^ To the top w/ this one link below is the torocast highlight of the event taking place. http://www.torocast.com/3059/tor-for-tots/

^ to the top below is a link to the torocast spotlight of the event. http://www.torocast.com/3059/tor-for-tots/

Bump for a good cause, all the streamers are going hard in the paint doing The Bastion and SWTOR community proud hop on one of their streams to check it out fun times all around.

My best guess is your machine could be throttling down GPU/CPU power due to heat, I would suggest installing something like Core Temp to monitor the CPU temperature while playing, and getting something such as MSI Afterburner/EVGA Precision to monitor the GPU temperature while playing. Another thing to note is that though the 670M is a nice GPU for laptops, it struggles to play many games on Ultra type settings, if you scroll down to the bottom of the link below they show performance in terms of FPS for different games, and there are not many the 670M can play at Ultra in what I would consider acceptable FPS, it's more of a high setting type card tbh for most games if you want to play at acceptable FPS. The GPU can play some games at Ultra on acceptable FPS, but a lot of games it simply doesn't have the GPU CUDA cores to handle the enhanced settings such as xAA/shadows etc as it has 336 CUDA cores which is nearly half that of the 650TI(Entry level Nvidia desktop GPU gaming model), in terms of a Mobile GPU it's powerful, compared to it's desktop counterparts it's an entry level type GPU. Obviously though that's not a fair comparison, but it puts things in perspective about the power of the GPU your using that even though it's a higher end mobile GPU due to the number of CUDA cores it doesn't have the muscle to run a lot of games w/ all the bells and whistles turned on. The link below should give you a picture at least of the FPS you should expect in games, the bottom portion has the gaming benchmarks as you prolly don't care about the 3DMark scores etc. http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-670M.72197.0.html My main suggestion would be to turn off x AA in the SWTOR graphics settings along with shadows and see if that helps. Also turning some of the preset graphic options down if that doesn't completely solve the problem. The other issue could definately be heat related, your computer will throttle down the GPU/CPU if they are overheating to keep you from frying the laptop, so this could be another issue. If it's heat related use an air dust can to clean all the vents, and I would also suggest getting a laptop cooling pad to further boost your cooling if the heat turns out to be the issue. Links to Core Temp for monitoring your CPU temp is below, also linked is GPU temp, a program that will allow you to monitor the GPU temperature to see if overheating there is the problem. Hope that helps. http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ http://www.gputemp.com/ Also if you haven't done so yet make sure your GPU drivers are up to date from the nvidia website.

Honestly if you want a gaming build that will last a bit longer I'd go with an Ivy Bridge i5 3570k can be found at Microcenter for $170, and is twice as powerful per core than the FX 4100, so it will last you through more generations of games, and is basically the top of the line gaming processor. Add to this that with an aftermarket heatsink you can overclock it if you wish, but it really isn't necessary as it will blow through any game at stock speeds. Also you should look into an SSD for your OS/main games you are playing in this case TOR, you can find a 128GB model for around $100 now for SATA III drives, so you can fit OS +TOR and a few other games your playing and swap out the games that are on the SSD if you move onto a new one. Those are the only suggestions I have, you could also look into getting a bit more powerful GPU though the 7770 is perfectly adequate, you can find say a 6870 that though last gen is better than the 7770 for around $50 more in some cases less than that. Besides that just make sure you get a quality PSU, Antec makes some good 550-650 Watt PSU's taht are manufactured by Delta which is a good company, XFX also has some quality budget type PSU's. In terms of the Motherboard I'd look into a Gigabyte/Asus/Asrock Z77 board to pair with the 3570k, the rig will cost a bit more, but you will be happy with the performance in the long run. Not to hate on AMD, but the FX series couldn't compete with last gen Sandy Bridge processors, and the Ivy Bridge simply surpasses it even more. Ivy Bridge 3570k or SandyBridge 2500k i5 processors are far superior for gaming and will give you a more pleasurable gaming experience over the next generation of games as they simply have a far superior per core processing power efficiency of 2 x that of the FX line of processors. I would suggest looking into Microcenter for the processor at least, and they often run processor+mobo combos for Intel processors, so you will save money opposed to most other places. For the RAM/Case/other components I would shop around to find the best deal, overall you will build a much better rig for less money by building it yourself.

