I am getting this too. I used to be able to control+alt+delete and go to apps and end the task there, but now the dead SWTOR window is always on top so I can't even switch to the Task Manager window. Come on Bioware; this game is 5 years old and still runs like an alpha half the time.

So I have not played this game for a long time because we all know how terrible it is. I log on recently to play and find I have this stupid plague debuff on my character that lasts way too long and I guess ultimately results in my death. Worse than death no matter what I'm doing I am knocked out of it so I can do some monumentally stupid coughing animation. Fighting something? Please wait while you do this monumentally stupid coughing animation. In a store? Please wait while you're knocked out of the store UI to do this monumentally stupid coughing animation. In the marketplace? Please wait while you're knocked out of it and lose your search to do this monumentally stupid coughing animation. You see, stuff like this is why you have to give this game away "for free" and still hardly anyone plays it. This game was made by some of the industry worst game designers and you have the industry worst game designers maintaining it. I almost fell out of my chair and hit the floor when I realized that a human being who I can only guess is intelligent enough to operate a computer actually implemented this asinine garbage. Hey I know, why don't you hire someone to come stand behind me and scream in my ear. That would be annoying too. So by the time I realize I have this stupid plague on me I am on Rishi. I have to minimize this stupid game (and god help you if you have to minimize this stupid game) and read google to find out I have to fly back to the fleet or another planet that isn't Rishi to spend in game money on a stupid cure. I'm actually kind of surprised you didn't make my swipe my Visa card in order to make my character stop hitching and puking every ten seconds (SO STUPID; WHOEVER CAME UP WITH THIS IS STUPID). So I have to sit through a half dozen minute-long loading screens to get back to the fleet and then back again to what I was doing so I could buy this stupid thing. In my entire life of playing video games I have never seen anything quite so stupid. Knocking someone out of store UI's and fights so your character can bend over and barf far surpasses the second stupidest thing I have ever seen. I know that no one at Bioware cares. You're probably all just sitting around waiting for your layoff notice to hit, but oh my god you are bad at making games if this is what you come up with. I don't even have any constructive criticism for how you can become better game designers. All I can suggest is you collectively quit your jobs, move back in with your parents into your old room and stalk celebrities on twitter for the rest of your lives, because you have absolutely no business in this industry at all.

I agree with the OP. The new flashpoints are not worth the effort. They either need to be easier/faster or the rewards need to be jacked up significantly. I mean come on, people just want to get their daily/weekly done. I don't want to stand around while people set up CC on every pull and kill trash bosses with a million HP and 2-3 mechanics I have to be aware of. Save that crap for Operations. These things might be easy for high level raiding guilds who coordinate on voice chat and are used to working together. Pugging these things are a goddam nightmare. I wouldn't mind the difficulty so much if I wasn't looting such awful stuff. 2 item levels higher than level 50 flashpoint gear? Really? It has gotten to the point that I don't even want to play anymore. It's not that it is too hard, it is the time commitment. The sheer weight of considering all the stuff I am going to have to do just to gear up makes me want to just do something else.

Sorry but this isn't gambling in the context you are trying to use it in. It is analogous in that there are random chances to obtain things so you are betting on an uncertain outcome, but it is no more gambling than playing on a game show like the price is right or partaking in any number of carnival games. Gamling-like games of chance are not gambling in the sense of the word you are using it in. Buying hypercrates isn't the same as spending all your money on blackjack or poker. There are no stakes; everything in there is attainable by other means. There is already a theoretical cap on crates because it would be exceedingly rare to buy more than 3 hypercrates on one particular theme and not receive everything the hypercrate has to offer. If you are really only looking for one ultra rare thing and for some longshot you don't get one after opening 75 packs then your money might be better spent on finding someone to give you one and you can paypal them twenty bucks. If you somehow become addicted to the actual idea behind opening hypercrates just to see what's inside, that isn't a gambling addiction any more than becoming unusually obsessed with any other activity is.

Don't want to pee on your parade or anything but is there going to be a way to turn double xp off? I already think you level too fast compared to the amount of content there is to go through. The game isn't paced at all for increasing the speed of leveling. I guess I can grind legacy all weekend and not play any alts but it would be nice to disable it.

I have carried dozens of fresh 50s through dozens of hardmodes. Maybe you don't deserve the new companion if you cannot even complete one hard mode. What do you do at 50 if you can't even do hard modes? Just level another character? What do you need HK-51 for then? I can 100% guarantee you the only thing stopping you from completing the level 50 version of the foundry is yourself.

well, aren't you important

I usually guard the DPS that has the highest amount of HP just because I'm kinda lazy in pugs and don't really feel like analyzing everyone's class/gear and making an informed decision. I'll change my guard if another DPS is ripping threat off me or (usually) attacking the wrong thing a lot. I'll usually guard the healer if they ask me to just to avoid drama. Although its almost totally impossible to avoid drama in pugs in this game because star wars nerds combined with MMO nerds are typically some of the hardcorest spergers on the internet and lose their cool if something doesn't go exactly their way 100% of the time. Using guard at all is pretty trivial in flashpoints though. I'm not sure why you are getting all up ins about it.

A good tank can keep the other team from completing objectives long enough for reinforcements to show up as well. With cooldowns I can last a long time with 2-4 people whaling on me - usually long enough for a reasonably organized team to react to my warnings that an objective I am defending is under attack. I don't get a ton of killing blows in PVP but I do feel useful most of the time.

I got my black hole comms and stupid lizard pet and I was a week late resubbing after the deadline to get those. So who knows.

I'm having a hard time finding this online. I see some but most of them are outdated or conflicting. Where should my defense stats be before tanking HM flashpoints, SM raids and HM raids?

