Let me see if I can throw in some actual help, rather than suggesting that you just replace/monitor your DPS players..... There is a way you can push the boss progression with lower than average DPS. Pull the boss and track the debuff stacks on the tank. As soon as the tank has 2 stacks, have your other tank taunt the boss and carry on, mostly as normal. Then get your ranged DPS to kill the two small adds that spawn. Then, when the 1st Jealous Male spawns... ignore the red circle and have the ranged DPS kill the Jealous. Melee DPS can stay on the boss. DON'T do a tank swap. You'll need to be ready for the 2nd red circle. The timing is tight for it. You'll need to have someone ready to step in the red circle furthest away from the boss at that point, if that one is picked. There will be more small adds than normal, but AoE'ing them down once they reach the red circle should be easy enough as long as you've got 2+ ranged DPS. After that, the fight continues as normal. You'll be swapping time DPSing the adds for time DPSing the boss. That should give you the boost you need to kill the boss on schedule. This line intentionally left blank

The point of being a subscriber is that it's cheaper to do endgame content relatively frequently. F2P/Preferred really only works out financially at endgame if you play 1 or 2 weeks per month or don't do "endgame" at all. After that, subscribing is cheaper. Other than that, it's personal choices. Pay or don't pay. Play or don't play. This line intentionally left blank.

Short version: Replace Alacrity with Surge any chance you get in gear. For augments use Power or Willpower, overall they're about the same. Long version: Power and Willpower overall are about equal. At first glance, the 0.17 bonus healing per Power as opposed to the 0.14 bonus healing per Willpower makes Power look the better choice. But it all balances out via other effects. Power will get you a slightly higher "Bonus Healing" Willpower will get you a slightly higher Crit Rating. Both will get you Bonus Healing anyway and the overall difference of stacking one -vs- stacking the other really only matters to people who are struggling to get BELOW a certain crit level (which I doubt you are). There's some debate whether alacrity really is that useful. Since instead you can stack power and get bigger heals slightly slower -vs- casting slightly less effective heals, but cast more of them per fight. There's a huge amount of overhealling going on within any raid anyway and Power tends to just contribute to that overheal. But unless you have the reaction times of a fighter pilot, those extra 0.2 seconds (or whatever) you gain with Alacrity might be lost just because you waited 0.3 seconds thinking about what heal to cast, or moving an extra 2 meters. Personally I favour the Power direction, but there's no single "right" answer and it will come down to your play style. Plus if you're still gearing up. You'll be getting lots of alacrity gear from Black Hole commendations pretty quickly and only later will start to get the surge gear from Campaign tokens (unless you start ripping enhancements out of Columi gear). Path of least resistance says learn to play with high alacrity first, then slowly migrate to better and better surge numbers. Hope that helps. This line intentionally left blank

As far as I know, EA/Bioware haven't touched the server measurements since the server merges back in September. Though clearly, there's no way to be absolutely sure of that. There was a minor spike in players about a week before F2P came out. Then a HUGE spike at the actual launch of F2P. From what I can see on our EU PvE server, things have settled back down to the levels matching the week before F2P launched. ie. Numbers are higher than the trend for the months prior to the F2P launch - but nowhere near the numbers from the 10 days following the F2P launch. And yeah, "Full" was temporary - we're still seeing full at weekends, but even that has almost disappeared in recent weeks (though not a definitive gone-for-ever yet). But judge for yourself, with the data from torstatus pasted together into a single image: http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/3666/torstatus30daysepdec201.jpg I should point The Red Eclipse is currently the most populated EU server. It was merged back in September with all the other English PvE servers. We had a couple of big dips in number of those two weeks in October when patches meant the servers were offline. And clearly, F2P launch was November. I last updated my picture in early December - the current details are are torstatus. Overall, the numbers are still trending downwards, very very slowly. But given the way torstatus collects it's stats - that could be more players, playing less hours per day concurrently. Though my personal experiences are that people are still leaving and those that are joining aren't staying long. What I can't predict is "The Fatman" effect. Where because TRE is the highest population English EU server... it grows (or at least, doesn't shrink) at the expense of other servers. That may or may not be happening already. Ask me again in January. It's too close to the F2P launch and Xmas to draw any concrete conclusions. This line intentionally left blank

