I used to think this same way, and I AM in IT security... my account has never been hacked, but surprisingly my wife's account was hacked once while inactive for around 14 months. 1) her wow password was only used in wow 2) she doesn't install a ton of crap on her computer and has never had a single problem with viruses malware 3) has never been "phished" for wow... i.e. had only ever logged into the actual game client. 4) had a security key on her account the entire time she played the game. it was only removed when we canceled her account and her phone was wiped so we needed to get it removed to cancel. I won't get behind this conspiracy that company employees are selling information.. but she was absolutely not keylogged, was not phished, had a unique password, and met all of the strength requirements... I have been in network and application security for over 20 years and the BEST I can come up with is that she did happen to use that password somewhere else and forgot and they happened to get hacked, etc. anyway, this post is just proof.. no matter how careful you are about your computer and your surfing habits, if you use the same passwords anywhere else, your account safety is only as good as THEIR security. activate the **** security device.

you can actually restore with a code that's generated that you are specifically told to write down somewhere. the original wow app was actually exactly like you are saying... and they never told anyone to write down the serial number. but no... all iphone authenticators now tell you to write down some code that makes it easy to either reinstall the app if it gets blown away (or you get a new device), or the serial number needed to remove it from your account. it really is painless. if you guys actually downloaded the app first instead of going all chicken little about it, all of these questions would be answered for you.

you are probably the only person who "got it all taken care of" in 24 hours. Our most recent guild member who was hacked in wow took around 4 days to get all of their stuff restored. the average time based on most accounts seems to be in the ballpark of a couple days to a week. but even with your story.... that's a full 24 hours (or longer) that you were unable to play. at like 10 seconds to enter in the code on the login screen, you would need to enter that code over 8000 times to equal that 24 hours you were not able to play for.

the app, just like the physical key, uses a unique serial number. once attached to your account, the only way to retrieve the serial number is from the app itself. so they would have to download the app AND get it setup to your account all without actually having access to your account. FWIW you can still do that with Blizzard. once. Typically the will only remove an authenticator from your account if you give them the serial number. However, just one time they will remove an authenticator from your account without the serial number if you email them a copy of your driver's license and provide them with one of the CD keys activated on your account.

hmmm.. because some people in this thread seem to be generally unaware... the security key is to protect your account from hackers... you may think "so what, they'll just play my guy for me?" no. they will sell all of your stuff. delete your characters. create new characters to generally do stuff that results in getting your account temporarily banned from the game. will you get your stuff back? mostly.. after hours and days of support calls and waiting. all the while you will likely be sitting there cursing Bioware for not doing it fast enough. Or getting mad at BW for screwing up something, or missing something. Finally after maybe 2-3 weeks your account will be back to being playable again. oh, btw... sometime between when your account first gets hacked and the three weeks it takes to get everything restored, there will inevitably be a post from you on these forums about how you can't believe you didn't activate the free security key on your account sooner which would have prevented all of it. activate the **** key.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but there is no way in this universe or any other that your laptop as listed would run BF3 with high detail at 60fps... so I'm not sure if you threw that in there just to make some sort of point. to be blunt, your laptop wasn't a "screamer" when you bought it in July. A mobile i5 with a 310m is an ok all purpose laptop, but around the performance of a low end PC for gaming. with shadows and bloom turned off you should be able to keep sstable playable framerates... but you won't get 60fps in BF3, and unless you are running under 1440x900 you probably won't get 60fps in SWTOR either. as others have said, putting together a 60fps SWTOR PC shouldn't be that much. conversely to get a 60fps SWTOR laptop you are probably looking at at least $800+ or so. edit - I should point out I'm talking about native LCD resolution.. you could lower your resolution for some extra fps, but honestly the loss of visual quality on most laptop LCD panels would be atrocious. that being said, if dropping detail down doesn't make it playable, being that you are already sacrificing quality for framerate, I guess you can try lowering the resolution of the game.

don't worry about it? but it gives me like 30K+ XP per day!!!

I've played girl characters.. Actually my most successful and prominent WoW character was a girl. Why? Eh, truthfully, because I wanted to make a blood elf and thought the females looked better than the males. Conversely I went to make a female sith here and thought they looked kind of stupid so scrapped it. Likewise I wanted to make a smuggler with a "girl in every port" type thing so made a dude there. might make a female jedi, but only really as an homage to my WoW character. I have no problems with dudes playing as chicks... And while I realize I can never know this, the only thing I would say is if dudes that do this (such as myself, even if on occasion), either be upfront that you are a dude, or at worst don't give any inclination to your gender (i.e. generic genderless replies). Because truth be told, if I was grouping with a female character who was acting super female-like and found out it was a dude, I'd be pissed and pretty grossed out... hence my guild knows I'm a straight male and just playing the female belf because I thought the male ones looked stupid.

