No it does not. It is a snapshot of one zone at one moment in time, it give no accurate picture of actual server population.

Those numbers don't prove anything about your server population except that at the time you did your /who that 89 people were on the Republic Fleet and 255 were on the Imperial Fleet. For example, there could be 1589 Republic players on your server and 1500 Imperial players. At that momment in time 89 Republic players are hanging out on the Fleet, while the other 1500 are out in other zones leveling, running FPs or OPs, playing an alt on Coruscant, and some just decided to do something else that night. Yet at the same moment 255 Imperials are hanging out in thier fleet while the other 1245 are out leveling, running FPs or Ops, etc. I'll say it again, your numbers don't prove anything. It is like claiming all people own jetpacks and can fly because you once saw that guy with the jetpack fly into a sporting event or on TV. What is needed for an accurate census is an actual running audit of all zones for both factions over a minimum 2 week period.

I see a lot people complaining about the population imbalance and am not sure what to think. First, where are people getting their information? How accurate is it? Are they just spouting someone else's claims that they read in some forum somewhere? All the server statistic sites don't contain information on faction numbers, just raw data on total population. So people report their experiences, personal testimonials, but again how accurate are they? Do they really know how many Imperials/Republic there are in that zone? Are they in a low population shard of that zone? That might be true for their server, but what about others? Now I'm not saying it doesn't exist, it very likely does, but I have yet to see actual numbers to support anyone's claims. In factional MMOs there always seems to be an imbalance. For example, and one that quite a few will be familiar with, WoW at the start saw Alliance as the dominant population faction but now its Horde. So imbalances can shift from one faction to another. Is this something that BioWare should actually take action on, or is it something they should let work out on its own? Shorter PVP queues are a big incentive, once it was Horde with the insta-pop PVP queues, now its the Alliance. Next, if you believe BioWare is obligated to resove the issue of server population balance how exactly do you propose they go about it? Most of the suggestions I've seen involve removing customer choice or grossly rewarding people who roll/play Republic characters. Restricting people from choosing Imperial on a server until Republic numbers match impedes their choice of where and with whom they want to play. Additionally this approach may or may not work, Imperials may experience better player retention than Republic, they cannot force people to re-sub, so you still can end up on a Imperial dominated server. Rewarding/buffing Republic players to give them an advantage over Imperials also doesn't work. Why does your $15 a month entitle you to recieve more than an Imperial do because of the faction you play? WoW also tried the "buff one side in PVP" with Wintergrasp & Tol Barad, didn't work very well, the more populous (or occasionally the more motivated) faction still almost always owned both 24/7. So how about some constructive, equatable, and non-whiney suggestions on how to approach faction population balance? A lot to ask on these forums I know, but let's give it a shot.

And just how do suppose they correct this imbalance?

And most content in WoW is cleared in the first day as well as long as there is not some built in mechanic to impede this like attunement.

Update your drivers.

I did on both titles, about a year later for AoC after I got a newer rig and just last year for WAR. AoC was still terribly buggy, and WAR still had terrible and clunky animations. The wolves were goosestepping FFS. I played both titles for 2 months after launch and didn't see much in the way of improvement when I returned.

You're either new to MMOs or you're...well I won't go there. You must have never experienced a content patch or expansion from Blizzard, and I'm talking after they became the 800kg Gorrilla of MMOs where money was basically no object. Abilities nerfed, buffed, and nerfed all after they've been on the PTR for months, same for bugs, etc. With all the money Blizzard was/is pulling in you'd think they at least would be able to release a polished product after months of testing. They can't or won't, so how would you expect a start up product to be perfect? It's par for the course in MMO's. Things will get fixed. Finding the cause of the bug, fixing it, and testing the fix take time. The game's official launch was a little over 3 weeks ago have a little patience and use a little perspective. Some people will not be happy no matter what they play, if they play WoW they will be saying, "I can't wait for <insert new hyped MMO here> to come out and then I'm gone." and Guild Wars 2 will come out and the same crap will be all over their boards too.

Its interesting how people buy a game ith the wrong expectations and are pissed when they don't get what they expected. Sounds like perhaps you and your guild should have instead invested your money in BF3 or maybe WHO as they are heavily PVP focused.

/facepalm You do realize that they opened up the servers in response to all the "OMG my server is full and I gotta wait 20 min" crying right? Sure some people are cancelling, others are back in school, back to work, or whatever. I rarely experience the "stability" issues you mention. I occasionally get the speeder thing and the other one is the clipped sound in the mid cannon in the Alderaaan Warzone. Compared to other MMO launches (and even expansions) SWTOR has been pretty smooth for me. Is the game perfect? No, but that is what content patches and hotfixes are for. Did they screw some things up at release? Sure. 1) No customizable UI. In today's MMO this is a feature that should be in at launch. 2) Boosted PVP. Horrible, just doesn't work. The better approach would have been brackets with boosting to the top level of the bracket. That's really it IMO. The rest of the stuff is mainly personal preference or bugs/tweaking that needs to and can be adjusted in a patch.

I think part of the goal was to create a "scene". You come up on a group of soldiers crouched behind barriers for cover for example. Also I've seen pathing mobs, not a ton but they are there and often pull as part of a group they are near so you might not notice them that often. The animals are very static though, haven't seen any pathing at all. I understand what you mean though I think its nit picking a little if you think about it. No matter what MMO you're playing the following things occur. You enter an area and slaughter every living thing in sight yet 5 minutes later all the mobs are back doing exactly what they were 5 minutes ago as if you never passed though there. Additionally, you (or you and your friends) attack a mob or group of mobs and the mobs standing 30m away idly stand by and watch you slaughter their companions. Those things are completely unrealisitic, more so than mobs standing absolutly still and remaining in the same place, yet you are able to "suspend disbelief" for those completely immersion breaking mechanics. So why does a guy leaning against a tree for hours break your immersion and magically reappearing enemies who stand there and watch you kill their friends (as long as you don't get closer than 10m to them) don't? It's silly. I do agree with you in principle though, I would like my game world as lively and responsive to my actions as they can reasonably make it.