Yes you will have to upgrade, I would suggest looking at Asus Laptops in the $700-1200 range, those will vary from mid-level performance to the ones in the $1200 range handling the game fine at max settings as you can still find some 560m GPU laptops for that price. You will have to upgrade though, the game running on your current machine will be unplayable.

MMO's can succeed, it has been quoted by many developers that the problem with the MMO industry in its current state is that it's in somewhat of a stagnant state, there has been a lack of innovation or change that makes many games stand out from the others in the past years. There is also the problem that many gaming companies have tried to clone WoW for success, when the truth is that those who like WoW have likely been playing it for years, and have no real reason to pay another company for the same experience when they have so much time and effort put into their characters. A subscription based MMO can succeed, EvE Online is a sign of this, it dropped a few subs last year, but has regained most and showing some signs of growth again. Yes it has no where near the WoW subs sitting at 450k subs, and has made the developers of it so much money since launch that they can basically support it indefinitely. The difference is that EvE Online is fully sandbox, and one of the only sub based sandbox games on the market, so it found it's niche, and has flourished in that. That's the thing I don't think another game can necessarily expect WoW type success, but if they manage their development budget around expectations for the game, they can easily profit under the sub based model because if players like your product, word of mouth spreads and before long you can have a hit on your hands. With all this being said I doubt you will see another MMO with a development budget of SWTOR for the subscription model, a rule of thumb for new projects would be to stay well below $100million, and likely try to stay under the $50 million range in development, therefore the product doesn't need tons of subs to be profitable and a success. The reason for this would be that by being able to fund content and expansion with the subs a game does have so say Rift as an Example only has 250k subs but still churns out content and updates rather regularly. I think with the addition of content and making the game better with the subs a game does have while remaining profitable would be the best way for long term success in the model as you keep your current players happy while adding features and content to draw new players in. Some of the larger budget MMO's have a hard time doing this because of the initial cost of development they need so many subs right after the game hits to stay profitable and still churn out content that it leads to unreasonable expectations for a new MMO as it takes time to build up Sub Numbers through content advances and expansion. WoW gained it's most subs after the BC and LK expansions, but you will see that their lack of content in between their huge expansions has led to a loss of subs, showing that the WoW model isn't perfect by any means either. The problem is when we try to measure new MMO sub numbers based on WoW's success, we forget that to a gaming community that loves a game such as EvE Online, or some of the other smaller niche based MMO's that may not have 1 million plus subs are still success by the companies that run them standards. If an MMO is making a profit under the sub based model and able to fund content and expansion of the game and community under it, then it's a success. The problem is every MMO coming out is being compared to WoW it seems, and this is just a sign of the lack of innovation, I am waiting for a game to come out that can't be compared to any other MMO on the market and leaves you speechless the first time you play. The Reproduction is the game that I think will finally do this for me, and it likely won't have anywhere WoW type sub numbers, but among the community and people that are already following it, it will be a work of art to be enjoyed for many years. The lack of innovation though is what is really killing MMO's, many players are waiting for a truly unique experience that isn't like anything on the market, that's what is truly lacking is no one has taken much risk in the MMO industry in the past 8 years, and it shows by the number of games that can't survive under the subscription model because their initial player base gets the feeling of been there done that and moves onto the next shiny game only to find those developers cloned WoW yet again.