If you have wondered why there are not enough tanks queuing for HM's and raiding, you only have to look at the mechanics in this game. I have tanked in just about every MMORPG I have played. I mostly enjoy it. I tank in this game. I find myself pulling my hair out more often than not. Just about half of everything in this game stuns the tank, or knocks me back 100 feet and snares me, or CC's me, or stuns me, knocks me back and CC"s me. It isn't fun, it isn't strategic, it's just frustrating and terrible. Even trash does this consistently. Stuns and knock backs should be used extremely sparingly. You have given NPC's so many powers that only players should have. The issue is exacerbated because DPS tend to just jump in .01 second after me and start blasting on the thing. Meanwhile I'm two miles away because I've been knocked back into the last room and am snared and/or rooted and some idiot Marauder is getting laid on by some huge robot and complaining that I can't hold threat. Yes I realize they should play smarter but you have to design around these kinds of issues. Tanks have enough to deal with keeping threat on everything. We don't need to deal with getting stunned and shot around the room every pull.

All my companions are now running around with their weapons out again. This is doubly annoying for force using companions who are just constantly running around with their lightsabers lit up. It is even uglier when they put their weapons away and the blades are still on. The last time you guys updated, this looked fixed, then in the last update it is back again. What? Did you think that we were too satisfied with a bug you actually fixed? Guards in fleet are standing around with their hands empty in a rifle-holding position with their rifles on their backs again. And my agent likes to make like she's drawing her rifle in some cutscenes but only pretends to and then threatens people while holding their pretend rifle. For reals this game has been out for nine months.

Hi. Please stop nerfing PVE in order to balance PVP. I like my Overload. I know every MMORPG designer in the world is totally obsessed with making PVE more lame to please the .001% of your customers that actually care about PVP, but for the love of god, stop it.

There's nothing wrong with the engine. TOR's code is just un-optimized and lazy.

Just because one game was even more inconvenient does not mean less inconvenient is the best solution. Some of these zones are huge and annoying to get around. And it does not help that bikes in this game move slightly faster than a Segway. I don't have a huge issue with the size of the world, but with the speed of the mounts. Complaining about 6-8 minutes travel time is perfectly valid. It's a video game. I don't want to spend more than a minute or two getting from point A to point B. I'm trying to have fun and travelling around is not any fun.

Dude. They have not even fixed the proton torpedo launcher and you think they are going to implement bold new space combat mechanics?

Is this some kind of KOTR canonical thing that I'm not aware of or just ugly game design? I cringe every time I see a dude with cornrows in this game, so I cringe a lot. Every time I see an imperial officer with corn rows I want to shut the game off. I'm all for varied hair designs but you guys need to select some hair to not come up in your randomizer when you make NPC's. It looks totally ridiculous.

I will do the weekly Q&A for you. 1. Will Star Wars The Old Republic help me lose weight? Yes! This this something we are definitely planning on doing in the future. No ETA 2. Will Star Wars The Old Republic go to work and do my job for me? Yes! This this something we are definitely planning on doing in the future. No ETA 3. Will Star Wars The Old Republic bring my beloved mee-maw and gramps back to life? Yes! This this something we are definitely planning on doing in the future. No ETA 4. Will Star Wars The Old Republic cure my cancer? Yes! This this something we are definitely planning on doing in the future. No ETA

At this point, why even bother? The time to do this was 4-5 months ago, before you lost half of your subs due to being spread out over the ludicrous amount of dead servers you opened, thinking that your game was going to be as popular as WOW.

Their reason is because that is how mounts work in WOW. This game is basically WOW. They even call your inventory window "your bags" in the tooltips because in WOW it is actually bags. I was driving across Voss (ugh) earlier today and I was actually embarrassed at how slow I was going. I ride a bicycle IRL faster than my tier 2 speeder goes. At this rate they should just give us run speed buffs and get rid of vehicles because it just looks silly as hell riding some futuristic hovering bicycle across a flat field at 20 MPH.

It's cute that you think the developers of this game read these forums. From what I can see the only EA/Bioware staff that read these forums are the ones getting minimum wage to lock every thread that comes up. I get the feeling that the community would be a lot less hostile and less prone to throw up angry messages if they had even an ounce of participation from the developers, other than the bad joke that is their weekly Q&A (Will TOR cure my cancer and make me a sandwich? YES OF COURSE IT WILL IN A FUTURE PATCH NO ETA!)

Might I put forth the crazy and totally out there suggestion of actually listening to your community instead of closing every thread that is started by your extremely frustrated user base? I don't know, maybe I'm old school. But when 99% of my customers are begging for something and they are my sole source of revenue, I'd at least consider the notion of paying attention.

This is silly. What the hell is taking so long? There were TWO people on Ilium when I was on there last. There were less then 30 on fleet. This is pathetic. I really want to play this game and support it but I am not going to because this is just a complete joke. My two options are to keep playing this game by myself (I can play my other games alone for free) or I can start again on one of the 2 or 3 popular servers, leaving behind all my characters and my legacy that you have spent the last six months hyping, rendering all that time TOTALLY POINTLESS. I am cancelling my account right now and you are not getting another dime out of me until you combine basically 95% of your servers. You have a MMORPG and no one can play with other people because you have a 3:1 server to customer ratio. I look at that two page long list of servers on the login screen and just shake my head. It cannot possibly take a company with the resources of Electronic Arts to crap out a tool that transfers data from one server to another. Swallow your pride and merge the servers before you lose the rest of your user base. Diablo 3 is going to tear another chunk out of your population in another week, and you're just farting around. Do you guys even know what you are doing?

I guess doing it for two weeks is a week longer than I thought this dev team would go for, but seriously? I have never played a MMO with such limited interaction from the people making it. Do you even care about your community or are you just coasting until EA lays you off?