Yes yes yes yes yes! I want to see Zakuul players making phalanxes!

Faction: Republic Guild Name: <Galactic Fifth Column> Guild Leader: Kreighton Officers: Gavik, Anneke PvP: Casual PvE: Casual GSF: Light Role Play: Moderate/Heavy Website: http//:www.GFCguild.com Faction: Empire Guild Name: <Galactic Fìfth Column> Guild Leader: Cerulian Officers: Ajáx, Muunin PvP: Casual PvE: Casual GSF: Light Role Play: Moderate/Heavy Website: http//:www.GFCguild.com

Revan should convince Satele to join his side. This would provide some awesome story drama. Plus, Satele would become a boss later on that you'd have to kill. Imp players have been wanting her to die ever since they lost Malgus. Speaking of which, more recognizable pub figures need to die in general. And this is me speaking AS A PUB. We need to take some losses that HURT. So far it feels more like we've been taking a series of victory laps, not fighting a war where the fate of the whole galaxy hangs in the balance. On the flip-side, the Imps need better leaders. Right now the only guy in the Empire that really poses a threat to us pubs is Darth Marr. And even Marr isn't an adequate replacement for Malgus. The guys that replaced Kilran don't even come close to the charisma and military genius of the legendary Butcher of Coruscant. And where the hell is Mandalore? Aside from his cameos in the BH storyline, he's nowhere to be seen. And this is the guy that is supposed to be the alpha-dog of all mandos. So bring back Shae Vizla. The Deceived trailer made her the iconic Mandalorian/Bounty-Hunter of SWTOR yet we've never seen or heard anything of her outside that trailer and the Deceived novel. Bring her back and find a way for her to become the new Mandalore. Now THAT is a Mandalore that the fanbase would look up to. Also change the False Emperor flashpoint so Malgus can ONLY be defeated by knocking him off the ledge with the grenades. Then bring him back and have the Imp players help him plot a coup where he finishes off the Emperor and seizes control of the Dark Council. Then the Empire could finally start getting its act together and start kicking some real butt. I think more Imp players would've joined Malgus than fought him if given the choice anyway. And why not? He's pragmatic, charismatic, intimidating, and everything else you'd want in a leader. Plus, he's always embodied the SWTOR Sith Empire more than any other character. If Malgus were to come back and whip the Empire into shape, then us Pubs would have a real fight on our hands. I signed on to fight the Sith Empire, not a series of one third-faction after another. That's not to say I didn't like fighting the Hutt Cartel, or the Dread Masters, or Czerka, and it looks like fighting Revanites is going to be another awesome ride, but I want to fight a strong Sith Empire. I want the Republic to have to make heavy sacrifices for its freedom, and not keep having victories handed to us on a silver platter by another idiotic buffoon in a Sith or Moff's clothing. Saving the galaxy is supposed to be challenging.

In my opinion, this is the single best thing that has happened to SWTOR since launch. Naturally there are still some kinks to be ironed out as always, but that doesn't take away from what Strongholds has already done for the player community. The crafting community gains a huge new market with all the decorations they can now make and sell. The PvEers can now not only show off all their accomplishments and trophies from boss kills, but they also have a significant impact in planetary conquest with all the points they rack up from clearing content. For PvPers, Strongholds adds something many folks have been dying for since launch but never really expected to get: a real incentive to throw down in open-world PvP. And Planetary Conquest provides just that. Not only that, but with the strengths and weaknesses of PvE and PvP gear, I think you could see PvPers and PvEers actually teaming up with PvE-geared players focusing on the commander bosses and PvP-geared players defending the PvEers from other PvPers. Now that would be something. Then there's the roleplaying community, for whom this expansion is a godsend. For such a long time, roleplayers have been frustrated with the lack of viable places to roleplay in due to most good spots in the game being infested with annoying trash mobs or locked away behind phases. But now roleplayers can create their own spaces inside strongholds, and redecorate at will to set up new settings for new scenes. One of the best parts is how it's possible (albeit somewhat tricky at times) to get players from both factions together in any stronghold. Already I've seen people creating cantinas, business offices, military bases, and everything else under the sun. And the boost to the RP community is becoming immediately clear as several "grand opening" events have already started to pop up on various community site calendars. And for guilds -- the foundations of the player community -- this is a dream come true. Guild flagships have always been a dream since launch and before. But the idea that once occupied the "wall of crazy" is finally hear! Now guilds finally have something big to aspire towards. For smaller or medium-sized guilds, the cost may be daunting, but not insurmountable for any guild that is willing to put the time and effort into it. They should be able to say, "Yes! We EARNED this! We worked our butts off for it! This is OUR guild ship! WE made this happen!" And it doesn't even stop there. For a guild to reach that point, and then be able to compete with other guilds to control a piece of the galaxy! Now that's what I call incentive. Congrats Bioware. In one giant expansion, you've somehow managed to cater to all the major player blocs at once and at the same time you've checked off all the biggest things on my wishlist. I've been an active subscriber since day one and this is the SWTOR I've been waiting for since beta; and now -- if you'll pardon the pun -- the wait is over!

