This I can agree with. Bioware more than likely realized that it is smart to meet people half way. Most players like me who don't have problems with the current companions, won't really care if there is a buff either. But believe it or not people do go to extremes to push their agenda, whether it is smart or not. Also this wouldn't be a huge bother for someone who has the setup for it. Voting 5 times was very easy and convenient even with a crude method. If I was really dedicated I'd make it hundreds.

I like your naivety, it's adorable. If you find IP checks difficult to get around maybe you shouldn't be commenting on anything tech related, just a thought.

No, something far more unfortunate. I mean you are talking about client side lag when everyone else is talking about server side lag. There really is no point to this discussion. Hope your ego can handle it when you realize you are wrong.

It is and everyone is experiencing it. It just only affects planets where corpses stack, so you won't get lag on instances for example. It's unfortunate that people make snarky comments when they really have no idea what they are talking about.

This is actually far more serious than the companion nonsense. The game is going to be unplayable, so what does it even matter how much your Lana heals for? It's not something you should leave up for the weekend when people have the time to play some games.

I like the combat well enough. It's less responsive than WoW for example, but the fact that you fight multiple enemies at once instead of just one is a huge boon. I also like the fact that SWTOR still has a nice amount of abilities instead of the 5 to 8 that you get in most newer MMOs. So yeah, it's not amazing but it's definitely not bad either.

I'm so happy with the changes I just celebrated by voting 5 times for it, and it only took me a minute to do, and I don't even have any special setup for it. These things are extremely easy to spoof in addition to having a horrendous sampling method. Strawpoll is for fun, it is absolutely not reliable for anything serious. Now I'm not saying that the majority didn't like the OP companions, they very well might have, but this is not the way to find out.

Where does this idea come from that newbies and casuals are completely awful at games? The leveling experience is still very easy, the game just doesn't play itself anymore. I'm pretty sure even new players know how to press some buttons. Seems like over here people get called hardcore elitists if they bother to read their ability tool-tips.

I don't mind that companions are stronger than before but they went completely overboard with the buff. The game is so easy now that it's not even faceroll... you need not bother to use your face. I don't feel like much of a hero when the AI is doing everything for me. We should at least have to push some buttons... even if the order we push them in doesn't matter.

Yeah I think the price should be re-evaluated. Gold sinks are good, necessary even, but this is not a good place to put one. Fresh 50's need the set to enjoy PvP, yet they are often the ones with the most trouble when it comes to credits. It's just not a good idea to remove money from where it is most needed instead of removing it from where there is a surplus of it. So what happens is that a lot players don't buy the set and go into WZ's ungeared. After that they either ragequit or stick with it and cause losses for everyone. It's just not a good thing from anyone's perspective.

I'm of the opinion that in PvP all gear should be normalized. PvP should be about skill, not gear. So this would be a step towards that. However BW will never do it until there is yet another new tier of gear available. Gear grinds keep subscribers.

Every match should be a challenge for both sides because win or lose those matches are the most fun. The reward for forming a premade should be that you get to play with your friends, not that you get easy wins. And yes, a premade should be made to wait if no other premades are available. Shorter queues should never be a reason to lower quality. Granted this will probably require cross-server to work properly. I agree with you that the percentages people come up with just don't add up, and that self reflection is good. However let's not exaggerate the effect a single player has on his win ratio. One player is just 12.5% of a team. It would take a lot of games to get statistical data on how that 12.5% is performing and even then faction imbalances (be it skill, gear or population) can easily skew the data. Also please people stop trying to educate PuGs, it absolutely does not work. Your average PuG is bad and it will always be bad. You can lecture teamwork, gear etc. all you want but the PuGs will still always be bad. Even after 7 years of doing the same old battlegrounds PuGs in WoW are still terrible at them. And that game has far more educational resources available to them than ToR has. So if it was something that could be sorted with people getting better it would have happened by now.

Some really strange pretend elitist notions from people here. Someone who is really good at the game would prefer the challenge of only going against other premades. You don't see little league football players going against professional teams because it's not fun or productive for anyone. Pitting sides of similar level against one another is important in any competition. It's why there are weight classes and leagues and all that... Also the idea of "rewards" is faulty on its own. Commendations are not rewards they are an MMO currency for progression. And the reason there is progression is because people tend to subscribe longer with it than without it. Skill is a separate factor from progression and anyone who feels truly skilled should not fear the progression of those lesser skilled. As for forming premades as a solution. Well, it's not feasible for all of us and for some of us it's not even preferable. For example I personally don't even like to be on vent all the time. Partly because in EU we have language barriers and Finnish guilds are few and very small. So I'm forced to speak english, which while fairly good is still exhausting to speak for long periods of time. So I fully support the OP on this one but fear it won't be possible until cross server queuing is implemented.

Honestly, if a couple days being live is enough to tell that obvious mistakes were made, then your testing is horrible. None of this should ever have gone live in the first place. That is why there is the test server... Still better than not doing anything.

Rather meaningless because as you well know no single player can alone bring victory to a team and no single player can make a team work as a team if they are not willing to. You cannot make a PuG function like a premade no matter how great you think you are at the game.