Good point. Kinda lost touch after the move from Nightmare Lands. I'll keep an eye out for who's online around 7:00pm to 7:15. This line intentionally left blank

Current Recruitment Requirements: Mainly we're looking for "our sort of people". People with a conscience, a bit laid back but with enough drive to want to clear hardmode OPs at least. Who are looking for guild for the next couple of years, not the next couple of months. We need: 2x Healers 1x DPS Maybe a Tank We're an 8man endgame PvE guild with real lives to live too. Which means we need at least 3 healers, 6 DPS and 3 tanks in total so we can raid on our chosen 4 nights per week. Right now, we're making do with 1 main healer and 1 alt healer and occasionally pugging someone or two if there's a gap. We're also unable to raid all 4 nights per week due to an occasional tank and DPS shortage. So we're recruiting to put things back on track. We plan to start our Xmas break on the 22nd, however what we really want is a full raid team up and ready to go by the time we start back in January. We will continue to organise stuff over Xmas, but it will be more low key (probably just Comms runs, etc). Quick link to our website.... http://bit.ly/cdguild Last updated: 16th December 2012. About us... Any guild that doesn't attract like minded people tend not to last very long (CD has existed for nearly 10 years, from our days in Everyquest and beyond). SWTOR has been a challenge to us and we've needed to reinvent ourselves a couple of times along the way. But at our core, we aim for a sense of fairness and responsibility. We are an easy going, friendly guild of English speaking players from across Europe who raid 8man content 4 nights per week (Tues, Weds, Fri and Sun) - starting at 7:30pm (GMT) and ending at 10pm. We recently swapped Monday with Friday. That might end up getting swapped back. We're okay with shift patterns and family commitments and other variations on that sort of theme. That said, right now we need people who are going to raid at least 2 to 3 nights per week on average. Which generally means we're looking for people who WANT to to raid 3 to 4 nights, knowing there are going to be occasions where they can't. One of our recruits said raiding with us was like slipping back into an old comfy pair of slippers. That's us... old and comfy. We want to have fun raiding and progress as far as we can with the raid team we have. We have a varied mix of people and skills and an attitude that says that's okay. We take raiding seriously enough to want to start on time, make constant progression and kill bosses with the best of them. But not so seriously that we're min/max'ing gear and referring to combat logs all the time. We think story mode OPs are for pugs and hard mode OPs are for guilds. We're probably not going to clear Terror From Beyond: Asation on Nightmare mode... and we're fine with that. (We hope to try anyway). Our progress has been slow and we've been stuck in story mode OPs for way too long, primarily due to people losing faith with the game. With the right people though, we can get back on track. Which is why we need YOU! We are NOT a levelling guild. We are NOT a PvP oriented guild. We don't spend a lot of time in flashpoints any more either. We try to dedicate one night per week to less progression oriented raiding. At the moment that is a "Comms Run", to kill the weekly quest bosses in EV HM, EC SM and then go on to usually do a full clear of TFB SM all in one night. As a guild we're recruiting you, not your gear. We can help you fix pretty much anything except your personality. Interested in joining us? Visit our website at : http://bit.ly/cdguild and post an application within the recruitment forum (or private mail the application to one of the raid leaders). Pretty much everything we do is organised through our website (and yes, we went to a little more effort than just signing up with a generic guild hosting company). Doing it this way means everyone who joins always has a website account with us. And finally.... We're also looking for an 8man raiding guild with a similar attitude to our own to collaborate for a few night's of 16man raiding. It's something we've been thinking about for a while. But "trying" 16man is kinda hard without the assistant of a friendly guild. We can raid lead, or you can. We'd probably choose one of our "Comms Runs" nights, but are open to other ideas. If this sounds like something you'd like to try with us, please contact Wodawick... alts: Doe or Barclays or post something here on the official forums and I'll get in touch with you. This line intentionally left blank

