It doesn't matter -- even if he is running any out-of-game GPU rendering tricks, he still only posts distant shots of nearly all-white, limited detail trooper armor. Probably because no amount of PC shenanigans will enable a texture quality that is disabled at the engine level of the game, rather than at the user's discretion. No trick he could pull will put a post-2004 texture quality into his game, so all we get are the same repeated "Show me proof! That's not proof! My game looks better than yours!" and distant screenshots of solid white armor. Seeing as how the atlas garbage packages and compresses textures together, naturally the images that suffer the most from it are the most varied, detailed textures. You take something pure white with a straight line on it and it doesn't look nearly as terrible. You put something with multiple colors, shades of colors, and non-straight lines (in other words, every robe, ever, among other things) through that atlas junk and it comes out the other end looking like dog barf. There's no way to make it not look like dog barf, unless you just equip plainer armor. Point me to the solid-color Jedi robes, please.

Here, pull up the fullscreen on this. But that's dialogue cutscene, you say! You'd probably be right, unless that's some kind of an emote. Take a look at her again. That's not a cutscene. That's the default stance for a drawn double-bladed lightsaber. Wait a minute, that robe looks familiar.

I was shocked at some of the repetition, as well. I guess you can't reasonably expect all fresh dialogue from 1-50 but some of it is played out. My friends and I joke about my Trooper's catchphrase "...how Havoc Squad gets it done!" and my snide Shadow's "Let's try words, shall we?" It didn't really start to hit me on my Shadow until either Tatooine or Alderaan but as soon as I noticed it, I noticed it a lot. My trooper was barely on Taris before my buddies and would crack up every time I mentioned Havoc Squad and "getting things done". I deliberately go out of my way to pick options that I think will lead to Havoc Squad's capacity to do things just for the giggle-factor. Some of the recycled bits don't even make sense in the context of the conversation you use them in, and some of them are used in class-story quests! Generic quests are one thing but recycled, ill-fitting clips in class-specific missions? Really?

I didn't say people were incapable of having fun with it, in fact I said it was very enjoyable, it just wasn't a very good MMORPG right now. If I really have to, I can go find proof that several competing games are "better" than TOR is, mechanically and visually speaking. I know "better" is a relative term, and subject to opinion, but I can assure you there are games with tighter combat, more features, and better (and way, way more customizable) graphics. That leaves the storytelling (which I said was great for the genre, and novel) and the license. There's nothing inherently wrong with loving the game for either of those reasons, but if you love TOR for its tight combat (it doesn't have it) or its next-gen visuals (these aren't even last-gen visuals), then you just haven't played a better game.

To sum it up: Repetition of History. It seems that nearly every MMO releases with a handful major and/or minor problems. These problems often have a direct and negative impact on the long-term population of the game. There will always* be time for fixes, things can always* be improved, etc. But not everyone will stick around to see the "real" version of the game, when and if we ever get it. It's far easier to keep a current customer than attract a new one, let alone entice a scorned one back. People expect (and rightly so) a reasonably complete, content heavy game when it releases, not after months and months of payments while the game sits in a "sort-of-almost-done-but-this-is-still-more-like-a-beta" awkward growing phase. Problem is it almost never actually happens, and people get bitter. It dooms some games to small populations, others it kills outright (Tabula Rasa had more potential and a fresher take on MMO gameplay than several competitors released before and since, but a rushed launch and incomplete game, and the complete lack of concern or care from Richard "Hell with this, I'm going into space!" Garriott caused the thing to shut down). Then you look at other games on the market, games that usually cost less up front and have the same monthly fee (or sometimes no monthly fee) attached and you think "If those other guys are doing this or that now, why isn't my game doing that? If a new MMO wants to make a lasting impression, if it wants to gain ground on the Gorilla hanging out in the corner of the room, it has to be awesome out of the gate. No MMO is ever awesome out of the gate, and once the initial novelty of "I'm playing a new game in new content!" wears off the cracks start to show. The dialogue and "RPG"-ness of the game add a lot to the immersion, and do push the genre in a (much needed) different direction. The problem is the RPG part is the entire game... the rest of TOR is a WoW clone, right down to ability effects and cooldowns in a lot of cases. That would be okay if the performance, both visually and mechanically, were tight, but both are a mess. You've got lackluster visuals (crap shadows, crap textures) and stiff, cumbersome mechanics (ability delay, general character and combat responsiveness). You're lacking completely basic required features like custom UI, macros (even simple macros like "assist" or target-of-target), multi-spec (games besides WoW do this), etc. for the genre and no reasonable or rational explanation for their absence other than "we'd like to do that some day, but we're totally going to start billing you now." So you've got this genre-altering amount of story presentation bolted onto what is unfortunately a very rough framework of an actual MMORPG. That upsets people, people that expected more than the game will be capable of anytime in the near future due to early release and poor design decisions and priorities. The Old Republic is a great experience but it simply isn't an enjoyable game world to spend untoward amounts of hours in, unless you love the Star Wars universe so much that you can overlook the quality and multitude of advances found in other games that, at the end of the day, all cost 15$/month or less. People get upset not because the game is universally terrible but more because they really wanted TOR to be the next big thing and it's always painful to pin hope on something and then watch it trip so badly out of the gate. *always, so long as the game is still live.

