According to the "Disappearing Act" ability for the Smuggler it is supposed to put the player in stealth so they are taken out of combat and they are supposed to be quote "virtually undetectable" for 10 seconds and that is why I chose the Smuggler as it's a big advantage to be-able to do this at the expense of only having medium armor and disadvantages in other ways including only having a single blaster for instance. One is supposed to be-able to fight, then use this to avoid death, to get away somewhere safe and restore energy Etc, the problem is the ability DOES NOT WORK AT ALL IN PVP! I suspect that the enemy player still has you targeted so they simply only have to keep firing, this is obviously a huge flaw and programming error. When taken out of combat the player should certain lose you as a target when you disappear with this ability. "Virtually undetectable" is a blatant lie in PvP, I have attempted to use it on numerous occasions in PvP to try to avoid death as it's supposed to be use, but it never EVER works. Within a few seconds when in stealth I am hit by an enemy player taking me out of stealth again and then I of course die, like I said this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME! Hardly "virtually undetectable" as stated clearly. I feel very ripped off as this ability is rendered totally and utterly useless in PvP and there's nothing stating that it doesn't work in PvP either. Stealth is the main thing that Smugglers are good at as they only have medium armor, so if stealth doesn't work as advertised the character doesn't work in PvP and it's a pathetically weak character. It's extremely unfair. In other MMORPGs this ability usually exists under a different name and it does work as it should, one can be fighting a Rogue for instance in Rift and just before their health is gone they often totally vanish and one cannot detect them, this is how it should work. Please sort this out and make the ability work as it should do as it's a huge disadvantage in combat which is the difference between certain death and likely survival. I'm dismayed at such a massive unbalance now with my character and wouldn't have chosen a smuggler if I knew that the most powerful ability simply doesn't work at all in PvP as it's supposed to. One hasn't got the power to go 1 on 1 against many enemy players and one is supposed to use this ability as one of the prime advantages to balance the odds so it's all wrong.

I experienced the whole screen graphics disappear and flicker on/off as I looked around leaving a bare landscape when off without any buildings or anything else, players disappearing may be a different problem to forced anti-aliasing, they can jump if you're latency is poor or if you simply have an unrelaible Internet connection like poor wireless, I used Smartping which you can try out free for 20 minutes at a time, but it's only $5.99 a month as it improves latency for me even though it's best with WOW. I connect to the London server. If it is a latency problem it will probably be worse in busy areas and maybe when the server is busier.

Please be warned: You may want to try forcing anti-aliasing on, but the main reason this feature is not supported and available as an option in the standard graphics settings is because they developers had problems during testing, I learned the hard way and had to eventually disable them again! It worked at first, but later on my 3rd planet the graphics started disappearing on/off as I looked around in a particular direction, making it unplayable even after restarting and changing any in game graphics settings didn't improve the problem either, I then turned off my forced anti-aliasing and the problem was resolved. It's a shame as I now see shimmering and jagged edges if I look closely at objects and it causes slight shimmering on distant objects, but it's better to put up with this than the serious problem it caused. My friend however didn't have the problem in the same area, so it doesn't affect everyone, but there may be other problems that could affect him later too, time will only tell.

This is extremely annoying to say the very least, it's a horrible programming error, but this companion is excellent in many cases as it heals you, URGH! If it says it again I think I'm going to smash my speakers up, LOL! I wish I could isolate that particular sound in the game itself and replace it with nothing, but it's not that easy as I've looked and all the main files are compressed and encrypted, so no luck there. There is loads of complaints all over the Internet about this. If you simply seach for the phrease "Excellent! I was just wondering what i could do to please you!" on Google you get pages and pages of them, it's really p***ing everyone off, me included. At the time of writing this is the latest known official response from Bioware in a reply to another person who complained to customer services about this issue 4 days before I wrote this reply: "The constant talking of 2V-R8 is something we are aware of and are currently working to solve this issue. Thank you for you patience as we get this issue resolved." At least they will address this issue and know about it, but unfortunately the response doesn't give any idea of a time scale. Patch 1.01 is coming later today at the time of writing, but I haven't read anything specifically about them fixing this on the update, the only section in the official changelog that could be related is quote, "Companion Character dialogue now plays at the correct volume.", GREAT, does that mean we will get to hear the droid repeatedly say this line EVEN LOUDER STILL literally every few seconds during combat? LOL! Since they're not specific on what exactly they're fixing we can only hope it at least reduces the volume level until they decide to fix it properly, but who knows at the time of writing, it could be the same or even worse still, who knows we might be pleasantly surprised even to find it resolved completely, I can only hope. It might not sound like a priority to fix this problem, but it's driving 1000s people up the wall to the extent of not using a very useful companion, so it is indirectly causing serious gameplay issues and fixing it should be given a higher priority in my opinion. I will leave you with a final link: Excellent Companion, LOL!

