Vent is the most used and easiest/cheapest to get hosted quickly. TS has come a long way from where it was but still isn't as strong as Vent. Mumble on the other hand is probably the best but very few people use it.

Yes you can either buy the wristband, or you can do the digital upgrade for $19.99.

I agree that the people need fixing - but Master Looter goes over like a ton of bricks with PUGs - good luck finding people who agree to that.

Welcome to MMOs? Seriously, a bit of maintainance is to be expected. Most MMOs have a weekly maint. that's 4-6 hours.

DCUO also had periods of unplayability, and due to dynamic respawns, mobs constantly spawning on you. If that's what you call a good time, by all means...

Going to have to agree, there's a bit of bloat here. Even with a Razer Naga, which I love, it's annoying. In most MMOs I can get by with ~20 core skills. To be honest I'm not complaining for me, I'm complaining for my noobly friends - people who don't have Nagas and never will.

I'm fine with macros, and to be successful in endgame content you're probably going to need them. I think Mouseover macros are a bit of a whiners way out, but if that's what it takes to actually get healed I'm cool with it. As far as mods are concerned - it would be nice to have a game that has encounter design and endgame content design that is NOT reliant on third-party mods. Not having mods forces the devs to make content that can be done through the base UI and is intelligent about informing the player that fire is bad. I'd really prefer for there not to be any mods in SWTOR. Mods are not noob friendly and cause devs to get lazy. That said, a scalable UI would make my life a lot easier - I don't even care much about the UI being more customizable (it's really not nearly as bad as people make it out to be) - but being able to READ it sure would be nice.

Scalable UI for my Wife Macros for me

The game still hasn't released yet... Besides that yes there are multiple instances of the planets. I've yet to run into an issue of too few people or too many - it's been well balanced.

I'm tired of these motherf***ing Siths in these MFing plains.

Don't let it scare you. Just get a grounding strap and it's all very very simple - especially nowadays. Ugh... Jumper settings in the past blah on that! You could build that box for under $400 if you are deal savy and you have stuff like an exsisting case and PSU (although you probably need a new PSU). Although I do tend to agree, the 4890 is OK, but it's probably close to time to upgrade that as well. I'd get 8GB of RAM as well, it's super cheap now. @SirSensi you can run ultra with that box once you get a 560/70 card.

All of it.

THIS. The queue times are fine. You'll regret it later if they just open servers wholesale.

The WoW accounts stolen by MiM attacks are vastly exaggerated. Regardless, use the key, it's just safer - and really as not as much of a PITA as you might think.

Around the 250 range you can get whatever you want really. It might sound backward but I might actually try to find 2 5850s or 6850s at that price range and Xfire them. 6850s pop up around the $120 mark every now and then - especially after rebate. Or if you're Nvidia SLi two 460gtxs?

Going to tend to agree. Disabling Aero is a solid tip, but really if that makes or breaks you, it's time to upgrade hardware. Generally a fresh install of Windows is going to be fine and need little to no tweaking on a modern PC.

Completely agree. A 60GB SSD OS drive makes a world of difference in boot time and performance. It's a great place to get a bit of speed for cheap. Though it should be noted that running a game off of SSD won't do much for you, other than decrease load times.

After playing many MMOs for years, it is what it is. Sure WoW has made some progress is quest design, but it's also 6 years old. The story driven element of SWTOR has kept my interest, and I can tell you about the details of the story of every quest I've done. I can't say that about WoW and I've played through both factions many many many times.

The 22nd actually.

Going to disagree on the processor, sure it's cheaper, and can be OCed pretty well, and holds out - but at this point if you're spending $600 for a rig, you should drop in at least an i5-2500k. That's my only call out - but yes in the States I was able to build almost a mirror image of that box, swapping the Gigabyte for an MSI board and the i5-2500 (non-k), for about $400 after rebates (reused an old case I had as well).

A lot of people here have obviously never been part of an MMO launch. This has been the smoothest launch I've ever seen. Their tiered access was brilliant. Just wait till 12/20 and 12/25-1/2. The servers will get super slammed then, and I'd bet we'll see 5-8 more servers during that time frame. Queues are relatively short, and should be expected at this point in the launch. Lag is pretty much non-existent - if you're having an issue it's probably your rig/connection.

Yes, the i5 2500s are beasts. But you might as well spring for 8GB of RAM given how cheap it is.

Now let's not get overly aggressive here, XP is fine for an OS. The CPU is what's really killing him. The RAM is probably fine (generally, you probably wouldn't want to carry it over to a new system), other than it's almost assuredly DDR2. They are right though, time for a new CPU/MOBO/RAM. Edit: Thought I read 4GB of RAM, 2GB is pushing it.

I run a similar rig on my secondary PC - the major difference is I'm using a 460 or something to that effect. No doubt the 8800 is slowing you down, but the processor is getting a bit dated as well. It should be fine for more things, but you can get a nice board and an i3-2120 for relatively cheap nowadays, which will blow your current CPU away.

I'm in a truly divided house for the night. I got in, my wife didn't. 12/5 + 12/8. My fault for not knowing her password and entering the code earlier. Doh - #bonuswave