Custom channels are great for guild alliances and small groups of friends. They don't work at a game level though. Since you've already mentioned that getting people to switch on/off channels in the chat settings is hard... getting enough people to do /cjoin's is beyond credence. And one of the reasons I was mulling it over is that I switched trade chat off back during early access. And try as I might, convincing people that trade chat is better for trading is impossible. For it to work, it has to be something that is both a better solution and appeals to people's self interest. I'd switch general chat off too on fleet if I could. But I still want a way to organise and/or join PuG groups for operations. This line intentionally left blank

One of weaknesses in the game right now is the instanced chat channels. Fleet chat is instanced, Trade chat too I believe. 700 people on fleet? Too bad, you can only speak to a maximum of 250 at once. Which makes person to person trading more awkward and organising operations groups, especially if you need just 1 person pretty limiting too. Add to that, the lag involved in so many players stood in one place plus the way other planets/areas feel a little underutilised, and I wonder if a single central hub is the best solution. I might wish for a technical solution to reduce the lag, but maybe there's an alternative. I was running through a couple of variations on themes in my head and decided what I really most like would be a couple of discrete locations linked by shared chat channels. Especially if those locations "made sense" (at least to me). So, I was thinking.... Have an event. Maybe a Dread Master assault on both fleets. Maybe something more subtle, with the the Dread Masters opening up both fleets to opposite faction attack. Throw in some PvP for those who stay on fleet (I hate PvP, but I can see the appeal/logic). Have the initial level 9/10 quests bypass the fleets and head straight for the capital worlds, and have an exodus of non-combatants (ie anyone who doesn't want to PvP back to "other" locations - primarily the core worlds, but also other places... listed below). So all the vendors, quest givers and other NPCs move enmass back to the core world, but in a time of change... other central hubs pop up. Nar Shaddaa strikes me as another great hub for trade. So add everything that was on fleet at a spot on Nar Shaddaa too, in addition to fleet. I'm obviously not familiar with what will happen with Makeb, but the Hutts are running the GTN... wouldn't it make sense that Makeb (or somewhere similar) might be another hub for trade, alongside Nar Shaddaa, Coruscant and Korriban? Maybe you could even have the Fleets defended in time, and come back as lessor, damaged versions of themselves. So now you've got people spread out around the universe, but they've still got to be able to reach each other. So have a trade network (chat channel), available everywhere on Fleet AND the trade districts of all the places I've suggested. People will still bunch up in those locations, but each will be equally viable as another. General Chat would still be local, but I'm hoping with people more spread out could mean the end to instanced general chat and trade chat. One extra thing I feel would be needed though, would be a global LookingForGroup chat channel linking all these places. Though maybe it could be a slightly wider scope than just the trade districts. But not so wide that you could be stood just about anywhere, since there still has to be something that draws people together. Maybe even go one stage further and have the trade chat channels work in any cantina? (that console in the corner is a trade hub - how else would you order goods an a backwater planet?). Maybe the global LFG channel could work when onboard your ship (Hey, I have comms on my ship, couldn't I use them to organise raiding partys?). You could do it without blowing up fleet of course (and all the added development time to rewriting all those quest points that send people to fleet) - but a guy can hope can't he? I'm not suggesting that we have truly global channels, available everywhere. But the idea that there's only ONE place to do this stuff just seems counter intuitive. Plus my hope would be that some emergent activity might happen, with a Korriban community arising. A Tattoine Cantina traders association. Stuff like that. Plus it works around some of the more quirky technical solutions (Instances fleet/trade chats? seriously?)... then even better. Plus it might incentivise people to use the right channels for the correct purposes. If general chat doesn't reach everyone, then maybe people will think twice about spamming WTB/WTS messages. Right now, there is little choice but to do /1 LFG/LFM... but if a viable, sensible alternative were added that had direct advantages to using the correct channels... then perhaps things might improve in that area. Someone might need to rework the spaceports and docking facilities to be a bit more "large number of travellers" friendly. Especially reconnect the taxi services on Korriban to allow travel from the spaceport to the trade district. But that's all good too. Want to gamble and trade? Go to Nar Shaddaa. (assuming mini-games might be situated there eventually) Want to talk politics and trade. Go to your capital world. Want to be able to trade, but are looking for something a bit more small scale with a few familiar faces. Head to the cantina on Tatooine. Don't like change, but still want to trade? Stay on fleet. Want to save the galaxy from the Terror from Beyond, talk in general chat without listening to "Goat" chat on the core worlds and fleet - and cba switching general chat on and off whenever you change zones. Stay on your ship, or simply don't go to fleet and/or your capital worlds... but still be involved. Clearly I don't know the technical issues that might limit a set of cross-world chat channels, but since custom channels already work and until recently, fleet and trade chats weren't instanced - I can hope. Though given this is something that one developer couldn't complete in a single day, maybe it's pointless to ask. This line intentionally left blank

