The i7 is great. But it's about $100 more. Best bang-for-the-buck in the "you really wanna play a new game and have it last a few years" is that i5 2500k. And yes, like the above says, if you want to throw another $150 at it, get a SSD. I have a 120 gig SSD for the OS, current games I play, photoshop, web browsers, office, etc. And it make a ton of difference. Also, a neat trick with Windows 7 if you don't have a SSD is to go buy a cheap thumb drive like 16 gigs and enable ready boost on it. It basically will use it as a swap file and it's a LOT faster then a traditional swap file.

The problem is their high/normal means nothing to me. My server is normal and there's crap for people. Most zones seem dead and I hardly run into anyone doing anything.

Look what I quoted above. a 2500k is pimp. Nothing wrong with it. And to the OP yes, I'd pick a 2500K. Make sure it's a K, the non-K has a locked multiplier. The K does not, and with a modern bios (like the Asus) if you don't want to mess around with OC the bios can do it for you with 1 button click. So for an extra $15 you can take that 3.3ghz 2500k and run it around 4.1ghz with almost no effort or additional parts but the case fans.

I like mwave. Just pick a mobo-cpu-ram combo, order your own HD, and case and PS and find your own windows install and you're done. For $325 you can get a i5 2500k and a nice little mobo with 8 gigs of ram. Spend another $100 on the hd, case and ps for another $100 combined (you can go cheaper here by $50 if you want). So for $525 you have a very nice modern gaming system and you'll use your own video card, monitors and windows install and you're done.

No tool that helps people find other people wanting to do "like" things is responsible for creating a poor environment or player attitude. There is a problem for many in this game right now of populations (they seem very sparse) and people wanting to do content that is in game without a guild capable of doing that content. A LFG tool would help alleviate that problem. If you don't have that problem, great, don't use the tool. Continue doing what you're doing. It's as if certain people are enraged that others want a tool to help them meet up with people to do content. PUG's right now require lots of spamming and waiting and often never materialize. Which is exactly how WoW PUG's were done for about 7 years. Now in WoW the culture became one that often PUG leaders would pass on certain people due to not having gear scores or experience in an instance. That happened before LFG was implemented in WoW in any relevant form. And whether that culture appears in SWTOR has no bearing on whether a more robust LFG feature is implemented. Currently WoW does match-making for raids, that is relatively new to WoW. It's done it for 5-man's for a while now and it was highly successful. Yes, many groups failed, but without the tool the attempt was probably never ever made. Let's say SWTOR puts in harder content. A typical PUG will probably require that you have at lease experienced "this" much before being invited to their pug. Reason being the content is designed for someone that's done at least "this" much. PUG's being that they aren't well oiled machine usually put the limit a little above the bar the designers had in mind for guild runs. That is logical. There's clearly nothing wrong with that. A lot of people just not thinking properly about issues caused in WoW and their true causes. They are going to see the same things here only in chat vs a LFG group and there's no way around it, especially seeing as SWTOR has completely gone to a tier/progression design.

Absolutely. It was a horrible feeling to be around FP and decide to try to go level in the Karanas, spend an entire hour+ getting there, and then realize it kinda sucks there right now. But, those days are gone. Being it was the first virtual world for a lot of people, and the interweb itself was just taking off, just having a zone to run through with /ooc was awesome. I really don't like the fast travel in this game because of the interaction it takes to do it, not because of the time. Certainly better than EQ, but EQ was a different beast at a different time.

The problem isn't how long it takes. It's the number of stops. The WoW system is really good. Take the original two continents. Yes, it might take 20 minutes to fly from one end to the other, but you can do it AFK. get to a FP pick where you want to go and go bio or get a drink or whatever. And in most cases in WoW there's a lot of port type abilities that make the long trips much much shorter. In SWG I have to get to a FP, take it the starport. RUN for like 30 seconds to an elevator, click, RUN another 30 seconds to my ship. LOAD. fast run to map, pick planet, then reverse the entire process. That's a clunky system. By far one of the worst I've seen in an MMO since post EQ.

I do not want certain mods from outside sources. I think they've ruined WoW to a degree. Especially raiding where they are required and so blizzard has to design crappy encounters knowing your screen will tell you when the fire's on its way and to move to the safe place, etc... That said, they do need to give us tools like meters, logging. I also think they should open up unit frames to modding look/feel/sizes and not just their own. But I'm fine with them not allowing mods to have access to a lot of information that would just be used to assist in encounters.

If the trend from ME1 to ME2 continues in ME3, ME3 will have 1 item in the entire game called "Item" and after the initial cut scene you equip it into your sole item slot with no further "item" upgrades available throughout the game.

