Pretty much this. I'd hardly call myself a 'whiner', but I knew if I was gonna have to play first come first serve all those months ago, I'd be at the front of the line, and I was. I was there 7am to get my names. I added up the /played on the level 10+ toons I have. It totaled just above 41 days. 41 days of my life, 1.3 months of time, I've spent getting attached to my toons. The outcry, is because there are people like me, who have invested a large amount of time into their characters, only to have the rug pulled from under their feet. Sure, you can say "what's in a name?", but not everyone feels so un-attached to things such as that.

If I go into a warzone, it stops working for me at all. I have to stay out of warzones completely in order to progress/benefit from the plague.

I wouldn't call it a giant waste at all. Horridly overpriced? Perhaps. It is expensive for a keyboard, but it does do many things I've never seen a keyboard do. The ability to use it to pull up webpages without alt-tabbing or leaving my second monitor on is an incredibly cool ability, that I'm sure I'll be taking advantage of. You've got to remember: not everyone likes mechanical keyboards, too.

I just got mine today. Been playing around with it while I'm at work. (Typing on it now actually!) So far, it's loads of fun. The screen/macro keys are neat, and seem to function pretty well. The key-design isn't my favorite, but isn't as bad as typing on a laptop (which I initially thought it would be.) The keypresses feel pretty solid, surprisingly so given the form factor. Though the spacebar seems to 'rattle' a bit as I type. (Minor annoyance, if that.) I'm not quite sure how I'll feel about the key design once I get into the game, but I'll reserve judgement until I get used to it, as I'm sure it will take a bit. The built-in apps are quite nifty, and I can see a huge amount of use to be able to pull up webpages while I'm in the game. (The browser even supports flash, so you can watch videos and what not as well.) The one thing I'm not seeing is a publicly available API, nor a way to modify settings for the built in apps. Seeing as the software is obviously in its' first few revisions, I expect that might be stuff that comes later down the line. (Since I can't seem to find an API, it doesn't appear to be as extensible as the Logitech G-Series screens, which I had before. I really, REALLY want a Ventrilo display, but I suppose I will have to be patient.)

I think many of us enjoy that. The issue is, Ilum not only has some design flaws, but due to current limitations of the client, is rather unplayable by a large portion of the population. Bioware not only acknowledged the flaws, but stated that they're going "back to the drawing board". They've just made Ilum not really worthwhile to go to for now (pretty much turning it off, without actually disabling it), and it will likely stay that way until they get the mechanics working the way they want.

Or if everyone selected the option

This is a constructive idea, and I quite like the idea of it. It could be quite elegantly implemented so that those of us who would like to skip the story can do so! You have my support! How refreshing to see a post that identifies a problem and airs a seemingly wonderful solution.

Those were very close to being my only dark side points.

Oh dear. That made me chuckle. This surely can't be intended... but if for some reason it makes it to live, I'm going to quite enjoy playing my smuggler for a week.

Well thought out, well written posts like this hardly ever seem to receive replies. I'm replying, because I think this is a good idea, and would like to show my support for some sort of resolution to this issue. Cheers.

As a 400 Armortech, I'm sorta excited that I'd be able to make some money on a crit. That'd be neat. But I gotta agree with the OP. I'd rather see all the gear that comes from raid/pvp sets have the Augment Slots in them. Personally, I like the look of the trooper/smuggler pvp gear. I'd hate to be pigeonholed into wearing some random orange armor that doesn't match, or fit my aesthetic prefrences, just because it has an augment slot. I vote for +augment slots to pvp/raid gear!

Most fun powerpoint presentation ever?

I love your 'sky-is-falling' doom-saying. Your 'facts' are based on that 'someone' at EA said they need an arbitrary number of subscriptions to 'break even'. I'm glad that you, who has no connection with the companies responsible for this game, can let us know how close to 'maintenance mode' it is.

So if there is: NA East PvP NA East PvE NA East PvP-RP NA East PvE-RP NA West PvP NA West PvE NA West PvP-RP NA West PvE-RP Euro English PvP Euro English PvE Euro English PvP-RP Euro English PvE-RP Euro French PvP Euro French PvE Euro French PvP-RP Euro French PvE-RP Euro German PvP Euro German PvE Euro German PvP-RP Euro German PvE-RP Euro Russian PvP Euro Russian PvE Euro Russian PvP-RP Euro Russian PvE-RP Etc. How the heck is that all supposed to work on one server?

I played Champions Online. I'd hardly say it "works fine" (this is all my opinion, as much as it working fine is your own). Albeit I stopped playing for numerous reasons, among them was that there was no sense of community. I hardly ran into people I recognized. Everything felt very disconnected.