torstatus.net isn't good for absolute numbers, since it only tracks %time spend at heavy/full/light etc. And whilst it doesn't let us know absolute subscribers numbers, it's a good indicator for concurrent peak user trends. I've been keeping track of the numbers for a while. Figured I'd post the picture here for anyone who might take an interest in such things. http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/3666/torstatus30daysepdec201.jpg I used to track light and standard, then realised as long as it consistently stayed above zero, the only number that mattered was heavy+. Recently, I started tracking "Full" too, since a week before 1.5 hit, we started to nudge towards full more often. My current take on the numbers. A lot of people played when they merged the servers, then things were fairly steady from September to the beginning of November (although there was still a minor drop off each week). The week before F2P launched, people came back and reactivated account, then a week later everything spiked. Right now, we've already dipped back to pre-f2p levels of active players. And if the "heavy" numbers look like they might drop back below 20% mid-week again. "Full" seems to have dropped back to zero. ofc, all of this presumes that EA/BW's numbers for light, standard, heavy and full haven't changed at all since the "mega server" merges back in September. I doubt they have, but there's no way to know for sure. This line intentionally left blank

Explain to him that due to poor sales/customer retention, EA/Bioware are under financial pressure. Most players are aware of the lightsaber bugs, alongside many, many other bugs - but they've gotten used to it. In short, it's not on enough people's radar that EA/BW prioritise fixing it. Sure, everyone finds it annoying - but everyone is still spending money. Fixing it won't generate more income. It's not a "big" enough issue to drive customers away. It might be the proverbial straw on the camels back for some people, but they already left a while ago. People have short memories, they are generally concerned with the issue of the moment (HK-51 for example) rather than long standing bugs like the pylon that's in the wrong position during the descent to kill The Infernal One at the end of Eternity Vault. Which is how EA/BW prioritise their fixes. Whilst people sabre rattle in threads like this about general quality and bugs, they keep paying. Need more examples?... 5th March 2011 - /readycheck - 'nuff said. This line intentionally left blank

So... Subscribers get access to everything.... ...except... this, and this, and that. Oh and this, that and the other thing. I read this news on Dulfy's site and almost cancelled my subscription on principle. Not because I plan to play a human with cat markings, but because of the precedent that subscriptions doesn't provide access to 100% of the game experience. First Cathar, then something else, then something else. This is the thin end of a wedge that don't want to experience the thick end of. I don't expect my subscription to give me everything in game - I have to work towards that. But I do expect my subscription to be able to get me access everything in the game. To those saying the Cathar aren't content... Are you expecting the Cathar starting zone to be Korriban, Hutta, Ord Mantell or Tython? Of course not, not unless EA/BW are being really cheap about introducing it. Do you really expect there to be no quest implications for an entirely new race? No. It might not be as indepth as the differences between starting as a Sith pureblood -vs- being a Zabrak... but the Cathar will be more substantial that just a reskin (not much, probably - but let's assume that EA/BW are still vaguely doing stuff beyond a bare minimum). If this was a "tester" announcement to see what the reaction from the community is... then my reply is a firm "Hell NO!". The more I keep reading stuff like this, the more I keep thinking that I'm not the target audience for this game going forward. If EA/BW are looking for more ways to drive their customers away... this one probably won't be it for me, but compounded with other stuff recently and the next announcement like this - it's getting easier and easier for me to consider leaving swtor behind. And no, I don't accept the "you can save up your free coins as a subscriber to access" argument. For me, the "free" *cough* coins each month could be removed. They the free sample that is supposed to get you hooked. It's a cynical solution to a thinly veiled cash grab. This line intentionally left blank

