All over the general forums and the login screen--it's not just Blizz, it's every companion. It appears they are aware of the issue. For now, unequipping and re-equipping gear every time you summon will "fox" it, but this is obviously a pain, given that everyone speeders around.

All companions, 6190 hp on summon, confirmed. Happens after hopping off a speeder, too. Can be fixed by unequipping and re-equipping gear, but obviously it's still game-breaking, if you can't hop off a speeder and fight.

Have you ever noticed what happens when you don't beat them? How you can almost never run away? How you frequently stand there until the last drop of health, trying to out-race their bar? How, once you die, you hit revive and bang your head against the fight again?

I assume that it was a limitation decided be somebody doing the "rows in database times number op players" computation. I agree, we could use more, now that it's possible to have almost a full set just by picking up dailies. Throw in weeklies and vehicle quests, and there's not enough room~

Hmrm, hard to compare directly to Anakin. In the books, he was basically trolled by Luke into looking like a moron in front of all of his forces. Then, tricked into thinking he killed Luke. Then, tricked into thinking his sister was Luke. The order of the One Sith just left him alone because they felt like he was an amusing distraction. We've yet to see that level of pwnage of Anakin--the Masters were all wary of his power, on both sides.

Where's Soa?

I hope they just make tokens tradeable. People who can afford them can get tons of credits...people who can't have a way to save up.

Presumably, it's the player's understanding of Trandoshan speech that comes across as simplified meaning... Or, he thinks we're idiots and is breaking it down for us...

I used to think that when I saw the Huttball go from mid to goal in 3 seconds, it was Hax~~ Then I found out that people are actually so good at this game that they actually do sprint, pull, pass, score in a line. Then I started killing the links in the scoring chain. Suddenly...there was less cheating in my WZs!!!!

SnowyAngel--the pieces obtained on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas are "bind to legacy." You can locate a mailbox, type in your Republic toon's name, and send the item from Dromund Kaas to them. And to answer the OP, almost all of them took <5 minutes. Except Kaas, where I had a devil of a time because others kept finding it and were too far away for me to get there each time. I gave up after 10 minutes, went back the next day, got it in 2 scans. Tips on getting the thing: Look at where everyone else is scanning and don't scan there, but scan near there. They are likely near a part, and if they find it, a giant beam will shoot out. So might as well cover more area by scanning a little way away Also...group up!

Biggest objection, I think, is that the same establishment gave the game an 8/10 rating at launch. And then, 11 months later, they pulled up the same game, only with 2 more Ops, 2 more FPs, 2 more WZs, and a huge list of quality-of-life improvements and called it a 4/10. Regardless of one's opinion of the game, doesn't that simply not make sense? It's not as though BW announced some kind of totally revised version 2 and asked people to come re-review. This new "review" sounds more like spite than objectivity.

I'm pretty sure you didn't actually read the OP, so I'll let you go back and do that now. He's quite right; I work at a college, next to the Helpdesk--an area filled with dozens of students at any given moment of the day discussing video games. I have *heard* misinformation, and the negative impact it has had. Folks saying that there's all these horrible restrictions, therefore they decided not to even try the game. Which was the OP's point. Which I am corroborating with real-world witnessing. He's not saying "lift the restrictions." He's saying "Stop presenting the restrictions out of context and making is sound as though if you try the game for free, you'll be severely handicapped and unable to play." Heck--I've even heard 2 separate people mention that Tor doesn't sound worth it because they read that there's a level cap... Play till 50 or something... And they don't want to get into it and have to stop. See what a little bit of misunderstanding and de-contextualized bullet pointing can do?

There is not a way, as far as I have found, to buy additional slots. I found this astonishing when a F2P friend mentioned only being able to make 2 characters *total*, regardless of server. It seems as though at the present, BW is preferring to have people sign up for multiple F2P accounts and to make scattered characters that don't experience legacy benefits, rather than selling slots. What I've yet to get a solid answer on--and Bioware, feel free to clarify--is whether a 1 month sub that creates 12 characters is still able to play the 12 they made. I know that no additional can be made w/out deleting to <2... but I've heard varying reports from players about whether the pre-existing toons can all be accessed. Either way--yea, take $5 and add a slot--I think it'd go over rather well.

Yea, it's a thing that happens, but you missed the exploit part. Suppose you were in open-world PvP on Ilum, back when there were actually daily rewards and stuff....and you just vanished in the middle of getting ganked!! Used to happen all the time. It's sort of an intractable problem--no point in being able to queue if you can only pop out of combat.

I haven't seen any patch released in the last week, so I'm not entirely surprised that something is still the same as it was before it wasn't patched...

I've added a note at the top, that this arena could be initially introduced as a beatable scenario for an Operations boss, and then unlocked as a repeatable leaderboard scenario per the description. Just in case Bioware is looking for some story-driven ways to bring this thing to life (Old data leaks indicated something with a planet Varl, some Hutts, Dread Masters...how about this in the mix?)

Most of this review is rubbish, in that it's very big on adjectives, and very sparse on examples. It spends its time simply listing the various aspects of the game and calling them underwhelming, bland, or not as well done as in other MMOs. And given that it is written from the perspective of having left and come back, daring the game to impress, only to find that it's only the same game with some new stuff--that's not much basis for a new review. There is one paragraph that is salient, accurate, and Bioware should be reading: I have been spending time with a few F2P players regularly this past week, and I'm startled by the things that they are required to pay for, and by the things that they don't have the option to pay for.

