Just wanted to add that I agree that this will affect FP pugs. I am usually one of the more patient players. I will put up with many wipes in an instance if I feel like the person is actually trying and willing to work to improve. I have wiped repeatedly for over 2 hours before on something that I have cleared many times before in less than 15 minutes. Why? because I am a good guy like that... I normally call it quits only when either I just get completely bored of wiping repeatedly or the repairs started to get noticeable against my bank account. Guess what this change just did? Lower my threshold for tolerance in the latter category. Pre 1.7 Getting to yellow usually meant me spending about 50k on repairs. Post 1.7 one death is costing me a little over 9k (this is assuming that you run in, pull, and die... no extra damage from trash mobs or anything). I am full 63s. Yes, I realize that if I wanted to spend about 4 hours each day running dailies (this is about the time it takes to do ALL of them) you can get around 400k from the quests and selling everything... But I do not WANT to run dailies for 4 hours... I have done this... it is not fun. You get burnt out on Dailies REALLY fast like this, and subsequently burnt out on the game... and burnt out players will be players that are more likely to leave the game (although they may come back later... do you really want to gamble with that?) The interesting thing here is I actually COULD find the time to run dailies if there were something to gain... This is not one of them... I will not run dailies like this just so I can raid and play the game... just isnt going to happen. I am not threating to quit here, or anything like that, because I do enjoy this game and have given a ton of my time toward it. But you can guarantee I am likely to be a whole lot less active, because my time will be better spent doing other things... in other games... not rerunning the same boring daily for the millionth time. And to those who say, make money in other ways... all the other ways involve getting money from other people... if NOONE has any money, then NOONE will buy anything on the GTN. Prices will bottom out. Its called deflation, and in this case it would be on track to deflate the money in circulation very quickly. I understand economics, and that you dont want runaway inflation. Which may be the reason for this change, is that they were seeing entirely too much money in circulation, but I think someone added one too many 0's to their tweek and is a dramatically noticeable issue. We have plenty of exensive credit sinks in the game already... is this really necessary? Removing mods from gear, adding augments, crafting missions, GTN transaction fees, and repairs are what I can think of off hand.

You ARE weak, because you chose the Dark Side... bwahahahaha Seriously though I support this as well!

Screw it... I took it down to good ole in game testing... run away from an object for 5 seconds and write down the distance... I only did it 5 times to get an average distance... but the numbers were not so far off that it really makes a difference here... do it with both sprint turned on and sprint turned off. Apply a bit of math and BAM you know how fast you run! 5seconds distance (avg): 28.414 normal / 37.59 sprint mps(meters per second): 5.6828 normal / 7.59 sprint kph: 20.45808 normal / 27.324 sprint mph: 12.7121 normal / 16.9783 sprint So whats the difference between the two values? about 35%? yep... The discrepancy is likely an error on my imperfect system to get the speed, and thus would throw the correct value off. But we can say we "run" at 13mph, and "sprint" at 17mph... So a 110% mount is 27.3mph. So again, why cant animals known to run well over that speed be viable for mounts? That's a verified two species straight from wookieepedia: Dewbacks and Tauntauns which are also the most WIDELY known animal mounts... Yes, I put way too much effort to discredit an angry few people "if you put animal mounts in the game IMA quit!!!!"... but don't go making baseless claims just because you want to complain... again... the better argument (if all you want to do is complain) is to argue why do our mounts go so SLOW... because clearly 27.3 MPH is far slower than my Lhosan Thunderbolt can take me. Why if they dont increase the mount speeds SO MANY PEOPLE ARE GOING TO QUIT THE GAME!!!!!!111!ONE

As an aside, even if you assume we "run" at 8mph which may be more of a likely jogging/running pace, and sprinting at 35% that is only 10mph sprint... and then 110% mount speed would be 16.8mph... Even if you over inflate the speeds because "we are jedi and we can run fast" (nevermind the non force users...) it would take us running at 25mph, sprint at 33.75mph, and mount at 52mph before you come anywhere CLOSE to the top speed of a tauntaun... Im just gonna say... we do NOT run at 25MPH.... doesnt happen... and even if we did, a tauntaun could still keep up... so where is your immersion argument now? Edit: Just wanted to add, the other widely popular animal mount as seen in other parts of lore, dewbacks, can achieve speeds of 50KPH (31MPH)... so again, give our current "slow" speed in the game, it is highly plausible to use them for mounts, and NOT break lore.