26th June 2012 to 7th November 2012 ... 3240 hours. 135 days. 4 months, 13 days. Still borked. My bags are getting full of Mission Discovery missions I daren't use for the sake of just wasting them. Or the grief (like the last few days) of trying again, "learning" 3 out of a possible 7 and needing to raise a GM ticket to get the 4 duplicates returned. Why schematics and mission discoveries work differently I've no idea.. but they do, and it's STILL broken. http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/apathy.jpg Apologies for the necro thread, but it's a necro problem This line intentionally left blank

No. But it would incentivise people to stay.. Or at least make the decision to leave a little harder and the decision to stay a little more rewarding. Alternatively, give 1x commendation from the first boss.. 2x from bosses #2 and #3, 3x for #4 (and #5). Make it worth while doing the whole instance. Plus make it worth while for someone to join an in-progress run where the weekly boss has already been killed. Because right now, I see people who won't join a run at the minefield - because they've already missed their chance at the weekly reward. That can't be right. This line intentionally left blank

My concern is that by increasing the BH comms from the weekly quest and the loot drops from the final bosses, there are a large portion of the community who will prioritise Boss #2 and Boss #4/5. I'm already seeing groups who only run the first two bosses of Denova in order to get the weekly comms. The number of in-progress groups looking for people to join after Firebrand+Stormcaller and to a lessor extent at the moment, Ciphas, Heirad, and Kel’Sara is definitely on the increase... and I assume as a direct result of people getting the "Weekly Quest Complete" and leaving. Personally I'd prefer to see 1x or 2x commendations per boss (not chest) and a small number for the weekly quest... totalling the same number as planned. Otherwise, those "other bosses" are just the things you have to go through in order to get to "the good stuff" for people with that mentality... and there are a high number of them in my experience. This line intentionally left blank

I don't know if it's easier or harder to use than the ones already quoted... But this is the one I drew a while ago for myself, our guild and a couple of friends. http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/2938/ancientpylons.png This line intentionally left blank

I'm thinking ahead to launch of F2P. I assume it's possible to raid on a couple of characters without a subscription. But more than just raid, to get close to the experience currently available to a subscriber. I'm assuming that without things like PvP passes, vanity items and other things that aren't relevant to endgame raiding - that by skipping out on the "other" stuff, it's possible to have a F2P account, spend under the current subscription fee on cartel coins and not feel like we'd not be missing out on anything significant. I'm sure there are many variations on a theme that people like myself will need to cherry pick from. But at the core of those variations will be a core wish list of necessary and optional unlocks. Has anyone started to put together wish lists yet, based on the current PTS info? There are so many unlocks, consumables (like the weekly operations access pass) and other stuff that I'm losing track. But I'm sure others are managing better than I. Thanks in advance. This line intentionally left blank

Got to agree with the majority here. 3 people up top and not moving the Fabricator Droid is by far the best solution overall. But the two things are completely separate. You can have 3 people up top and still move the boss. Or you can have 2 or even 1 person up top and not move the boss. Having 3 people up top (including preferably 1 healer) is the more significant factor. Even if that means 1 person on the far left never does any DPS to the boss at all (just put the least geared DPS up there on the left). 1 person up top is possible, but the reduction in time the boss spends debuffed just isn't worth it in my opinion. Even if it's a sorcerer or consular dashing around with force speed and knocking probes (on HM+ only these days) away from the buttons. As for moving the boss -vs- not moving the boss. Not moving = more DPS. Not moving the boss is 8 puzzle piece moves. Moving the boss is 7. Trust me, the extra time for that 8th move is less than a second is most reasonable groups. Moving Boss: R -> M :: R -> L :: M -> L :: R -> M :: L -> R :: L -> M :: R -> M Not Moving: R -> M :: R -> L :: M -> L :: R -> M :: M -> R :: L -> M :: L -> R :: M -> R (R: Right, M: Middle, L: Left). Plus not moving the boss means the people up top only need to learn one pattern to rotate the pieces rather than 1. One tip is to keep in mind if you do move the boss is that where you move the smallest piece to is where all 3 pieces of the puzzle will end up. So always move piece #1 where you want everything to go - the rest takes care of itself as long as everyone pressing buttons understands the basic rules of a Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Using the middle column to clear the probes/droids is handy, but a tiny advantage compared with sticking with the right (fire) column. And as far as I can remember, the far left column is just ice which acts in an identical way to fire - with no advantage from alternative fire & ice. This line intentionally left blank

