After this week's patch I noticed that the opposing faction doesn't seem to be phased by expertise. For example, Empire VS Empire, normal damage plus exp - mitigation. However, going Empire VS Republic, everything crits, there's zero mitigation? I don't mean the occasional hit.. I mean 4k-5k crits over and over again. What's going on here?

I've been told NM is only for bragging rights as they drop the same exact loot. I don't know if this will be fixed in the future - but doing NM is not worth the bugs... However - this actually was a bug. Our guild has been dead focused on gearing up our newer players in 8m normal, and the core 8 people doing HM's we haven't done KP before this week because we were focused on getting HM SOA down. Like I said, Wednesday, the HM was fine - we got rakata gear... the fights were obviously HM... then the server reset - we came back to finish the last two bosses and it said it was on HM but it wasn't REALLY on HM.... it counted as Normal lockouts and we can't even get into the HM raid to finish it up. This needs to be addressed.... and today after giving EVERY SPEC of detailed info I get this little gem: Greetings Julie, Thank you for contacting us regarding your issue with Karaggas. Your report has been forwarded to the relevant department, who will investigate further. We regret we will be unable to provide you with further updates on this issue, but recommend checking future patch notes for any up to date information. We would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and to thank you again for the valuable feedback you have provided. Please do not hesitate to report any other issues you may encounter while playing. Galactic Support is our specialty. Sincerely, Marc Star Wars: The Old Republic Customer Service We would love to hear your feedback on our Customer Service and invite you to fill out the following survey which will us to continually improve our support! https://www.research.net/s/TOREN?c=3416322

Okay I've calmed down so here is exactly what's up. The raid was set to Hard Mode, that "star" icon was on the purple wall. We down the second to last boss... (forget his name, game's not up) it took a lot longer, it was FOR SURE hard mode - we hit enrage right before we killed him, that never happens on normal - we burn his *** before the 4th lava pull normally.... he drops normal loot... so then we're like ***? tionese tokens? auto assigned loot? Someone check the raid! We spent 15 minutes saying to ourselves, "we must have had it set wrong." I mean... we downed Hard Mode SOA - we KNOW RAID BUGS. Finally after disbanding, resetting, switching to Nightmare to Normal to HARD... we were like, okay we probably made sure it was Hard Mode. Icon was still on the wall. We go back in down Karaggas... SAME THING. When we check our lockouts. This week the guild ONLY did Hard/NM EV and the night before we did the first Half of HM Karagga's before the servers went down. It was giving us the proper tokens and loot, NOT auto assigned so it was working. Anyways, we check our lockouts... it tells us that Normal mode is completely locked out for the raid (although no one did it, which sucks is because we run our lesser geared guildies through normal to get them gear for 16 mans - and now we can't.) It also says nightmare and hard mode are still available. So we can't even DO it on Hard or Nightmare... we even switched it to nightmare and ran in to check, everything looks cleared out - all the way til the end. Another thing we noticed that the RL was about to switch the modes with people still inside, that's not supposed to happen for him. So, ***.... it's like the raid went to Normal and it's unchangeable.

I just got a reply in game asking for details..... I gave you guys details in the original thread.... How do you not know who's opening the ticket ? How do you not know what server I'm on..... HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THE OPS RAID WHEN THE TITLE OF THE TICKET SAID KARAGGAS IS BUGGED??!! /rage

We're all pretty effin miffed right now.....

We had this problem too it's NORTH SOUTH SOUTH NORTH, with minimal turns possible since we started NSSN, we have yet to have it bug. Trust me.

Server: Wound in the Force Guild: Deception We just completed Karagga's after starting it on HM last night - We started the fight for G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator, when he died - the loot was normal loot even though the OPS was set to Hard Mode. We disbanded and reset, switch to nightmare then back to hard and attempted the last boss SAME THING, NORMAL LOOT. *** is going on. We've tried relogging, disbanding, changing leads - the horrible part is we CAN'T do it on Hard Mode now, it says the bosses are available but we can't get the raid to switch to Hard Mode, and when we go in there - the instance is completely cleared out. No one in our raid group has done normal mode and because it's bugged, the entire normal mode instance is bugged out and no one can do it this week. This is really messed up. I'm opening up tickets every hour until a GM starts a live chat with me. This needs to be hot fixed asap.

There needs to be a forced faction balance, however in the end there will be more Imperial than republic, so what's to do with the remaining Imperials? So we won't have that. Open and world pvp will continue to be an issue until balances are fixed. I hate HATE making WoW references, but take Wintergrasp - there was a queue, it was a battleground on a massive scale, it was unlimited - HOWEVER, in the end you once side couldn't have more players than the other. They need to make a queue system, just like their other warzones - to keep the open pvp balanced even if the server is not. That's one solution. I would say scale back gains, but there really aren't that many gains. It's 20 valor per kill and if you have all of the nodes in the area, it's a 180 bonus - that's where the gains are, also how many players are you killing? if it's a handful, it's not a big deal, if it's 20, 30 or more, then you'll see significant gain. However, any decent republic player can kill a smorgasbord of empire players if they play their cards right. Because there are more of us than you - and you won't suffer diminished returns as quickly. My first few weeks as 50, I didn't bother with ilum pvp because there was no one to kill, no one to cap back the bases.... if anything, the game is crappier for Empire players.

I wasn't going to post. Honestly. I run around and I see bugs and glitches and I have a list in my head and I keep telling myself, "I'm going to write this down and make one long epic post about what's wrong and what needs to be fixed." This MIGHT turn into one of those posts, but I will try my hardest to not go there. So... I'll just start with that. Call it poor game design, call it people cheating the system... but picture this: If we were all just running around ilum, chasing each other and killing the opposing faction, would it be any different than what's going on now? It's how ilum is designed. The only difference being, these are coordinated kills. Organized. Even playing the game normally, Empire was still camping the Republic spawn point and ganking them. I've discussed this in length with people who see both sides of the issue. However, this is not an exploit. It's the design. However, the basketball comment summed it up. (also hilarious) But if both sides are willing, only the referees can tell them to go home and end the game. There are no rewards for this either. I, personally, like the Warzones. It gives me a chance to get commendations for rewards. Ganking people in ilum doesn't do much. To get any real gains, though quicker, still takes up a decent chunk of time. Above all else - marinate on this... what else is everyone supposed to do when the game boots you from FP's WZ's or even just bouncing around the galaxy. Even now, I'm sitting on the Imperial Fleet crafting and sending companions on missions and I've been booted no less than 3 times.

Anyone else noticing this? I'm doing the HM FP's every day - I see the gain in DS/LS points as well as social points but then I complete the FP and my bars don't go up. I'm stuck at DS IV and I haven't even made social 2.... is it a bug or what is going on?