Coincidentally, I pushed through 99 of my "stash" of slot machine tokens over the weekend. The only thing I got was rep tokens back. Not a single jawa junk. So, in my experience, I would say the slot machine payout has not recently changed.

The characters that look like a BOT, act like a BOT, and seem like a BOT, to me, may or may not actually be BOTS. That is true. However, a Sniper that can move instantly from one point on the map, to a different point on the map, in which there are no quick travels...that behavior is very, very suspect. Like...I know none of my slingers or snipers can do that (and I have 3). But if they are BOTs, they will all do one thing: They will all farm credits and then trade those credits to a subscribed player. All BioWare needs to do is follow the credits. Eventually the credits MUST arrive at some mule account, where they are stockpiled for later distribution in the form of a sale. Since a F2P or even a Preferred account cannot hold enough credits for even the smallest of these transactions, the credits must be in the banks of a subscribed character. Honestly, how hard is it to chase down these mule accounts and ban them? Tin foil hat time: If BioWare wanted to, they could follow the credits and ban the accounts. The question I have always wondered: Why doesn't BioWare do that?

I was unable to attend this event, but after listening to the live stream, I'm thinking I didn't miss anything. I did attend the Phoenix Cantina last year, which had seating for over 50% of attendees. If Anaheim didn't have enough seating, or even enough space, I actually view that as a SUCCESS problem. It's honestly good to hear about a problem of that nature. In my own business, I enjoy (to an extent) hearing about how popular my product is, and how there isn't enough of it available (at times). Watching the live stream, however, I was disappointed in the lack of reveal. We got 2 nuggets: There will be a Yavin Stronghold (though we don't know when). And the QA team is finally going to start testing with an all melee team. Wookies, hair styles, companion story, Mandalorian story, more Stronghold Hooks, A banner?: Honestly, those were lame questions to have hand selected and wasted our time discussing. Finally, the cantinas seem like the ideal opportunity to give is a roadmap about what we can expect to see between this cantina and the next. We know very, very little about what we can expect beyond next week. VERY, VERY little, after next week. BioWare admitted doing that last year was a mistake. And they are doing it again this year.

With the community cantina happening tomorrow night in Anaheim, and Star Wars Celebration in full swing, here's to hoping the relative silence this week is because the community team is making all of their final plans to make a HUGE reveal. i know it's entirely too late to influence how much of a reveal we are going to get, but please, please, please...be awesome!

Your efforts to troll are getting weaker and weaker.

So what you are saying, is your team is willing to carry your underperforming Marauder. That's very generous of them. It also exemplifies that bringing a Marauder is asking your team to carry you.

The i5-4690K is indeed the best CPU you can get right now, with SWTOR in mind, as SWTOR only uses 2 cores (and only seriously uses 1 core). The i5-4690K can be overlocked easily, for substantial performance improvements, which is what makes it such a superb choice for gaming. If you find an "older" i5-"K" processor on the cheap, it'll work nearly as well. And far outperform any CPU AMD has to offer.

Eric, I don't main or even alt a Mara/Sent in 3.0, as I've personally ranked the class as the lowest performing in SWTOR right now. However, I find it depressing that the most iconic class for the SWTOR universe, is indeed the lowest performing class in SWTOR. That seems wrong on so many levels. With that in mind, if I were BioWare, I would always place a high priority in making sure my most iconic class was indeed fun to play, and in every single play environment (PVP, Operations, Solo, etc.), it performed at least as well as the best in the game. As a means to a successful business, I would think keeping my customers happy would be a high priority. I believe this is why the majority of the feedback is so overwhelmingly negative. Many, many people are playing SWTOR because we get these cool glow sticks to swing around. Except, as of 3.0, those cool glow sticks are like wet noodles in comparison to others on the DPS meters, and equally problematic, we can't stay in range of our targets long enough to use them effectively.

