Not very many people know me, but I've met a lot of you, and I've enjoyed this server the most. You all have been great, and probably the most friendly server out of all of them. For the foreseeable future, I will be permanently leaving. Quick TL;DR: Game has become a chore, and promises are hyped up a bunch, but they were almost like half-truths; they are going to release things, but they seem half-assed. If you want more in-depth: -------- Why are you leaving? Ultimately, I'm finding SW:TOR a chore now. I come home to relax, have fun and unwind from the stress that is work. I thought I would be excited for a chance to participate in the Rakghoul event that I missed the first time around, and I never logged in for it. I thought I would be excited to finish off the Gree, and do a bunch of PvP to get all of the achievements, and all I did was the base stuff. Heck, at the bare minimum I was supposed to get enough tokens on multiple characters so that I could get a few Gree weapons. Only thing I got was the Holiday Mount. Also, SW:TOR is full of a bunch of broken promises. The 3 question thing was a joke; the fact that we never got a second round of questions was proof of that (all of the groups probably had 250 questions to ask). Like SW:TOR, Starfighter was a rushed gimmick that should still be in development. Its an utter wreck of balance. Its shallow, and it should have never been pushed out of development as fast as it did. Did you see that "now we're doing the 3-week development cycle" thing in the blog post? They down-played it as "we want higher quality patches." However, knowing development, they probably finally realized that they can't push out patches as fast. Its taken them two years to realize this. Its positive, but it also means that they don't have the framework and personnel to handle a rapid development cycle. Meanwhile, two weeks ago, Warframe pushed out a content patch, and six hot fixes, and this week they pushed out an entirely new gun and three hotfixes. If you've ever been a developer, you know how crazy that sounds. Honestly, I think TOR might stick around for another year, but I can't see EA allowing the game to proceed further than three years without a severe influx of new players. Not to mention my life IRL has been...incredible lately. Its partially thanks to you all helping me out when my life was **** in November. I was able to stave off complete depression thanks to you all encouraging me, and I thank you all. Lately, I've met some great friends that I have a DnD group every Saturday/Sunday. I've met this great woman, that I spent Valentine's Day with. In March, I'm financially stable enough that moving is just something I have to do in March, rather than it being a questionable time. At work, I'm doing great, and I have lots of things to do. I fit in at work, with my friends, and I'm actually happy for myself. Is this in relation to your health? Meh, kind of. I'm getting headaches while playing SW:TOR, but a majority is the lengthy answer above. What are you going to play after SW:TOR? I'm playing Warframe now and I'm loving it. Its mindless (almost), yet it has a depth and complexity that I'm finding very soothing to my calculating side. I'm already Mastery Rank 7. If you're ever playing, look me up, my Steam Name and Warframe Name is 'Imper1um'. Can I have your stuff? Sorry, I'm keeping my account as-is. I might log in every now and then when something interesting comes along. At the most, I might log in for a day to randomly raid if possible. Would you be available in the future? No. This is a 100% leave. I don't have any plans on coming back, either.

http://imgur.com/4nwhS8y I have hit 18035 Achievement Points. Whoo!

I get plenty of those during GS, so I'm basically facepalming a lot with people on both sides smacking into walls and such.

No 3d Radar. Only 2d, which is garbage. The outer circle shows things, but, since the Edge UI Triangles don't increase/decrease depending on distance, which makes it a problem if things are not on screen; enemies 50km away are the same size triangles as an enemy right on your six.

Well, if you're interested, myself and a bunch of other people that could talk to you will be on Mumble tonight about 6-7p ET.

Simperium did get a rename to Liex. Everything else, I actually liked the name of, so I'm not concerned with changing it.

Thanks! and Quoted. Yeah, I saw plenty of matches where it was 8v8 instead of 12v12...although, I preferred the 8v8.

I never played a match against Republic (and I only played on Mebell, which is Republic). I'm going to go with, because of how the Match's Lore plays out when you enter into the match, you will never experience a Same match. Although, they kind of fixed that with Novare Coast (making it a training simulation), so I'm going to say...maybe. Any other regulators experience a Same-faction match?

Yes, full WZ Chat (/ops). You can do full /whispers if you need to.

