It would have! Sith are jerks. And if the Republic were willing to commit more forces to protecting the Foundry, as opposed to taking a hands-off approach to it, it might have worked*. But in doing so, and in being able to support an initiative like that directly instead of turning their heads from it, they'd be a little more like the Empire. (*: Okay, I'm being silly, the status quo is supreme and nothing is galactic law like "the sith and jedi will carve each-other to pieces for the entirety of the era"**.) (**: Because the Star Cabal sez so.)

That's a good reason to join him, then. It sounds like a cool scene!

The new story content arriving with planet Makeb - will it only have a planet storyline, like Ilum or the World Razer chain on Belsavis, or will it contain new class-specific story content? I know I'm very much looking forward to seeing some of the ramifications of our class endings in the world.

The story element of the game begins dissipating as soon as characters hit level 50, and many players are playing alts who have already seen the story content many times over. As such, "old content" is generally skipped to get to rewards and interesting fights - there's no challenge or reward in fighting a pack of regular enemies fairly, for example, so why not hug the wall to avoid them? Generally, I find that if I ask politely to watch the cut-scenes, the other players will be cool with it. Just don't act like it's the assumed state. Watching the cut-scenes in hard-modes is just weird anyway, like how your Sith might be talking like he's apprenticed to a Darth that you know is dead.

If you listen to the fans and the game turns out poorly, it's no fault of the fans. The fans are, by definition, not professionals. They are not earning wages in exchange for understanding what sort of game they like and the ramifications their stated desires have on the larger game. People who work for game companies are. Their job, when producing a mass-market title, includes doing adequate research on what their fans want, what they will be satisfied by, and what will ruin the game even if the fans aren't thinking about it. If an insider says "well, we listened to the fans, so it's no fault of ours" they're saying that that's the sort of company that would roll out a Car Built for Homer. Not that I'm saying that TOR is that bad of a game - I mean, I am still subbed, and I do enjoy playing it, but "the fans steered us" is a lame defense.

That's not a legitimate e-mail and you may ignore it.

"The World Razer" is apparently some sort of intelligent planet-destroying weapon that slumbers at the heart of Belsavis. I basically assume it to be a sentient, talking death star, and you should too, because that's hilarious. "The Burning Way" is an ancient colloquialism for the fact that if you pour tons of magma from elsewhere in the Belsavis crust into its prison it has a devil of a time digging its way out.

This (along with same-faction /em - Nar Shadaa gets ridiculous without that) would be a good feature for PvE-RP servers. It probably wouldn't be allowed on PvP servers, and would probably be locked while in warzones. On the other hand, it would, in fact, increase the amount of stupid sass you get after a warzone, but it would also allow cross-faction socializing to be coordinated better.

I think it's more interesting to play a character that's a good person in a corrupt system. (Or at least, as good as a person as you can be if you're working for the Empire.)

Oh, that's an excellent thread, thanks for sending it my way.

Oh, awesome! I'm impressed. Have you tried any other HMs yet?

I'm curious about the experiences of other players with beating flashpoints with fewer than four players. (That is, running with at least one companion out.) I've beaten Battle of Ilum HM like this before, and it was a bit of a rush and required some weird tactics on the final boss (use of Unity / Heroic moment, for example) - oh, and skipping boss encounters where possible. I think it's a neat challenge, and I'm wondering about other flashpoints where this might be feasible. Anything with a stay-out-of-the-fire mechanic would probably kill the companion quickly, so Black Talon probably wouldn't work, for example.

Still talking about the IA ending, of course. I am still tempted to roll the guild on an RP server sometime. Agents will double-take, everyone else will think it's a bland, generic name.

IA ending spoilers, all day, everyday. Hunter's definitely the best villain in the game, though.

Imperial Agent ending spoiler.

But is it really interesting to talk about "right" and "wrong" with respect to canon, anyway? I think, like in KOTOR 2, you can get a lot of mileage out of alternate ways of playing with the themes and cosmology of a canon (like star wars), regardless of whether it's in step with the party line of the franchise.

The lead writer of KOTOR 2, Chris Avellone, wrote Kreia as an attack on how the Force was portrayed in the rest of Star Wars canon. He didn't like the binary morality of the rest of Star Wars fiction and how it idolized wandering, selfless space samurai as being paragons of moral achievement. Avellone viewed Kreia's philosophy very sympathetically, and as such, within the context of KOTOR 2, she's "right", but it obviously doesn't hew with the rest of the canon, so if you examine how the force is depicted and discussed in other works, she's obviously going to be very, very wrong. People who like Kreia probably also like the Star Cabal.

Vector Hyllus has his fans. (I think he's charming.) Plus, it's important that the IA get a hard LS for-the-empire, diplomatic type second - it's fairly obvious that he's written to be the opposite of Kaliyo. Not that, of course, there aren't plenty of characters which could easily be fleshed out and added to the companion ranks for every class, and Hawkins would be a perfectly fine one. We're just going to be a bit tetchy because you're knocking our favorite joiner.

Kamino, because an oceanic planet of storms might be an interesting mini-location. A cloud city would be fun too. (Like Bespin, if Bespin existed.) I suppose I want another urban platform planet like Coruscant or Nar Shadaa, just with something cool in the background instead of more city.