I thought as much. Either way, the response is appreciated. Personally, I think the dev team has made a wiser choice by starting the limit low and potentially raising it later rather than allowing a bunch of people to run into performance issues and being forced to slap a limit down after the fact. Neither option is ideal, but the latter would've been much less welcome. I do hope you are able to raise the limit sooner rather than later though.

Agreed. When people asked about armor stands for displaying gear sets, the answer given was that companions could be used for that purpose. But this makes it pointless if the companion is only really there when the character who owns them is there. It's very disappointing when I drop by my stronghold on one of my alts and I'm left with a bunch of holograms.

Yesterday a very good friend and I were heading to the Slippery Slopes cantina on Nar Shaddaa to RP. ICly, our characters had just recently arrived on Nar Shaddaa after getting our ship repaired at Carrick Station, and we were looking forward to kicking back and having a few drinks after the long flight. Being guns for hire, we were also hoping to maybe rub elbows with some potential business contacts. But then when we got there, we were reminded the hard way that this bug is still alive and well and it basically killed our evening of RP. The Slippery Slopes is, of course, the most popular cross-faction RP hangout on The Ebon Hawk and I'm sure any RP server as well. Or at least it was. Now everyone is forced to use /me or /emote instead of /say which effectively cuts down interaction between players of different faction to 'nil since custom emotes can't be seen by the other faction. Speaking of which, I may not be a dev so I wouldn't know what's involved in working with the chat system, but if /say is proving so troublesome to fix, perhaps /me could be changed to make it viewable by members of both factions? That would be a way to kill two birds with one stone. Provide a work around for the /say bug and fix the main criticism of /me at the same time. Anyways, however it's done, I know my entire guild (and others like us) would really like this bug to be fixed so we can resume holding cross-faction events. Oh and Tait, thank you for at least letting us know that you folks are aware of the problem and for your reassurance that the team considers it high priority. From our perspective, it still may feel like it's taking a lot longer than it should, but the feeling of not knowing at all would be even worse.

I was RPing last night (The Ebon Hawk server) and /say was all messed up. Anything more than a sentence wouldn't be visible to anyone, including the poster. It was pretty simple to work around, just post in smaller chunks, but it was still annoying to deal with.

I'd love to see emotes that would allow you to simulate certain effects that can usually only be done through certain abilities. Like the animation and effect of the Sniper's Suppressive Fire ability. Looping animation emotes for various postures and actions would be extremely useful as well. A lot of them have been mentioned already, such as typing on a console, or taking cover with a weapon drawn. Or various forms of laying down such as /asleep or /ko (K.O knocked out) or some various death blows. Like how /sit makes you sit down and then you stay sitting until you get up. You could have /death1 /death2 /death3 and so on that makes you fall down in various ways and end up on the ground. Or /ko1 /ko2 /ko3. Here's another idea, how about some emotes that reuse or recreate various actions or postures that Kotor players would be familiar with? Like the cantina dance! GIF link

Indeed. The parlor dance is a great dance! But it's very annoying when half the time the wrong animation plays. Even more so because the animation that other players are seeing is often not the one you are seeing and visa versa.

