This would be cool, but I just don't understand why people are so against simply creating a new character instead. This really isn't a feature that any MMO has ever offered before. The only thing close to this that comes to mind is how some MMO's (like Final Fantasy ARR) provide a way to replay the cinematic cut-scenes.

A LOT of people in this discussion could benefit from reading this entry on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum And if you learned something from that, I highly recommend doing a search on Logical Fallacies and reading the entire list and all of their descriptions. You would be doing yourself, this community, and the world a favor.

This is a pretty good read that explains most of the difficulties. It's not impossible, it's just not worth the effort for a US based company to try and navigate the legal ramifications of the process. However, having the customer log into a US based server and enter the data themselves is a perfectly legal way to bypass all of these laws. http://www.bryancave.com/files/Uploads/Documents/Dancing_the_legal_limbo.pdf

It might be more practical to ask for a better way to manage and use the toy items. While it does seem simple enough to just create more toolbars, adding things to the UI like this could have a dramatic impact upon performance for players with low to mid range hardware profiles. It might even impact server performance. A solution that allows you to use all the toys you want easily, while also removing them from inventory and existing toolbars might provide a more elegant solution to your problem.

If I remember correctly when they did the 12x XP event before SoR released, only the general XP boost items worked with the event bonus and the Class specific ones did not. I'd hardly call my response official though. I rarely remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

Giving F2P/Preferred players the ability to deposit into guild banks creates a method for circumventing the credit cap. I can also see some ethical implications as well in regards to how guilds could potentially exploit F2P and Preferred players as credit farms. The only solution is for them to become subscribers.

It's possible the bonus ends at 55. I just finished editing my first reply to add that when I saw your response here.

The main story missions on Makeb are all eligible for the bonus. It starts with the mission you pick up first and all missions that continue from that one until . It ends up being most of the missions on the planet other than the dailies and a very small number of optional missions that lead into dailies. EDIT: It does appear that once you reach level 55 the 12x XP bonus no longer continues to provide any benefit for any missions. Disregard the follow italicized text. Even if you start Makeb at level 47, the Makeb story missions are enough with the bonus to get you to 55 without doing more than half to two-thirds of the them. Doing all of them with the bonus will probably push you to level 57 or 58. Doing all of Correllia before starting Makeb will probably allow you to hit 59 or 60 even. However, I'm not sure if you continue to receive the bonus to XP once you reach level 55. The announcement doesn't say if they have implemented anything to stop the bonus once you hit 55, but at the same time it does say it's meant to help you reach level 55.

Settle down children or you shall have no pie.

Depends on the value and rarity of the item. If the item is worth 10 million credits and there is only 1 on the GTN, and I'm confident there are more than 1 buyers in the market, I'll list mine for 12 million for a few days and hope my patience allows me to make more than the other guy selling one. Items that are not super rare and there is a steady supply of them hitting the GTN, then I will undercut by about 2-10%.

You really should create a thread for that issue and stop trying to deal with it here. This thread is simply about the exploit. The existence of loot on a World Boss that is better than HM Ops drops is an issue that deserves some thought and discussion, but you are choosing the wrong thread to do that within.

They stated yesterday that the gear would be removed this time around. They didn't explain why though.

For the players that want to be able to offload credits into something like the cargo hold or legacy cargo hold, there is a work-around. Designate one character on your Legacy as your GTN Shopper. Store all your credits on characters that are not this designated GTN Shopper and only send the shopper enough credits to buy something you want or need. The Shopper will never be holding more credits than you intend to spend and your vast fortune is safely insulated from your inability to read the listings correctly.

Love the pie chart. It was very informative. Personally, I think there should have been class-action lawsuits filed against the author and publisher of the books and the directors and producers of the movies.

Being able to cancel a GTN purchase and return it for a refund would be exploited in horrible ways. The most obvious way is to buy all the items that are cheaper than the price I want to sell my item at, then cancel the transactions and get all of my money back and return the goods to the sellers who were trying to undercut me after mine has sold. Returns and refunds on the GTN is a terrible idea. Focus on fixing the display and sorting of prices instead.