And Martian really killed Kennedy, Bush personally flew those planes into the WTC just so he could go to war for oil, and the CIA really is beaming instructions into your brain from satellites orbiting the Earth. Go back to your tinfoil hat man.

I find the near hysterical reaction of the "disappointed" folks rather amusing. The funny thing is I remember similar reactions to WoW when it was relased from the EQ and UO crowds. BioWare's biggest failure IMO? The lack of a customizable UI at launch, as others have said this should be a feature included in any new MMO. Bugs can be fixed, and TBH people seem to forget that this game is running on a reedonkulous variety of hardware. Most people with newer machines seem to experience fewer issues from what I can tell.

Ever heard of military surplus? Why do you think civillian semi-auto rifles bear a striking resemblance to the military equivilent in many cases? Cost & consumer preference. Anyway, most posters don't seem to have played many MMOs. The worlds are populated with clones. It's not economically viable nor practical to have each NPC be unique. Major quest givers/actors? Yes. Peon #124598 who most people won't even notice? No.

You all do realize that MMOs have these things called content patches right?

Dear Devs, It is absolutely imperative that you address the biggest most terribly game breaking bug in the game. It cannot continue as many subscribtions will be lost and SWTOR will fail, the fate of this online Star Wars universe is at stake. You will soon see /ragequit posts flooding the forums if you do not address this dire problem right away. In fact I don't see how anyone could have possibly allowed the game to go live with such a glaring and horridly obvious flaw. There's no way this grevious gimping of gameplay should have made it past beta testing, I mean what were you all thinking?!?!? I believe it is imperative that you immediately dedicate all of BioWare's resources to fixing this horrible bug or there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth along with many cancellations. It will be like forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! Please, please, please, make sure force wielding characters put thier lightsabres away when performing the /dance emote. Someone could seriously hurt themselves or someone else, in fact the other day I saw a poor PowerTech take a lightsaber to the knee while a Sith Assassin gyrated wildy while spamming LFG in the Imperial Fleet. Actually folks, thanks for a fun game so far. I've been fortunate not to experience too many bugs, at least not ones that are far out of line for MMOs. The worst one I've experienced has been in PVP with not being able to leave the respawn point. This has happened individually where I've actually been removed becasue the time ran out and to the whole group in Voidstar which gave the opposing team a massive head start. Unlike others, I realize that this is an online game an content is subject to change. That change takes time. That other MMO doesn't much resemble the game it was in November 2004, and in time things will get fixed, broken, anf fixed again. Features will be added and some possibly removed, its the nature of MMOS. People need to settle down and stop acting like they're two and throwing a tantrum. Does the game still need polish? Sure. Should you report issues? Absolutely. Just behave like you age is out of the single digits when you do so. Anywho...good luck to the hard working Devs and keep your Nomex suits in good order.

Well then you should be forced to watch all cutscenes, because with an arrow to the knee you're certainly not moving fast enough to skip them.

^ this. You can even call it <Spacebar Slammmers>, or <Cut the Cutscenes>, or <Impatient Imperials>, or maybe <Rushing Republic>, or even <ADD Troopers>.

No it would not. The only thing that will get you like minded players is what you are already doing. Advertising your group as a no cutscene loot run. The addon you're asking for would only allow you to be a douche to the poor person who's been looking for <insert FP here> for 40 min and takes your group out of desperation to maybe actually run it.

Wait...what happened in the ensuing 3000 years? Don't most societies experience a net advance in technology over that kind of time span? I mean shouldn't TIE fighters and X-Wings be more advanced than fighters of TOR? I mean why does Han fly a ship that looks a lot like the Smuggler ship of 3000 years prior?

That all depends. You see many Sorcerers might be heal spec (like mine) and that limits their offensive bag of tricks. Most of which really don't hit that hard. Force Lightning can if you pop Recklessness but aside from that a healers damage isn't that great. CD and Affliction don't seem to do enough to kill anyone by themselves, at least not as a healer. They help but really don't seem to tick for much, and whith the burst other classes have relying on DoTs to kill is not an effective strat. Even with boosting none of my abilites seem to hit that hard, not compared to the 2-4k hits I see from other classes. Now I've been able to outlast a few "smart guys" going for thier assasin medals trying to 1 vs 1 me down. I DoT them up, get a few burst spells off, heal myself and I live. They don't. Sages are also in love with throwing stones, which BTW seems to hit damn hard. Then again I haven't hit 50, nor have I respecced into the Lightning tree.

Listen, Mr. Force Using Lore-Dork. Lore don't go around here. Savvy?

Your eyes would not bleed, lightsaber wounds are cauterized instantly.

8.5 days played. That's 204 hours you have sunk into the game, 204 hours many people have to attain on 1-3 hours of play time a day. At 3hrs a day it would take someone 68 days to achieve that much play time. That's just over 2 months. Stop whining on the forums cause you pooped in a sock for a little over a week cause you couldn't be bothered to get up from the keyboard.

Agree and disagree. I agree that LFG tool was a community killer in WoW, especially cross server. No more need for friends list or worrying about know good players just wait for random body 6791 to fill the needed spot. However sitting in Fleet and spamming LFG for an hour or more kinda sucks. I'd rather go quest and be able to do stuff while I wait. I'd be for a global LFG channel but it would only be horridly abused by trolls. This has been proven time and again. So no universal LFG channel. BAD IDEA there. So all that leaves is a LFG tool. I'd prefer it to be server only however.