Yes yes yes!!!!!

How about a combined Warzone/GSF map? Like two capital ships are simultaneously trying to board and sabatoge the enemy ship's hardpoints from within while defending the hardpoints on their own ship from the other team. Meanwhile, GSF players launch from each capital ship's hanger and try to disable external hardpoints while fending off the other team's fighters. The internal hardpoints could be set up kinda like void-star, where you need to plant and defend a bomb to destroy one and advance. Add in multiple lanes, defensive turrets at the hardpoints and NPC spawns like Imperial/Republic marines and/or battle droids and suddenly you've got yourself a MOBA map. That would be really cool. Or if that's too complicated on the coding and scripting side, then it would still make another very nice Void-Star type map. On the GSF side of things (and this might be something you could use in a GSF map by itself), you've also got several frigates around each capital ship as well. These frigates are similar to the satellites in the GSF domination mode, except that enemy frigates need to be destroyed instead of captured. When your team destroys and enemy frigate, a friendly frigate warps in to take it's place. That could work well on it's own for a GSF map, but in the combined GSF/Warzone idea each frigate could open up additional boarding points. Like lets say each capital ship has three boarding lanes. Like a central hanger that puts players closer to the enemy internal hardpoints but the spawn is on a timer. So like every 30 seconds or so, a drop ship flies from one hanger to the other and everyone who selected the hanger spawn is respawned at once. Alternatively, there are also two boarding pod launch bays that allow players to respawn almost instantly but place them farther from the hardpoints they need to destroy. In space, each boarding lane is defended by a frigate. So if an enemy frigate is blocking that pod or shuttle lane, your team boarders cannot spawn on the enemy ship from that lane. Or maybe instead of spawn points, they act more like speeders like from Alderaan Civil War where you'd fly from the drop ship to the ground point. In this case, you spawn somewhere on your capital ship and use the instant boarding pods or the timed shuttle to board the enemy ship if your team controls those lanes. If not, you'll be on the defensive until your friendly GSF players can take out an enemy frigate to open up a boarding lane. I'm kinda writing all this as the thoughts come into my head so take it for what it is.

I'd like to see maps with more opportunities to use the layout to your tactical advantage like with line of sight or multiple vertical levels. Or mechanics like periodic bombing runs or artillery strikes. Maybe you see a flashing target marker on your character that means you're being targeted by an NPC sniper and you have to use line-of-sight cover to avoid being one-shotted. Anything to get people to fight a bit more smartly instead of just charging in and button mashing.

I'd like to see CTF too. Maybe that could be another sports-type warzone!

Oh here's an interesting idea that's popped into my head on occasion. How bout a warzone where everyone can summon their companions? *strokes beard in thought*

I would like to see more warzones that feel like they are part of a larger war, with lots of ambient combat that feels like a larger battle is being fought around the warzone. Maybe more urban settings or no-man's land trench warfare or more ship-boarding scenarios like Void Star except with tighter close quarters like the Empire boarding the Tantive IV in A New Hope. Or on the sports end of things like Huttball, I'd really like to see more sports-type warzones that really feel like a spectator event. One of the problems I have with a lot of the arenas is the lack of a cheering crowd. Huttball has that, even if the spectators are not clearly visible. For inspiration, think of the type of crowd at a WWE match. I would absolutely loooove to see a MOBA style warzone, like League of Legends, DoTA, or SMITE. http://cdn2.gamefront.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/mobas-intro-map.jpg Where you've got a Republic base in one corner, an Imperial base in the other, and equal numbers of NPCs continually spawn from each base and travel down several pre-determined paths toward the opposing base. Each path is also defended by towers that do damage to the other side's NPCs or players that try to go push down any of those paths. The players on each team must work together to defend each path to their base while also trying to wear down and destroy the enemy's towers, and eventually the enemy's base. Most Mobas are from a top-down perspective, so SMITE might be the best one to look at for how a warzone of this type might play in SWTOR. Let's say the setting is Balmorra, or some equally devastated war-zone planet with lots of trenches, bomb craters and no-man's land. http://cache.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/302647_S/the-legacy-of-fail-gears-of-war-3-level-design-with-epics-jim-brown.jpg Kinda looking like that except with the layout of a MOBA map. Each side's command bunker has artillery that pounds the area, mostly for visual effect, but you could throw in some AOE with warning markers on the ground like the Storm Protocol phase of the first Eternity Vault boss. The lanes are a simple maze of trenches. Maybe there's like 10 meters or so of no-man's land separating the two side's trenches and that's where you have the AOE artillery. The "towers" defending each lane could be an AI controlled pillbox, a turbo-laser emplacement, or a stationary tank or walker. You win be eventually destroying the enemy command bunker.

