MMORPGs in general, and this one in particular, are the exception to that rule. Every player in your area and every action they take and movement results in used bandwidth and computations by your CPU. That load increases linearly with the number of people in your area and their activity. That you are getting a red colored FPS meter in these cases means you are CPU-bound. Blame the engine/game if you wish, nobody is likely to claim it isn't an issue. Also you mentioned wifi, but it wasn't clear if you were trying to play the game over it. If so, try upgrading to a wired connection.

What do you base this belief on? You seem to be treating this game as a single-player experience, which is fine, but if so I don't see how that puts you in a position to see just how many players actually do run FPs and SM ops.

As I've said before, subscription numbers DO matter, because the hybrid model of this game locks a lot of group activities behind a paywall. It should be obvious that active players doing group content are going to be subscribers because it becomes more cost efficient to subscribe than to buy weekly passes all the time. If the subscriber base is growing, then the pool of available players to play with and recruit from is also growing. If you are a Bioware employee or EA investor, you may only care about active players, revenue, and average revenue per player. And if you are mostly a solo player, you probably don't care about any of it as long as the servers are still working. But if the content you enjoy requires a subscription to access freely, then wanting to know what is happening with subscribers is natural and logical.

Yeah the consular from 1-50 was really boring. The highlight is crafting your first lightsaber on Tython at level 10. Smuggler acts 2 and 3 are not very good from a plot standpoint (yeah, i'm a delivery boy!), but the dialog choices and everything involving Risha carries it through and makes it my favorite on the pub side. The knight is also very good; I spent most of act 2 muttering "I have a bad feeling about this" to myself. Trooper is also a bit weak, not as weak as the consular story, since some of the dark side options can be very entertaining.

Not really, because I'm all in on the "want more good story" side. Besides, you are being just as subjective by saying the class stories were all excellent and engaging and what not, and thus want more of them. My preference is faction-based, because I want long, epic stories that I can experience with friends. Putting in a few class-specific quests for dialog options would be great also, but I never cared for the way instanced class stories impeded leveling with a friend. So if you continue to insist on saying you want a continuation of the class stories, then yes I disagree with you. I also believe that the amount of writing and development resources that would give us really good faction-based stories would NOT be able to produce 8 different class stories anywhere near as satisfying.

Then please stop using the adjective "class". Say you want good stories, or epic stories, or engaging stories, or something of that sort. Say what you really want, because "class story" has a very specific meaning, and it is not synonymous with the terms I listed. And at least for me, the Imperial Makeb story line was extremely good and engaging. Far better than many of the acts of many of the class stories. You may argue that has no replay value, but some stories weren't worth seeing in the first place.

Because MMOs, or at least this one, don't tend to be GPU-bound like a single player FPS is. The bottlenecks are CPU and network latency, as every time a player or NPC in range moves, jumps, emotes, talks, casts, etc, the server has to send updates to your client, which then has to calculate what the GPU should render. And when new characters enter your field of view, their appearance and gear also has to be loaded and updated for the GPU. It is the price to pay for all that character customization.

How did you survive this long without rocket boots?? I farmed dailies every day for about 5 weeks straight to get the credits together to buy all 3 ranks like 2 years ago. And it was totally worth it!

EDIT: Deleted stuff already posted by others. I should read the rest of the thread before I respond. We actually *don't* know whether the game as a whole is making more or less money, because again, EA doesn't break out results by game. We really only know that Cartel Market sales were up, and subscriptions were down. Our next glimpse will come May 6th, when EA releases Q4 2014 earnings. And this thread will appear again.

Really? Because in December 2013 GSF was announced and open for early access already, we also knew the Dread Master's story arc was concluded with Oricon/DF/DP released in October, so there would be a new story arc beginning soon . And a new expansion was pretty much baked in as well, since the first expansion occurred 14.5 months after launch, extrapolating outwards another 15 months is September of this year. Not sure how another expansion before the end of the year could be a surprise to anyone. But I will grant you that housing, guild ships, and legacy banks are a surprise.

I think you are correct. Windowed mode is usually how I avoided the bug, but I also minimized the game at that point. The same effect as being full screen non-windowed, and alt-tabbing. Letting the animation render in any mode seemed to trigger the crash. I was thinking about this bug the other day, and wondering when we should celebrate its second birthday. I can't quite recall whether I started seeing it in 1.2 (April 2012) or 1.3 (June 2012).

Yes, it is. If it is content your group has not cleared before, or doesn't clear easily, it is progression raiding. Otherwise it is farming. It doesn't matter what other raid groups in the game are doing. What you are talking about is competitive raiding, which is what stops after an operation has been out for a month. EDIT: also, was there a point to your original reply, other than to try and belittle the OP and his raid group?

Maybe, but it really seems to me like DF and DP are really one operation split into two instances. Their doors are right next to each other, and their story is linked moreso than we've seen before, so much so that completing the Oricon story line requires clearing DF then DP. So I'm not sure that either could stand on their own very well, especially since guilds have been farming both in HM in under 90 minutes. It wouldn't be out of character for Bioware/EA to try to stretch the content out in that manner, but I doubt it would solve the underlying issue.