Once Bombers were pretty much Nixxed, I didn't see this in much of my matches. Usually, 3 caps lasted a few seconds, but, since a very limited set of people had access to Bombers, and Bombers never got Ship Reqs (and Fleet Reqs were hard to get), and everyone had their equipment reset, I barely saw this problem. The first two weeks I played, Bombers were in full force, and it was whoever had the bombers set up their turrets first that won.

1. Snipers! And Killing Snipers in secret. 2. DEATH FROM ABOVE! and...Below. 3. One of the maps has a very tight corners in the middle of an asteroid, which makes for some visceral gameplay inside it. Sucks with Minelayers/Dronelayers, though. 4. Lag wasn't too much an issue. 5. Once they pretty much nerfed and then made bombers go away, the game's play was quite interesting and fun.

Each match gave me 20-45k Credits/Match. I didn't play <55, but I think people were saying that you got EXP just like in PvP WZ/Arenas.

you need to reverse this, and this is kind of incorrect. Ship -> Fleet (1 Ship : 1 Fleet, 1 CC : 10 Fleet Reqs) Fleet -> Ship (1 Fleet : 1 Ship, 0 CC Cost) Basically, you don't convert Fleet to ship Reqs, just if you don't have enough Ship Reqs to purchase something, you can use the remainder of your Fleet Reqs as a 1:1 Ship Reqs.

Its only for Ship -> Fleet. Its also not necessary. You can enough Fleet comms anyways, but getting the Ship -> Fleet conversion is quite interesting. I wish I could do that with Unranked -> Ranked comms.

You cannot convert it, but you can spend it exactly like Ship Reqs. See my above example.

Fleet Req actually also is Ship Req. You can 1:1 Convert Fleet:Ship for free (no CC Cost). Its the opposite direction that converts Ship:Fleet that costs somewhere 1:10 CC:Fleet Req. I had 1100 Ship Req and 560 Fleet Req and I was able to purchase a 1500 Upgrade, and I was left with 160 Fleet Req.

Yup, I waited to make mine for Noon ET (when the NDA released). My Regulator/Starfighter FAQ. Dulfy and Ludwig also did the same, and I linked theirs at the bottom of mine. Hopefully, there's enough information that most of the questions can be answered with our three posts!

Other Regulators have also waited to do the same action! (Dulfy) Dulfy posted a full writeup on her position of launch. I remember facing her multiple times during the entire thing (as Mebell). It is very well written. (Ludwig_Vancover) Ludwig did a FAQ as well on Regulator Testing.