No. Just No. The F2P model in SWTOR is extremely generous. I don't want any more spam email than I get now, so F2P cannot be given email. I don't want any more spam whispers or /says than I get now. F2P players get the entire leveling experience to level 50 that I had at launch, with the same rate of xp, the same exact quests, mostly everything the same, that I paid $50 for. My first level 50 hit the level cap, and never had more than 100k. So they don't need more credits than the current cap either. It's already an amazingly generous offer. Sure, they won't get to do as much PVP along the way. And they won't have as many action bars, but they have what they need to have to enjoy what by any other standard should be a $50 game. And they get it for free. I don't know what world people come from, where that's not enough. If a player wants to make a life of SWTOR (which is essentially what we subscribers are choosing), then $15/month, is a very fair price. Ridiculously fair.

I didn't LOL...but I did smile. Also, you forget to mention how OP that backpedalling is. /golfclap

If the writers of The Walking Dead ever need script ideas, this thread may prove valuable.

They should announce a new slot machine, one that has a high rate of jackpots, and once it you get a jackpot, you can log in on an alt, and collect the jackpot a second time...and repeat for every alt. This is a "working as intended" behavior to reward our most loyal subscribers with LOTS of alts.

So, a month ago, this thread was beaten to death. Are you guys going to let it go already? Maybe at the livestream Q&A or the next cantina event (LA in April) you can attend and get the answer you seek.

I strongly suggest you go to ecollegepc.com, select the Intel Gaming computer, and go from there. Things you want: Intel i5-4690k processor Intel Z97 based motherboard BIG power supply 16 GB Memory SSD (for the OS and the game) As much video card power as you can afford. 75-100 fps is no problem (what I see), if you spend the money, throughout most of the game worlds. However, no pc can fix the horrid frame rates on 16 man Sword Squadron, etc. I fall under 50 fps in these horribly optimized areas that BioWare seems incapable of getting a handle of.

Eric, So, in case you were wondering, as a player, I would fully endorse a much heavier handed approach to this form of cheating. Seriously, much heavier handed. I don't see the need to pull punches here. Be aggressive, as the cheating of the few so greatly affects the fun of the many (which you must already understand, and far, far more so than does PVE exploiting, where a lighter handed approach could potentially be viable). IMO, the result of your actions needs to be such that a cheater isn't able to be creative and still cheat. It needs to hit them hard, square in the center of their chest, and straight up stop them from cheating. Honestly...a warning, doesn't sound like it's going to slow enough ppl down...anyone cheating now, that doesn't get a warning knows they can keep on cheating. And anyone that gets a warning is now aware they have to get more creative (start to look just a little more legit). How about starting with 3 days, and an immediate 0 rating? You may smack an innocent...so be sure to give the presumed guilty a realistic way to redeem themselves (perhaps their internet connection has been truly problematic). Anyway, if you were wonder what THIS player would like to see...that's it.

The Republic and the Empire are engaged in a brutal war, and you attack an enemy battle master, and then expect the enemy to just watch? Ummmmm....honestly, really? Seriously, even if you are on a PVE server, the battle masters are placed where they are for a reason. So that the opposing faction has the opportunity to defend them. It's totally and completely intended, and while I rather loathe the Galactic Conquesting system for being pointless...at least stuff like this makes it mildly interesting.

The Stronghold design for Kaas City and Coruscant are intended by BioWare. If they wanted it differently, it would be different. With Tatooine you get 2 ship hooks and with Nar Shadaa you get 1 ship hook for 3 ship hooks available. Perhaps the new Stronghold targeted for later this year will have a ship hook as well.

Pie >> Cake

Tait, I'm aware these broken itemizations seem to be acknowledged: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=783782 But could they get into a release? 3.0 Launch bugs, that are seriously detrimental to crafting appropriate gear for Shadows/Assassins are in particular need of a tweak! Please don't let 3.0 be like 2.0, and have crafting bugs persist FOREVER.

