Fibermesh last couple days. you cannot search for it, even by partial name matching. but if you search tradeskills without keywords, you can find some.

you reduce tradeskill items. yeay, but then you force me to leave the game and write down a bunch of crap i need to craft before i can craft the stuff i want to craft... um... ***? go back to a single click tradeskill system. i do not want to do a two layer system. i dont want to have to spend time having my characters all craft crap that doesnt matter, except as an exercise in my ability to count and keep track of stuff. that was one thing about the original system that was nice... yes, things took a long time to make, BUT i could login my characters, start stuff cooking, and then go play for a while, then switch back when its done, mail it over to the character im working on and use it. now i have to interrupt my game several times to craft all this sub level crap, and i have to use more tradeskillers, and i have to load up on twice as much vendor crap in my hanger bays to store it all, so the net result of the tradeskill item reduction, was i needed to buy another hanger. completely bad idea. also, new recipes... why did i have to buy 250k worth of new recipes up to 400 skill, when i already had every level 1-400 recipe? you should have mapped them to old recipes instead, and given us the ones we already had the equivalents for. stop milking us to redo content. thats stupid. you just added content, we should be spending there, not into the past. on to the level capping. its sorta nice when helping friends. its sorta bad when i help with content i skipped and now everything is highlighted bright purple like stuff i need to work on, when its stuff i dont need. i liked being able to skip content and work only on the class quests. this past week saw me return to the game and level a character using only the class quests, and you know what? it was a good pace. not too grindy, and it kept me interested without becoming a total chore. now that im continuing on, the planetary quests are all grindy crap. i dont like them... im not looking forward to repeating them 4 times each either. as an alternative, add planetary quests to the faction legacy. when you finish it once, it allows class quests on that planet with the same faction to be worth 12x. that way people like me that really dont want to repeat it have a way to avoid it, while the people that want to grind every quest can do it several times and enjoy a nice exp boost as well the second third and fourth times through. companion affection change. my god, did you really have to scale that to 50 levels and 250000 reputation? talk about grind. that just really sucks. i was happy that i had one character that was done with that, and that i could move stuff to others. but no... now in order to get back the tradeskill bonuses i used to have, i have to grind even more. sigh. word of advice... i dont appreciate or look forward to changes that throw away work i have already completed, just for the sake of making something different. in the future, consider why you are making a change. and make sure you reward people who have already put in the time and effort, and more importantly, COSTS to doing something. simply starting me at 10k out of 250k when i was "max" before the change is insulting. making me re-purchase recipes is insulting. making me slough through trash mobs to finish old quests is not adding anything to my game play. finally, actions. i was hoping you were going to make a real attempt to get players down to a manageable number of buttons to press in combat. im perfectly OK with raids and AOE being a different set of keys than normal solo play. but im not ok with normal solo play typically using 12 keys in combat. the game doesnt need this artificial mechanical interface prevention to "decent play". i dont want to fight my interface. i want to fight your mobs. having 5 attacks that are "hit mob, deal damage, and oh, um, stun it" is not compelling to me. im just running through everything that isnt on cooldown, then using resource generators when they are. the only time it changes up at all is when i spam aoe attacks. seriously look at collapsing the skills. much of this can be done simply by removing duplicate attacks and changing it to things like procs on the target. "target is stunned for 4 seconds, cannot be affected by this ability more often than every 8 seconds, ability only processes every 4 seconds" . with that, now i can spam a single attack key, that occasionally stuns my current target, and if i switch targets, it can happen more often. same result, less keys. add a snare for 4 seconds after the stun, and now you have reduced 3 separate keys to one. simple stuff, should have happened long ago. short version... fighting the interface of a game sucks. it makes me want to quit. you added more fighting the interface and didnt remove any. you added more inventory management than you removed as well.

the new space mission blaster sound and loading method suck. the blasters are soo loud that i can no longer hear incoming fighters.... or my wife yelling at me. you might think that is a good thing, but she was trying to tell me the house was on fire. the loading method starts your flight before you finish loading now. this is stupid. im not sure why you would think this is an improvement, but its not. even with an SSD hard drive for the game and OS, i dont get control of my fighter until ~5 seconds into the level. since some of the levels start you in combat, i miss my chance for the first few kills. look.... if you can waste our time by randomly throwing "PRESS ANY KEY" in front of some of the flash points and PVP matches, where they are just in the way, and instead move that to space missions... that would be great. you can completely pre-load the flight, so everyone can start *when they are ready and not lagging like crazy* im not sure who taught your engine designers how to code for graphic events that cause hitching... but well, frankly the performance is piss poor. my pet being summoned should never lag me like that. its my per, the graphics for him should ALWAYS be cached. same with my mount, etc. why are we suffering performance hits for this crap?

did you really just admit to the general forums that you never knew the whispering was his name? ja ja ja son son son.