Yesterday, on a whim, I put out my holo rancor, and then dropped my dancing holo-twilek right in front of him. Know what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's practically criminal--here I am, reproducing one of the most memorable, classic scenes from Return of the Jedi....and nothing. This is a completely goofy and silly suggestion, but..... Holo-Satele and Holo-Malgus are class trainers... What does Holo-Rancor do? He really ought to eat other holograms in his range. I mean, this is just common sense. (Or could he at least Holo-roar?) Really, though--anyone else on board here? Shouldn't there be some of these kinds of little hidden extras in a game? Bonus interactions for certain social items? Otherwise, I think we're going to run out of reasons to collect them...

And after I just agreed with you on something else Exclusive armor that requires the player to be level 31 to wear *does* come with level 30 mods in it. This is not pay2win. You know the danger with phrases like x times more powerful, right? They're used by advertisers to make something insignificant sound big. "I now have 13 times more pennies than you!!!" ..."13 cents?" Bioware determined, and posted about this determination, that until level 10, that single stat on that single item was a huge boon (you only have 3 or 4 pieces of gear, so that one stat practically doubles your abilities). Compared to the 4 stats on the 13 other pieces of gear you can wear, however, Bioware determined that the advantage falls off "very rapidly" as you level past 20. So, if you're a level 11 in a warzone, it's pay 2 be less gimpy. If you're a level 30 in a warzone, it's pay to feel special. Not exactly pay2win, but it's a very slight advantage. I don't know why anyone is letting you out of combat in a Wz--I'd suggest they deserve to lose--but this is along the lines of the Shockfrozen Water, which they ended up counter-nerfing so hard that the item has all but disappeared. Yes, this one is an unfair advantage and an oversight. Expect a nerf. (They already nerfed my holorancor, and he doesn't even eat players!)

Agreed and desired~~ I know real-life couples playing this game!!

The biggest problem with chat bubbles, which seems to be cheerfully overlooked, is that they are unreadable in the current design of Swtor. Head up to the fleet, near anything--the gtn, guild bank, cargo holds, QT points, PvP area--and try to pick out individual character names among the sea of same-coloured words floating at the same height above everyone's heads. Now, add full paragraphs of text, as OP requests. Bioware has designed the game's environments to encourage players to wind up smooshed together. Chat bubbles are nightmareish in this scenario. I *would*, however, like to have bubbles, so I'd suggest something like this: The /say command would display speech bubbles to only players within a few meters of the player. The /yell command would have a much larger range, and would have a short lockout timer, 10 seconds or so. Chatting in /p and /ops out of combat would show the bubbles to your party and ops. In short, I cannot think that popping bubbles over everyone's heads is going to help visibility, and it will hurt folks suffering from lag already. But if we're maybe a bit less exuberant about all-bubbles-all-the-time, I think this can work.

I agree with Darth_Carnel on this one. There was not a "big Hellno" on holiday events; there was a disgusted, vocal crowd screaming hellno as loudly as they could. Same with F2P. Same with ... everything. Heck, everyone with a white lightsaber crystal was crying ohnoes when they came back in the Cartel Packs...but since that's like, 3 of us, and we were all pretty softspoken in our complaints, nobody bothered to point out that there was a "big hellno." In short, any time--*any time*--that players have things a certain way and there's a suggestion to make things a little less "that way," or to make their exclusivity a little less exclusive, people get very, very defensive. Darth_Carnel is cutting through that decently insightfully, and getting to the things that make F2P players stick around and spend their lives in the game. Hint: it isn't just story.

His point still stands. "Dipped under a million subscriptions" in August, according to EA. But let's do a "sky-is-falling" analysis, where everything is the worst thing possible while still being technically accurate. So let's call it only a million until July. We'll pretend that the 2 million subscribers dropped immediately to only one million after the free month, then immediately to only 650k in August when EA says they "dipped below a million and are well above 500k. " That's $15/month, one million players, January to July = $105 million Plus $15/month, 650k players, August through October = $29.25 million Plus 2 million purchases...let's pretend nobody bought a digital deluxe or collector's edition, so $60 at launch, but let's call it a revenue of $40 = $80 million So, that's $214 million. In short, sure, that leaves Ea and BW short about $75 million, if we're counting advertising dollars, and not counting any sales that took place after December. The gap is probably closer, then, but let's say that technically, they've lost millions! But...the game is 11 months old, and had, at last count, enough subs to hit the break even point over a time period that EA hasn't been willing to specify. So, it's not a flop--it's made back about 2/3 of its cost in a year, and it's supposed to be a many-year game. Sure, it's funding has slowed after 11 months, so getting that last third might take 3 times as long, but with a game that has an anticipated 5 to 10-year lifespan, it's pretty out of character to call it a colossal flop if it hasn't hit its 5-year goal in a year. That being said--sad to see that Zoeller's gone. It was fun to hear him talk at the guild summit, and his insights into character balancing--while not always popular with the fotm crowd--were great reads.

I just slotted an augment into a piece of purchased Cartel gear and *did* get the bind warning... And then I did it again with another piece of gear, just to be sure. Tokens well spent? Whatever's going on here, BW will hopefully look into it, because while I'm clearly getting bind warning, it sounds like in some circumstances, people are not. Odd stuff.

I think so, along those lines~ My assumption is that the level cap increase does have a lot to do with it, and also the general availability thing you mentioned. If I can get lvl 55 gear through story missions in the coming months, one might assume that getting rank 51 gear should become cheap and easy. I'd guess that they are phasing out the crystals and lowering the comms cost specifically to cater towards the "non-progression raiding" idea that they are moving towards in SM. As they go forward, I think they're not trying to "skip" that level of gear, per se, but they'll want to make it as readily "gettable" as 51 gear will be in the story quests.