This is a question to the community, since generally someone out there has read something or heard a podcast I've missed. Has anyone seen any evidence about whether features bought with Cartel Coins to lift restrictions will be account wide or per character? I'm thinking about stuff like the restrictions on the size of character inventory and cargo holds. The obvious choice from EA/BW's point of view would be per character. Since that will likely be spun as "more choice" and might result in more revenue... which seems to be the sole aim right now. But... The push so far as always been to alts. Legacy being the focus, but also stuff like a lack of repeatable content. In a sense... "We don't need a lot of repeatable content, since there is seven other full and complete stories to experience". Yet a system where cartel coins are per character effectively penalises players who've embraced BW's ethos of "go reroll an alt". Since cartel coins are solely rewarded per account, with no additional bonus coins for per character progression. Nor even a bonus reward per legacy level. Anyone choosing to go f2p, with a lot of characters will find their cartel coins spread pretty thinly. ofc, all this is supposition on my part. Which comes back to my original question... "Has anyone found any definitive, concrete information about how cartel coins will interact with the f2p restrictions?" (Links greatly appreciated). This line intentionally left blank

Bought: Green. Thought about buying: Orange Wouldn't buy: Red Global Perks: Ship Mailbox Ship Repair Droid I had some spare credits, and so it meant my bank mules could stay on their ships Operations Training Dummy - 0.5 mil for something I might use once a month and is free on fleet? No thanks. I can't even test healing on it. Operations Training Dummy - 0.5 mill for something I'll definitely not use. Never. GTN - 5 mill for the convenience of not listening to /1 or /3. I could be selling stuff 24 hours a day and it would never pay for itself. No, just no. Character Perks. Improved Speeder Piloting I - Ability to move through content quicker, 15 levels early for only 40k. Complete no brainer. Bought on every new alt. Improved Warzone Experience - Maybe worth it if I did WZ's to level. But I don't PvP, so No. Improved Flashpoint Experience - Maybe worth it if FP / LFG queue times were shorter. But they aren't... so No. Improved Space Missions Experience - This might be worth it if you did Space missions each day from about level 12 to 40. But from what I've seen, most of the XP comes from killing ships/targets. The actual "quest complete" component of the XP isn't that big a deal. So it's not as attractive as it first looks. Travel - Capital World. - Might save me a tiny fraction of time while levelling. Worth 20k, just.. maybe. Field Repair Droid - Maybe. Though let's face it, repair droids aren't exactly hard to find during levelling and only a minor inconvenience while raiding. Worth a total of 350k? Not likely. Improved Class Mission Experience. - Seriously? Most XP, even when doing the class quests is from killing mobs. Even then, XP from class quests is tiny compared with XP from non-class quests. Looks good, as long as you don't read the small print. Improved Exploration Experience. - As almost completely useless boosts go... this is way up there. Travel - Outlaw's Den - If I were on a server where Outlaw's Den is widely used. Maybe. But I'm not, and I wouldn't PvP even if it were. Travel - Fleet Vanguard Vessel - Flying from fleet to Zoist's shadow too much like hard work? lol. Travel - Black Hole - With quick transport to Black Hole from lots of shuttles these days, is this really needed? But regardless... worth 150k? No damned way. Field Mail Droid - Is finding a mailbox quickly ever likely to save me 100k ? Nope. I didn't think so either. If I couldn't think of anything else to spend the money on.. maybe. Field Respec - 200k ? No. Just on principle No. Quest as DPS then do flashpoints as healer? Maybe. Respec from DPS to tank in raids? If that sort of stuff is going on, you've got bigger problems. But 200k ? NO. Legacy of Altruism - As soon as I get a new companion. I boost them to 6000 affection using level 1 companion gifts from fleet. Why on earth would I think I might struggle to get from 6k to 10k? And certainly not for 90k. Legacy of Persuasion - See: Legacy of Altruism Legacy of Crafting - 350k for a 3% increase increase chance of getting augmented gear. I know adding augments is expensive... it's not that damned expensive. Plus most of the gear I want to augment drops from bosses, I'm not crafting it. No. Legacy of Leadership - Maybe, maybe level 1. But an extra 50k for level 2? Nahh Overall... My view would be that only the Level 1 speeder upgrade at character level 10 is worth it. There are some other stuff that is personal preference, but few are ever really worth it. The rest... are just caveat emptor. There to look expensive so that they look like they might be worth real money when cartel coins make an appearance. Or in the case of my ship mailbox and repair droid. Credit sinks for anyone who have more credits than sense. This line intentionally left blank