This is an indication of a failed game design. you should never have to leave the game itself to learn to play properly. the devs are not stupid. they verify claims. if the majority of players have the same issue, regardless of how YOU feel about it, it needs to be addressed. if its only a few forum whiners however, the stats will not prove out their complaints and the devs ignore them. of the games that have ever posted statistics, less than 5% of the player base ever posts on their forums. again, you assume the devs are incompetent, they are not. they have charts and graphs and logs. you do not. players posting here do not. having content for, and catering to, are far different things. receiving feedback, confirming the issue that your veteran players are bringing to your attention, then deciding to act on them, is an appropriate business model. again, your personal dislike of a change doesnt mean that a change isnt warranted. I hate my car too, but i cannot afford a new car. i can go do things about what i hate about my car, things like a steering wheel cover, a new stereo, etc. the same is true of the game. things that i dislike arent always things that are flavor, often they are bugs or balance that the devs also agree are "wrong" and want to fix. veteran players typically have a concept of what balance is and can see issues more readily than a new player can. if you dont like a balanced game, go play KOTOR on EASY DIFFICULTY. you can be the hero, and no one will change your game play. but when you want to be in a dynamic world with hundreds of thousands of other players, then be prepared for balance. the best definition i ever heard is simply this: everyone is pissed of equally.

some numbers from a (much) smaller data center. an HP data cube, which is a converted trailor that is a self contained data center with 10 racks of space is about 4 million dollars. 10 racks is about enough space to run 2 servers @5000 users each. this may not make a lot of sense to people. but think about this for a moment. your PC barely plays the game. your PC has to struggle with the graphics, and thats why. a server can do the "non-graphic" part no problem. it can even do it for 100 players. but players are outnumbered by NPCs. not to mention, to keep things simple for humans to manage and use, each server only handles one aspect of the game. but we dont use just one server. that wouldnt be very good business practice, to suddenly have the game crash because a single server had a bad memory chip or something, so we use 4 servers for each 2 that we really need. but you are still only handling a couple hundred users. Thousands play per server. start multiplying the hardware. remember that we dont run servers at 100%. you want them only 75% or so, that way if something wierd happens like a player event where everyone piles into one zone, it doesnt crash a server by overloading it. so... 40 physical servers make up 1 "server" you see on the list. but again, thats one aspect. call that first 40 zone servers. because they are specific to that server you login to. there are also transaction servers. these are separate because the type of work they do is. they are also shared across several servers since there is no reason to dedicate them to any one. again they are fully redundant, and underprovsioned. another 40 support servers, but we only use, say, 8 of them. so 48 servers. SAN and storage. soo many users. you need fast access. fast access is only via lots of caching or lots of disks. disks for servers arent cheap. disks for SAN are stupid. a 2tb hard drive costs you $120. a 2tb for a server costs $500. a 2tb drive for a SAN costs $5000. why? because you arent buying a bare drive. you are buying software licensing, tools, support, etc. when your hard drive dies, you are SOL. when a SAN hard drive dies, the customer cannot be allowed to see any performance change. in order to do that, you use a LOT of drives and a LOT of resiliency. And you have a maintenance agreement that leaves you with either spares on the shelf so you can swap it, or a 6 hour call to repair that has someone from the vendor onsite and swapping that drive within 6 hours... even if you call at 3am on christmas morning. gear. servers are great. but you also need networking... a lot of it. it also has to be massively redundant. then there is the safty systems. firewalls, PII tools, etc. if you are lucky, you might be able to build out a datacenter capable of supporting 5 SWTOR servers for $25 million. that cost cannot be divided up either. you cant just pay 5 million for one. because some of the costs are only that low when spread out. Rack space for instance, costs the same if the rack is full or empty. however the KW hour use cost for electricity is based on use. cooling is billed based on your heat output. etc. oh... and all that hardware costs 25% per YEAR in maintenance, and needs to be replaced in 3-5 years with new stuff. so.. 5000 users paying $15 a month = 75k, x5 gives us $375k. at that rate it would take 66 months just to pay for the hardware.

this is also false.