High resolution (advertisement mode) textures for at least myself, my companion, and my group members? No? Then I guess I don't care about 1.1. I like to spend money on products that aren't still in beta.

Everyone that says their game looks as good as the promo materials never posts screenshots. I always found that strange. Maybe 'strange' isn't the word for it... maybe it's because they're lying and there's no way they can prove that they aren't, because it's not possible. Yeah, I think those are better words. And EAware committed to nothing. Some people just don't understand that. "Improved graphical fidelity" could be .0001% less compressed textures. Now, it could instead mean full glory, high resolution textures. I'm not saying that it will only be .0001% less compression, but they didn't promise us any more than that. When they commit to something that matters, rather than throwing PR weasel words at us, then I'll pay attention and maybe start paying them.

My shadow would love some options besides brown, brown, brown, brown with green trim, brown, brown with brown, white with brown brown, brownbrownbrown. Every once in a long while I see a blue-purple-ish thing, maybe 3 or 4 chest pieces total, but can never find a full leg/glove/boot set to go with it. Or, in the case of the Elder Exemplar set, I can't find a helmet that matches and overrides the ridiculous, gold-plated hood that comes with the chest piece. And I have a nice white coat but nothing to go with it, even the legs of the same name and set don't match any part of the chest. Not the coat, not the shirt, and not the undershirt. All of which are different shades of brown, except for the coat.

Leaving out the entire high-end set of graphic options (texture quality, shadows, shaders, reflections, etc) most likely because your game engine isn't capable of running these options and then telling players that this is "working as intended" while continuing to advertise the game at a graphical level that the players cannot even attempt to replicate was totally an unforeseen bug.

The changes you should expect: Aside from the eyecolor and the circles around the eyes, it's much easier to notice in the "cutscene" textures than in the normal gameplay muddy textures. My guy looks evil as hell in dialogue, in gameplay he just looks like he fell asleep in front of a car exhaust for a few hours. If you aren't seeing the above effects on your character, check your options like an above poster recommended. If "show sith corruption" is checked and you still don't notice anything, maybe it is a race thing. All my characters are human so I couldn't comment on differences.

It's okay, guys, it turns out these were the high resolution textures we were looking for! Let's all sign up for annual subscriptions now! Edit -- As there is High-Res graphics in the game, we cannot offer an refund? I get better English from Asian account-info-phishing spam emails.

The backloaded damage on Project drives me nuts on my Shadow. In the tank spec, a lot of our rotation revolves around Project, building buff stacks with it, burning crit charges with it, etc. Triggering an ability only for the 100%-critchance buff to fall off of you in the day and a half it takes that dead droid to actually hit the target sucks. Also, the single-target channeled ability for trooper (full auto?) allegedly behaves oddly. There was another thread that mentioned this, the trooper's full auto takes a really long time to start doing damage and it's really easy for incoming damage or player interaction to clip off some of the ticks, where it's much more fluid with the BH's equivalent ability.

He asked, in the OP, if people liked the corruption effects. My reply was that I liked them... on some of my characters, and I gave a very brief description of why. He told me to get out of his thread. Logic? No. Trolling? Yes.

So you asked for people's thoughts on corruption, then tell them you don't want their thoughts on corruption? Trollthread flagged as trollthread.

I left it enabled for some of my characters, and shut it off for others. I had all these plans to have good characters, neutral "I do what I feel like" characters, and evil characters. ...All of my characters ended up being heartless, take-charge, collateral-damage-happens bastards. I hid the corruption on my trooper and bounty hunter because it didn't make sense. My main, my shadow, rolls with the corruption on because he's very connected with the Force, half of his abilities revolve around it, and he is constantly doing terrible things... for the greater good of the Republic, of course.