Damn. We went a whole week with a full raid team... I knew it was too good to last. Sadly, we're losing a RL couple from our active raiding team, who happened to be a tank and healer. We've also realised that our DPS could do with an extra person to keep things on track. So we're back to where we were about 10 days ago... looking for 1 DPS, 1 tank and 1 healer. Edit: First post updated. This line intentionally left blank

Thanks all. We're sorted now we think. We'd like to welcome Ward, Hanah and Adusan aboard. .. and yes, we're still looking for that 8man collaboration some time, if anyone is interested. This line intentionally left blank

Current Recruitment Requirements: None at this time. 1.4 has not been kind to us. Whilst we do have a full raid team, we were cutting things really fine. To the point where any one person being unavailable is hurting our raid schedule. With that in mind, we were looking for a couple of extra people to join our 8man raid team. We're looking for any sort of Tank, although a Juggernaut would be ideal. We're looking for any sort of Healer, although an Operative would be ideal. Finally, we're looking for a DPS, preferably a mDPS - but we're okay with rDPS too. Mainly though, we're looking for "our sort of people" Quick link to our website.... http://bit.ly/cdguild Last updated: 14th October 2012. Who are Continental Drift? CD are an easy going, friendly guild of English speaking players who raid 8man content 4 nights per week (Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday and Monday). One of our recruits said raiding with us was like slipping back into an old comfy pair of slippers. That's us... old and comfy. We want raiding to be rewarding without being judgemental. We take raiding seriously enough to want to start on time, make constant progression and kill bosses with the best of them. But not so seriously that we're min/max'ing gear and referring to combat logs all the time. We want to have fun raiding and progress as far as we can with the raid team we have. We have a varied mix of people and skills and an attitude that says that's okay. If you are looking for server firsts or even twenty firsts, then we may not be for you. We aim to do exceptionally well, but never at the cost of having fun. We're probably not going to clear Terror From Beyond: Asation on Nightmare mode... and we're fine with that. (We'll probably try anyway). We plan stuff around being a relatively low attendance raid team. Which means we're okay with shift patterns and family commitments and other variations on that sort of theme. But that has knock on effects to our gearing up and boss killing progression. We're going to be slower and require a greater flexibility of our guild members. In our opinion, the rewards outweigh the costs. That said, right now, we're looking for people who want to raid 3 maybe even 4 nights per week. We are NOT a PvP oriented guild. We don't spend a lot of time in flashpoints any more either Progression: Eternity Vault : 5/5 Nightmare (including speed-run title) Karagga's Palace : 5/5 Nightmare (including speed-run title) Explosive Conflict: Denova : 1/4 Hard Mode so far. Terror From Beyond: Asation : 4/5 Story Mode so far. (Started this week). We do have members who've completed EC HM, but our progress as a guild has been limited due to people's limited availability. This is pretty much why we're recruiting so heavily now. Raid Schedule: Our raid schedule is :- Wednesday : 19:30 to 22:00 (UK Time) Thursday : 19:30 to 22:00 Sunday : 19:30 to 22:00 Monday : 19:30 to 22:00 Who are we looking for? What do we expect from you? I was in a random flashpoint the other day healing. 2 of the melee DPS were slaughtered by a boss whirlwind type cleave that cut through their health like it was butter because they ignored the flashy whirling lightsaber graphics warning them "not to stand in fire". One guy immediately said something along the lines of "a bit of healing would be nice!!!", at which point his friend pointed out the boss ability and how no healer could have healed through it. To which his reply was something like "Oh, I didn't know" and my reaction was "So... you didn't know, but your first reaction was to blame the healer? Cheers!". If you're like the first guy, you're not the type of person we're looking for. If you're like his friend, you ARE the sort of person we're looking for. Interested in joining us? Visit our website at : http://bit.ly/cdguild and post an application within the recruitment forum (or private mail the application to one of the raid leaders). Or contact the following empire players ingame: Wodawick... alts: Doe or Barclays Caldazar... alts: Rocheforth or use the " /who drift " command to speak to any of our members or current recruits. /who is a little bugged currently, but still works directly some of the time. Alternatively, if you have any other questions about the guild - feel free to post something here on this thread and I'll do my best to answer. And finally.... We're also looking for an 8man raiding guild with a similar attitude to our own to collaborate for a few night's of 16man raiding. Some of our members are unsure about the eventual step up to 16man raiding and are looking to do a very limited period of "trying" 16man with a friendly guild. We can raid lead, or you can. We'd probably choose Denova Storymode to try, but are open to other ideas. If this sounds like something you'd like to try with us, please contact Wodawick... alts: Doe or Barclays or post something here on the official forums and I'll get in touch with you. This line intentionally left blank