An Unofficial FAQ on the Starfighter Expansion Hello everyone, I have been a Regulator for three weeks, and the NDA released at Noon ET (11am CT), so I can talk about Starfighter and what has been going on, and what to expect. Closed Beta Selection Q. So, I *might* have heard of the Regulator Group, or "Shuffleboarding", or whatever...what is it? The Regulator group is a group of people that was selected to participate in a closed, free, NDA-held Closed Beta of the upcoming expansion: Starfighter. Shuffleboarding is the "codeword" that you should probably leave the channel, because we're behind an NDA, and can't talk to you. Q. Oooh, is there going to be an open beta for this? This weekend, you can access the PTS to find out for yourself. Q. Why didn't I get picked? All of the "regulators" looked like they were people active on the forums, and have been playing for at least six months as a subscriber. There might have been additional requirements (e.g. power of your computer), but that was kind of dashed as a rumor when one of my guildies was actually invited before I was, and he's got an...underperforming machine. Q. Okay, so its over with, what is this Regulator thing? This was testing everything, including the 2.5 Class Changes, and also the Starfighter Expansion. Class Changes Q. So the class changes were in-game? How did they perform? It was...somewhat okay. People have reported that class changes for 2.5 will help, but I have been talking with Tam/Keyboardninja, and we're both in the agreement that we need the +Defense right off the bat, e.g. exiting stealth will grant you 2/4 stacks of the +Defense buff. The rotation, however, for Shadows is incredibly unchanged. You want to get TKThrow out as much as possible (since its one of the highest threat abilities), and nothing is really bad. The only thing that really I saw was that Shadows were a lot less spiky, but soloing was a little more difficult. The Oricon Heroic 2+ area wasn't too bad, but I noticed I was ending fights with 50-60% HP rather than 90-100%. Overall, thumbs up. Still some kinks needed to be pounded out. Q. So the other class changes... Yeah, I didn't get time to test them, I probably should have. Although, I was there for Frakken SPACE BATTLES. Yeah... I like Space Battles, even though they are incredibly flawed. Starfighter Q. What does the Starfighter Expansion Add? Honestly, just a new "queue" UI. Accessible pretty early, and has no level adjustment; a player Level 10 will have the same capabilities as a player Level 55, which is nice. No need for Bolster. Starfighter is 100% accessed through Queue. Q. How do I level up in Starfighter? When you complete a match, you get an amount of "Reqs," exactly how you get Comms in PvP Matches. Based on your contribution, you get Reqs. However, there is a catch to this. You get two "types" of Reqs: Fleet and Ship Reqs. Fleet Reqs are used for getting other ships. Ship Reqs are used for getting upgrades on a specific ship. If you use your NovaDive Scout, you will get Reqs with only the NovaDive Scout. Fleet Reqs can be used (for free) as Ship Reqs, but, obviously, Fleet reqs are considerably harder to gain, on the tune of 1:10. Its difficult, but its how it works. Q. Is there any CC Market options in this expansion? Yes, you can 1:1 Convert Ship Reqs -> Fleet Reqs on, what appears to be 1 CC per 25 Fleet Reqs. I wasn't able to set this system. You can't buy Fleet or Ship Reqs in the store, but, I imagine that a pack will have increased gains in Starfighter Buff or something. We weren't given any of these "buffs," but we all know they will exist. Edit: Confirmed by Dulfy, the conversion is 1:25, but this was the latest build, and is subject to change. Q. How does being a subscriber affect the Starfighter Expansion? 1. If you're Preferred, you will not get access until January 14, 2014. If you're F2P, you will not get access until February 4, 2014. 2. When you're playing, if you don't have a "Starfighter Weekly Pass," you will gain Reqs at 50% of the rate of Subscribers. Q. How does repeated play affect my reqs? Every day, you will get a 2x Boost to your Reqs. After a few matches with that specific ship, you will lose this buff. It resets with the "Heroic" reset (supposedly). Q. How grindy is it? At the time of posting, the gain was kind of grindy. Here's what kind of costs you're looking at: Level 1 Equipment Upgrade: 1500 Ship Level 2 Equipment Upgrade: 4000? Ship Level 3 Equipment Upgrade: 9000? Ship Unlock Equipment: 2500-5000 Ship Unlock Gunship: 5000 Fleet Unlock Another Ship: 2500 Fleet Gains per match: ~800-1000 Ship, ~80-150 Fleet, ~30-40k Credits So, you won't be grinding for much, but the base Equipment is decent enough that you won't be dying much. However, unlocking the extra equipment makes things a lot nicer. Being able to be undetected until you're within 25k Meters is nice, but its not incredibly problematic; the UI is confusing enough that sneaking up on people without a Sensor Dampener isn't too difficult...mainly because the entire field is 3D, instead of 2D. Q. That doesn't seem too bad...why do you say its kind of grindy? There are four major equipment slots. There are four minor equipment slots. Each equipment slot has 3 systems you can purchase. Each equipment has 3-5 levels of upgrades. To fully unlock a ship, you're looking at weeks even months of grinding. Factor that in with four ships, and more on the way, to be fully unlocked is almost impossible. Q. How important is upgrading Equipment? The equipment isn't a big deal, but it helps tremendously. You can still easily kill a player with fully upgraded ship with no problem. Q. Do I get anything from my character? All of the companions are actually people that give you bonuses (Co-pilot, Offensive Specialist, Defensive Specialist, etc.) Basically, the idea is that your companions fill four "boost" slots, which give you two small boosts (e.g. Treek gives you +5000m sensor dampening), and then one of the people in the four slots you can select as a "co-pilot." This co-pilot gives you one "special" ability, which is a lengthy, but very powerful cooldown. Besides that, nothing. Q. Can I unlock companions from another class? Yes, but it costs Reqs. Unfortunately, Legacy Companions don't carry over, which is saddening. Characters you unlock on the character you're on are free. Q. If I don't have companions, is the base characters provided to go in the slot powerful enough? Very much so, yes. Honestly, I only switched three of the seats to companions, because I liked the base character in one of the seats' ability. Q. Is the UI for Upgrading Clunky? Its...alright. Not great, but not terrible. It fills the screen, but it needs to. There's a lot of information you need. Starfighter: Playing Q. Is any ship overpowered? They removed (temporarily) the only overpowered ship in the game: the Bomber. The main reason is that Mines and Drones were just too powerful. Imagine a ship that could buff their Shields to all maximum (making them almost impossible to kill), could place down drones that can't miss (but can't move), and cause the damage of any other ship. That was the bomber. Fortunately, they decided to delay its release until February. Q. What ships are available from the start? 