I suspect there will be as much new content if not more compared with other rival MMORPGs as Bioware are a quality software producer. This may not be quick enough to please hard core veteran players that play MMORPGs day in day out however as this is the case with just about every MMORPG, these maximum level veterans are usually left grinding and playing the same repeatable quests eventually and are then crying out for new content. Having a shadow character progressing with the opposite faction as well almost doubles the game's entertainment value, I recommend it for the best longer term value for money from the game. PS: I also noticed there wasn't a search box on this forum, I suspect it's because it uses a lot of server resources, but I wouldn't use this to judge Bioware on releasing new content. Anyway, I've had to use Google to search this forum which isn't exactly efficient as it doesn't index everything and not straight away either.

All MMORPGs have decisions that you could mess up accidentally as there's no way to save your game at various stages to revert back after such a mistake as this feature wouldn't be feasible or possible in a multi-player on-line game, you couldn't for-instance revert back to before an enemy player beat you in a PvP battle for-instance. Once on a rival MMORPG I accidentally bid a fortune for a low value auction item when I wasn't paying attention, unfortunately I had to live with it even though it virtually cleared a decent sized bank balance, but the person selling the item would have thought they were the luckiest player ever. I didn't even try to ask for the money back as it wouldn't be fair as it was my mistake. In your situation an extra "are you sure" message or a way to get trade them back would have been very useful addition to the game. The game is however in it's early infancy and there's lots of improvements that will be made over time to what is already an excellent game and the development team can't possibly please everyone immediately all the time. I think however they should add a way of sending in suggestions in game where one doesn't need a reply, instead of opening support tickets so Bioware can see what most people want and therefore where they need to prioritize next in the game's ongoing development.

One should remember that SWTOR did come out just before Christmas at the time of year when more computer games sell than any other time of year, if one compared sales in proportion to overall computer game sales at that particular time of year however I still think SWTOR would come up as a big seller, but it may not be close to the fastest growing MMORPG ever if it wasn't released just before Christmas. I will say however that in the UK at least the game has been sold out for digital download on Origin for quite sometime and there's only a limited number of titles left in various stores, while some have sold out making the game often difficult to obtain. The download restriction and limited numbers is obviously to prevent overloading of their servers, but in a way BioWare have shot themselves in the foot by not having a larger capacity to begin with as this will obviously reduce their sales, especially since many people would have wanted it for Christmas and may buy something else instead if it's not easily available, perhaps never ever to buy it. The original Star Wars movie however (Episode 4) smashed box office records in it's day and every movie released since has been extremely popular. There's Millions of Star Wars fans, many of whom collect anything related to Star Wars, so it's not really surprising that SWTOR has sold very well. When levelling and when deep into the story, SWTOR is stunning and it's a very good sized game too. Many players will enjoy the game twice over by having a shadow character on the opposite faction too, I recommend it so you can play through the story from both sides to get the best entertainment value for your money. I would be interested however to see how subscriptions hold out in say 6 months time. Once lots of players are up to the maximum level on any MMORPG (not just SWTOR) and after the main story quests dry up, players often start to slowly lose interest. Eventually it often becomes a battle for the producers to bring out fresh new content as quickly as possible to keep their veteran players fully occupied, rather than just grinding and constantly repeating the same old repeatable quests. Sometimes the main thing keeping veteran players is their friends, but these can also disappear, often to other MMORPGs that they may then decide to also move to. Unfortunately when a decent brand new MMORPG then comes out many bored veterans will move over to it in an instant as they're desperate to see fresh new content and they'll often then neglect their characters on their previous MMORPG or they'll even decide to unsubscribe completely to save wasting money on a game they hardly now play. I can only hope that the producers will keep bringing out new content in record time to keep people interested as much as possible before too many people end up completing the entire story for a long period of time, that is the key to keeping players over the long term. Bringing out a decent sized paid expansion in future may not be too popular, but it obviously can make a big difference too, plus this can often bring old players back. Since a paid expansion would earn Bioware a lot more money than subscriptions alone, they could afford to employ more people to develop it to make an expansion a considerable size with a lot more features, but I'm really getting ahead of myself as a paid expansion is usually unlikely for a least a year after an MMORPG's initial release, perhaps we'll see one for Christmas 2012?

