ABSOLUTELY. The events on our server (Niman) today were stupid. Once the republic started increasing in number - they were still severely outnumbered and managed to start pushing the empire back off their spawn. The republic were smart, they stayed out of sight - only a few got pulled in to the swirling vortex of death created by the empire and every few seconds you'd see a players name in your ops group being defeated. It was that point that I started to enjoy the world PVP a little more. What I didn't enjoy though was that our faction didnt seem to realise they were fighting in a choke point, up against cannons that were out of range for them to destroy - giving the republic a major advantage - yet despite several raid groups attempts to try and move the fight in to the open, they stood there and died repeatedly. I'm pretty much convinced now that the empire on our server are mostly full of tryhard gear farmers, foul mouthed and with a hint of undeserved elitism. If there was an option to faction change over the next month from imperial to republic, I would try very hard to get my guild to make the change. If it weren't for the social aspect and running HMs etc with the guild, I'd be levelling that republic alt I've had reserved with my beta name. The attitudes on republic side seem at least moderately better than ours overall.. They also seem to be the better players.

Everyone is right, you need to take the servers down with immediate effect. If you don't believe this, I suggest calling an emergency meeting within your company now and putting forth the idea that you put a poll up in game - much like the way you did your stress test tickets and allow us - the players, to tell you what we want in game. Currently PVP is not fun. Quite frankly there was more fun interacting with each other and farming the walkers - yeah sure it was broken, but people put in the effort, socialised and just dealt with it. If this is allowed to continue, the game is going to get bad rep. Everyone knew this was going to happen given the imperial/republic imbalance. Everyone on the servers has been saying they want character transfers for republic. I've logged on for about 20 minutes, stood in what shall now be known as the camping area and gone up 2 valor ranks. That's absurd and completely unfair on the people who shrugged PvE and instead focussed on grinding PVP. You basically have two games to support here - SWTOR PVP (Including open world) and SWTOR PVE (Including hard modes, raids and so on) While we could live with the PVE bugs and imbalances - the PVP is basically unacceptable. Yes I'm on a PVP realm and I'm not amongst the hardcore pvp'ers - but I can see why they'd be massively frustrated at this. You can not allow this to continue. Seriously, we'll happily take this downtime. If you dont want to shut the game down - lock everybody out of Ilum with a server announcement explaining why. Just make sure this stops immediately! Argh. Upset. btw: This is from an imperial perspective on Niman. This is not a good game now, for PVP.

Am I the only one who's noticed the filter option at the bottom while searching for items? You pick your categories... you search... then you apply filter *after* This isn't a particularly unintuitive system, I got it first time. It's not even 'stupid' However - filter by slot would be luvverly. I think just expanding the filter options would take care of most of the issues. <3

lol - I was thinking that too. Dude, this is why people roll alts - so they can play with their friends and while the other is offline - level up an alt. y u not understand?

Are they actually 24 hours? I know during beta the timings were a bit screwed.

More interestingly and on topic - where did you get the numbers to base these calculations off?

They're getting the same deal - as you can see, Bioware operate on US time (funny that) and no - EA having offices in England doesn't make any difference. The Americans just got a chance to pre-order before us. Hence why all the US servers are full and ours appear "empty" -- now why do you think that is? Because they're doing it in order. I'd like to apologise on behalf of Bioware - for this I'm sure they wont mind - for not having T.A.R.D.I.S technology and being able to merge two timezones. Ah well.