No, I don't agree. SWTOR has all the content. They just did it on rails. If they did ONE planet that you could literally walk at level 1 to go group with your friends there is no less story or games. Just choices. If they put the flashpoints in the world itself it doesn't take any more work. Skyrim sells like hotcakes and makes money. It's a sandbox. Put it in an MMO, give it better itemization. Case closed. But no one will do it. Rift failed because instead of creating a world, they did another WoW clone without the 10 years of features and polish WoW has, made a niche that was forced (the rifts) and called it a day.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

No. But I think the point is that a mass market game with the right funding could make more a sandbox MMO and have it work. The problem is they all make a WoW based MMO only make it more WoW then WoW when compared to EQ because they're afraid to do anything else. A total sandbox no. Doesn't seem great. Forced grouping doesn't seem great. But come on. This is KotOR with multiple people and a few areas that require multiple people. As I've said in a few posts. SWTOR is a great game and worth the money. But it's a single player game with a few MMO elements built in. It'll be dead within 6 months.

This is a great point. In EQ the cap at release was level 50. When you hit it and sat around talking in /g there was a million things to talk about. Stories that happened to you. Places lower level guild members should go try. In WoW when you hit level 60 there were some stories to be shared. Not a ton.But some. In SWTOR there are no stories to be shared. Everyone did the same thing that was laid out in front of them.

I'm sorry but finding "books" like it is in other games isn't a reason to explore. And it's just a minor reward. The datacrons aren't a vital part of the game and the rewards while tangible are not class defining. By themselves are small boosts, and adding ALL of them together becomes somewhat meaningful but that's about it. Good exploration is over that hill is a lair/dungeon/rare mob that drops loot that matters, or gives you an epic battle. There is nothing epic or special about datacrons. They are an easter egg hunt.

I 100% disagree. If the world was more alive, more interesting, more places to search, special rewards to be found, made me want to explore, rewarded me for going off the beaten path, gave me the excitement of killing a boss and looting his gun/chestpiece/etc, I wouldn't care if it didn't have mail and taxi's. If the GAME is good, the extras can be added later. Unfortunately, we got mail and taxis and a game on a rail with poor itemization and no reward for exploring outside of virtually useless holocons that are the equivalent of a needle in a haystack anyways. That said, they still did great things with the story. Just once I've finished all the story lines I don't think the game with keep my attention. Well worth the money and I recommend it to many people, just with tempered expectations that in 6 months this place will probably be a ghost town.

I find leveling boring outside of main quest line compared to other games at release. Most games lure you to the dungeons/instances/whatever. They keep you in an area (but usually give you choices of what area you are in) that revolves around a "problem" you solo quest about for most of, but that you usually team up to beat in the end and you get great gear for it. People that skip the end aren't penalized, but they don't get the nice gear and closure, but get similar gear mid way through the next "area". In SWTOR there is no dungeon/instance/whatever you are drawn too. Instead they just give you a symbol above a head that has nothing to do with what you've been doing or even just do the fleet/shuttle crap. You're totally penalized for doing the dungeon/instance as you get nothing really important you can't get anywhere else until it's end game. And it certainly doesn't feel epic. And then in the end game you just hop through really buggy crap that's like LK before Cata easy and the rewards are meh.

I'll compare early WoW to SWTOR in a different way. At WoW at level 1 I created a toon and went out and killed some ostrich looking things. Quested onwards, the game brought me to a village where I learned to fish. Quested onwards, made it to a large city. Along the way I found some really "pimp" gear that made me proud. I even had some "greens". Then I was told to travel over yonder to a large barren plain. There was some scary crap there! But I finally made it to the camp I was destined for and quested onwards. I then got wind of a really dangerous place but with great treasure. I got some friends together and looted the freaking Sword of Omens! OK, it was a wingblade from a quest turn in from my first instance. But holy crap it was pimp. I quested onwards and went to a vale full of evil (good?) night elves. I killed them. I was happy. I went and slaughtered some evil fish people with from friends. Awesome! I took their leet wares too. I quested onwards and went to some crazy place with a 1000 foot tall elevator and fell off it. But I was revived and quested onwards. I then got wind of a jungle across the world. I took a blimp to it. I killed crazy crap and looted it.....skipping a bit....We raised haunted towns and took down zealots. I got crazy loot. We killed a dragon and took it's head back to a starter city for all to gawk at. SWTOR forgot to create a WORLD. I was instantly drawn into a story. That's great. I got to skip the killing ostrich part. Sweet! I'm epic at the start. But I'm playing in a giant corridor. I don't care about any loot when I level. I don't run across crap and go "what's in there?". It's a great game that's horribly designed as it can't suck people in. They give you a 50 level tutorial to play then say "click buttons for end game content" without giving you a reason to want to. Who the hell has any stories about leveling? The time the giant robot wiped the town? Spending an entire Saturday wiping with some friends against the Empire/Republic but in the end you got the Wrists of Wrestling and you wore them forever? Or the time a bunch of level 50's tried to open world pvp your guards cause they were bored and you and 3,432 midgets fought them off? Such potential. This game would be 1000x better if it took place on one world and was truly a world. You think space combat is on a wire? *** is the rest of the game?