This is really a question that could be best answered by someone on the Bioware end of things, but I would appreciate anyone with relevant info such as links or other sources. So I've been in a roleplaying guild for several years now. This guild has active chapters on both factions. Will there be any way for us to allow our characters from one faction onto our other faction's guild ship? I'm not talking about PvP (though a boarding scenario is one interesting possibility), but as of now we're pretty much limited to pretending the GSI cantina is the interior of our ship when we want to do anything cross-faction. So something like a permissions list on the guild ship where you could allow access to individual players outside the guild or even entire allied/adversary guilds would be a great feature. So to recap, first I'd like to know if something similar to that is already part of the "Galactic Strongholds" expansion. And if not, is there a possibility of adding something like that function I described at some point in the future?

Nar Shaddaa, or specifically the promenade, is generally the hub of cross-faction activity. Especially for roleplayers. There are lots of other great areas on Nar Shaddaa as well, like the two casinos and the Red Light Sector. But people generally don't use those areas because only one faction's speeder network is connected to them. It would be great to connect these areas to both faction speeder networks.

I'm sort of in the middle. I can see problems arising if mounts go TOO fast, sort of like the flying mount problem in WoW. But I agree that the vehicle mounts feel too damn slow. The creature mounts on the other hand, like the Tauntaun and the Varactyl, they feel just fine. But the vehicle mounts, specifically the ones based on speeder bikes, they just don't feel right. Even there can just be some visual changes made to certain vehicles to create the illusion of increased speed, that would be a welcome improvement IMO.

We need some more legit swords in the game, like the KOTOR-era vibroswords and vibroblades, instead of the blunt sticks and training sabers that are currently passed off as vibroswords in the game. http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20051123191036/starwars/images/6/6d/Vibrosword.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_hINHQgfkPg/TXVA6JUpzyI/AAAAAAAAETA/WxYFYOMJJhw/s1600/378499-150px_vibroblade_large.jpg http://img122.echo.cx/img122/4388/vibroblade7ot.jpg If these were put on the cartel market like the Cathar warstaff, I would definitely buy them.

For people who socialize with other players, especially in the case of roleplayers, it's kind of counter-intuitive to force people to grind Esseles/Black-Talon over and over again to unlock social gear. What I'm thinking is something subtle, like giving a player just a few social points every hour they spend a significant amount of time posting in any chat or using emotes. This should be subtle, because you obviously don't want people spamming as a means of grinding social points. That's definitely not social. It should only occur once every hour or more, and it should be a very small amount. Grinding group content should still be the faster way to get your social score up for those who want to unlock social gear sets quickly. But those who actually spend their time socializing or roleplaying would find their social ranks increase gradually over time.