Really? Because I've run ISP networks and in every company we've worked in where there's consumer ADSL - we always offer an 'up to' service. BW hasn't mistreated their customers in any way - they've put thought and planning in to the repercussions of inviting several million people at once. For my most recent thoughts: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=202670#post202670 That thread has since been closed and I'm too tired/ill to repeat myself on that topic again. What they're doing is right and you as a telecom/data company service manager of all people should understand it. Tomorrow is the first day they start officially having any sort of promise to deliver on - for pre-orders that still come in. They'll still deliver on that of course. I now work in the games industry having transitioned out of the ISP industry and I can tell you that companies shrugging off the barrage of complaints on their forum (in the short term) is not uncommon. Sadly we dont live in a world where one can throw a tantrum and be heard instantly. As an outsider, but within the same industry I can tell you that the number of people who have a responsibility within Bioware to keep these forums informed is relatively small compared to the rest of the company. The other 99% are busy reviewing code, rolling out patches, maintaining servers and so forth. Those employees are also reading these forums - however they are contractually bound by NDA's and so forth that forbid them from disclosing any sensitive information publically. Everyone in the games industry is - since it is a very competitive industry. However at the same time that means that the guy working as community manager has to dig deeply to get you any sort of figures - liase with departments he doesn't even work in, take part in "holier than thou" internal politics and when he does finally deliver any sort of news - he gets flamed to death. Have you seen Stephen Reids twitter? The barrage of repeated questions that he's dealing with? Can you imagine spending your entire day.. on twitter? Cut the community managers a bit of slack, pipe down and you might actually start seeing some positive feedback from them. I can only imagine all this incessant whining is making somebody at Bioware go "FML" and start looking for a new job. Not cool - I paid too dudes, early access before the advertised period is a privilege - not a right. They've only committed to "up to 5 days", some of you have 6 days, some of you have 7. The MINIMUM they've committed to has been 1 day.

I gave quite a well detailed response as to the problems they face when doing mailshots like this back on page 11/12 or something. Sending out this many emails is not trivial

No, I don't think they should be embarrassed at all. They've set out a business plan which is to deliver early game access UP TO 5 days before launch. Yesterday was 7 days pre-launch and today is the 6th day before launch. We have seen that invites have gone from July now through to early September. I would not be at all surprised if Bioware have all the October/Early November invites in tomorrow - really only leaving the people who went "Hey, this games pretty good!" after they got to play the Beta. If it turns out to have cost them revenue, I'm pretty sure they will address this. EA have this habit of being able to stay afloat in the games industry while squeezing the maximum return out of their investments. That's what businesses do. Embarassment and regret dont even come in to it - only adapting and adjusting. Because the vast majority of gamers - since the introduction of affordable consumer broadband have been kids and early teenagers who tend to post up and down forums displaying a major emotional investment in games. They're also quite easily lead, lack an independant mind and will latch on to ANY negative press releases they can. Wasn't it Zero Punctuation who said there is no arena quite like a debate on games/gaming platforms that will attract the most insane zealot like crusader mentalities? What are you talking about? Of course they would! Things are going well. Assume July-December for the pre-order period. Let's round it up to months - not days so the maths is easier for you to digest. July + August + September + October + November + December = 6 months At the time of writing this, it's the 14th of December, that's less than half a month - so I think we can chop off December to make our number AT MOST - 5.5 months. So: 5.5 months worth of pre-orders to get through, assume '2 million' pre-orders (2,000,000) - if you spread that across the months EQUALLY that is 400,000 pre-orders PER MONTH. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT MAIL SERVER FARMS DO IF THEY RECEIVE 400,000 EMAILS IN A DAY FROM THE SAME MAIL SOURCE? The default behaviour in a lot of ISPs when spam conditions are flagged (whether spam or not) is to either freeze the mail, temporarily reject the sender - or flag it as spam and stick it in the end users junkbox. However, if you assume that like most places, Bioware staff are contracted to work an 8 hour day - you're still talking about sending 50,000 mails per day. Or 6250 per hour. Or 104 mails per minute. Or just under 2 mails per second. If you were a machine and your only instruction was to look for patterns of behaviour - what would you do if you saw 104 mails per minute coming from a new source? Yet, you and the hundreds of other people who are still in education and haven't actually spent 10+ years working in the communications industry will swear black is white and tell us savvy folk that what Bioware is doing is a mere trivial task that should just work with the push of a magic button. Oh.. right.. well, I'm glad that's your standard response to all arguments. Unfortunately in this case it doesn't quite fit the logical argument I'm putting to you here. Exciting newsflash! Bioware haven't stated WHICH servers would be stressed by sending out invitations in large volume. Did they say their actual GAME servers? Did they say their customer facing mail servers? Or like most businesses who spend 2-3 years engrossed in their own product - do they refer to all their equipment as 'our platform' ? Answer - the latter. None of this will help though. Bioware will still get flamed. I will see no coherent response to this, just some wild unchained lunatic frothing at me without reading the words. Oh well.

