That wasn't a news article, sorry I should have said, that was the EA press release.

Does this mean that 1.4 is coming this august?

Some people don't seem to understand, this is a call to investors. If an investor asks for the subscription numbers for this game, then EA are legally obliged to answer. This isn't just EA throwing out random information to people, it's legally binding and is monitored. They cannot include F2P numbers as they are not subscriptions. A little background, when EA released the subscription figures for Q3 2012 it was just after the launch of the game, at this point 1.7m people (of the supposed 2+ million who bought the game) had set up a subscription. Most hadn't actually paid a subscription since the first month was free, but 1.7m were set up. By the end of Q4 2012 the number was 1.3m, so while they were 400k down, it's not known how many of the 1.7m actually paid their first months subs and how many cancelled before that. Subscription (even if you haven't started paying yet) isn't the same thing as a f2p account. To include those would be lying to investors and would also affect your stock value. You would have to be pretty stupid to try and pull that. I think the actual figure will possibly be 600k or so, but it's summer and there is a major sporting event going on (if you're in Europe the second this summer). So there will be a lot of people inactive at the moment who may still be subbed, likewise there are those who will resub when new content is out. The figure will be a snapshot of the number of subs, but it may well rise again once new content comes out.

Firstly, Makeb won't be in patch 1.4. So no new planet, from what I've read you get a new operation (as well as nim ec), a new fp, a new warzone and a new daily area. The other stuff in the E3 vid will be 'This Year' but nothing concrete. There is no guarentee that HK-51 will be in 1.4 although i'd be surprised if he isn't. About F2P i'd be shocked if EA went that route entirely. I imagine what you will get is a f2p service alongside a subscription service where subscribers get items free rather than having to pay for them, plus maybe other benefits. As for the original post, I would have a world event on GW2 Launch with maybe the patch hitting PTS so it arrives around 3-4 weeks later.

Infiltration Shadow 1 How are we perceived by others Weak DPS, Very Low Survivability, Bring nothing to the party with regards to (de)buffs. 2 How do I perceive it We do have survivablity concerns compared to all other DPS classes as we are in light armor and thus cannot take many hits. We have no self healing, party buff, mob debuffs. Our only strong point is against someone like Soa who we can use the short windows at the end of the fight to put some serious burst damage down. We are poor at sustained single target and poor at AoE and have no real DoTs. We are also very easy to read in PvP, a well played opponent will just wait for the second clairvoyant strike then try to negate the upcoming project. I would like Shadows to get a Medium Armor Proficiency (maybe unlockable in the infiltration skill tree) to put us on par with sentinels and gunslingers, and maybe a party buff that combines the Sentinel and Gunslinger ones (increased damage / heals plus a damage reduction maybe at 50% of the level of the others). Finally something done to the talents to try to mix up the 4 attack combo that seems the staple of infiltration shadows (maybe a proc to allow shadow strike to work from the front). It is a fun class to play though despite all that.

Had this twice now on SOA once in 8 man, once in 16 man. The game just stops working, you can't type into general chat but guild chat or ops chat still works. Your abilites (such as buffs won't activate either) and it will eventually just log you out. When I logged back in I quit the group but the ops frame was still showing with me in it. I was reinvited and then was told I couldn't enter the instance unless I was in a ops group which I was.

Totally agree with OP. Using group finder so far I haven't been able to fully complete an op (once due to the game crashing and once due to undergeared teammates). It's impossible to queue for Story EV if you are locked out of everything but Soa.

Mixed feeling so far. First run went ok, if a little quiet, but i'm not a big chatter myself so didn't overly bother me. The second time as a disaster. Queued for story mode ops and after a short while EV pops, so we all enter. Everything was going really well, straight to Soa no wipes. Then we had a problem on Soa since 4 of the group had never done the fight before, but ok we give them time to watch the vids, then give it a go. We wiped during his final stage because the one tank who knew the fight died and the other didn't move Soa under the pyramid. Ok no problems with that, you expect the occasional wipe, was sure we'd get him second time. We all exited and tried to re-enter, but kept getting a message saying we couldn't enter due to a fight in progress (even though there wasn't one). A minute later get a message from Server Admin saying we can't be put back into the instance. We tried a few things but nothing would allow us to re-enter. Finally we just gave up and called it quits since it was getting late and some people wanted to go to bed. So I didn't get my BH comms and I'm now locked out of EV up to Soa. Gonna try tonight to see if I can somehow get back into EV (not holding out much hope). Oh and Larry, you can already turn off the option to join an FP halfway through (it shouldn't have reset that is a bug).

I have cleared the fight (as sent and shadow) with both another melee and with a ranged. I would be all for them introducing something new alongside this to raise the difficulty a bit higher. I've also done this with 2 different pug groups as tank, one all melee, one all ranged. The difficulty level is massively less without having to move around, you're never out of interrupt range for a start. I also completed the FP as healer and it's so much easier again with ranged, target appears, run, drop aoe heal, go back to tank, repeat. Throw in the occasional cleanse if the tank isn't concentrating and you've got him beaten. Compare that to melee who are occasionally getting splash damage off incinerate and dying or the tank loses aggro because he can't back away from the lightning and keep attacking so once taunt goes he has no threat. Or as a healer you lose sight of the tank at a crucial moment because he's moved behind a pillar and you can no longer see him. From every persons perspective in the group all ranged > ranged + melee > all melee. So take someone who has just really chosen this to get the black hole comms, you know you are going to make the fight harder for yourself as a tank and healer if you have melee in the group, the answer to which is don't take melee. In short, I don't want a gimp, just a mechanic that is fair to all classes.