1 Scout Class and 1 Standard Ship. The scout has the most boosting capability, but has very low damage. However, two or three scouts can easily take down any other ship. Q. What ships can I purchase? There will be another scout ship for purchase, a fighter ship, and a Gunship. It sounds like that Subscribers before Nov 1, 2013 will get the Gunship for free, which is kind of nice. Q. What ships are planned? The bomber will come out in February (supposedly). This was announced in the Cantina. Q. How difficult is it to get used to the controls? It depends on how 3d Spacial Orientated you are. - Do you play Flight Sims? Space Flight Sims? You'll probably understand the physics and orientation requirements pretty well. - Do you touch the optional space combat? You will understand the look and feel of the world in Space pretty well, but the spacial orientation problems will show themselves, because you're not used to being able to control your speed, pitch, yaw, roll, etc. - If none of the above, you will have a helluva time trying to figure out the look and feel of the expansion, and will be even more lost. Even with the above, you will be hard on trying to figure out target acquisition, how the guns fire effectively, and such. Q. Does the tutorial help? Heh heh...Tutorial. That's funny. Imagine that you're learning how to shoot a .50 Caliber Barrett Sniper Rifle. The instructor hands you the rifle, the bullets, shows you how to load the bullets, then points downrange and tells you to hit a 4 ft target 200 meters away. That's how the "tutorial" works. The silly thing is that after the tutorial, imagine immediately afterwards, the instructor puts you on a plane to Afghanistan in the middle of a warzone and tells you that you need to take out 12 targets. Yeah, that's how helpful the tutorial is. Q. Okay, so tutorial doesn't help, how do I play the expansion effectively? Okay, here's what you need to do. First, forget the Expansion is in 3d for a second, and imagine the PvP Field of Alderaan. Okay, basically that, except that, instead of requiring a 8s click to take the places, you just need to be nearby the objective to take the places. That's all there is right now. The only two maps available have the exact same functionality. Now, all you have to do is get used to the fact that the map is in 3d instead of 2d (you can attack from the top/bottom as well), and you're all set. Tutorial be damned! Q. Do the bases have anything to help? Every 30-45 seconds, the bases spawn a turret. The turret hurts, but it isn't a sure-kill. Up to 3 turrets can be active on the point at a time, and a Gunship Sniper can annihilate the turrets from long range, without taking a single point of damage. Q. How long do matches last? Roughly 10-20 minutes, depending on how many points you can cap. Q. How many kills actually happen in the game? You'll be lucky if you get anything close to 9 kills right now. Double digit kills are reserved for only the elite. Q. How do I effectively kill a player? I will tell you, if you're dogfighting, you're going to want to jet away from the battle, and swoop on them for a 3-5 second time of killing. You'll never kill someone you're dogfighting with, just because the orientation switches too much. If you can stay on their six for a while, then you can easily kill a player, but it requires a good 5-15 seconds (depending on CDs) to kill someone solo. Q. How hard is it to attack a point? Not difficult, but not easy either. The spawning of the turrets can be problematic, but the snipers can aid in that. Also, the turrets have extremely limited ranges of fire. Defenders are really your problem. One defender can easily stave off two attackers, with the aid of the turrets. Q. Spawn Camping? Well... you could spawn camp, if you have 3.8 million HP (which you don't). The turrets at the spawn areas are incredibly powerful. Q. Joystick Support? Nonexistent. Devs never commented on whether its a priority. Q. 3-Capping? Hard to pull off, but doable. Requires coordination, and requires that everyone is on top of their game. Also really possible if you're fighting a scrub team, and you got voice comms. Voice Comms are going to be the killer in this game. Q. Loading Times? Not a problem. The match takes 1.5 minutes from the time of the first queue pop until the first spawn. Q. Spawn UI? Easy to understand. Q. Loadout switching? Barred as soon as you queue. Q. Getting back to the capture point? Scouts can get there with a little energy to spare base set. With upgrades, you can have much of your energy remaining for dogfighting and such. Other ships won't be able to get back to points extremely fast, unless you spawn closest to the point. Also, if you're the only defender, regardless of where you spawn, the attackers will *generally* be able to take the point from you before you respawn and fly back, even if you're the scout. Q. Continuous Fire? You have enough energy to unload on a single target, and kill them. Controlled fire is the name of the game here. If you go full auto on a target too long, you'll have nothing to fire after a very short period of time. Q. Lag? Usually not a problem, unless you're at 500ms ping. Q. Bugs? Surprisingly, the only problem I've been seeing is that balance is still an issue, which is why I was a big advocate for delaying the expansion and/or the bomber until the bomber was fixed. There was a serious problem with trying to get into matches, but they fixed that, although the presence of the inability to get in-game and the fact that it locked down your character until the server reset worried me tremendously. I hope it doesn't rear its ugly head after this. Q. Ranked? Doesn't exist. Q. Not-Alderaan Ruleset? If it exists, we didn't test it. Q. Chat? Same chat as in any other WZ/Arena. However, because you're not exactly "standing still" enough, typing "Inc A" is very difficult. I did it when I could, but I was staring at my UI the entire time. Q. Voice Chat? If you have Mumble/Ventrilo/TeamSpeak/Whatever. But...in-game, no. This expansion really needs it, though. Q. Same Faction Matches? I never experienced a same faction match, but other regulators (on the Imp Side did). I never got a single match (out of ~18 matches) where it was Republic versus Republic, so myself and Vandicus believe it is just because there's so many Imp dogs out there! You Imp dogs! Q. Map size? Relative in size to current WZ size. Think of how long it takes (by just running, no boosts) to get from Grass to Snow in Alderaan, and you got the relative time it takes for a Scout using Upgraded Boosts to get from point A to point C. Q. Players in game? The size of the game can be either 8v8 or 12v12. No one knows why it would drop down to 8v8, but I experienced both. Maybe it depends on how many players are actually queuing. -------------------------- That's all I can think of right now. If you have any more questions, I can answer them to the best of my knowledge.

