this all happened once before, and they were pretty clear that abandoning whatever you've worked towards is part of the fun, and at least half the staff would rather be fired than fix the problem. maybe that's part of what's going on now; a bit of restructuring, so nobody wants to move forward with the game until 'the bobs' settle out who gets the axe.

i think the right answer to your question is that number represents a deviation from the light/standard/heavy line. so if the server is standard and that number is below 1, it's kind of below standard. if it's above 1, then it's a bit above standard. there is a good chance i'm waay off. scorpienne did some pretty amazing population work before the server merges. the forums took a big loss when she disappeared. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=449144

you should be able to poke around this website and see for yourself http://www.torstatus.net/

you sure do seem to like the harbinger. you posted 3 times in about an hour just to tell the world how much you like the harbinger. if you go to http://www.torstatus.net/ they have a nice little graph of server status, based on light/standard/heavy there was a spike last week where jung ma and pot5 actually got over 'light.' the harbinger is the only server to get above 'standard.' so your experience is not typical. i guess everyone can abandon their toons and reroll on the harbinger, like many people did at the start, when we re-rolled on the fatman because bioware didn't want to do anything about the dead servers at that time. (the fatman, ironically, later became pot5). they're too busy figuring out how to screw up marauders and sorcs to deal with any kind of server population issues.

you really think that's more likely than a bug in swtor?

you're probably going to spend more money buying the new thing for the same reason you spent money buying the first ones. that is not bad for their business....

it seems to me they didn't nerf end game pve or pvp. people who play sorcs in either role do not spam force storm for the win. competitive pvpers weren't rolling sorcs so they could spam force storm in ranked pvp. pve'ers weren't clearning hm content by spamming force storm on single target boss fights. what they nerfed was the ability for sorcs to skate through dailies and the low-level tacticals or flashpoints. force storm cleared mobs. that's pretty much it. this is not rebalancing, it's removing a fairly simple quality of life ability sorcs had that made it a bit easier to skate through the casual crap, and carry the people who are so bad they need a sorc to carry them through that content. there are always people that will jump up and say they only care about pvp, or those who say they only care about pve. i think it's evident they've given up on both, and they're focusing their class balance on tactical flashpoints.

better to follow the middle path, where you can recognize awesome things as awesome and not awesome things as not awesome.

if there is a single event of which could be said "this is the end of swtor," i believe this is it on the other hand, i kind of assume she'll be back in a month.

i'm not sure that's true. having artificial tiers in pvp due to the gear gap is a barrier to entry. at some point, everyone starts out not knowing how to play, then they learn to play. the people who don't know how to play are going to be beaten by the people that do know how to play every time. however, the people who don't know how to play can read their abilities and guides, put in some effort, and eventually be competitive enough that they're at least getting in some useful practice that will help them become better pvp'ers. introducing a gear gap means becoming better doesn't matter as much. you're being beaten because the other guy has more time to kill and grinds gear, not because he's a better player. gear progression in pvp is not a hamster wheel where you grind for no reason, it's a barrier to entry that makes the process of being competitive a pain in the ***, so those who don't want to waste tons of time on a gear grind won't participate. imho, the gear grind in pvp caters to lazy stupid people who want to win despite being lazy and stupid. good pvp'ers would still win without the gear grind. for what it's worth, i'm in full brutalizer now (as of last night, just bought my wrist piece), so i'm not asking for a free ride to the top tier. i'd rather get to the top by learning how to play my toon better.

i bet musicRider has force management problems

i don't really get your point. pvp is more of a gear grind than pve, though for both, it seems grinding is the ultimate goal i suppose. the accomplishment should be the reward, not a lvl 186 armor piece. i understand that you shouldn't be required to pve in order to be competitive at pvp, or the other way around. whatever grind there is to get the gear should be equivalent whether you're going pve or pvp, and it should probably be somewhat superficial. let players compete in both pvp and pve based on how good they are at playing their toon, not how many hours they spent grinding or credits/dollars they spent on the gtn. also, having to keep track of 2 sets of gear is just a pain the ***.

i would say the best way is to have a single gear set that works equally between pve and pvp. there is no reason to separate the two.

for starters, 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 advance lesson, move those to 3 and 4 because it's harder to spam green spray paint with your pinky 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 4 3 3 3 4 free lesson. you're welcome.

you should not be pulling people out of aoe's in pve. your dps should not be standing in aoe's. might as well let them die, because letting them continue with your group drags everyone down. extricate is best used to pull teammates into lava, or to pull them next to droids that are about to blowup. it's also useful to help them drop their threat, if they need their threat dropped. the last fight on explosive conflict has a part where extricate is useful. you can pull afk or d/c'ed people along with the group. also, quite useful in a variety of situations in pvp.