The point isn't to make the FP easier as such, it's to make sure it isn't a gimp to take melee instead of range. I've started to see plenty of "LF1M Ranged DPS for Lost Island". Now fair enough they may be wanting to balance melee with range, but i think it more likely the healer and tank want an easier ride so take ranged over melee. A poster above mentioned Shadows / Assassins which don't tend to suffer in this encounter quite as much as a sentinel or guardian does. Moving the boss around the room while staying within 4m at all times is tough, especially when the boss decides to stop mid move to cast something. I'm willing to bet come tomorrow there will be a post on the forum saying that a melee dps got vote kicked from a Lost island group.

It does tell you, if there are no schemes to learn it says so in the tooltip in place of the chance to get a schematic.

I recently levelled a Sentinel, and I found it was significantly easier than Guardian was. Also after belsavis I tended to go with the melee tank companion rather than the healer.

Dunno why, I just assumed DPS lol. Still, on my Shadow I made myself a full set of Battlemaster Force Master augmented gear and the filled it with Rakata and columi mods. You shouldn't be going to Denova really until you've at least gone through EV and KP once and picked up some Columi.

What you have to remember though is Denova is completely different in SM than KP or EV are. Below is a comparison between WH Weaponmaster Vs. Columi Weaponmaster WH Armor 673 Strength 87 (105 assuming augment) Endurance 111 (123 assuming augment) Expertise 110 (Irrelevant) Critical 61 Surge 53 Columi Armor 627 Strength 93 Endurance 116 Power 53 (replace with crit) Accuracy 48 (replace with surge) So overall augmented warhero is better than unaugmented columi.

It's tough to say. From personal experience how you run your crew skills can affect chance greatly. If you run say 5 gathering missions log off, wait til they all complete then log back in there seems to be a higher crit chance (possibly due to a delayed dice roll) than just staying logged in to run them. Similarily if I craft items I tend to find that sending all 5 companions out together give more crits than sending 1 comp to make 5 items. Oh and BTW, if you already know the scheme it picks another one from the pool.

Watch this video, says it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4AmIKhfr40

Did you switch players during the FP? I had a similar issue when I went from tank to dps mid FP and it kept putting me back at the start of the instance. Usually exiting and going in again will fix it.

For story mode that should be fine. If you are unsure check your WH stats against Columi and see if you get the same. Since 1.2 they changed the way that stats are distributed among mods in PvP gear. BM basically used be Rakata with slightly less End + Primary and some expertise. Now you get a lot less end + primary and more expertise. The fact your gear is augmented might offset this loss or it might not, I don't PvP so I don't know the stats. When testing 1.3 on PTS we were doing Lost Island on HM with a nearly full rakata scoundrel healer and a tank in full BM/WH and the healer couldn't keep him alive against the Shaclaw boss before you get to the droid, so my feeling is no.

It's no secret that this boss is a melee hater. The tactics for melee compared to ranged DPS make this highly unfair to melee guys (especially sentinels). So I would propose the following tweek to make this fairer to melee groups while still remaining challenging and fun. When the boss is about to drop his lighting ball thingy and the target appears at the DPS's feet, instead of it being a second before the ball appears make it 5 seconds. Next make the target follow the DPS (or healer or whoever) as they run around. Now when he puts the target at your feet the DPS has to run from the center and place his ball of lightning on the edge then run back to the center. You are still filling the arena with lighting, so it's still a challenge, but the tank can stay in the middle same as with the range guys. If you did it with an all range group the tactics would remain I would imagine pretty much the same.

If you abandon the class quest AFAIK you can't do dailies (since ilum is an extension of your class quest). OPs and HMFP's open at 50 not on story completion.

1 Word. Elite.

You cannot earn 10 black hole comms per day every day. First off LI shares it's reward with other HMFP's, and secondly you cannot repeat ops. So 10 a day for 2 days then 5 every other day (not counting weeklies). I would imagine this is some way to balance out the extreme difficulty some melee heavy groups have with Lost Island (especially PUG's).

Totally agree with the OP on this. This isn't just a problem with synthweaving, it's the same with all crew skills. Why are Tionese implants or Earpieces not BoE, it's not like they are a common drop. As someone who forms a lot of groups for ops and hmfps it's annoying when you ask someone what gear they have and they say full columi (or tionese) and rock up with 2 lv49 green implants and a green earpiece because "I don't do dailies". Tionese level gear should be BoE and craftable from stuff you can get from HMFP's. I know you can buy columi (and now win if from FP's) but if you could make Tionese maybe by using 1 biometric alloy you would find there is a good market for it. And to the second poster, you could earn the gear faster than the credits it would cost to rip columi level gear. ~100K per piece * 5 = 500k Legacy Gear = Minimum 750k So 1.25m just for that, and it goes up to 1.75m if you don't want to use the legacy gear.

Oh, I agree, if it worked right that would be fine. As a class we are one of the worst at sustained DPS (infs I mean) yet one of our biggest attacks is consistantly denied us in ops because you can't tell where the sweet spot is.

Please can you do 1 of the following either 1, Make Infiltration Tactics allow you to activate Shadow Strike form any angle or 2, Remove the effect condition entirely. I'm sure it's been posted before but i'm sick of having to run around in ops to find the bosses sweet spot for Shadow Strike (which 99% of the time isn't behind the boss but more to the side). Either turn off the condition or make it turn off during infiltration tactics.