Wait... how is it that the speeders go too fast to be feasible with an animal mount??? We are running around in our speeders MUCH MUCH slower than they are capable of lore wise. Heck some of the speeders are used in the taxis and they certainly go faster in the taxis.... You people dont know your lore... Tauntauns run at 90KPH (55mph) http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tauntaun You "run" at lets assume 6mph... the 35% speed increase for sprint would be 8.1mph... the mount at 110% would be a measly 12.6mph... So why cant a TaunTaun keep up with 12mph again???? The real argument shouldn't be "OMG dont give us animal mounts!!!! IMMERSION!!!" and instead should be "OMG my speeders dont go nearly as fast as they could be IMMERSION!!!"

Just so you and others know, this is what happens when you get an actual developer to respond to a thread, instead of a CM. Their posts have to be cleared before it will show up so they dont accidentally give away any secret information. Thank you, Nathan for the response here, and I hope this is a sign of more responses like this to come directly from developers. Please let your co-workers know it is nice to see you guys now and again in the forums directly talking with your customers, even if we can be a little harsh at times . This is definitely very appreciated, instead of things feeling filtered and disconnected, like the community has no direct dialog with the devs.

I may be missing something here, and Ill be honest I only read through the first like 3 or 4 pages, but I think people are reading into this wrong. The only "old" content here is section x and the heroic space missions, which are from 1.6... gee how dare them make you visit content again from one patch prior! The NERVE! /sarcasm I read Voss heroics as a NEW heroic questing area... Rep grinding in more of an end game thing this day and age in MMOs... why would they put in something for level 45s when we are about to jump to 55... doesnt make any sense... so either everyone is right, and this is stupid... or you are reading into this completely wrong, and it was a stealth announcement that there is EVEN MORE new content for 1.7. AND THEN! People are like "what about PVP??? I HATE YOU BW!!!! CRY!!!!"... Ummm you are getting ilum back in 1.7... what more do you want? This makes two patches in a row that they have focused on something for PVP. Seriously, stop complaining, just so you can read yourself complaining... So what we have, based on this information, in 1.7... 1: Reputation system being added to the game 2: Ilum PVP Area 3: New quests in Voss. 4: Giant Wampa Boss??? So you get your solo play through Rep and New quests mixed with some old (but not like 1.0 old...). You get PVP content, and you get at least a little bit of PVE... I am also guessing they will give us NiM TFB in 1.7 which would round out the PVE and make this one of the most content filled patches yet. But go ahead... Keep complaining... Because obviously they aren't doing ANYTHING with this game...

So the change happened (presumably) after the 23rd? This makes the most sense, we just didn't do EC on our Tues run, so I wasn't sure if it happened in 1.6.3 or 1.6.3a. Either way I am surprised this was not in the patch notes, since this is a rather big change to that fight. I mean, not as big as removing the ability to blow it up entirely, but I thought that was supposed to be part of the mechanic anyway, that you shouldn't click on the shield so pay attention to WHAT you are targeting (which is a pretty good thing to force people to do, because I cannot tell you how much it irritates me when people don't target correct things on just regular pulls.)

I have searched the forums to the best I can, and double and triple checked the patch notes and I believe they either gave a nerf to the fight or it is a bug. As of at least last night (1/27/2012) and at least in NiM 16 Man Firebrand/Stormcaller, the shields are no longer able to be targeted. We did verify that AOE would still damage the shields but at the very least you cannot "accidentally" tab or click into them to make them your target. Personally I like it, because it saves me time having to press tab one more time as I switch targets, but it would be nice to know if this was intentional or not.

Sorry for the delay on a response here. Thank you for your clarification on MOX as I did not know this about their delay. I think where you have issues with them being "accurate" is mostly when you drop out of combat for any length of time. This resets your meter but not everyone else. So for the shadow/assassins this really sucks and you dont get good numbers unless you upload your parse to a website. What I was referring to is at the end of TFB when he starts randomly picking people to attack and the tanks have to rotate their taunts. It was questioned what makes him choose who he attacks here. I hope that clears up what I meant for that. Speaking TFB, having it with the first phase would be helpful since each tentacle has their own threat table, and since I am always getting the swirlies these days, I really have to be careful sometimes about my threat... The question I would have, does your meter suffer from the same issues that MOX does in regards to dropping out of combat and resetting your meters? As I mentioned before with stealth classes, but also if you die, and then on fights like Toth and Zorn where you have a brand new combat when you engage the leader. Just some things to ponder. I will try to remember to bring this up to my GM and see what he thinks.