Currently, we run mostly Rep-side ops, but we do have Imp-side ops every now and then. Do you have a Republic-side alt, linkofthelake?

While I probably won't be joining your guild (sorry, too tied to Aisthesis), look for me on my Alts (see below!), and I'll be Space Combatting it up.

At the moment, Aisthesis is looking for some great people to join our guild. We are currently doing top progression raiding (DF/DP HM, SV/TFP NiM) If you're interested, you can send me a PM, and I can get you on Mumble to talk to our leadership.

<Aisthesis> is now 4/5 16m HM DP and DF. I got some stuff to prove it...but if you want any more, please let me know. Calaphayus 16m Kill And my achievements... And DP stuff.

Be Aware of the Risks of "Investment" in this company 1. Bioware does not endorse, nor prohibit any kind of Ponzi, Pyramid or similar derivative scheme 2. Investments are not insured by any in-good-faith company or entity. Basically, if Greenspan fails to pay you, you won't get your money back. 3. Star Wars: The Old Republic, its affiliates, developers and owners will not refund any of your credits lost by buying into this scheme.

The idea is that Commendations can be acquired by not doing Ops. You can get Ultimates by doing other things, so the gear for that isn't "up-to-spec." The tokens are sure-fire ways to accomplish getting better gear, and should be better. Its balanced that way, and I wouldn't change it. I would change the Oriconian gear though to be a little bit better, though. =/