Same issue, flashes and artifacts on screen for brief moments, mostly outdoors (have not tried kotet xpac yet as I am leveling up a new toon atm). Happens often enough to be really really really annoying. Happened with the new patch (5.0 and newest one) and only with this and only this game. ANY response would be appreciated. I5-2400k, AMD Radeon 270x, Win7 64bit, HDD, 8gb ram. Edit: I also noticed when watching other players that on some mounts the animations seem really wonky. It looks like they are out of focus and are missing animation steps resulting in a very weird surreal almost-like movement. Its pretty hard to explain but definitely has only appeared since the 5.0 patch hit. Seen on every Walker mount, creature mount, or generally mounts that have moving animations tied to them. My own mounts, creatures and Walker, look fine.

I have also got random screen tearing, artifacting and screen flashes since the new patch. Tried every possible gfx settings and everything else you'd want to do ( driver re-install and so forth) but nothing works. Outside of SWTOR things behave like normal. Also, log-out blackscreens/game-freezes and even blackscreens when transitioning to a cutscene which never happened before. System is older, but it used to run SWTOR like a chamer at mid-high settings: I-5 2400k, AMD 270x (2g vram), 8g ram. The game is playable, but these screen flashes and screen tearing/artifacting are already getting really old real fast.

I am playing a Vanguard Deep Assault specc as my main, been 50 for 2 months now and pvp almost all day for several hours. I'd like to think that I know my specc quite well and do more than well in pvp (the only specc that occasionally outdamages/outmedals/has more kills than me are those darn hybrid lightning sorcs - at least on my server). I predict that with the 1.1.5 change deep assault is dead - in terms of competitive play like rated wz's. Why you ask me? Because of the change to dots not preventing caps anymore and because you really only need your 4 medals per match. The specc has almost no group merits in pvp apart from doting up everyone all day long and putting out pressure, but putting out pressure can be achieved with any specc and the other speccs have far more utility to boot. Up until now, DA has been, for me (I pug 99% of the time), the go-to specc to farm medals and to prevent caps. I could solo (with all cd's up) hold off entire imp teams from capping - even when dead and en route for a new round of dots. Guess that is the reason for the dot-change thats about to hit the servers. It was simply overpowered in that regard. As a 1vs1 lover, the specc is more than lackluster. Yes, I've been delusional - as so many others - about the actual procc uptime of ionic accelerator. I see here people claiming to get 4 proccs in a 15second window, but I can count on one hand the number of times that has happened and more than likely the enemy was still standing there with enough health left whilst I was completely ammo starved. Deep assault is all about pressure over time and preventing caps, not really about nuking an enemy down in 15secs. The rng on ionic accelerator is just too unpredictable for it to be a nuke specc. As for the actual question about gut or IR for pvp, it all depends on what your specc/playstyle is and you will see what fits in where better. They both have their highs and lows depending which specc you run and what sort of utility/damage you want out of it. I wonder what specc will be dominating once 1.1.5 hits, in regard for the coming rated wz's. Iron fist would be my bet i reckon. Anyways, peace out.

