The three MMOs you can bet on being here in a couple of years are STO, WoW and SWToR. Why you ask? A simple reason, a backstory with cult-like following. Many newer players of WoW seem to forget the legacy that WoW was built upon. Sure, it was the first mainstream MMO breakthrough, but there were and have been others that technically were up there. WoW was created during the end of the gamer 'age', if you can call it that, where gaming was not as mainstream as today. Which one of us that comes from that time doesn't remember the Warcraft games? That's what WoW was built upon and it could count on the loyal followers of the franchise to back an MMO. I'm not sure if WoW brought out today, with somewhat up-to-date standards in terms of gaming and graphics, would enjoy the same success. Us old-timers still know the franchise, and I would be tempted to try it just for that. Warcraft (other than obviously WoW itself) isn't mainstream enough these days to guarantee that by itself, if you ask me. Star Trek doesn't even need explaining, I'm not playing it right now but I have a lifetime subscription. Why? It'll be there in a few years and I will deffo pick it up at some point, and the moment I shoot some phasers or whatever, I'll have a smile on my face. Star Wars could be considered the biggest cult-following of all imo. So AoC, Rift, Aion, Eve-Online, Guild Wars and even Warhammer, these don't have that support structure of decades old fanboys/girls. Some survive through F2P, others through niche markets (Eve-o being brutal, GW with its great PVP base and skill diversity system). Sure, I'd like to see more content *now* from BW, anyone in their sane mind would. People will get bored with it too, people got bored with WoW in droves. A lot of them came back, a lot of you quitting now will come back to this later on. Star Wars isn't going away, and nor is this MMO.

Only Eve-Online from what I know has had a suspicion culture going that far amongst the 'guilds' (corporations and alliances). In PL we'd screen applicants in a multitude of ways, going from a interview to full API key exposures. API keys and the character names of all personas on that account are run through a DB of all known spies and other persona non grata. If we find evidence ANY of the characters are owned by someone with multiple accounts then this is probed, and more checks are run if needed. We also actively monitored IP addresses used by members and applicants wherever we had access to this info (mumble, irc services, website). These are again cross-checked against known offending IPs. The PL website and forums have a type of unicode watermarking built in which means any leaked information can be traced back to the account in question (including screenshots as the unicode watermark leaves a very minute visual marker). Passwords were monitored in a similar way. If a member would use a password that an unwanted person had used in the past that would be flagged up and investigated. Yes sirs, internet spaceships is, and always has been, serious bzns. Edit: so what I'm saying is, you might have accidentally joined PL in SWTOR, if they made a guild xD If so, o/ guys

I thought it was a bit funny. Whilst working here I found that the Bonetrasher fight works by making players randomly cast the Taunt skill on Bonetrasher. Cheeky and clever by the devs, I like it That's all. Edit: Actually, 'Taunt' is also a base event it seems. So the Taunt skill is a wrapper around the taunt base event which I assume is simply a max-threat+1 on the threat table. Still interesting. It's basically the same thing, but they're not really forcing a skill fire, just triggering the same underlying mechanism. Good thinking ahead.

Really? How old are you, and I'm not trying to patronising here :/ How does this matter at all? So there's only 4 encounters, I'd rather have 4 good ones than 12 bad ones. Honestly, if you get truly upset about these things you need to sort some stuff out. It's not healthy to get upset about these trivial matters. Enjoy the game or enjoy something else.

I hope you're not just talking nonsense and are actually submitting bugs. The rest of your additions to the thread have no point? Such as comparing the design and creation of a closed system network controller to that of an MMO application, which is ludicrous and nonsensical. The point still being, if you encounter a bug report it in the proper way and that's it. There's better ways to voice frustration than making blanket generalisations. If you are a network engineer or a circuit designer, I would expect a shred more maturity.

Assuming you're talking from an RP-perspective with killing, the same-faction BGs are training excercises. I.e. imagine they're using a far more advanced version of paintball/laser tag. Relevance in this matter is purely subjective, if you feel you're not killing your pixels in a sufficiently appreciable way I'm sorry for that *hands tissue*

Instead of complaining about 'lazy devs' please put a post with *specific* bug details and, if possible, reproduction steps in the appropriate forum section. You can also use the /bug feature in-game to directly report a bug. Your tears alone will never fix anything, tears are sadly not valid input for a developer.

I run a Teamspeak 3 server on my 512mb Linode with no effort. You can get TS only hosts for cheaper and even less set up, but my linode offers me a lot more than just TS. Bandwidth for that kind of user size is negligible. You could probably run it from a home machine, though I find that annoying with up-times in most cases. If you decide to run it off your own machine or a linode, there are freely available installers or bash scripts for the servers that automate 95% of the setup. As for non-TS, Ventrillo has worked well in the past, so has Mumble. I wouldn't recommend any beyond those personally, as I've always used those 3.