We don't. Stronghold early access comes with 2.8 in June, preferred at the end of July, with full launch in August. We don't know what the version of that would be, so I'm just calling it 2.9, since GSF went from 2.5 early access to 2.6 full launch. All in all though, it doesn't really matter what the specific version numbers are. If their cadence holds, there will be significant updates in August (strongholds full launch), October, and December. Of those, December looks like the right one for the major expansion.

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/press-release/20140319 Subscribers as of May 11th will receive: Early Access to Galactic Strongholds on June 24 Luxurious Nar Shaddaa Stronghold with three additional rooms unlocked (Value: 1,500,000 Credits) ... Subscribers beginning June 24th will receive: Early Access to Galactic Strongholds on June 24 Luxurious Nar Shaddaa Stronghold Unlocked (Value: 250,000 Credits) ... Seems pretty clear to me. If you are subscribed on May 11th, you get access on June 24th, and the Nar Shadaa house with 3 rooms. Otherwise if you are subscribed on June 24th, you get access on June 24th, and the Nar Shadaa house without the extra rooms.

This really depends a bit on the class. For a trooper, agent, smuggler, and bounty hunter, it makes sense. It's not like you got a promotion to rear admiral or something. You are a highly skilled individual/specialist, and your skills are in demand. That's the backstory to every operation and flashpoint in the game, and Ilum, Makeb, and all the daily areas. Jedi also are not supposed to be concerned with their rank in life. They are expected to remain humble, so that saving the a nameless grunt from an onslaught of droids or defeating a sith lord are equally worthy of their time. Also consider a class like the inquisitor

I wish we could like posts on these forums, but since we can't, I'll just say QFT.

As Darth_Wicked pointed out, it was technically October. Also, there is pretty much 0% chance of a new operations tier appearing in 2.8, because NiM DP will be coming then. A new tier of operation and gear will screw up the progression/titles/etc for NiM DP. It just opens up a whole nest of problems that we should assume Bioware is aware of and not crazy enough to inflict on us. Now they could possibly release a new operation with 2.9 in August. That would give a 2 month window for NiM DP without it competing with a new OP. But it also starts to bump up against what we think the timing is for the major expansion and level cap bump. If that is coming between October and December, it seems like a waste of resources to release a new operation and new tier of gear only to make the whole thing obsolete or retune it for the next patch. So it really looks like we will be going a year or more between new operations releases. I agree it sucks, and is the main reason my 6-mo subscription will expire in a couple of weeks. I hope Bioware knows what they are doing with their roadmap having so much GSF, housing, and tactical FP content to the apparent exclusion of WZ and raid development, because it seems like a substantial shift in focus away from the things that have kept their current subscribers around.

Well said. I get a little bothered by people bashing it as being childish and immature, since those are slights against its fans and developers as much as it is against the game itself. But nothing wrong with not liking it because it isn't to your taste, so /respect to you.

Yeah I hope that Carbine eventually relaxes the division between factions, at least on PvE servers. I've never seen the point of trying to foster a "they are the enemy, no collaborating" attitude on a PvE server. As far as the missing out on raids thing, just being able to see when your friends are online, no matter what server or faction they are playing, even if they've started a completely new toon, is a big step in the right direction. Not all the way there, but getting close. I believe the PvP faction lock is server-specific. You can still create characters on both factions, on PvP servers, but only one faction on one server. I think the idea is to prevent "spying" for OWPvP. And since the context is comparing against TOR, I'll just point out that at launch we had isolated GTNs and couldn't send email cross faction either.

And this is why we can't have nice things. Because every suggestion/idea has to pass the lore/immersion test.

Yeah that would work great for military players on deployment. Or people that just want to take a vacation IRL. EDIT: And why limit it to level 49s or below? Why not be able to steal names from level 55s too?

It isn't being held hostage, and it isn't unjust in any way. Anymore than someone owning a vacation home that they never use is holding that home "hostage". Just because you want to live there, and they don't use it, doesn't give you the right to move in.

Here is my take on what WS is doing better at launch than SWTOR did: - Cross server queuing. Means it doesn't matter so much what happens to server populations post launch, and PvP rankings actually mean something. And it's optional for PvE. - Game engine that can handle more than 20 people in an instance/area. OWPVP just doesn't exist in this game due to this problem, and it's a self-inflicted wound that just will not heal. - Social features. Account-wide, cross-server friends list, cross-server whispering, etc. Things we still can't do here. - End-game PvE content - veteran dungeons, 2 raids, plus adventures. Stuff to do!!! - Costumes, dyes, etc, so that not everyone is dressed identically in their Columi/Rakata pieces that can't be modified. - Housing. I didn't miss housing in SWTOR, but there were lots who did. What did SWTOR do better at launch? The story telling and leveling content. Story telling with voice overs and cut scenes is superior to story telling in chat bubbles. And Wildstar frequently gets even the chat bubbles a bit wrong, like having a quest giver call in the middle of challenge, or just being the middle of a fight, and missing the conversation because you are focused on something else at the time.

I think it will get better once we can unlock all 8 slots. From what I've seen of the healing classes, they are like damage skills - not all heals are created equal. I expect equipping 4-5 heals, a damage ability or 2, with the remaining slot being utility skills will be the most effective, at least until max level with veterans and raids. Yep, pugs are going to have to learn to stand in the healer's telegraphs or not get healed. It also means a tank and a healer that work well together make a huge difference in the smoothness of the run. Knowing when and where to dodge to avoid damage without also dodging heals is key to a tank's survival.