I'm not entirely positive about this, but you may need to remove the monthly recurring payment that is attached to your sub before you can add a bi-monthly recurring payment option.

I use the Devastator's as well. I love the glowing orb in the middle of the hilt that matches the blade's color.

I know. I didn't mean they should be driven out at the expense of the cheaters. Did you read my entire post though? I'm all for punishments. Remove the items, achievements, and comms. Ban them for an appropriate amount of time. Once this is done they have little impact upon those who play fairly. I just don't think they should be thrown on a sacrificial altar to appease the blood-lust of some.

Honestly, I don't care for the heavy handed approach too much. Punishment is needed, and bans are warranted, but being too heavy handed just drives people away from the game, even when the punishment is warranted. Taking away the items and achievements gained from the exploit is a must in this case. It would have been preferred in the Ravagers exploit as well, but since that occurred during a time when the drops from the boss were already obtainable, I can understand them being hesitant to remove gear and comms from players without a perfect system to detect who exploited and who legitimately downed the boss. While the data trail may seem perfectly clear on an individual player's data entries, doing massive selections against all players in the database is a completely different beast. In this exploit though, since the bosses were not yet available to any player as a legitimate kill, it's easily to find players with the item ids and achievements and the evidence is indisputable. So removing items, comms, and achievements is much easier this time around. As for bans, I think they are definitely needed to help discourage future exploits from being used, but let's be honest, whether there is a 1, 2, and 10 day ban, cheaters are still going to cheat if they think there is a chance they can get away with it. I think 2-3 day ban is fine, even for the ones who exploited Ravagers as well. However, I do believe the bans shouldn't be immediate. They should start all of the bans when the new content unlocks on May 4th and force those players to be days behind on progression of the content they tried to exploit before it was available. I can't stand a cheater, but there comes a point where you have to weight how you deal with them against your public image. Being too heavy handed with punishments can have unpredictable backlashes for the game's proprietors. Even the cheaters have friends and family who will take them for their word and believe that Bioware was the evil corporation that took a punishment too far. From a societal and cultural viewpoint, we as human beings have a very perverse perception of justice. The punishment should fit the crime, but being too heavy handed risks touching upon that perverted sense of justice within certain groups of people and making them sympathetic to the cheaters and criminals being punished. I've been told I think too much though, so what do I know? lol

I took the part about "multiple day bans" to mean they were giving longer bans to people who have been found to use exploits in the past. I'm only speculating though.

I've been buying 192 gear and ripping the mods out and using Legacy gear to store them on low level alts I haven't even started leveling yet. I have 2 characters less than level 10 that are pretty close to having a full set of 192 gear in their cargo holds. With the 12x XP event on the horizon for next week, I should have some Ops ready alts in no time flat. That said, something else to spend Elite Comms on would be appreciated.

Not to disagree, but to expand on your thoughts... All video games, regardless of genre, are dying a slow death. It's just a fact of the industry. Less than a dozen games made 10 or more years ago are still popular today, and only one of those is in the MMO genre. And very few of them are even available at retail stores today. Every video game ever made has an expiration date. To make it 3 years in today's market is an accomplishment in my opinion. As for secret development work though, that isn't very likely to be perfectly honest. We dealing with publicly traded companies that have to report development projects to stakeholders. While they usually work on these projects under coded names to keep them secret, there is very little on those financial statements over the past few years at either Disney or EA that are sufficiently significant budgets to support the development of a new MMO. It's not impossible, but it's not very likely. The gaming industry usually keeps a close eye on those financial reports to try and speculate upon secret projects before they are announced, and the industry has been alarmingly good at this for a number of years now.

Why pay them in any official capacity when they do these things voluntarily already?

I met Noone once. He's a stand-up guy, but easily missed if you aren't paying attention.

The main point you are trying to make about progression loot deserves it's own thread. I won't disagree that it's not a great idea to have drops on a SM boss that is better than HM Revan drops. However, to use that as an argument that an exploit was necessary to test something is foolishness in my opinion, and does not negate the fact that people used an exploit and should be actioned appropriately for doing so. If HM raiders were worried about their progression, they could have waited one more week to test this and been no worse off.