It's not too difficult to force Anti Aliasing on in your Nvidia Control Panel or in your Catalyst Control Center or even in by altering your INI file, if it did happen to cause any problems (I'm having no problems), it's very easy just to simply turn it off again, so why not give it a try? Yes it would be a nice addition for them to add it to the advanced graphics options as when properly supported the graphics can look better and there's less chance of any problems, but in my personal opinion I wouldn't see this as a significant part missing from the game as it doesn't affect the actual gameplay of the game itself and the graphics are still very good indeed, but you're entitled to your opinion too. SWTOR is a brillaint game, but my most missed feature is the lack of macro support as there's far too many abilities to control efficiently without them, the lack of macros detrimentally effects the entire play of the game for many advanced players that are used to using them with most other decent MMORPGs, so I would hope they give this a priority. What's much worse is one can't even legally use your own 3rd party macro software to work around the problem as one risks being banned as it explicitly forbids the use of any macros in the game's agreement. It's very odd however that Razor produce an official Razor Naga Mouse specifically for this game that comes with 17 fully programmable buttons and full macro support built into the driver software (I own a standard Razor Naga Mouse which is the same, except without the SWTOR exterior design). How can they produce a mouse officially for a game where you're not allowed to use it's designed features? The ability to program macros at the touch of your thumb using the 12 button side matrix is one very good reason for buying a Razor Naga Mouse in the first place and it's normally ideal for MMORPGs especially. The harsh anti-macro policy certainly seems very strange indeed and even contradictory, I sincerely hope they rethink this silly policy very soon or even better include them as a feature in the game itself like most other successful MMORPGs already do. This to me is far more important than relatively small graphics quality improvements.

The game is very new and it's probably a bit too early to be sure about many unbalances as it could all change, but to say it simply cannot be moderated at all is a bit closed minded, although it can be so difficult and sometimes unpopular that it's not always attempted. They may not be-able to force people to choose particular factions as this would be very unfair, but they could attempt to influence the worst servers affected by preventing new sign ups to the overrun faction on this particular server or if a player was desperate to play this faction on this particular server they could set up a queueing system or perhaps even a limited invite only system so players could still sign up if they had friends on a particular server in the overrun faction. This can only work however if some servers are unbalanced one way, while others are unbalanced the other. If all or most servers are overloaded with one particular faction, then by preventing sign ups on the worst servers will only make the other servers even worse as most people will choose to sign up on an alternative server rather than to sign up to the other side. The other problem would be unpopularity, possible complaints and it would be difficult to implement and/or police, especially with a queuing or invite system, so I doubt if this will happen. Offering to freely move players to other servers while restricting some movements that would make imbalances worse would also help matters in the long term. This would remain quite popular as it's offering an additional service even though it may be restricted. This could feasibly happen in future, it can be hard to police and implement, but I've seen this system successfully work with a rival MMORPG, moving servers is as easy as following a few simple steps and can be done in game, but one can only move to certain servers to improve and prevent further unbalancing. This won't work well however if every server is one sided to the same faction. The other way of moderating would be to offer an incentive to people signing up to the minority faction, E.g. in game items, but by doing this could set off a debate on whether it's fair to do this, especially from people who have signed up to the minority faction before the incentive and also from people in the majority faction, so they would have to be very careful what they offered and this probably will never happen. Just advertising the game more towards the more unpopular faction could make more people decide to sign up to it in future, this wouldn't upset anyone so could feasibly happen in future. The media is very powerful and influences people all the time, often without them even knowing it. Being part of a majority or minority faction has both advantages and disadvantages. If you're in the minority you're less likely to have to wait ages for warfronts as there will nearly always be a queue of opposing players wanting for opponents to play, there's more to be scored as there's more enemy players to kill, but the disadvantage is you're often going to be attacked by greater numbers while trying to go about your adventures on PvP servers and you're more often going to lose large PvP battles due to being outnumbered, it's a bigger disadvantage when levelling as you stand a bigger chance of being ganked by a higher level opposing player or players. If you're in the majority you will have an easier adventure most of the time on PvP servers with less chance of being interrupted and outnumbered in world PvP , but sometimes you won't get a look in on PvP battles as the opposing side will be wiped out sometimes before arriving, plus there's less players to kill for your own progression and you'll often have to wait longer for warfronts for opponents to become available.