It looks like that, for the near future, that +41 crystals are the top ones, barring potentially very rare crystals. There's no proof of crystals above that range. The rarity will be mainly for the white colour as 1.2 will NOT have any white colours available through other means. Whilst the means for getting white crystals is coming at a later point it's already been noted that it will, most likely, not a trivial case. So get a white because of the colour, it should stay competitive in the short-medium term. Long term I expect higher value crystals, but the ability to gain new white would come too. Crafting colour crystals could change to a 'colour component' + 'value component' so you can have white + 41 or white + 57 with the colour components being extremely rare for white. *shrug* should suggest that!

The tears alone were worth it!

Want to buy one of my crystal balls?

Let me tell you a story! Once upon a time... I bought a piece of forum software. After some time I requested that the developers add a troll reporting button. After sufficient threadnoughts and flaming on the developer forums the request was actually accepted and implemented. BUT OH MY GOD, the developers did not apply this new feature to all older versions?!!?!?!!?!!1111111111111..... ! Thus started the threadnought wars on the developer forums about the injustice of not applying this fabulous new feature to all older versions. Sure they'd be outdated, sure everyone would upgrade soon anyway, but what about MY ATTACHMENT to these bygone relics?!?! Oh sure, they OBVIOUSLY tried to palm it off by pointing out that refactoring all the old stuff would take a lot of effort due to the fact that the mechanism was in a different place... YADDA YADDA YADDA. I don't care about techspeak!?! Who cares if they would need to waste a lot of resources for a minor benefit? I WANT MY CAKE AND I WANT IT NOW!!!!!1111 I still don't have a troll report button in my older versions, and I got banned from their forums. ps: Grow seh **** up.

Pre 1.2: - T1.1 Tionese available from NM/HM FP content and normal operations - T1.2 Columi available from HM FP content and normal/HM operations - T1.3 Rakata available from HM and Nightmare mode operations 1.2 - T2.1 Campaign gear available from dailies (might as well by equal to FP) and normal/HM new operation - T2.2 not yet available, and nor is nightmare mode on the new operation So you're complaining the 'new Columi' is available in exactly the same way the old Columi is available right now? They've already noted that Normal mode becomes 'store mode' now and will not have any influence on what gear you get, it's for the story. HM becomes the new base line to getting base line raiding gear, which you currently can get WITHOUT raiding already. Nightmare mode on the new operation will introduce the next level up and will not be available from solo content just like Rakata isn't. Flashpoints are short enough and small enough to be considered PUGable and thus solo. Of course, some of you already knew this. The main point here is that there are people who feel a need to have gear that is not available to anyone not playing the game the way they are. And to be honest, I wouldn't complain if it WAS that way, but it isn't and I'm not going to complain either. You'll get your carrot, I'm sure you'll survive a while not being able to stand around in fleet with armour noone else has. No matter which side of the argument you are on, elitism in MMOs is fading out. Mainstream is the norm and to be honest, I don't mind it half as much as I used to. Then again, the times when I did mind is when I was younger and did not have the IRL obligations I have now. The old guard of raiders is dying out, raiding every single night used to be hardcore, now 3-4 days a week is the norm. Don't worry, you'll get over it too

Trying to 'argue' with people who think a services provider (which BW is in this case) is not listening to it's client base (which is the anathema of any services provider) is like trying to argue with a religious zealot who will deny all science whilst reading on his iPad. You haven't clarified what they didn't listen to, or why you feel they didn't. Constructive feedback is the only way you'll ever get listened to, rightfully so. Arguments such as 'releasing combat logging and a few operation is stupid' is well... stupid?! The two features aren't necessarily linked, and from a code perspective I doubt they are entwined in any shape or form. We all lack sufficient information to decide what is good or bad in terms of packaging into a release, from a technical viewpoint. So discussions on those topics are nonsensical. Is it so hard to put your specific arguments forward in a constructive manner? The only thing this thread established so far is that you're unhappy about 'something'. Not much to listen to there. It's not how you do business in the real world son.

Are you telling me everything currently out there is manually entered? :/

Really, noone else wants this?

I run HM KP/EV pug ops on a weekly basis. There is a general level of patience with players. We explain the boss mechanics if new peeps need it and we generally don't wipe at all. Who cares about a wipe anyway, people are getting rakata gear in a pug so big deal. We get regulars anyway and have a sort of vouch system as well (so it becomes less pug-y I suppose).

As an avid programmer I like building out of game tools for my favourite games. Currently it appears the only way to get access to item data is to data mine it/manually update it. Would it be possible to have a data API or static export available for the player devs to use? I was excited when I saw the fan site kit but it was only the art work (though thanks for that!). Having the item data available in ANY logical format would be greatly appreciated. Ps: even if that means CSV -_-

Have all the item DBs online datamined their information or, god forbid, manually entered it? I'm looking for a copy of the item data in a logical format if available anywhere. Does anyone know if there are plans to allow the export of items from the client or via the site?

Hmm don't think their comments are mutually exclusive. The interview states 'We want to get this launch under our belt and everything stabilized and happy.' which I take to be the same as the comment here. Finger in the wind estimate on any realistic turn around on a Mac client would be 6 months to get it to a PTS stage, full year for a deployment, if they started soon. Maybe that's pessimistic? In the short to medium term the best is hoping that an avid fan takes it upon himself to find a good Wine work around.