As many people have said/suggested, even just giving the player character and his/her companion the high rez would go a long way toward easing player concerns. Personally, I'd want it a step further than that -- I'd want my character, my companion, my group, and any of their companions in "cutscene resolution". That would be enough to get me to renew and continue playing. I do enjoy the game, but I can't justify paying a monthly fee for something this substandard. Yes, it's only a game, and yes, gameplay should be more important than graphics, but I am a very visual person. I like to see my character improve, I like to tweak ways to make my characters interesting, unique, and cool looking. I've gone way out of my way and spent a ridiculous amount of credits so that my Shadow wears pants instead of a dress bottom, pants that still match up pretty well with the rest of his gear. Now, if it wasn't all just a pixellated mess, I'd love the guy. This solution *shouldn't* be hard. The game already has to drawcall those textures (you, companion, group, group companions) for dialogue anyway. Just keep them loaded and display them at all times. When someone joins your group, they still use "medium" textures. When you summon a new companion, it loads in "medium" textures. As soon as you hit your first drawcall (from dialogue) *bam* keep that candy loaded until they leave the group. Update the 'perma-drawcall' every time you initiate dialogue (to 'unload' people no longer in your group and add in new people if necessary). Done. That's a maximum of 4 high-rez characters in most normal circumstances. Up to 16, if you are in an operation config. If 16 cripples the system, that's pretty sad on the engine's part, but that's still what graphics options are for. If 16 runs like crap, the user can just dip down to the "medium" setting until after the raid is over. If the game can't handle just 4 high-rez characters, we've got problems way, way larger than just texture resolution here. If I could see myself, and my grouped friends, as they were supposed to look, and not rocking some of the best MMO texturework 2004 has to offer, I'd happily renew and wait/hope for further improvements down the line. Without that, or even a promise of that, I just can't hand these guys any more money right now.

I ripped through the story on my Shadow, and I play a couple different characters in static groups with various friends. Playing through once by myself was fun. Playing through in a static of a buddy or two gives the game a "new Neverwinter Nights" feeling, and it's really enjoyable. Trying to play this game as a MMO that is severely lacking in MMO functions and features is just painful, though. Want to do a Heroic 4 quest before you leave the planet you're on? Good luck with that. I averaged 11 or so people on Voss for all the time I spent there. Want to do a specific flashpoint? Better sit your butt in the fleet and troll general chat for a tank and/or healer for up to an hour, maybe longer. Difficult content? Have fun doing what you need to do with the ability delay. Get some shiny new gear to make you feel good about your character and "show off" a little? Oh, right, lack of high rez textures makes most equipment look like muddied crap, so there's little reason to get excited for new equipment aside from the minor stat improvements.

Was the companion in the group when the item dropped? Did his or her AI directly contribute to the acquisition of this new item? No? Then don't push need on it. Yes? ...You should still probably check with other human players, first. That would be the same as me running a flashpoint with 3 strangers. Say I'm on my Vanguard, and a End/Will BoE robe drops. I have a friend that plays a Shadow, and we actually have a static (neither of us do quests without each other). I push "need" on the robe because, hell, 90% of the time I'm doing stuff with my buddy. So what if he's not here, that item still benefits me because when he does better, we do better.

That would be hilarious. "Turns out that giving you high rez textures then compressing them to barf quality actually slows your system down, who knew?!?"

The thing that bothers me about the Wait-and-See Tribe (Scrubs reference woo!) is this: Wait-and-See says, "Hey, wait and see, it could be better, you don't know what the future holds!" People upset that TOR looks like butt say, "Exactly, we have no idea. We have a weasel-worded PR response that things will 'improve' ... months from now. Instead of just giving us the same optionset that was available in beta." It's a circular and hollow argument. Yeah, EAware may fix the game to even the most specific of requests. Or they may not. There's no proof either way because the only official word on the matter is PR spin that actually promises very, very little. So, just like 'People Against The Blurry Republic' have no proof of future progress, the Wait-and-See have no proof, either. That's the entire problem -- we have no idea what the design intent or goal is, because the people in charge won't just lay it out on the table. "Improve graphical fidelity" means nothing because "improve" is a relative word. If the textures were made .01% better, that's "improved" and still nowhere near what we're asking for, or what would be visually comparable to any other modern MMO on the market. If SR or any dev could have just said "Goal is high rez textures for you, your companion, and your group by 1.2, possibly in Q1 2012, will try to optimize engine for full high rez texture support by summer" then a huge chunk of this graphical nightmare would be behind us. On top of all of that, there is proof that they've already lied. These textures were part of beta. They were pulled. Reasons were given as to why, and the players were led to believe that they'd be put back. To date, no single advertisement image or video appears to use the atlas-dogbarf textures that players have to play the game with. To date, Bioware said that the textures were tested and didn't work at one point, then 180'd and said that we were never supposed to even have them at all. And this was all after hundreds of pages of rage and "what the hell, mate?" after we saw the medium texture option silently dropped from the test server. If that doesn't constitute "lying", then I'm really not sure what does. I have a bridge to sell you, and also I'm a deposed prince in desperate need of assistance to unlock my family fortune.