Heya, So yeah - firstly I support what Bioware are doing now. You'll find a well thought out post here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=7673 However every time someone suggests that they paid extra for early access they are shot down. Seeing it a lot lately and while I'm biting my tongue patiently waiting I have to say - they're actually in the right. Here's why. I've ordered a copy for myself and a physical standard edition for my girlfriend who also plays MMOs. The reason I bought myself a digital copy was because I had £40 worth of credit on a trade in card with Gamestation and to be fair, I wanted to register earlier - it was icey cold and going out on my motorbike to the store didn't seem at all sensible on the day. So, she has a £40 pre-ordered physical copy - I'm looking at the proof of purchase case right now with the code in. On that product - it's a deposit. However for digital orders, just as Blizzard handled SC2 - things are a little different. STAR WARS: The Old Republic Digital Deluxe Edition Online, Role Playing £45.83 Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Digital Deluxe Edition Pre-Order Fee £4.17 Okay, that brings it up to a nice rounded £50.00 - then we introduce the tax. Subtotal: £50.00 Tax: £9.99 Discount: -£0.00 Your Total: £59.99 What tax is this? VAT I assume? Well - VAT rates are at present: Standard Rate : 20% Reduced Rate : 5% Zero Rate: 0% Which means there are 3 options there. 20%, 5% or 0% tax. Sure enough 20% on top of £50 does equate to £59.99 However the physical copy itself - a copy which costs you *more* to produce due to requiring physical materials, shipping and handling costs, printing costs - costs only £39.99 in stores with the £5 pre-order fee. This includes VAT. The digital standard edition is £44.99 including tax and pre-order fee - That's already a £5 increase on top of what you'd pay for a retail copy. People have a right to be angry regarding their wallets and it is neither your place nor my place to tell them otherwise. Simply going over the numbers here makes my blood boil - but that's for reasons completely unrelated! ;-) Yet knowing all this, I've pre-ordered for myself digitally and purchased a physical copy for my girlfriend. Why? Well, because like most others - I wanted my early access - couldn't afford/justify the retail CE though. (I also wanted my colour stone!) To conclude and the TL;DR version: * Am I going to get early access? Yes. * Am I going to be one of the first in? No. * Did I pay extra to avoid missing RELEASE DATE via digital order? : Yes. * Did I pay extra to GUARANTEE being one of the first in: No. While I'm quite prepared to wait, it is rubbing me up the wrong way every time I see someone spoken to like a moron because they feel like they parted with more cash than they should have. In hindsight - I should have bought a physical copy too, but the lure of a holographic twi'lek got me. Try to be a little understanding of peoples frustrations at least - dont mock them - educate them! There's a lot of people out there who are either students, unemployed, or working part time on minimum wage. Not everyone has the option of a wonderful job. When £10 can fill up the petrol tank of a 125 motorcycle for a week - you need to realise that the additional money paid for a *digital* pre order is a significant amount. £10 notes dont just fall out of the sky. This would be what they call neutral alignment, by the way. ;-)

This is by far the best post today.. and I thought mine was insightful!

tl;dr version ^ THIS MAN WANTS TO PLAY TOMORROW. ;-) Agreed though.

Thing is, what you need to realise is that your desire to be the first in the world to reach end game raids and beat the game is really insignificant. Why? EA/BW *need* to create a stable solution so that the entire game can stand the test of time and not go free to play within the first year. Your guild, or other guilds desire to rush through the multi million dollar content and crafted story just to get 'an achievement' really isn't top of the list. Unfortunately that entire argument falls apart when you reduce it to what it actually is - which is people being upset because somebody else got to play the game before them. I'll be honest, as soon as I saw some of the replies - I rolled my eyes and went "Here we go" then started wondering how many pages it could go on for before the thread gets locked. As for the race... I've done that - rushing to the end is just tedious. The only reason I've ended up paying for SW:TOR is the story aspect has really drawn me in this time around. Your arguments have this undertone of "Well, you wouldn't understand - you're just a casual gamer" Don't get me wrong - I understand how engrossed you can get in a game - but to suggest you've been betrayed and this is 'the worst launch in history' when you've known for months that there was going to be a staggered launch just strikes me as well..... a tad unhinged. - Steve