The laptop below would be an entry level gaming laptop that would be handle the game on max, shadows would be questionable, but it has good GPU/CPU power for an entry level gaming model, and made by Asus. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230412 The laptop below this text would be something more optimal if you want the GPU power to last you through the next gen of games, a long with a lot more memory for only $400 more. Basically your jumping two GPU tiers with this model to the 670m, and getting 8 GB more memory and more harddisk space for $400ish dollars, really nice model for the price. That would be more of a top tier model where you can run max shadows and everything and not worry about slowdowns due to the GPU being more powerful. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230408 The middle of those two in terms of options that would be in the $1200 range you mentioned would be a 660m laptop shown below, which is rather nice 1080p screen resolution, and other nice features for the price. It will also have no problems with max settings like the 670m, the model above was just an example of a more high tier system in the price range. For $1200ish though this 660m is a good buy and will run the game smooth as butter. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230404

That's basically what they do in TSW with the "use" function key, it can be bound to anything and does exactly what you were detailing, interacts with quest npc's when in range, quest gathering items, and other quest objectives such as doors that need to be opened, or items that need to be picked up.

I have to say this is a valid issue TSW made by Funcom also owned by EA can be run in both Dx9 for older GPU's, and also a Dx11 for those GPU's that support it. This may not seem like a huge issue now, but it would seem that if TSW a much smaller budget MMO can pull it off that it should be entirely possible for a game of the scale of TOR. To those saying it's not possible, TSW is proof that it is, and on a much smaller budget than TOR has.

An easy way to do this is what many new MMO's do and have a key that can be binded that is the use function, which formerly required players to right click to carry out such actions. How this would work is say the default "use" key binding is f, the player can then rebind it if they have a Naga/Logitech G600 type mouse so whenever they get close to NPC's/Quest objectives it will activate the action associated. The "use" function could be used so when players are close to conversation NPC's they just push this key and the conversation begins, or if they are near a gathering quest objective, or other quest objective that requires interaction such as a door, it would activate the needed action. It's a pretty simple mechanic, and well carried out in TSW allowing you to use the key bound to mouse or keyboard to interact with quest objectives and npc's.

Considering it's not on the TC, and it took them at least a month on TC to get 1.2 and 1.3 out I wouldn't expect anything until September in terms of a content update. You have to remember they had people playing warzones that were bugged at gaming conventions going up to launch. Just because they are letting people play at a convention doesn't mean it's anywhere near going live. Based on the facts we have from their previous content updates, it will take them time on the TC to iron out bugs, and this process usually takes about a month, so earliest the new content would be is around September unless they want to unleash a terrible bug ridden content update that will further upset the subs they have left. September/October is a better guess as nothing has hit TC yet, and pushing a major content patch live without any TC time would lead to more bugs than their current patches, which would be laughable at best.

I think if they buffed the Recruit Gear so it was within 10 mainstat/Endurance of BM gear, perhaps less in the 5 range for some cases, it would help these balancing issues. Also perhaps boost expertise so it's within 10 of the BM gear, so say the BM gear has 100 expertise on a piece, the Recruit will have 90 and so on. One of the real problems with recruit is that yes it add expertise, but the mainstat/endurance is lacking. Overall what they're doing currently is in most cases giving fresh 50's gear that isn't as good a lot of the times endurance/mainstat wise as that they were leveling in, yes the expertise is nice, but doesn't change the fact that the lack of endurance/mainstat makes it hard for most to compete in warzones. All this would fix this, but below is the real solution to the problem. Bioware either needs to matchmake warzones based on valor rank, or come up with a system to do it based on Item Level. Another idea would be to add solo ranking one gains from just doing normal warzones that shows the success rate of the player. Overall though cross server q's to match like geared or valor ranked/ solo ranked players would fix this problem completely as recruit geared would play recruit or partial BM, while BM/Warhero would play each other. Those are all big changes to their PvP system, and seeing their development times on much smaller things, I wouldn't expect such things this year as it took them 6 months just to do Ranked warzones.