It's been interesting. Could have been fun, could have been so much more... Why has it failed for me? - I love the story while questing, but there are too many cutscenes. They hinder guild/group/vent chat, they go on for way too long destroying any semblance of dynamic in the game/gameplay - Flashpoints are way too long. I'm a casual player with limited time and I really don't enjoy sitting in front of my pc for 4 hours trying to complete a flashpoint. A single flashpoint. In his timeframe are included actual flashpoint play, waiting/finding of group, waiting on group to assemble, and so forth. Flashpoints should last no longer than an hour on average. Everything else is just tiring and not enjoyable. - PvP. Oh my god. I shall go there, yes. I have almost valor 50 and the other toon has valor 26, having grinded my way up without exploiting Ilum and the sort and I can say (after being a pvp player for over a decade now) that it has been a frigging nightmare. The Warzones are neat, but the actual pvp gameplay is horrendous. It begins with a game engine that is reliant on suuuper long animations and that cant handle having more than 20 people at one place (ello Ilum early days) and culminates in a gear unbalance that destroys any semblance of fun you thought you had while pvping. People in Full BM (ello ilum exploits) farming all day long the Wz's in their tiny premades, ruining the fun other less geared ppl might have... It's just a frigging abyssmaol hell. Well, PvP on my server is dead because of that. Good job imps. Have fun in Huttball. - The actual game engine. Words cannot describe what i feel when i think about it. Let's just say it should NEVER EVER have gone in production with this engine. There are tons of mmos out there that have better engines and are waaaaay older. Nuff said. - PvE? Questing is like riding a train from a to b. Exploring? Doesnt exist. Immersive World? Not gonna happen - it's the most sterile environment if have ever seen in any mmo. Massively at least? Because of the design of the game to hack the game into pieces and have the content strewn over dozens of worlds, the term "massively" only aplies when it comes to bugs, missing content or screwups. Raiding? Shallow and trifle, riddled with bugs (ello mr masterlooter). - Are the planets design than at least lore-friendly? In my view, the known planets from the movies look nothing alike than those in the game. Nothing! Not even Tatooine or Hoth look like the originals. So, is all bad? No, not in the least, but what does it help me if the fun i had is completely overshadowed by the things that just dont work? My guild went from over 30 active 50s to 3 including me. After 3 months one can say that the game is dead. Dead from a core-gamer standpoint. I just dont have the energy to waste my time on a game where its beginning to be impossible to find groups for even 1 hardmode flashpoint... and i'm NOT gonna reroll on a server that has a bit more players. All in all it reminds me of AoC. Sooo much anticipation, so much hype and then such a massive letdown... Well, see ya all and keep the flames burning

A theme park? What are you talking about? It's is a mmorpg and it's marketed as such. Where is it said that ANY mmorpg has to have generic opponents and dungeons? You are talking about something entirely else dude. I do not know what mmo's you are used to play, but in those that I've played, non player characters would move around, patrol, and the like. Apart from some crappy mmo's that no one really cares about, most newer mmo's have npc's that have some, any sort, of movement. In TOR all they do is stand in their place, waiting to be engaged. There is seldom any npc that has any sort of patrol path or the like. What interaction? With npc's? Where? Apart from the cutscenes and their questnpc's there is NO interaction at all. Have you even played this game or are you just trolling me for the sake of being a naysayer? It's is, for a game that is released in 2011, not even bad, it's a frigging scandal in my eyes. Like I said before, I don't believe any of the devs have spent hours upon hours looking for groups as a dps class or this archaic system would never have made it live. I am not talking about the interaction of combat per se, I am talking about the fluidity and the flow of the combat, which is a killer for most mmo's and THE main reason why most are not successfull past their first few months. They had just to look over their shoulder's and glance at that other mmo I've been refering to, their combat system is THE main reason why it is so successfull and profitable, there, the cat's out of the bag..... Excuse me for wanting a massive seamless non-streamlined world when I play an MMORPG. Would I want a railroaded level game, ANY singleplayer rpg would do fine, but I am not playing a singleplayer game here. You bring up the game of Skyrim. Believe me when I tell you that Skyrim as a mmo would blow people's minds. But that's a topic for another time. Are you really suggesting that I cannot have a massive non-linear game when playing an mmo? The more I read your comments the more I cannot believe you actually played ANY mmorpg to this date. Of course it has it's brilliant moments. Never have I denied that. But when you are looking past the shiny - those brilliance you are talking about - all that remains is an unpolished, old game that at its base has so many fundamental flaws that could have been avoided that it is a shame and THAT makes me a sad panda, because I WANT TO LOVE THE GAME I've been waiting for 5 years. Just because I feel let down by Bioware doesn't make me a hater. Maybe you, like so so so many other people LIKE you, should stay away from boards and forums altogether, because you obviously cannot have a serious discussion about a topic where people have different opinions than your own, without attacking, ridiculing them or even discrediting them.

As if the date I joined is indicative of anything. Hilarious the way people get out of their way just to put others in their place - or so they like to think. And then they wonder why the gaming communities are so bad...