Eh? By staggering launch and carefully monitoring everything - this allows them to scale up where required. They've given themselves 48 hours before the official EGA offerings even begin. Of course the response is going to be "Well why didn't they just get more servers and network stuff than they needed to allow us all to play and and and" -- you dont drive to the store in a Formula 1 car when walking would do. In other words: You dont spend $3,000,000 on a solution that could be covered with due attention and $1,000,000 (£/€ for those on this side of the pond) Power consumption + Economics play a huge part. What's going to happen in a few days when everyone has access? Simple. A bunch of satisfied pre-order customers who all got their early access up to 5 days before will be logged on and questing while a huge number of people are in queues of up to 4 digits waiting for a slot. I was really attempting to dispel the rage and bs about this being just a stress test that is somehow ripping us off - when in fact it's an online service provided by EA/Bioware that will require CONSTANT maintenance and monitoring so that we can sit on our butts and play a game. Rule #1 - Show your admins some appreciation and acknowledgement and they are FAR more likely to listen to you. Say a little prayer for 'Jeff' on this day, who is buried under a pile of Cat5 cables somewhere. Y'know, those little people working their butts off to get you in to the game?

This has been an incredible experience just watching the reactions to the pre-launch opening of the game. There sure is a lot of rage and insults directed at EA/Bioware for something that seems quite sensible. There's been an argument floating around that EA/BW are somehow "ripping us off" and using the early game period as a stress test. Why would they do such a thing? Well - let's think. Are other big MMOs run on pure faith with no monitoring? NO! Do they never have to remove a server from a rack, replace a faulty disk? I get the feeling reading some of the comments that a lot of people don't understand the infrastructure required to run something on the scale of an MMO. This is an array of disks. http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/222154/222154,1266046597,1/stock-photo-row-of-hard-drives-mounted-in-a-rack-in-a-data-center-46554550.jpg At an ISP I worked at, we hosted but a mere fraction of the numbers EA/BW are looking at supporting long term - with managed backup solutions for all the data aswell as secure and compliant storage for billing and personal data. We had to watch these networks daily and ensure that everything was running smoothly simply so the telephones didn't start ringing and we all got a good shouting at. We occupied three datacenters with our own suites consisting of a huge number of cabinets to support that user base. Then there's the question of data - how it gets in to the network to talk to a server and how it gets out. How do you design a network to cater for millions of people all connecting at once? Quite simply: You dont. What you do however, is create a scalable solution that can be easily scaled up if needs be - with an easily replicated base image that you deploy to your machines, which are all standardised with a bunch in reserve to swap out entire servers that have failed. Ever heard of service providers that offer 99.9999% uptime with scheduled maintenance? How do you think they manage it? Guess what - when we talk about cable pixies or rack demons.. WE WERE JOKING. It's actually the all powerful guiding godlights in the fibre optics that help the most. Then on top of this, there is the issue of balancing load ON A GLOBAL SCALE while guaranteeing performance. Question to ask yourself if you're upset about not being in the game yet and have flamed BW for a 'failed launch' -- Do you know what this means? SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK. If you don't, well - I guess your reading ends here and HOPEFULLY your flame. Those that do already know how much of an utter ache it can be to cater for handling connections on a large scale. Sure, they might be using UDP for the game, I haven't looked - but I'm pretty sure their secure authentication system for logging in is going to be a tad more reliable... I cannot fathom what the shade of underwear would be at bioware if we ALL authenticated at once. Now, more importantly - if you understood ANY of this, fair play to you. If you didn't and just went "LOL NERD" -- this is a Star Wars game. Men with fuzzy beards from the 70s who all love Star Wars more than you - will be reading this and nodding approvingly, on their way home from work because they *didnt* take the day off work and were probably spending their entire day maintaining such networks themselves. As for ruining your gaming experience? Hording names? I started WoW a year late and never ran in to those kinda problems... But yeah, let's all just have a good shout. Everyone loves a good shout. tl;dr version - Networks are complicated things that require a Jedi Knights level of understanding young Padawan. You are far too hot blooded and rash to appreciate the finer arts. Now bugger off to the Sith so I can kill you.