This is done in TSW very well, their investigation missions are difficult, and challenging for the most part, and give a break from combat. Another idea is to combine these aspects into quests, there are many in TSW that are combinations of investigation missions, and then you will say kill a boss type NPC at the end after unlocking the puzzle, this isn't needed though, it could be all investigation. Another way they could go with this is having quests that are simply puzzle based where you say go to a location and have to put the Holocrons or whatever object is being used in a specific order to unlock the next step of the mission or complete it. I think this is a good step in making the leveling process in SWTOR more diverse as it's concerning that there aren't these type of missions already and they chose to instead go with kill x and gather y missions. This is where TSW did better than TOR in many ways through their leveling process even though the game doesn't have levels per say it gives you so many choices and ways to level up that's enjoyable and doesn't feel as bland as TOR.

This would only do everything to improve leveling in SWTOR, if you were bored with warzones/planet missions, in a open flight space system it would be easy to add endless quests to allow someone to level almost entirely through space outside the class quests. Also it adds another element for the endgame of SWTOR. 1. Space PvP, hopefully not warzone style, but just open world space pvp where they would have pvp space zones or something with no ship limits. 2. Endgame Open Space missions: Correlian Corvette etc from SWG type missions where you take down powerful enemy fleets or something of the sort. 3. Room to add content endlessly. Honestly if they would make an announcement and show details of an open flight space system and plans for it soon, I think it would do a lot to show that they plan on still giving meaningful content past F2P.

I'm guessing they will put a patch such as that on the Test Center, and like 1.2 which was a content heavy patch, it will take them at least a month, but likely much longer being the game system changes in terms of the level increase and all the headaches this could cause. In addition testing a whole planet of new content will take them some time, a long with the new Op/warzone I'm sure there will be a plethora of bugs they will need to address. Since it's not on the Test Center yet, best guess would be September at earliest likely later in the month, then in more likelihood October/November release to ramp up F2P and give them their first content patch to put in the F2P store. It would make sense that they would be testing the new content in relation to the F2P store in order to offer it as content extensions for the F2P players as other games have done. They haven't given us enough details yet though, so if it was subscriber only content not to be given to the F2P players without a subscription the development would likely be further ahead in schedule and you could see it sooner. My guess is this August event will ramp up people for the next content patch, and be related in some way, and you will see the patch on TC sometime soon, and the patch would be delivered in September. October/November would be the latest though, as I would think they would want to have that done before F2P hits or right when it hits to give them their first cash shop content updates to sell to the F2P'ers.

10/10, that really sums up my thoughts pretty well, they talk about community yet with 12 servers in NA they each can't have their own forum. That in itself is proof they care nothing about community, not having individual server forums when you barely have more than 10 servers in the NA is just laughable. Everything else you stated is entirely true as well.

Logitech G600 or a Razer Naga will fix that problem, I prefer the G600 myself because of higher DPI for FPS, and it fits my hand better, but either that or the Naga will make this a non issue. You can easily keybind all 48 quickbar slots bound using the G600/Naga and it only requires a push of the shift/alt or ctrl key to activate additional bindings . Really though think of it as an investment if you plan on playing MMO's, it makes the experience much better in PvP/PvE and you can also bind other things such as targeting much easier using a mouse such as those two.