Hmm, I don't know enough about their codebase to comment on that. Take in mind it generates another wing for CS to deal with too. Still, if their internal investigations into these things come to the same conclusions I'd happily support it. If they get ROI it means overall more time and effort will be spent on the game, rather than taken away. Still, it will mean testing on more dimensions, and will most likely mean more testing for releases.

I think this isn't a discussion of the OS. There will be people who don't want to make the effort of bootcamp and who only use macs. I use an MBP at work and at home, I also use Redhat and Slackware heaps, and I have 2 windows machines whose primary purpose is gaming. So, undiluted, the facts are: - The game runs fine on bootcamp (compatibility wise, your specs define your actual experience regardless of OS). Bootcamp is NOT an emulated or virtualised environment. The OS runs native on the hardware, windows and Mac OS alike. - Creating a Mac client will take development and budget, both of which will need to be taken from somewhere else (impossible to avoid, work is never done for free or instant). - GPU manufacturers are not proactive in providing MacOS drivers (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon#Macintosh and try finding Mac drivers on their sites). Mostly, Apple brings out drivers but support is far less than for Windows The first is a simple fact, bootcamp is nice for running Linux or windows on any Intel based Mac. The second and third are also known fact, and will be ongoing issues should they still decide to create such a client. Money and time will go to supporting something which does nothing but provide an easier alternative (not an only alternative) to what STILL is a small section of the player base (how else are you here posting if you're not already playing?). Drivers are not likely to see official and broad support for Mac from their manufacturers, not for gaming at least. Tablets are not really a part of this discussion, tablets feature onboard graphics processors, they won't be switching to cards any time soon. Sure, I'd like to be able to play swtor on my MBP, which is a nice new one with good GPU. But I have bootcamp and Windows isn't that hard to get. The *ONLY* counter point is that Windows obviously costs money, and you have to do some extra effort to play the game. - Effort: if you like the game, you'll make the effort to go into bootcamp. if you don't, oh well it was nice playing with you whilst it lasted - Getting Windows: if you don't have Windows already you will need to pay, there are however MANY ways to get it for free or a lot cheaper (student, MSDN, etc). Now personally, I suppose I can see why the second reason bothers people. Though how you have been mainstream gaming if you are 100% Mac Only I have no idea, you're quite restricted in your market. Then again, if you shell out the extra for an MBP or so, you can afford a Windows license. Again, if you feel you can't for the principle of it, it was nice playing with you.

Eh, the OP is not seeing things in context. Regardless of the game or who made it, a CS team will have X staff receiving Y amount of tickets / hour and able to deal with Z amount of tickets per hour. - X: the amount of CS staff, will be lower at launch due to budget and training requirements - Y: the amount of tickets submitter per hour, will be very high post-launch for months, decreases over time (rather goes into a sine style pattern based upon content releases) - Z: increases over time, training gets better, people individually get more experience so more tickets are solved faster There is no magic button for a new game, because someone else did it for 7 years doesn't mean it's going to be as good because it's not even the same thing. The way CS happens will differ in virtually every instance. Tools differ, better tools are made. In the case of the operation not providing the title, the simple answer is, imho, that the CS department does not currently possess a tool to grant or remove titles ad-hoc. I'm sure that capability can be coded but I can't blame anyone that this didn't make the launch road map. Your complaint is, in essence, unrealistic. They *might* have programmed a tool for title adding/removing already, but that would have been geared to situations that would only come about due to bugs (bugs they didn't know about until a little while ago). I dare say such a tool is already on a board somewhere, perhaps already in coding. Firstly though, those devs will be creating a fix for the issue itself, making band-aids comes later. Hopefully this insight will mean you never have to make such a misinformed complaint again

It is a common 'mistake' and just a bit of a misunderstanding about how SWTOR tier systems appear to work. You may have noticed that both the current PVE and PVP sets provide set bonusses across the current 3 'tiers'. These could be classified as sub-tiers. So the current PVE set is: 1.1 Tionese 1.2 Columi 1.3 Rakata All 3 provide the same set bonus, regardless of combination (as long as they are in the same named set, e.g. 'War Leader'). This makes me assumes the next tier of gear will also feature 3 sub tiers with new names! However I'm not sure, they might just have a single sub set this time around. If they DO have 3 sub tiers again then we're looking at 6 new names, 3 levels for each.

I wouldn't really bother. Run BT HM a few times, even if it's not as the tank but as (be it mediocre) DPS. You can get exotech drops that are good stand-ins until you get columi gear. ALWAYS take the daily (complete 1 HM) and weekly quests (complete 3 HM) which get you columi tokens as well as a load of tionese. You should get some tionese gear within a day or 2 at least and if lucky, some columi too. Don't be afraid to go with PUGs but ofc running with guildies if you can is a plus. If you happen to be on Sceptor of Rag I'm happy to give you a run through.