I cannot participate in these due to work scheduling so a move to the beginning of the week would be pretty sweet. But I am glad that world pvp is not dead, they just havent provided incentive to do it... which is funny because the only incentive here is just for the heck of it.... makes no sense (come on bioware!!!). My question, how is the lag and or frames looking with 80+ people on screen? I was curious if they had even come close to fixing these issues yet since 1.7 is just around the corner! Anyone able to weigh in on this?

So you gonna say what you did exactly to get yourself out of combat to do that and keep yourself out of combat?

I wouldnt be so sure on that. People love spectator sports and if you can bet on teams I think that would make it very active. Implement a camera (or even randomly jack into other people's field of view) and it wouldnt hit on lag so much... I wouldnt think. Since you are not actually physically there, you would just be receiving a feed of the match. If it is broadcast on a big screen in a cantina (with maybe a clickable option to go full screen) you would only be adding one extra "player" or 2 or three depending on the overview cameras they add. Take a look at "The Secret World" (dunno if it is in any other game, as this was the first I saw it in) and when you die in a dungeon you rez up and then get an "camera" button. This lets you generally pick from 4 or 5 stationary cameras on the edges of the area that track individual players on the field. Something like this would work, but I still think, grabbing peoples FOV's would also be cool, just remove the HUD and bam you don't have a ton of information, nor would you be invading someones "privacy" for their actual screen view. Personally I think its a cool idea, and one which fits within the realm of star wars anyway since gambling is a big part of the lore.

Sounds like you will finally be getting your wish. The blog post just addressed this issue. You will be able to copy your characters over *soon*... I know I know... the always just out of reach word "soon" but hey, they said it would also open up character transfers later in the year... so it would have to be before that right? So *soon* would be sometime between "now" and "later in the year" cheers*

Having played through the beta and now officially leveled 3 characters to 50 (I am not much of an altaholic so my other characters are still in the 20s). I can honestly agree that I do not really understand the leveling issues given that you are a sub (non-subs get an xp gimp so they have an excuse). If it is truely for the new players, then they should likely end up experiencing other stuff in addition to just the solo quests. However, if you really cannot stand to group with others, this is why the bonus series are in the game. The only thing I can imagine is your amount of rested XP. This can most definitely impact your amount of experience. However, given that my first 3 50s were all leveled about as quickly as I could manage, there was no time for rested XP except for the 8 hours of sleep I got or whatever. I have leveled multiple ways, and this is the first game I have played that doesnt seem to force you into one (or two as you listed) ways of leveling. I know people that have leveled solely through space missions stopping only to quickly do their class quests now and then. I know people who have leveled through FPs only. And of course through PVP only... these three methods are the only that I would consider a "grind". Aside from that, if you are questing to level, there is plenty even if you just stick to the quests themselves and not do the heroics. I had to do that, since one of my characters I went so fast that there was noone around to quest with and or doing the group content (like literally planet population 1). Doing this, I still managed to hit 50 by the first zone in corellia and that was after skipping a few bonus series because I was getting a little burnt out. So tutorial to the noob: quest however you want, because you should be able to hit 50 in whatever way makes you happy. The only thing you cannot do, is quest solely through your class quests, UNLESS! You must pay for the 30% boost to your class missions (good luck getting the money for that if this is your first character, but then, why are you skipping so much?) You must also pay for the XP boosts on the cartel market. These combined give a huge boost to what you are doing, making this tactic work. I know this works because, I started doing it on an alt, and just didnt want to keep forking out the cartel coins (it was my free ones mind you), but I also have a guildy who did it all the way to 50.

And this is why a bounty board would be so amazing. The best way to have a community police itself? Create a system that gets people to gank each other because someone else doesnt like them. Then your social rules or social norms would not only be known but required, lest you suffer the consequences. I know there are a few people out there I would love to put a 1 mil (cause I am rather poor) cred bounty on their head to have them corpse camped for a while... but thats just me...

