Who's here from Ausmonauts? Anyone still playing this game?

I’ve got alts and mains to max level! Plus, think of the F2P silent majority of this game who need every break from EA’s dictatorship on their gameplay. Double XP weekends should be always on, not just for special occasions! And extend that bonus to Valor and Crafting bonuses too!

I guess BW forgot that not everyone in the galaxy reads Fornax. Especially women. HOWEVER. I'm a guy, I have a female alt IA, and she's in love with this Borg King. RESISTANCE, IS FUTILE.

Kai'kaara. Because he's blue-skinned, given typically "Asian" features, sounds alien and means Common Spider in Tau'va, a blue-skinned Mongoliod race from 40K.

I'm working on a new IA, but I'm just praying that it won't end in a 3-colored fashion...

Mega-servers main benefit is pop. Which SWTOR doesn't. What good is good ping if you don't even get to do anything with it? As long as its still playable, it works.

Oh yes, I find 3 flavors of recolored bikini in the cartel boxes. And now with dye modules, whats the difference between all 3? NOTHING. STO still has Romulan ships to sell us. I wonder what does the CM have left to sell without going into P2W?

So long as F2P cannot possibly buy their way out of every single restriction, subbers will have a point. That is why I support some of the player restrictions. A lot of the bad PR for SWTOR had been how the game decided to paint F2Pers. If instead of giving a 20% cut to XP, EA gave subbers a bonus 20%, people would feel better. Likewise by doubling the amount of comms a subber gets versus a F2Per, it feels better than doubling the prices for an F2Per. But that is exactly what's happening. In the end, SWTOR is currently giving Rift and TERA "bonuses", but their PR department failed by making F2Pers feel penalized instead of subbers feeling privileged. Also, they tuned the game to make F2Pers suffer too, by making it much harder to overlevel content. Had there been bonuses, F2Pers would've kept the level lead over mobs and feel heroic, while subbers would be outright invincible by the time they arrive on a planet for the first time. I am much more concerned about the CM itself. Either you raid and get a slow mount that can't get you knocked off ever, or fork out cash and BUY the mount that practically allows you to do the same without speed restriction. Went cybertech to build and sell mounts? Tough luck getting anyone to buy them. All the cool looking gear are in the CM, so all you need to do is raid for mods. This invalidates all professions that don't make mods. Right now, it can be argued that cosmetics sell and makes money without affecting gameplay. Well, okay, that's fair. But I swear, one day there will be reusable adrenals, stims and medpacks in the store that flat-out beats anything Biochem can do, leaving BC to be producing last seasons implants along with the other professions, while the non-mods languish. Or worse... You can buy mods that affect PVP balance straight from the store. Or introduce some kind of mechanic of gear progression that is luck based like an Asian MMO-role-playing-grindhell. This is when SWTOR truly falls to the Dark Side of the mmo industry. There is still hope. If the gamble continues, then I hope the gamble boxes do include stuff you can buy on the CM. Like an Account Unlocks box. By causing the massive hordes of boxes bought by rich kids to generate tons of 'junk', the GTN gets a large supply of unlocks, driving prices down and allowing both F2Pers and subbers to have ingame access to these things that would otherwise not have hit the market at all, while EA make off with the lockbox money. Not the best solution, not especially after the stupid negative PR EA seems intent on generating, but I'd much rather a neutral SWTOR than one in the dark side. So, tl;dr: SWTOR F2P is fair compared to other mmos. However, they fail at PR by making it seem unfair, by calling bonuses, penalties. The main problem is the direction where the CM is heading. For now, there is balance, as the junk generated by RNG boxes depresses prices for those items. But I sense a great darkness in its future and I fear that CM may take this game down a path we may not be able to follow. Especially with Darth EA at the reigns and plotting away in the shadows.

You'd be surprised how many devs CAN'T do open world pvp than CAN. And then there are the player votes: PVE servers are less of a ghost town than PVP. I'd say this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy afflicting any theme-park MMO that wasn't designed from the ground up to be a pvp machine.

There is no chaos, there is only peace. As long as most of all head to Harbinger, I do believe we would keep our community and gain a few insomniac 'Mericans while having a much larger community to sell Cartel Products to. <Light of the Republic/Empire> would still be open for business. And there is a silent majority in APAC... The F2P kids from everywhere not Australia. I've seen some really bad child's english about huttball being thrown around a Singapore lan cafe for example. These are the people who cannot post on the forums and maybe they like the improved ping? But we are all entitled to our opinions... And I'm certainly not leaving unless I can't even play.

I feel a terrible song coming on... must... resist...!

How about a compromise: break sets up into groups? Like instead of one giant set you get Belt/Bracers as part one, head as part 2, Top/Bottom as part 3? In short, use the Covert Energy Armor way of grouping up sets in the database.

Non-photoshopped pics or it didn't happen.