Picking a companion would have been much better. I've avoided certain alts, not because of the class, but because of when they get a decent companion. Annoying I can deal with, but not useful really sucks. As a Trooper it was at a reasonable level that I got a romance option healer that is by far the best companion for a Trooper. While other classes you have to wait for the useful companion till the 30's and even then they aren't the interesting "virtual hump fest" that the Trooper got. Only a few classes get their best companions right away "useful" wise. And having to companion swap before dialogs is crap.

I think that means 52% had pvp'd. While 100% had PvE'd of course. PvE is a vast majority of the game no doubt. PvP is a solid minority, but a minority nonetheless.

RAID 0 is using 2 hard drives as if they were a single drive with the data striped across both. A RAID controller is responsible for writing/reading the data Let's say a typical SATA 3 7200 RPM disc does about 80 megs per second reads. If you put two drives in RAID 0 you should get reads about 160 megs per second. And so basically doubled your HD speed. Because the RAID controller is reading from both drives at the same time to get your data so it's able to be as fast as the two drives combined. It still isn't even close to SSD speeds though. RAID 0 basically exists only for speed. RAID levels itself, like when you mention in the server world, wasn't originally built for speed. It was built for redundancy. With RAID 5 being the most common where data is striped across multiple drives like in RAID 0, but also redundantly striped across multiple drives. RAID 1 for example is where drives are mirrored. So in RAID 1 if you have 2 500g drives, your OS would see 1 500g drive and the RAID controller writes the data to both drives. That way if one fails or has issues the OS doesn't even know it. Where as in RAID 0 if you had two 500g drives your OS will see a single 1000g drive.

I was just about to go to bed but I wanted to respond to this. WoW and SWTOR are very different games for being the same genre. If SWTOR was introduced as KotOR 3 and had ALL this extra stuff it would be a 11/10 game of the decade winner. Story is very cool. I think SWTOR sets the new bar for story line in an MMO. And I think it will be copied. Though the "can't hit ESC" to get out of quest cutscene I've already done on 3 other toons is annoying. Still. WoW has a huge game till the end game. There are tons and tons of quests. Dungeons. Phat Lewt. PvP. "HOOKS". In wow from level 20-85 right now. FAR more then SWTOR. WoW does not have a single arching story per class though or anything even remotely as indepth as SWTOR does. But it does have a ton more side stories, usually on a zone level. Personally. I think games should have both. And in the future have it phased. Let me restore Duskwood to it's former glory while also tracking down the head Necro my paladin questline has me on. Etc...

Of course I've read this far. Now, I would say based on your post, that if you are a SW Geek that the hooks you described exist. I can't be sure, but I take your word AND I can fathom it. It's like if someone made a Riverworld MMO (horrible idea, if I wasn't Mark Twain I'd quit ) I'd be all over it for the lore and what "group" is around the next bend in the river. But see, I'm looking this as brand agnostic. I think 2 of the original 3 movies are good. 1 of the new (old?) movies are OK. The rest suck!!!!! To me. So over that hill to me needs to be something that drops phat lewts. Doesn't. Or something that makes me want to look over the hill because the one time I did it was froakin awesome. I totally see your point though. We just have very different thoughts on SW. To me, I don't care that's it's SW at all. To me Mass Effect and SW are no different. Just made up stories I don't have a pre-existing emotional attachment to.

I totally agree on fast travel. I want it. I'm spoiled now too. I'm not waiting 20 minutes for a boat only to have the boat take 15 minutes to go through a meaningless zone to get me where I want to go. But...I'd much rather the flashpoints be real places on real planets and the fleet fast travel just lets you go there onces you've already been there once, or high enough level, or both. And when it takes you there it takes you outside the zone in. It's very cool when you're level 12 or 19 or whatever and you're just playing and you run past an "instance" and there's 10 level 50's sitting outside a "dungeon" that just happens to be in your questing zone and they're waiting to raid and about to go in. And you /inspect them, and look at all the cool stuff they have, and what not. That's cool and gives you a "hook". Something to want to do one day too.

You sound more like you're arguing graphics then how EQ worked. EQ was built at a time where just have a 3d world to be in was meaningfull. Hell, when I first spawned into the world I choose a DE DK and it took me like 2 hours to find my way out of Neriak from where I spawned and it was AWESOME. Not just for me but for the mean other DE's that got lost in a virtual world for the first time. Obviously you can't get away with that anymore. Players aren't going to be happy lost for a few hours to start a game. Times changes. And those first moments will never be the same in any game. But still. EQ, had hooks. I mentioned some already. First time I saw a mino axe from some level 15 dude weilding them I wanted one. First time I accidently zoned into Naj I wanted to group up and kill everything in there. First time I saw the gypsies I wanted to buy their weapons. I could go on and on. Where in SWTOR am I getting a taste of what is to come?

Detail? How does that matter? It's not a rhetorical question. I'm really confused on what detail as to do with me, at say level 12 or 23 or 35 saying "can't wait tll I can do/kill that!" Also, what are the hooks I'm missing. I feel totally abstracted for higher level content while leveling. I'm on toon 2 now. After the first I just rerolled because there was nothing I couldn't "wait" to do to 50. I'm not saying that sarcastically. What did you find along the way that were your hooks?