The Secret World/Eve are the closest thing to those things listed on the market atm. I played The Secret World last weekend, and it is a perfect mix of sandbox elements with a very challenging questing system. The Secret World doesn't have levels like thought of in other MMO's, instead it uses gear to tier content by QL levels 0-10. It has a skill wheel with over 200 abilities that you custom build your character skills from these based on weapon/magic skills. There is no reset for the skillpoints/ability points, so if a player spends them unwisely they are not able to simply start over. Also in the game there are corpse runs to some extent upon death, however they usually aren't more than 100-200m as the respawn points are spread through the map correctly, this may be a deal breaker for some, but some of the quests really require you to take this time running back to your corpse to think about what you did wrong the last time, and what to do in order to survive the next. To add to this the combat was fun and somewhat challenging in The Secret World, not overly so to cause frustration, but one needs to use terrain, kiting, and tactics to defeat enemies as most have special abilities that will kill you quickly if you stand in them, honestly fighting 1 mob in The Secret World gave you a much more Heroic feeling than fighting 3 in SWTOR due to the fact that one had to think about the combat and change their rotation and even skills based on the enemies being fought. Honestly The Secret World reminded me why I play MMO's, it was fresh, exciting, and felt innovative, which are all things I sadly cannot say about SWTOR, which now just gives me the feeling of been there and done that as it really took no risks to try anything new. The Secret World is also run by EA though, so no matter how much I enjoyed it, which I really did, it showed me what SWTOR should have been like with very lifelike feeling environments, day/night cycles, and doing all this while having fully V/O'ed quests was truly amazing. If people don't have a problem with EA though and want these type of sandboxy games, The Secret World is worth a checkout, I was totally amazed with the innovation that was in that game, and it showed me how little effort the SWTOR devs put into trying anything new in this game. I would love to play The Secret World, but am to weary of EA run MMO's now to really give it a try. All that being said, The Secret World/Eve Online are more challenging than the average MMO, and time really will equal progression unlike in themepark games where content cleared = progression to the most extent. Eve Online more so as it can take years to truly be competitive in that game. The Secret World to a lesser extent, but still being so as those who have the most experience and time to play will be further in the skill wheel, quests, and have an upper hand in PvP which a lot of traditional MMO gamers will not like as the player with a full skill wheel can adapt better to enemies, and synergize their skills to defeat enemies upon death, a concept also used in GW2 where you can change your skills upon death in PvP to adapt to the enemies being fought. Both games are more niche markets, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing as it keeps all the people from WoW that think WoW was the first MMO out for the most part.

WoW I just laugh at you fanbois, it's like Biofail pays you to search the forums for every use of Biofail so you can then go troll people...........

That's not why SWG closed, they were having no trouble covering their operating costs with the License Agreement they had in place with Lucas Arts. BioFail/EA came in and raised the cost of this liscense for SOE when they were negotiating the terms of their License for TOR including a no competition clause for the length of their contract from other Star Wars MMO's. So basically they raised the cost of the license so that SOE couldn't afford it, while also making a clause in their contract with LA to have no other Star Wars MMO's during the time, thus killing SWG and their only Star Wars MMO competition off in a single blow. You know what's funny about this? By raising the license cost BioFail/EA has likely forced themselves to go F2P because they couldn't afford the license cost + maintaining their game with the price they had negotiated. SWG was killed by Biofail/EA, SOE would still be running and maintaining the game had they been able to agree to terms for the license at the same rate they had previously had with LA, but Biofail/EA came in and raised the cost so much thus putting them out of operation. Funny thing is the raise in the licensing cost that EA/Biofail agreed to will likely not be good for the future of this game as they continue to lose subs, and eventually won't be able to afford the cost of their own license agreement, thus putting this game out of service as well.

TSW a similiar MMO, very flawed at the same time won't say it's perfect by any means did a fully V/O MMO, with story as a main concept, however they at the same time made a game world that doesn't feel as static and dead as SWTOR, there are day/light cycles, you can interact with the environment in interesting ways that make the game world feel much more lively. Add to this that the quests in TSW are fun exciting, challenging, and many of them are puzzle based or investigation type missions make the game more fun during the leveling process. In other words where TOR went the most wrong to me is their planet design and implementation where the world feels very lifeless and instanced. TSW has instances, but they do not break from the flow of the game world like the ones in TOR do in many ways. Also the environment in TOR is so on rails, that it's not fun to explore you have to get into the canyons of TOR mostly by following a distinct path envisioned by the developers, in TSW you are encouraged to explore the world as you see fit, and find interesting and sometimes challenging. Part of this in TSW was that mobs weren't just related to quests, they were throughout the world, and as you explored you discovered rare or never before seen enemies. Another reason TOR is so lacking now that I've played GW2 and now TSW, is that the combat is just very lacking in many elements, during leveling there is very little need to use tactics or kite enemies, especially as a casting class say gravround commando or Telekenetics Sage/Sorc Equivilant, the combat is just simply boring. You are forced with certain talent specs to be immobile to get a majority of your dps or healing output. An idea that TSW and GW2 uses that changes this is not forcing you to stand in place while casting abilities, this makes casting related specs actually viable in PvP and more fun to play in PvE as you aren't forced to stand in one place to be effective. This point is really played out in TOR PvP now as the casting reliant classes are far less effective, and the healing class with the most instant spell castes the Scoundrel/Ops are the most effective PvP healing class now. If TOR did a complete combat overhaul to make it more tactically based around movement and positioning, the game would improve drastically. As it stands the combat makes leveling somewhat dull and uninteresting as one doesn't have to challenge themselves to use tactical things such as terrain, and for the most part can stand in place through most the PvE combat without needing to move. Also making casted spells usable by moving would create more diverse class talent specs in PvP making it more enjoyable for all, and help to start eliminate all the FOTM pyrotechs/vanguards/marauders/sentinals running through warzones.