I sincerly believe that every person is entitled to his own opinion, and that, a forum, is a platform to voice such. However there is no need to get up close and personal with me - apart from the occasional "feeling up" which might be enjoyable who knows. No, let us be serious for a second. I have not been playing WoW since 4 months after cataclysms release. I do NOT intend to go back to it, not because I can't stand the game, but because the community is full of ignorant, self-centered egoistics. But so is our daily life, unfortunately, those in my daily life I cannot avoid so easily. Some people don't seem to understand that while gaming companies provide us with games and their employees are gamers at heart, they do need to make money in order to survive and continue doing what they love the most - games. Purely from a financial aspect, if you believe the numbers floating around the 'net, TOR has cost a pretty penny in making. You cannot tell me that they would not LOVE to be the next WoW - purely in terms of cash-inflow. WHO wouldn't want that apart from some idealistic hippies that haven't realized that we live in a world marked by recession and worse... Sure, Bioware wants to have a product that sets itself apart from WoW, defining its own standard of quality and gaming experience. But thats it, it falls flat attempting to do so. For me at least. I won't go back to the "better gaming experience" WoW offers me, I will duke it out for the next few months with TOR, but honestly, I'm not going to sub past that if some CORE problems are not being addressed. I just really hoped for more than just pretty cutscenes and if you look at the forum, I surely aint the only one. Hadn't it been the Star Wars franchise and Bioware, I surely wouldn't have felt this let down. I'm just a kid at heart I guess and a big old fanboi.

I am not criticizing the launch of the game. That aside, you cannot tell me that a game that has been in production for the last few years shouldn't be BETTER than a game that has been out for 7 years. Even if they laid the groundwork for SW:TOR 5 years ago, they had ample time to analyse the one game that has revolutionized the MMO world and has been the most profitable enterprise in all of gaming history. Bioware had ample time to tune it's game and be WoW's successor, as it stands now, because of its archaic core design - which btw good luck on addressing that - it's just a novelty MMO thats even more dated than a game that is 7 years old. Yes, WoW has been patched extensively, but TOR was not even released yet. They had ample time to programm a game thats modern, not a game that is even more dated than its predecessor when you look past the cutscenes.

Dear Bioware, Really, is this it? Railroaded levels, mostly static npc's, almost no world interaction, archaic lfg system (whoever claims that that's good has clearly not lfg'ed for years on end as a dps class), clunky and free of any flow combat-system that's overburdened by a trillion abilities, an engine that screams for a complete re-write from the ground up, a pvp system that is decent as a conceptual idea but really doesnt work out when not every1 is at levelcap. Instanced worlds with no real sense of massiveness (you hardly ever encounter other people, not in a "massively" way anway). Everything is so static and confined its really offputting. And then the need to play this game with a pet/companion else you are really hampered in your gameplay experience... The need to groupd every 5th quest with other people because it's a group quest again. Yes I know, one plays an mmo and "should" always want to party up. but thats just not realistic. There are many more flaws. I got this one question for you: WHY do you think World of Warcraft has 10 million subs? Take a look at the above and compare it with WoW. Almost everything in WoW is tailored for the best playing experience. Be it as a party player, solo player or even raid or pvp player. There IS a reason why WoW was and still is this succesfull. I am NO WoW fanboi, far from it. But the gameplay experience combined with a world that is seamless and open is, I regret to say this, more than vastly superior then what you experience in SW:TOR. I just don't understand or rather I'm really saddened by the fact that you, Bioware, let this opportunity slip by you whilst having arguably one of the strongest franchises in the world and all you can come up with is this archaic game with shiny voiced quests? Whoever is in charge at Bioware or even EA, you guys must KNOW that you passed up on the golden cash cow for now at least. I am surely not writing this down because of my fondness for WoW or because I like to troll, but rather because I honestly feel let down. All those years developing the game - did not one of you bother to analyse what makes WoW the only subscription based MMO that is really profitable? It's not the wonky story, that much I can tell you.