Wow, I didn't know people actually felt negatively about that. I guess there are people of all types around these parts. Generally I will "help" when either I see someone is about to die, or if I am waiting for the item to respawn so I can complete my quest. Honestly, for the latter, I hope you wouldn't get mad because I helped you kill it faster, but honestly the faster it dies, the faster it will respawn and the less time I have to wait. I am already being nice by not stealing the mob from you, and now you want me to be even NICER by letting you take your sweet time killing it? Also, you could be attacking the mob because it is part of a quest... just because you dont have the quest doesnt mean one doesnt exist. Elite mobs are nothing to solo in most cases, even named mobs. If it was a rare I doubt he was just there waiting for you to kill it to wait for a respawn since it likely would have a long timer. Play the game how you want to, but I am still baffled at someone complaining because someone would be trying to be nice and help you out.

Zetliam - Empire Earpiece Hazmat Pummler's MK-1 Device

So this was suggested numerous times throughout beta and this is why we have the fleet pass in the first place. That was their solution to solving some of the quick travel issues. Also with the spacestation thing, you are actually able to take the shuttle straight to your ship from the ground on all the planets I have seen, making you bypass the station altogether on your way off the planet. So yeah you see it as you land there, so it makes sense gameplay wise, that you aren't just magically on the ground with no spacedock planet side. I would agree that it would be nice to have a ship pickup button, but honestly if you look at the cannon, you almost always had to land your ship at a spacestation or spaceport planet side, then travel where you wanted to go by speeder. You didn't just hop on your ship and fly to where you wanted to go. Everything in the game for the most part needs to stick with cannon and not break that or what is the point of playing? You are removing the star wars from the experience and then you might as well just strip everything else away. As a matter of alleviating the stress of jumping through loading screens you got fleet pass. You also got the ability to quick travel to any location you have "discovered" these are both the products of beta testers pleading for something to make this a little better. I am actually happy with what we have now.

While I would agree and love to see a vastly changing story, I think you are basically gonna be stuck with the outcome ending in one or maybe two ways... I was discussing this notion with my friend. Aside from personal character growth (forking in whatever direction you want your character to go) I would imagine things being forced to shape up much like mass effect does. There should be deep character growth and shifting, but the overall story (the main plot) will most likely be forced to start and end the same way. This is because when you release more story after the fact, it has to work with all possible variations of the previous stories. If the stories continue to fork out over time, it becomes a tad... unrealistic... if each planet had three forks, by the time you got to the end of the game 1-50 you would be looking at (assuming 12 planets) 531,441 unique endings... This is why everyone was so shocked by the prospect of at least 12 different endings to mass effect 3 (which sadly never happened) since that in itself is a massive undertaking. TL;DR - Most likely not gonna happen, sorry... just not technically feasible to keep splitting the story.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=548277 That's the 27 crafting thread. Should have what you need posted there. If it isn't listed that someone has your pattern then you might be out of luck. Although I believe the one you are specifically looking for can be made by Zero'feyd. Aside from that thread you might have to randomly post it in general to find if someone has it. Ears are the most scarce, since aside from a drop, I believe they can ONLY be crafted. AFAIK those only drop from NiM EC which not many have made it very far in that place.

I could run it on my end, just out of curiosity, but I would assume that like with mox, you need everyone parsing together to get the data right, its not going to work out so well on my end (just a lowly guildy not a raid leader....) I would also assume that there would be an update delay like MOX has as well? if this is the case then a threat meter becomes less useful. Yes, there are times when people pull off the tank (mostly when they dont wait the 5 seconds he needs to get threat), but I would agree this is largely a non-issue. Where I could find this useful is on a fight like TFB where it seems like at the end of the fight he goes down his threat list as he picks targets to randomly attack. Would help with finally confirming or denying that theory haha! If it has a reliable update cycle (say 1 second delay between when an attack goes through and when it gets updated in the parser) then I wouldn't mind seeing this getting off the ground. But if you throw in 16 people all updating with each other every second, how much can this handle? Again, pointing to MOX, there is most definitely a delay on the refresh. About the overlay... what kind of gamer isn't running two monitors these days? geesh... seriously though, I really never liked the overlay on MOX so lack of an overlay isn't an issue with me here. Its why I have two screens!

if you get google chrome you can have the browser translate the page for you... alternatively there is prob an addin for IE to make it translate foreign text.