This is false.

its nice if you want to grab a drink of a soda or something and not have to take your hand off the mouse. IE you can play 90% of the game one handed. its also good if you want to attack something you arent targeting to get some threat on it, just stop hitting keybinds for a second, right click on the new target, then click on the old one and continue rotation. its not a bad idea, just a poorly documented and controlled idea. IE they need to allow you to choose what attack to bind it to, or to move its focus to a different key other than 1.

right clicking targets activates button 1. thats the only "auto attack" there is. I had a similar problem why leveling my knight. i got used to right clicking to attack while busy and building up force, but then i swapped 1 for the guardian version that has a 6 second cooldown and wondered why right click was buggy for a while before i figured it out.

Because only Techblade did not have moddable versions from the start, nor anything better than green quality unless player made. IE they never flushed out loot tables for him. the rest use techstaffs, etc, which have orange versions.

can we please get an update that removes PVP on entering flashpoints and operations? it makes it a pain in the butt to wait for flags to drop at the start. which brings up the second bug. if you are flagged, flagging yourself turns your flag ON. instead it should flag it OFF. you have to flag twice.

again, im in near full purple gear level 50 with a few blues left and im still feeling very ineffective.

is there any link to the devs discussion of pvp and its intended balance etc? im a level 50 jedi guardian tank, im in full level 50 blues and purple gear. I feel completely ineffective in pvp. i cant out damage a healer even while interrupting. i cant live through a dps class, even using defensive cooldowns. i dont cc better than anyone else, and there are classes with immunities to my CCs so they are even less effective. so whats the role of a tank in pvp? its not like we have dual specs or anything to allow me to choose something else. as a detriment to my team, im not gaining gear very fast either, so i cant gear up.

same for jedi, i can no longer tell what i have enough focus for and what i dont. i would have to waste time for the GCD to finish, then wait for the keys to light up. completely defeats the purpose of pre-casting.

changes above

ok so being slightly under doesnt hurt you much then, thanks.

so at 9999 you are only 14% then once you hit 10,000 you get 15% ?

does it matter? or do you just have to be 8000+ to be rank 5 and thats all that matters for trade skills?

so i just got Rusk, but one of the dialog choices was "change companion". anyone know what the change is? i didnt want to risk it because i wanted a ranged dps.

Thats incorrect, most strongs are not immune to stuns. you are most likely thinking the gold symbol. those are immune to stuns except as interrupts. no symbol = weak/normal silver star = strong gold = (frankly, i forgot) gold + silver = champion/boss so for me, it does indeed work well on strongs, who are affected by force leap and hilt strike and force stasis (now that i have the talent to not have to channel it)

I use pommel strike all the time while im still leveling. its a good way to drop a normal, or severely damage a strong. opportune strike is a lot weaker as guardians do not use snares as part of their attacks, and i dont believe that kira's freeze will allow it either (also I turn off her freeze anyway) not sure about you guys, but i fight hard enough content that im not two shotting anything. as a guardian, even normal mobs can take 4-5 strikes to kill.

the "you have to earn it" argument. is false. someone has to earn it. it doesnt have to be the player that ends up with the item. this is why raids can carry new members and gear them. the raid earned it, not the individual, the individual gets the benefit of the group effort for his personal use. you can completely reverse that model and its still valid. an individual can do the effort of a group by having a series of quests or solo event areas where they put in the time. the fallicy is believing that per-raider there is more going on than a flashpoint. for dps classes especially, there is often less to worry about; because the entire personal responsibility aspect is gone. you can die and the raid can still succeed, you cannot say the same for single player content. its succeed on an individual basis or fail. there is no "be carried" option.

random random is random. my average is about 7 REs per green to discover a blue. I believe its supposed to be 10% which would be 10 on average. makes hilts and enhancements easy, offhands are a pain because you burn a ton of mats.

they had a perfectly good system for tradeskillers to learn the recipes without raiding. the mats coming from raids is fine, i can buy them off the GTN. the mats and or patterns requiring that the crafter attend the raid is not. because then you have raiders. not crafters. now we are back to "raiders get the best". there is a way, for a single player to put in time and effort and achieve good results and have it be balanced. we do it with quests all the time. edit: oh, and as someone who has raided since eq1, yea, raids arent really hard, so much as they require coordination and leadership. neither of those things are any work for anyone except the raid leader. so if raiding is the requirement, then only the raid leader should be eligible for the loot. But since i have been able to drag very low skill people through very hard content for years, i have no faith in anyone who believes that raiding itself is harder than playing the game normally. its harder for a few people, usually healers and tanks. thats it.