first, I don't agree that it's dumbing it down. on the contrary, it implements it in a way that causes less needless ambiguity and makes the need/greed system much more straight forward. second, those "two out of three stats" are going to be on every item in that class (i.e. armor, blaster, blaster rifle, etc). but beyond that, each of the mods are typically going to have both attribute stats on it as well (endurance and other [other_stat]). so every piece in this line will have endurance, but to regem the cunning to aim on it, you basically have to remove all of the cunning AND endurance, and repopulate it with aim AND endurance.

my argument was in fact that they were/are both equally STUPID, but alas it's a situation that exists because of how bioware basically implemented their gemming system.

this is really the inherent problem with the mod system as it exists... you really ARE rolling on the mods in a moddable item.. if you get a piece of heavy armor with a ton of end and cun, why shouldn't a smuggler be able to roll on it? he doesn't care about the armor, but the blue and purple mods in there are a massive upgrade in his current mods. IMHO BW should just fix it by NOT pre-populating orange items with mods. wow has socketed items, these are basically socketed items. BW needs to not reinvent the wheel here and just add lower base stats to orange items, and then make those need-able by the classes they are suited for and their value comes from that they can be modded. fwiw, I disagree with the original OP based on all of this alone. You are in essence rolling on the mods.. the cosmetic aesthetic of the actual armor is secondary to the stats it boosts. allowing the BH to roll on end/cun gear because of the looks essentially is no different than smugglers rolling on light armor because it has cun/end mods on it. that they can extract and use. both are equally dickish, but equally valid with the way BW has implemented the mods system. in most (all?) cases mods and such will have two stats on them... one of them almost always being endurance... to say the item already has mods on it for endurance AND armor is like saying a piece in WoW already has armor and sta... of course, almost every piece in wow has armor and sta... it's that third stat and armor type that determines what class it's for. like I said, BW brought a lot of this on themselves by basically pre-populating gems/mods, removing all base stats from the items, and then allowing everyone to roll on them based on armor/weapon type... I get that they didn't want to openly ape wow... but in this case it opens up cases like this, where it's possible for everyone to out-need a jedi tank on a light armor piece because of its mods or aesthetics.

there are two types of bonuses from companions, efficiency and crit. efficiency reduces time requirements. so a underworld +10 requires less time than no underworld. a cybertech +10 requires less time than no cybertech. crit increases crit chance, which basically results in chance of higher quality. for missions and gathering, it means better chance of getting higher quality materials (blue or purple). For crafting it means getting exceptional results back (crafted item will say (Exceptional) in the tooltip).

level 18 and healing is fine.. it takes a bit getting used to the energy aspect... but once you do and realize you can't sit there spamming heals, it's fine. it's a fine priority-driven energy-based healing class... and let's me participate in the SW universe without playing a jedi... I'm all for it

I don't do a dps scoundrel, but I believe most of the cover-requirements are on ranged DPS mechanics.. and only some at that. as a scoundrel most of your most powerful stuff will be close range and not be cover. your stealth stuff for now is also only at opening, but once you can go into stealth in combat then that will help also. but yeah, with a scoundrel, you pretty much are a melee dps and your position is important. like I said, it's basically like a rogue/feral hybrid.

if you are familiar with wow, scoundrel in terms of DPS is basically a feral druid (which itself is basically a rogue with utility). and if you stay out of the sawbones tree completely your healing utility is going to be VERY minimal at best.

send an in game ticket.. because outside of the game you are screwed. In Bioware's defense, they did warn you a number of times that only your first character auto-invited to the guild would be invited. otherwise you'll have to wait for officers to come in for invites. Beyond that, without an ingame ticket, more than likely you'll have to wait the expiry two weeks before the next officer is promoted to leader. I mean I guess it sucks that there isn't a good answer, but they did plaster all over that auto-invite would only work for your first character made. edit - first character accepted. for clarification.

LFG in WoW (or Dungeon Finder, or whatever version you are talking about) evolved as the game evolved. The Dungeon Finder as it exists on WoW today only exists because WoW IS how WoW is today. While a dungeon finder, as it exists in wow, is insanely convenient, or even meeting stones from before, in a game just launching for everyone they do exactly as what was already said in here (and by devs).. it makes the game world smaller, less populated, and causes a lot of content to be missed. Now sure that's optional and should be a player's option.. but we're playing the game the devs want us to play, and right now they want everyone to experience the content.. want everyone to be playing amongst everyone else, and want to socialize to a degree to LFG.. so that's what they want, that's what we do. in the future, I see no need to reinvent the wheel. WoW's dungeon finder is near flawless... and classifying AC's by role should be overall trivial. make the dungeon difficulty selectable by the leader once the dungeon loads and you are good to go. with that being said, I Can see why it's not in now, and can understand their point. so once I get in I'll just LFG like everyone else (or more frequently go in a guild group) and move on with it. remember, when comparing to WoW or other MMORPGs, you can't just compare to how those systems exist now... it's a weird amalgamation of the things that were introduced in those games because as far as gameplay systems go devs just know better now, and what was introduced in those games because as the games matured, the priorities and goals of the general playerbase matured as well.