Meh, I've a feeling the game is moving away from relying on subs for sustainability with more CM updates. I think we're already past that point. By now, purchases by F2P rich kids of Chinese Communist parties, Brazilian cartel drug lords, and princes and princesses from the oily Middle East who by the way CANT whinge on the forums can support this game even though subs can drop to ZERO. SWTOR has gone too far down a path we cannot follow.

Its an MMO. Solo players ****.

I've a feeling that this game could drop to 0 subs and it'll be sustained profitably by F2P rich kids in China, Brazil and the Middle East. Short of Disney revoking Bioware's licence (which again isn't possible due to the deal EA just signed), SWTOR is stuck to EA and will get managed into the ground. And it will stay that way until the CEOs wake up and pull the plug 8 years later (Eg The Sims Online). I frankly can't even THINK of a meaningful way to protest any game changes that would inflict enough damage on EA to either make them change tack or change devs.

ASA can't do **** to this game given that by subscribing and playing the game we agree to the Terms & Conditions... ...and it specifically states "If there is any conflict between the Terms of Service and any other rules or instructions posted on a TOR Service, BioWare and LucasArts shall resolve the conflict in its sole discretion." And let's not go into the amount of forcefields put up by the Indemnity sections, the ToS nuggets about content... I stopped reading at some point though, as this is an industry-wide practice. The only way this is going to change is if Federal law catches up with mmo gaming and allowing their Consumer Rights laws to start applying to a video game's development. Otherwise, mmos, computer games, and their whole shebang of money-grubbing tricks will just keep on trucking. Interestingly, the ToS says that your only recourse is to If you do not agree to the terms in this Terms of Service, your sole remedy is to not use EA Services and to cancel your Account or applicable subscriptions. You understand and agree that the cancellation of your Account or a particular subscription is your sole right and remedy with respect to any dispute with EA, including any dispute related to, or arising out of: (1) any term of this Terms of Service or EA's enforcement or application of this Terms of Service; (2) the Content and Entitlements available through EA Services or any change in Content or Entitlements provided through EA Services; (3) your ability to access and/or use EA Services and/or any Content or Entitlements thereon; or (4) the amount or type of fees, surcharges, applicable taxes, billing methods, or any change to the fees, applicable taxes, surcharges or billing methods for EA Services and/or any Content or Entitlements thereon. This alone is the ultimate forcefield preventing you to sue EA over anything in this game. Like I said, until consumer laws catch up with videogames, game devs can put this in their game ToS and we literally sign our digital souls away to them every time we create an account.

I wish there was even a community to run into on some servers.

Nope, moved to a different slot and the Holo Dancer still doesn't register.

How the hell does it work for CE items? All of them are grayed out except for my bike.

My friend, the Trooper is not for you. Now, leave us as we bask in the gratuitous litanies of righteous fury from the tiny Liberty Prime that is Forex.

Exactly. PVE is gloried 10 men [jumping through the hoops after hitting the gym to beef up by the adequate amount]. So, you level the field in pvp. HOWEVER, I dislike the idea of having Bolster in the endgame when you do have a pvp gearing system. I'd much rather have pvp gear that has crap pve stats and some Expertise and Bolster that makes everyone's stats except Expertise equal across ACs. The net result is anyone in any gear can step into pvp and compete, but grinding for pvp gear still rewards you with more expertise. After that, the rest is skill and coordination.

Fun thing about soloing as a Trooper type AC: all the drops are usable by everyone. So I'd take the nurse on a date, plow through the instance, and at the end of a few runs have everyone on the Thunderclap in uniform.

I'd like to think myself a natural tanker having gravitated to that role since the pen & paper days and by now have an impressive resume of rolling endgame main tanks across 8 mmorpgs. But I swear, half the joy (and the rest, frustration!) of a Jedi shadow tank is my HP just pingponging when getting focused fired on. Other tanks usually feel beefier the more gear I get; but this one never stops feeling like I'm in the middle of an epic struggle to stay alive. But I must say, it does feel exhilarating. And there is something really fun about being a stealth tank doing stealth ops with stealth heals and dps. It would be nice to be able to be anything though. My favorite class in that other panda mmo was the druid. With a 2ndary spec, I could be anything the group needed. Too bad there are no such thing as tank/dps/heal ACs.

Which is the problem with this gambling system. Some guys just get all the luck, other's have none of it. And then there's the rest of us who aren't ever going for black/black for various reasons and instead are drowning in GTN-bought modules for bargain bin prices. If the random dyes never existed, the GTN wouldn't be deluged with dye modules, and even more players would never get to spend credits to buy these things. If there was a way to buy cash currency using game currency, then yes, gambling makes it all worse. But since there isn't, the only way most of us are getting it within reasonable prices is for the system to generate so much junk that the price of each not-so-demanded module gets competed right down to the clearing point. I'd hate to admit it, but its the better of a really bad situation.