Let's use that estimate of 1.7 million subscriptions. Let's say you're on the republic fleet one night, and let's figure of those ~800,000 republic players, that 50,000 are on the fleet. How is that broken up? are there 5,000 instances of the fleet? How do I find a group? Is chat cross-instance? Or is it only in my local instance? What if no one from my instance wants to do what I want? Do I start swapping instances looking for people? If I'm dealing with everyone that plays republic at one time -- how do I ever remember anyone? The way things are now, when I get into a warzone, I might run into one of my buddies, or a player I think is very good. If it were that way, I'd probably never see the same player twice. How are you supposed to get a reputation if you play with everyone? Sure, some people will know you, but out of all the players? You could be a total jerk, and you'd never feel the repercussions from it, because you'd probably never see the handful of people you've pissed off again. With smaller, individual communities, there's less of the sense of anonymity, and therefore a larger social pressure for you to not be a total jerk. Big one-world games work for some MMO archetypes (a la Eve), but I'd argue heavily that it doesn't work for one of this style.

Scrapper spec'd, it's really -all- we do. Pew pew pew, vanish. We aren't very survivable, the burst doesn't last forever, and if we run out of energy, we're pretty much done. I'd say it's fairly balanced. (Speaking as a 50 vanguard who has been on the receiving end, as well as a 40 scoundrel dishing it.) If you can outlast the burst we have, there's a good chance you can take us down!

Posting in this thread to again show my support for Rhythm Augmentation Droid. Can't dance without him!

This would be a slider I'd like to see. "Maximum lines of Error Text" As a scoundrel, some of my abilities only work from behind a person. PvP often moves so quickly that I can't ever be very sure if I'm actually behind the person, so I'll often tap the button several times while trying to position myself. My ability will fire, but then I'm left with a screen of "Not ready Yet" and "Effect condition failed". I get what's going on, I'm pretty sure I don't need a whole screen full of the text. Alternate solution to limiting lines: Don't put the same text up again. Just refresh the time-to-live (and fade value) of the text already there. (So if I keep hitting a skill while it's on cooldown, the "Not Ready Yet" will continue to stay on my screen, but won't spam itself over and over again.) I believe this fits in the same category: Voidstar, when the attackers have moved on to the next room. I get it. I don't need it on my screen 10 times in 2 places. (Center screen, and the chat log.) Believe me, I'll be ready to move on as soon as I finish killing this guy! (This is exactly the time a static or flashing UI element that says "The attackers have secured this room, move on to the next" would be perfect: It would stop spamming my screen and chatlog, but still be prominently displayed to alert me to move on. Hopefully it would be out of centerscreen a bit, so I could focus on the combat I'm still in.) Just my two cents.

Nerd here: Don't bother trying to use Remote Desktop (rdc/msts). The way remote desktop works, is it streams the video data (everything on your screen) through a fake driver. The driver, while it supports some things, does not support most, if all of the hardware acceleration games expect. Thus, once you click play on the launcher: the game will fail to start, because it can't initialize the direct 3d device (as in, can't initialize the graphics hardware.) Some of you have noticed that you can use an already-running SWtOR with Remote Desktop: Yep. Because the game has already got a handle to the graphics device, and will continue to use it. I wouldn't recommend this though, as it will be slow. Alternatives? Several people have suggested things in this thread that will work. VNC and Log Me In work, because they just clone what is on the screen to be sent over the network, instead of using a different video driver. The most luck I've had with a similar program is the "Splashtop Remote Desktop" The iOS app is on sale for $1.99 (Regular $9.99), and the Android flavor is on sale for $4.99 (Regular $9.99). These apps run on your phone, and you install a small, free server on your desktop. Set up SWtOR to run in 'borderless windowed' mode, and forward the proper ports to your computer, and you should be good to go. (Over the same network as your desktop, the speed is actually quite nice. I wouldn't say you should try to PVP, but it's rather impressive what it can do.) As always, your mileage may vary. tl;dr: Don't bother with rdc/msts. It's not going to do what you want. Try: VNC, Splash top, or Log Me In (VNC and Log Me In are free!)

I have neither a dash, nor one that makes me "white and flashy"? Class specific?

Posting in this thread to show my support for R.A.D. I miss him. He was my bess fwiend.

If he adds one more set of cushions to the seats, I'm gonna. I swear.

Really? You might want to read the first phrase on the game's info page.

Bumping this thread, continuing to ask: Please fix the R.A.D.! (And Portable holo-dancer, while you're at it!).