All I'll say is how long I stay subbed for has a direct connection to how many frigging rollbacks they do over the next week...

It's fake currency and items purchased with real time. Finite time players will never get back. Hence legitimate anger.

I'll be honest Eric, I'd seriously think about revising this whole gearing system from the ground-up. Non-subs are excluded from it. Raiders will hate it. People in between will quickly become abjectly disgusted with RNG grindfest slot machines for their gearing. Psychologically-manipulative reward loops for something like non-cosmetic gear have a point where they reach and diminishing returns start kicking in. People aren't stupid. Currency-based gearing and crafted gear give people a way around back luck and also a guaranteed way they can plan their own gearing. Self-determinism is important.

I've got to admit I've got a comfortable layout for my roughly 4 billion abilities across several bars, but I find the big problem for me is when it comes time to create alts of the same class. I confuse myself as to where to put those abilities to mirror my existing characters. I think a certain game involving both War and Crafting has had relative success in their latest expansion with another fairly severe abiltiy-bloat prune. You'll always miss some abilities but sometimes it communicates a better intent from devs on what an optimal rotation is.

My neighbours were having a screaming match on their porch in dressing gowns the other morning. Does that count?

Master ChissyMcChissFace.

Trust me folks... As someone who has been ghosted by Blizzard developers for 12-14 months at a time more than once, let me tell you the SWTOR dev team and their level of communication is pure liquid awesome. We can wait a few more weeks

That's a fair point, but there's a solution to that. Just make them a set awarded like any other set you unlock ;P

Just a quick suggestion. I think it makes a lot of sense to either bundle these up in part-sets or when someone equips the full 50% bonus XP set it gets unlocked in collections. It just makes sense to me. If I ever lost or accidently deleted the character wearing this gear after earning it that would suck. Make it happen guys!

Who said I was talking about WoW? My advice: If you want to project, roll a Consular. If the use of phrases like "pendulum swings", "long delays" and "decisions by committee" make you automatically jump to WoW, that's your choice

Can I just say thank you not only for this change, but for listening. As someone coming from a certain other MMO that won't be named but I'm sure you'll guess, I've never before seen senior developers openly admit their design decisions may not mesh with what the community is getting out of the game and then change their minds. I'm also really pleased and surprised that unlike that MMO, reversing course didn't require months of round-table discussion by committee followed by six to eight weeks of beta testing before begrudgingly arriving at the decision. There's not really much more to say I guess. Just thank you for being the first MMO developer I've seen in a while that knows the pendulum can stop in the middle. Good work!

Server populations have been nerfed by approximately 50%. This is intended and fits in with Bioware's design intent for servers.

If this is their vision and there is so much negative feedback from the community that basically boils down to the game being slower, more punishing and actively less fun, then maybe they need a new design vision. That's all I'll say. Their number one goal behind pleasing management should be making the game fun. We were having fun. Now we are having less. Nothing has been value-added or traded up in the process. That is a failure. End of discussion.

Can I just make one quick point that may have been lost in the discussion? It's not just about whether or not you can solo a Heroic 2. Even if you can post-patch, is in fun now? Is it too stressful to be enjoyable? Do you have to do too much micromanagement of your companion? Has the difficulty spike made it un-fun? Are you looking at a few dozen weeklys and thinking aabout how you want to progress your alliance... But just... Ugh, the deaths. The slog. The timesink compared to a week ago?

Can I just say for the record, thank you for unlike another developer who's name I won't mention (but I'm sure many of us are familiar with) for communicating the reasoning behind a change like this clearly and concisely as well as indicating you're open to further feedback. I think most of appreciate that openness. Makes a big change of pace coming from a certain other game.

It's a working Monday for me here in Aus today so the afternoon kick-off (our time) has given me something to look forward to all day at work. Hopefully things don't explode/die/crash/bork/FUBAR tonight. I wants me some XPs.

Gee, I'm also a developer. I suppose that makes me an expert in Games industry design process and timeframes. I'll leave out the fact that I build and support business and financial applications of course, rather than games. That's not even slightly important.

So I had my first SWTOR account scam email arrive today. Ironically enough, it went to the email account that my SWTOR account isn't actually tied to. ...But that's not the funny bit. What's funny is that the account scammers had better Engrish than Bioware/EA's frontline support GMs. Badum tssh.

Can you guys please just get this damn thing patched and over with as quick as possible please? I couldn't provide an airborne reproductive act about the Illum issue personally (I say this as a Republic player), but I do care that this will be the second night in a row I get home from a 12-hour shift and can't play the game I'm paying for. Please just get this over and done with ASAP.

8/10 for the story content, voice acting and the art style. Two points are lost because my GTX 570 yearns to not be rendering character textures from 2001. 5/10 I'd say is generous for the MMO side of things. Bioware have done all these things right like social points, group-specific levelling content in every zone, amazing group conversations in flashpoints, etc, then given us virtually zero functional ways to actually find those groups. It's even worse for me being on Oceanic time. Overall: 7/10. I'm loving the game a lot more than I am annoyed by the things that annoy me. That hasn't happened since I started playing a certain game in November 2004.

I never even conceptualised an Ewok Sith until I read your post. Now I want to play an Ewok Sith. gosh darn you. (Hehe. It turned my "magic sky ghost, sentence this individual to damnation!" into a "Gosh darn you." I approve )

I agree. In the spirit of gnomes, I want to play a Jawa. I like my borderline-psychopathic midgets obsessed with implausable technology.

They've been trading design tips with Blizzard.

There's a very articulate, informed and well-researched post by someone else (here) via the Darthhater dev tracker that explains it much better than I ever could: http://www.darthhater.com/devtracker/topic/40809-why-is-there-a-copy-protection-system-in-the-graphics-and-is-it-crippling-the-game

I'm trying to point out from a player's perspective how a system designed to protect their vaunted artwork is having a negative effect on the gaming experience.