At the moment the SP system is flawed, as others have pointed out, as the main source of SP is one individual mission, and for everything else, unless you have a fixed levelling partner who will only play at the same time you do, it's nigh on impossible to consitently group up and run through other missions with the same group of friends. As a result, cracking down on that mission really isnt an answer... its just a symptom endemic of the problem, not the root cause. When i first heard about the social system, I got the impression that you'd be earning points for chatting and taking part in the ingame community, not just for being in a group when you happen to run into a conversation option. The system needs a revamp, that much is sure, and I for one would like to see it encouraging people to be a community by chatting, having a laugh and enjoying themselves, rather than thinking "i have to get a group for this mission because theres a few conversation options to work through for points." It'd be great to think that the random jedi that ran past me and threw a quick heal in my direction got a few SP out of the deal as a way of saying "way to look out for other players" rather than just seeing them run past ignoring me when that one quick heal could have been a life saver, and possibly missing out on a conversation that lead to both of us becoming friends etc etc... I wouldn't punish people for grinding their way through the system as it is for social points, and I certainly wouldnt prevent others from doing the same, if they want to... but the system does need to be fixed at some point without making normal players feel like they've lost out, and without causing those of us who have done some grinding for sp to lose anything we've worked for either.

Sadly, after writing to CS about this just over a week ago and was told that they currently have no plans to work on one. it's a shame as the W7 phone market share is growing slowly, and after discussing exactly the same issue with devs on a different game, it turns out there isn't all that much extra work to do to port the iphone/android version over... A physical authenticator is no good to me unfortunately, but I would love to make use of the service... I just dont want to have to join the iSheep and pick up an iPhone as the irony behind following the crowd and buying a device manufactured by a company who's slogan is "Think Different" bothers me....

I'd also like a Win 7 app... I wrote to CS about this a while ago... the response was: Identifying info's removed, as i don't want to fall foul of any "thou shalt not post the contact info of ppl from support" rules... Unfortunately it seems you can code up an app for an iPhone on what was probably a windows pc, with an SDK that is very similar (not identical i know, but the languages aren't crazy different) but you cant actually make a windows version for the 3% of the market (and rising) that chooses to think differently (how ironic is that slogan apple?) and not own an iPhone.

public opinion seems to suggest : Boris Johnson. Personnaly I'd go with Vin Diesel.. not the greatest depth, but still kick ***, and unlike Chuck Norris, not a blizzard sell out.

signed, seconded and supported.... Agree with far too many of the points here to start naming my personal gripes... but it really needs sorting out... And if we must endure the mass effect dialogue wheel, would it be too much to hope for some unlockable "light side only" "dark side only" options like you get in the ME series? I've put effort into getting my LS/DS score up, let it count for something... give me the standard choices and a bonus option to bully someone because im that evil, or let me give them the moral pep talk they so desperately need because I'm a goody little two shoes...

i get a similar bug... If you find the "sweet spot" position for your camera angle, in certain spots at very specific angles you loose all sight of the terrain and your character and can only see the skybox behind it, and any other players that pass in front of the camera.. I actually used it in one case to take some pics of a guild mates character: http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/5364/samplezd.png taken from the republic fleet....

no major ingame performance gains, but i've noticed load in times seem a little less... painful...

the reduced latency is kind of a bonus....

ive never been so glad to be stuck on a late shift.... I wont be leaving work till 8:30 tonight... but this is really bad scheduling for EU again... especially when I seem to remember seeing figures that suggested we were approx 55% of the player base :S never thought id post on one of the maintenance complaint threads before, but there it is...

I rolled a sorc first because I wanted to play sith (my guild had always played the good guys and I fancied a change with swtor) I chose SI over SW because I wanted to have some ranged attacks with my glowbat, and went Lightning spec Sorc over assassin for the same reasons... As my guild went rebel anyway I got lonely and ended up starting a scoundrel with them... since then for solo PvE, I've found that pretty much any class feel's easier to level than my original SI.. I agree that in PvP, the sight of a few SI's going all palpatine on your face generally means that the republic are about to lose, but in PvE, having played Scoundrel, BH and Jedi Sentinel now as well, I'm pretty confident saying that I probably spent more time flat on my back waiting for an ambulance to turn up and jump start my character again with the SI than any of the other characters ever did. I do agree though there is a balance issue, but I dont think it's as clear cut as "SI are OP"... From my own experience I'd say that its more that SI and their skill sets really are geared more towards PvP where other classes seem to favour PvE or a more general role more, if that makes sense?

A suggestion that'll prolly get shot down in flames, I accept, but here goes... Why not just pinch the Lotro mechanic of both sides having a fixed base that simply cannot be entered by the enemy faction full stop, and then have spawns automatically shifted to the next nearest "free" spawn point, until they're all the way back in the base area if the "world" spawn points are overrun.. It at least allows people to get off world if the area is terminally overrun, and if lotro is anything to go by can "even" up pvp purely by allowing the least represented side to organise themselves... Just have a delay on pvp flags when entering/leaving the base by the front door so that people don't abuse it for easy kills.. It worked ok there, where the pvp environment was very similar (one open area you had to travel to specifically to pvp) and didn't involve having to implement bonus mechanisms or enhancements to help a weaker side.

Not quite there, as im not quite in my 40's yet but getting there... I'm a former mmo dev, and know that we had players on some of the games i worked on in their 70's These days I'm in IT, and hold my hands up to playing from the office when I can get away with it.... my son plays some of the mmo's i worked on that are still running, and my first quest of any day is the daily struggle of getting some gaming done past the missus who doesn't understand and refers to herself as the gaming widow.