From what I can see then... Story mode operations are all now (in theory at least) a similar level of difficulty and reward similar gear. So puggers or alts can go do EV, KP for columi gear then EC or even TFB on story mode and get Rakata gear. Then for your progression raider... you do EV SM --> KP SM --> EV + KP HM and/or EC / TFB SM --> EC HM --> TFB HM --> EC NMM --> TFB NMM. EXCEPT... If EV and KP have more bosses, less trash and can be cleared quicker on HM than a SM operation... why would anyone in their right mind go and do EC or TFB more than once or twice on story mode ? All I see for EC and to a lessor extent TFB is stick, with no sight of the carrot. Then... Black Hole comms are now worthless to raiders. Raiders capable of doing EC HM don't need BH comms, because they're getting Campaign gear which is better itemised for secondary stats and doesn't require the cost of extracting the mods to put them into Columi / Rakata shells. Sure, they can get campaign gear AND BH comms to tweak their secondary stats around for a short while, but that period is very limited when you are already getting campaign gear. So for raiders who perhaps aren't quite ready for EC HM yet or who are struggling progressing on those fights... the only obvious choice is to head BACKWARDS into flashpoints for gear upgrades. *sigh*. btw, the next call from players is going to be to nerf EC HM to make it more accessible for the lower tier of progression guilds. On the basis that the uber guilds are already working their way through TFB HM and the step up from EC SM to EC HM is too great for everyone else. You know, just a heads up, so you can think about it ahead of time, rather just reacting blindly. My take on this that it will do nothing to slow down the gearing speed of "high level" progression guilds, and removes the opportunity for "lower level" progression guilds to over-gear fights they are struggling with. So... lose-lose, with only frustration on the horizon. This line intentionally left blank

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I can confirm that Fleet chat is now instanced, although it doesn't show that on the /who panel. I was on Fleet [2] with about 45 people, where a fairly long conversation was going in between 2 or 3 people. I swapped over to Fleet [1] with about 240 people, where the usual LFG type stuff was happening. But not those 3 people. Then I swapped back to Fleet [2] as soon as the cooldown would let me, and asked if those people had been continuing their conversation... They said they had. Fleet chat is instanced. This line intentionally left blank