I think it would be great to add some PvP areas to the game that are set up like Massive-Online-Battle-Arena (MOBA) games similar to DoTA, League of Legends, or SMITE. If you're not familiar with MOBA games, there are two opposing teams whose goal is to destroy their enemy's base to win. Typically, there is one main structure which must be destroyed to win, though destroying other structures within the opposing team's base may confer other benefits. Defensive structures (i.e. big turrets) are in place to prevent this, as well as relatively weak computer-controlled units which periodically spawn at each base and travel down predefined paths toward the opposing team's base. Without player intervention these NPCs will remain in a stalemate around the middle of the map. Players would have to fight the enemy's NPCs (and enemy players) to tip the balance and push toward the enemy base. The NPCs of a team on the defensive should also start scaling up gradually as the other team gets closer. The first side that manages to destroy the enemy base wins. There could be multiple forms of this. This could be a warzone type, perhaps 4v4. The NPCs involved would make up for the smaller team size. Or larger scale 8v8 MOBA warzones. Or a mix of the two. There could also be open PvP areas added to the game using this model. They could be added to existing planets similar to how Black Hole is accessed on Corellia and Section X is accessed on Belsavis. These areas could be in a constant state of war between the two bases, and any number of players could drop in at will to tip the balance. Once one side wins in one of these areas, it resets after a cooldown of say... 30 minutes or so. One possible scenario is Illum. The Gree could be conducting another experiment, pitting two teams against eachother and spawning gree droids at each base. Another scenario could be a Republic and Imperial capital ship attempting to board each other. Each team has to push onto the other team's ship and destroy the critical systems to win. A third scenario could be on some war-torn world like Balmorra or Denova (I'm not saying those particular planets, but something along those lines), and both teams have artillery bases overlooking no-mans land that. Each team fights through trenches toward the other team's base. It is possible to go climb out of the trenches, but anyone who does so risks being killed by the artillery or NPC-snipers from the enemy base.

STAR WARS The Old Republic <Galactic Fifth Column> Over 3,600 years before the rise of Darth Vader, war between the GALACTIC REPUBLIC and the SITH EMPIRE has devastated countless worlds and reduced both superpowers to mere shells of their former glory. Republic citizens are left to fend for themselves against the rising tide of crime and institutional corruption while their Jedi defenders battle the Sith. Constant infighting has proven the Empire to be its own worst enemy. The once-mighty HUTT CARTEL finds itself struggling for survival against countless other gangs and syndicates vying for control of the underworld... Amid the rising chaos and instability, disillusioned individuals from all sides join forces under the banner of the GALACTIC FIFTH COLUMN. A mysterious alliance operating in the shadows of all three factions to bring an end to the chaos and restore justice throughout the galaxy.... The GFC is a multi-faction roleplaying guild that is active on The Ebon Hawk server in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The GFC was created on March 9th, 2011, as part of Bioware's pre-launch guild program. The guild was founded on the idea of creating a unique setting that would serve as a melting pot of different kinds of characters, backgrounds, stories, and styles of roleplaying. We wanted to build an open and friendly community for ourselves and for the benefit of the EH RP community as a whole. Years later, we still consider our guild to be a work-in-progress. This means that, unlike some other guilds that remain completely static with their lore and structure, we are constantly evolving as we look for ways to improve ourselves. This evolution has also been reflected in our lore. The GFC ICly has changed dramatically overtime as our story has moved forward. This process has always been a team effort. Every single member of the guild is an essential part of the team. We do not have traditional guild officers, because every member is an officer. That is how we view eachother. That is how important everyone's input, feedback, and participation is to the guild as a whole. It's an amazing group of great people that have come together to share something that we all enjoy. We demand very high standards of maturity and responsibility from all our members. We have witnessed many good guilds get torn apart by drama, and so our members have written a code of conduct based primarily on good old common-sense. It's our combination of high behavioral standards and down-to-earth policies that have allowed us to overcome our obstacles and become stronger and wiser from each experience. We do not pretend to be perfect. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us as we continue to build our guild into the one we all want it to be. But if you'd like to find out more about us, come to our website at http://www.GFCguild.com and ask us questions, browse our forums, apply to join, or just have a friendly chat with us. You can also find us in-game roleplaying with eachother and our friends in The Ebon Hawk RP community. We'd like to thank you for taking the time to let us share a little bit of our story with you, and we hope to be seeing you around The Old Republic. May the force be with you!

Honestly, I'm glad that those two individual dyes are available on the market at all. I would definitely like to see the cartel coins price lowered but hopefully this will at least result in an easing of the demand and lower the GTN prices.