There needs to be an EAware employee that lurks around the offices, during meetings, game planning, and development. This employee needs to carry around a foam bat. Every time this employee hears the word "elevator" or sees an elevator in gameplay, this bat-wielding employee needs to flog the nearest person responsible for the elevator, until the elevator is removed and never spoken of again. I'm kind of shocked that Dragon Age wasn't riddled with elevators.

I'll be keeping it alive for 3 more days. After that, my sub is up, and since I'll no longer be paying for the game then I'll have a diminished interest to see the game not suck. I'll most likely be back in WoW, but I'm kind of burnt out on it at the moment. May fire Rift up again or something. I thought about Aion, just to cleanse the pallet with a truly beautiful game, but glossing over the forums there, it seems like there are many issues with the gameplay and content. The Rift forums are in much better shape -- there's an expected amount of complaining, but the forums aren't entirely the wall of hate that they seem to be for some games. I'll still check back here to see if EAware ever fixed their game, but my "crusade" to get the game to look like advertisements (or even get it to look like something made in the last half a dozen years) will be pretty much over, and failed. This will be the last bit of money BioWare and EA ever get from me unless drastic measures are taken to improve this game. I've already given up on most of EA for various reasons, the next-to-final nail in the coffin was shoving Origin down BF3's throat, the visual mess that is TOR (while they still advertise amazing graphics) is the final nail.

Playing TOR like a single-player RPG, or playing it with 1-3 buddies as a multiplayer RPG with a static group, going through the game's story in a linear fashion, I really enjoy TOR. Playing TOR as a MMO, I kind of despise it. It looks awful (textures and shadows being the big two visual offenders), the combat isn't responsive, even character movement doesn't feel that responsive to me. I don't mind that the MMO-part of this game rips off WoW so shamelessly, I expected that going into the game. My problem is that it rips WoW off with such a lack of polish or attention to detail or finesse that it's almost offensive to me. Mashing abilities that clearly state "this ability does not respect the global cooldown" over and over and over only for them to fire -- get this -- after a GCD finishes, having interrupts fail to fire depending on what animation my character is hardlocked into, being 100% unable to get excited about approaching endgame and gearing my character because character models look like dogbarf due to the enforced atlasing, etc is just too much for me to fully "invest" myself into TOR and make it my only (or even just my primary) MMO. It was fun, it can be fun, but I can never seem to 100% enjoy the game without being frequently reminded of disappointments and shortcomings. I think I'll check back when the game is mechanically and visually beyond beta status.

My shadow tank used Nadia. Some stuff is more touch-and-go than if I was using Tharan but... Holiday creeps me out, and then to an extent so does Tharan. If I got to an elite though, I'd have to carefully manage the fight and my tanking abilities so that Nadia and I could kill it before I died. It's way easier with Tharan and if it's a really hard fight then I still have to drag him out of the ship for it. 90% of the time, though, Nadia's ridiculous damage output helps me move through groups quicker and thus diminishes the need for a pocket healer. It is very disappointing that each companion is hardlocked into a role for the reasons already stated -- often you end up feeling forced to use a companion you dislike, or you have to bench someone you'd really like to have along.

To some people, one of the main forms of character development in a MMO is gear progression. You do harder content, you get better eqiupment (or you work on putting together "appearance" sets), and so on and so forth. It takes a lot of the wind out of the endgame's sails if there's little-to-no point in getting that shiny new piece of gear if it looks like vegetable soup ran through a blender, which coincidentally is how your previous armor looked, and the piece before that, and before that.