my experience is that the changes are pretty worthless. the dark heal thing is kind of neat but costs too much force to be useful. for the consumption change, i'm sure it helps but force management is more of a problem than health, especially if you're using the stupid dark heal. maybe bioware will tell us about their metrics, and let us know if sorcs are now equal to ops based on their statistics. just kidding, if they wanted sorc heals to be a viable spec, they would have changed things so we could help our team instead of changing things so we could run away and stun ourselves.

i think having the bubble heal over time is a good idea. that can be cast while moving, so it helps with mobility. also, i think our cleanse should be able to cleanse something. making the cleanse useful shouldn't effect pve at all. i don't think the problem is survivability necessarily. trying to fix the class with more things like force speed, to take us away from and out of the fight (the way force barrier does) doesn't help. we're not healing our teammates when we're running away. honestly i don't have a problem with force management either. if i'm not getting targeted by 4 people, then consumption early and often. follow consumption with a resurgence or self-heal. if i am, force management isn't an issue because i'm going to die quick anyway.

normally i will eat a stun if my resolve bar isn't full yet. sometimes i break a stun without the full resolve bar if i have to run to someone out of LoS/too far away and for whatever reason i don't want them to die. sometimes i'll break a stun early to stop the other team from capping an objective. typically though, those aren't the cases where i die 3 times before my stun breaker comes off cooldown. mostly it's a problem when getting focus-fired. if i get hit with a net and one of the 3-second stuns while 2 (maybe 3) people are focus firing me, i would have to use the stun breaker to get my force barrier up, then use force barrier to stop the damage (since i lost a cooldown to break the stun and probably lost at least half my health). it's unlikely i would be unable to force speed away to save myself, especially when force charge will stop me. then, if i'm in 8v8 i have something like a minute of no stun breaker. if i'm in 4-man, i just hope the others have enough dps so my impending death doesn't cause a loss. it's easy to kill a sorc if you know what you're doing. you may want a merc on your team. how is that hyperbole? are internet forums you're main source of education?

i would like to see it, though i would lean towards % of time played stunned i play a sorc healer. i know i probably shouldn't be able to pvp at all since i'm healer and not an op, but it is what it is. being a healer, i've been on the wrong end of focus target a few times. it's not all that common, but there are definitely games where i've spent as much time cc'ed as i've spent alive. my resolve bar can go from all white to nothing a lot faster than my stun breaker and force barrier come off cool down. depending on the warzone and how much time i spend in the penalty box, i can easily die 3 times before my stun breaker comes off cooldown. would force barrier count as a self-inflicted stun?

i would like to see a stat at the end of warzones (with the dps/hps stuff) that says what % of the game each player spent stunned. maybe stunned or rooted. (don't include other dots or slows).

that's just weird. it's not like you're figuring out the mechanics with your group. you're a pug. you're relying on that group to take time out of their day to babysit you. just because you refuse to read dulfy? what difference is there really between reading dulfy and having a pug group carry you? if you're going to rely on that group to carry you, let them use mumble or some other voice program. it's easier for them to tell you what to do (since, as stated above, you're not figuring it out on your own) rather than type it, and it's considerably faster for everyone else. also, if you're screwing up in the middle of the fight because you're not familiar with the mechanics, it's a hell of a lot easier for them to try to correct you if they can talk to you. i agree that people shouldn't expect everyone to know the fights. the more experienced raiders should be helping new people get used to the content. however, you're just a burden to the groups you join. they're going to dulfy to see the fight mechanics, and you're expecting them to spoon-feed that information to you. as if that isn't bad enough, you're going to limit their ability to spoon-feed you by taking away typical avenues of communication.

you had me at 'hop in a DeLorean' i'm good with just that part

this should go without saying. surely the OP knows if his healer can't get to him in time to heal, there's going to be some repair bills to pay. doesn't mean the healer should be taking a nap instead of healing though. also, if the healer has to stop to collect some bioanalysis material, well, keep that in mind with the quoted understanding above. i've seen quite a few groups not wipe while i stopped to salvage. no reason to get upset for any of us.

i don't know jewel. sometimes you get those people that have to stop between every pull to run to walmart and get a donut, or stop a take a dump. if they can't join the rest of the group to clear the content they pugged for at a reasonable pace, i think they hold some responsibility. perhaps practice the lower level content a bit more so they're more comfortable with their class? or get the walmart trips out of the way before they join the group?

don't worry about the haters. i'll heal for you. i've never asked a tank to slow down. sure, i've opened boss fights with a consumption or two trying to catch up from the last fight, but the game just isn't that hard. if you're not up to the task, pug into lower level content.