This thread highlights a perception problem that is common with BioWare. I know at the cantina event last year in Phoenix I inquired about this issue. I was assured they care (although I honestly wish I had pressed further on the issue). The fact that so many in the community believe that BioWare DOES NOT CARE, is actually a sad perception problem, which is yet another example of where BioWare's community team could do so very much better at communicating with the community. Plain and simple, BioWare does care, and they have financial business reasons to care. Credit sellers undercut the cartel market as a means to turn $$$ into credits, and BioWare doesn't want competition in that regard. So they absolutely care. Credit sellers also often look to hack and exploit legitimate accounts for their gain. These hacked accounts are the perfect fence for the transactions they need to conduct, and hacked accounts result in turning a happy customer into a non-customer...also bad for business for BioWare. In-game functionality that detects and deters credit selling does seem as though it could be improved. Everything from detecting when a bot exists, prohibiting any bot from spamming the same message again and again, detecting the usage of a URL in a message (which judging by the recent change to some of the spam may now be the case), automating ignore/friends list management, automating IP and account banning, putting greater /say and /1 limitations into a F2P account, and then periodically doing some form of deep search (or sting operation), which will result in shutting down the fence accounts (the subscription accounts that must exist, which hold the pile of credits the credit sellers are offering). If BioWare can identify those accounts, ban them, and take those credits away, on a consistent basis, the credit sellers will not have what they need to sell. In terms of putting man hours to the problem, I would be searching for the "banks" that the credit sellers must have, and taking their credits away from them. Honestly, there aren't that many players that have MILLIONS of credits (as a percentage of the player base). And there aren't that many occasions where a player trades MILLIONS of credits to another player...especially with nothing in return. Sure, it happens legitimately (husband sends credits to wife's account)...but if I was going to spend my time working the problem, I'd be looking at every trade/email that involved more than a MILLION credits that didn't have an item on the other end of it. Those trades/emails would be highly suspect, and certainly, with chat log support, a BioWare employee would almost assuredly be able to tell if it was legit. Then take the credits from the buyer, and all of the credits that that fence account has...and take all the credits from accounts that are feeding the fence. This is where some more functionality may be needed on the server side to help an employee "follow the money", if it doesn't exist.

Just last night, I pugged into a Ravagers run with an entire guild (well, 6 of them) that had clearly exploited, each wearing their 198 HM set piece chest, and very few other set pieces or token items (lots of Massassi and 192 comms gear...and most with 186 Mainhands). These were gear levels that simply could not have killed Coratanni on HM. It was very depressing to see at the time. I can only hope that all of those 198 Chest Set pieces are out of the game today...or soon. And that those players don't just receive a day or two ban (which is indeed nice to see). I'd like to see them lose their achievement and the gear item. Not sure if that is planned for the "casual" exploiter, but it's what I would have liked to see. Regardless, I'm glad BioWare is doing what I consider to be the right thing and taking some action. Hopefully it gives more players pause the next time an exploit is revealed. Likewise, I hope BioWare takes future exploits far more seriously and fixes them in a far more timely manner.

The best approach I've always found to surplus comms is to buy an offhand, pull a crystal out of my collections, plop the crystal into the off hand, and then immediately vendor the offhand for credits. That's after I've legacy'd over an offhand barrel/armor/hilt to every alt for that tier and reverse engineered them as well.

Too soon? I thought it might be.

All attempts at sarcasm, clearly lost on the reader.

I wanted to make yet another post about the slot machine, so I can nerd rage over the latest incarnation that is the Contraband Slot Machine.. Not sure if the cost is too high or too low. Not sure if it costs too much to play it or too little. What the heck are cartel market certificates and jawa junk anyway? I've never received either of them while playing GSF. Don't really even know why I would want one in my stronghold, which I never visit, because I think Strongholds were a complete waste of resources by BioWare and I cannot believe they are even in the game. Now I am forced to go to my stronghold, which I don't even like, and click on the slot machine mindlessly for hours, ruining all the fun I used to have in this game doing <something else>. Oh, and right now, I only have 100 million credits, because I spent 1 million last night buying slot machine tokens on 8 alts in anticipation of the price increase. I hope someone out there feels sorry for me. We now return you to your regularly scheduled gaming