Lot of complaints lately about people joining already lost warzones or about to end warzones due to people leaving. The fact is there should be some sort of penalty, instead of a time lockout which I don't know the devs would ever implement, a valor loss would be applicable to this. So say you leave 1 warzone the penalty is say 1000 valor, that's is not too harsh. The thing that makes this penalty work is that it will reset every day, but over the course of the day, the penalty is multiplied by the number of warzones left. So lets just use an outlandish example, but some player is having a terrible day, and quits 5 warzones. 1st warzone = -1000 valor 2nd warzone = -2000 valor 3rd warzone = -3000 valor 4th warzone = -4000 valor 5th warzone = -5000 valor Because this player quit all of these warzones they lost a sum total of -15000 valor Also to make this work more effectively you lose rank as well so say you were 81 and leave a ton of warzones you can then drop below 80 and lose your conqueror title. This penalty isn't outlandish, and especially for higher valor ranked players would give them a reason to stay in warzones. The fact is this may not work in the game due to the fact that I don't think their system can tell the difference between a disconnect and someone actually leaving the warzone, if it's possible for them to tell though this system could work. Fact remains something should be done to penalize people for leaving warzones, and this system isn't that outlandish in penalty as it doesn't lock you out of the warzone(something they have said they don't want to do for some reason), but it does calculate the penalty based on how many you leave each day. The reason this wouldn't be weekly is that could cause a ton of QQ, but I don't think anyone would have a problem with people receiving a valor loss for leaving warzones, and this would help to fix the problem of people joining already lost warzones and feeling their time is being wasted by the player who left.

Yep I agree with you, EA/Bioware failed to mention the other 60% that unsubscribed was due to their lack of content development and implementation into the game, fixing bugs that should have been fixed in beta still almost 8 months after launch. The other percentage of these people likely had terrible performance due to the games horrible game engine, and then add the server side performance and then dead servers for month and that sums up why the other 60% left. Also without looking further into why people selected Subscription as why they cancelled, the subscription reason could easily be linked to their lack of content, and performance issues not being worth the subscription fee. Subscription MMO's aren't dead by any stretch of the imagination, the reason many of these new MMO's can't hold subs is because people play them and get the been there done that already feeling from playing WoW and the other WoW clones for so many years. Once another MMO comes out that is somewhat innovative it could easily succeed under the subscription model because players would feel a fresh and new experience and not have the been there done that feeling the majority feel after playing SWTOR.

He's making the speculation based on the fact that likely the %40 that unsubbed due to subscription would play the F2P version for the class stories and quests , and have little reason to use the cash shop for XP perks as this would just make the part they want to experience go faster. Add to this that most of these will have no reason to subscribe and help replenish guilds of subscribers that do Operations and Ranked PvP with new members, and you have blown a hole into an already sinking ship. The fact remains that going F2P with 500k subs is unheard of in the MMO industry, and just show's that EA is greedy and unwilling to do what it takes to fix this game which is adding meaningful content endgame and in other areas of the game that will keep subscribers.