When i looked at the SP system in Beta, it looked like there would be a way to gain SP's without having to group up for q's, and I'm kinda gutted you don't get them for actually being social (eg. chatting, or chucking a heal in the direction of someone that's getting slaughtered by something nasty, etc) At the moment it seems like the bulk of players pick up SP's in PUG's on heroics, where they barely speak to the other party members during the mission and likely never see them again afterwards, which in my opinion, kind of defeats the purpose of it being a "Social" system in the first place. Atm they may as be called "Pug points" or "randomly clicking conversation options while grouped points"

Shared storage would be ace. Beyond that I have this feeling they'll go for something different, maybe unlocks that are specific to the character that gets the level up? eg - Unlock Level X with a Smuggler and all of your characters gain an innate bonus to their alacrity/dodge Unlock level Y with a force user and all characters become more resistant to force attacks I unno, I just get this feeling it makes more sense to have a legacy that actually involves the "people" leaving something of themselves behind for the other members of the "family".

Don't know why I hadn't seen this thread earlier, but as with the many many other posters here, I'd also like to know when/if we can expect to see high res textures in game. I didn't spend the last 4 years building an uber rig so that it could handle all that SWTOR had to offer on release just to find out i wasted my time and money on a machine that only needs to handle "diet Swtor".

Von-Tesla... Main is a lightning Sith Sorceror... Tesla seemed appropriate but wouldn't have sounded right after my first name, so slapped the Von on there

/signed. some of the hats are gorgeous, but sometimes it is nice to look at the companion under it ..

*bantha's fixed it for you... Unless you really did mean Banta's a herd of those would be... impressive...

lol very true... In that case the dev's were well aware of what we were doing so it wasn't quite so bad and did result in trade limits being added which pretty quickly normalised the markets again and made it impossible for others to do the same thing. The cash advantage we had really didn't amount to much, it meant we were pretty much guaranteed to be able to afford new skills and equipment as it became available, but beyond that it didn't do much for us except save us some of the cash grind, and as the game in question died a few months after that, the lasting effects of two well off players meant nothing.

im happy with the limit. Why? Because in years gone by, myself and a friend managed to single... ok dual handedly knacker the economy on an entire game server by buying out pretty much the entire auction house stock and then reselling at a level we felt was more appropriate, and we held it that way for several weeks till the devs implemented limits on players there. We did it to demonstrate that the market wasn't working properly, and we made playing as a trader nigh on impossible for a lot of people as a result, whilst our bank roll's just got bigger and bigger. Personally speaking, I don't want to see that kind of arbitrage messing about the economy in SWTOR. 2 or 3 people should not be able to dominate and dictate the market by virtue of owning all the products on it (including buying out and reselling other peoples gear) and in my opinion the 50 item limit is more than generous and currently still allows individuals to monopolize a lot. Sorry, I know it sucks if you want to mass produce, but those are the breaks. It's harsh but it's a mechanism that protects your ability to trade at least as much as to the extent that it inhibits it. Scale down your operation, try not to flood the market with stuff that isnt selling, SLOW DOWN...

this tbh.... Plus in all honesty I'd prefer they paid devs to work on bugs and features that benefit the whole community (ie content, expacs, etc) rather than implementing and supporting a half dozen modders and a few hundred users that can't follow a walkthrough guide and install said mod without knackering their client.

i think about 30% of my total game time is probably spent using "Seeth" for self heals..... I use med packs so rarely I've kept whole stacks of them for novelty value...

Tbh i use death as a means of fast travel, or to get a much needed bio break :S The timers can seem a bit excessive if you die a few times ( i had a major blonde moment and managed to clock up a 9 min one once myself by basically failing to turn on my brain) but as mentioned, if you start getting into "omg ouch" time out periods while waiting for rez, odds are you REALLY need to give up, return to med center and repair your gear anyway.

Happy Life Day!!

I'd have to say no to each of those points. Crass exaggerations which really should be beneath you. This however is very true and a far more realistic view point which neatly explains part of the mindset of "Western" hardcore players that I was trying to allude to. We're too focused on what "I want" or by extension "what me and my group of like minded friends want" - we very rarely stop to consider "what is best for the vast majority of people, many of whom probably don't share my own opinions and values" Unfortunately in gaming, the vocal minority of players tend to be the frustrated hardcore players who for some reason or another find themselves on forums or discussion boards because they can't get in game. Because they are used to fighting (after all, competition is the name of the game right?) they work to put their points across and get heard while the majority just want to be able to log in from time to time and play with their mates and probably never even hear about whats going on until its referenced in a patch that forces them to change their play style simply to appease the needs of a few players who mouthed off and got heard. The sense of entitlement never really stops. How many posts have you seen where people are demanding money back because of server queues, its not what i was expecting, or some other silly issue that has no real foundation? What about the rage quits, if not here then in other games... I want this, or else I'll quit! As a GM I once got so fed up of hearing that particular line, just because a player wanted to throw their toys out of the pram that I started permabanning people for it, and in EVERY case the players ended up coming back to apologise and request that the accounts be reinstated. We, as players, forget that all we really pay for is the right to save our personal information on Biowares servers, and anything beyond that is just complimentary services used to entice us to keep paying. Beyond that we aren't really "entitled" to anything and no one's needs, wants or desires are any more valid than anyone elses.