I just submitted a ticket with respect to a portion of the HK-51 companion quest. I won't bore anyone with the details; suffice to say that the response I received was along the lines of "We only answer tickets that deal with class quests at the moment, so you are SOL." I am trying to understand this. Reports from BioWare and Electronic Arts both discuss the large increase in the subscribed base to this game since Free-to-Play went live. Although I did not see any report of it, it seems quite safe to assume your company's income per subscriber has also increased substantially as people are purchasing Cartel Coins above and beyond what they get free each month for subscribing. It seems to me that since your company is pulling in a LOT more money than it was six months ago, you should have more than enough money to hire enough people to meet the service demands of this increased player base. It's called "customer service", not "customers serve us". In providing service, you don't tell paying customers that you can only provide support to 10% or less of the tickets you receive. You don't say "Gee, I see you have finished your class quests -- congratulations on that, by the way -- but since you no longer have any class quests, well, I am just going to ignore you." Oh wait ... that IS what you just told me. Do you really want me to stop paying your salary with my subscription fees and my Cartel Coin purchases? Because if you deliver a shoddy product and claim no need to fix it, I'm going to throw you in the trash and ignore you, taking my money elsewhere. Get your act together. Stop acting as if you left hand does not know what your right hand is doing and that you're just fine with that. Your subscribed base has doubled and, with cartel coin purchases, your income has more than doubled. Stop lining the pockets of your company's executives and start paying attention to the people who REALLY pay your salaries.

Have none of you bothered to consider WHY the Gree want to collect combat data from all of us, Republic and Empire both? Have none of you bothered to ask that if the Gree have data-collection droids on numerous worlds, including our home worlds, that have not reported in, just how many planets HAVE they reported in from? Has anyone contemplated the ancient age of the Gree, who else was around at the time of their elder days (the Rakata), why they left, and why they return now? I'll tell you why. The Gree mean to invade and take over our universe! And all of you pathetic fools are rushing about, doing the Gree's errands, turning over zettabyte upon zettabyte of combat data that will lay bare all of our weaknesses! You are laying the foundation for our subjugation by the Gree. You are the harbingers of your own doom! Repent! The end is nigh! PS. There is a means of salvation; personal salvation. Contact me with a PM and I will get you the name of one of my "agents" on your "server". As soon as I receive a small, one-time payment of 50,000 credits, I can guarantee that you and all those of your legacy will be expunged from the Gree database immediately. Of course, any further contact with the Gree will undo all the work that I can do so future expungations may be required.

Case in point? Covert Torso Energy Armor. By now, anyone who wanted to go around bare-chested has it and at least ten times as many players who consider it little more than vendor trash also have it. On my server, it is priced as low as 1900 credits on the GTN ... I say "priced", not "selling for" because they aren't selling. So, I take my 3rd in 3 packs to a vendor, now that it no longer is bound to me. The tooltip says it is worth 3105 credits! Much better than what it isn't selling for on the GTN. Only, when I try to sell it, I get the message "You cannot sell that item (Covert Torso Energy Armor)". Why the hell not, BioWare? I paid real money for the coins that got me this crap, the least you could do is let me vendor trash it for some in game credits. Otherwise, why do you even have a credit value assigned to it in the tooltip at all? More evidence of BioWare's right hand not having the slightest clue what it's left hand is doing. Yes, I realize buying these packs are a gamble and I accept the risk that I will get crap like this. But I also expect BioWare to allow me to sell it to a vendor so I can get some small value out of it, rather than having it take space in my Cargo Hold or, worse, just having to throw it away. Hell, killing gundarks on Dromund Kaas gives me more items of in-game value than this idiotic piece of "armor" does. If you're going to give us crap in these packs, let us sell it back to you. 3000 in-game credits probably isn't worth 1% of the real-world penny value of this thing, but it would at least buy me a few trips between planets in my ship or pay a repair bill from a flashpoint, both of which are worth more than the item itself.

Something I've toyed with is a pure harvester. I haven't leveled him all that high, but given how much I craft across the different skills I think having a Scavenging/Archaeology/Bioanalysis toon at combat level 50 and skill 400 for each would be a huge time-saver. Every time I send one of my 50/400's out to harvest one type of material, I see all the other nodes or harvestable NPCs I could also be hitting up and it makes me want to cry! With Armormech & Armstech & Cybertech crafters, I do a LOT of Scavenging and as a result I have a number of "farms" for each grade of material where I know there are enough nodes in a tight enough circle so that when I get to the start of my path again, the nodes have respawned ... being able to hit any other types of nodes along the way would make the time spent all that much more worthwhile.

Biochem and Bioanalysis. Bioanalysis allows you to harvest the mats you need to grind Biochem green schematics and raise your skill level there, turning any unused mats over to your main Biochem toon who probably has Diplomacy for the blue/purple mats and can already craft the implants and reusable medpacs/stims you need. My main Biochem toon is always in need of green mats, and my toons beyond my core crafters are always feeding that habit. But other than grinding up your skill level to be able to use those reusables (which never bind, and can be traded to other alts) there is no reason why you would need to grind out advanced implants or meds/stims on more than one toon. That leaves a third slot for slicing. Slicing will make you a lot of credits from harvesting, particularly once you get up to about Hoth or so. The "density" of slicing nodes on Voss is just sick, particularly in the Gormak Lands ... I usually make at least 400-500k from Voss just slicing nodes. Furthermore, if you find yourself in need of purple crafting mats, there is nothing better than having multiple toons with slicing so that you can run 3 or so Lockbox missions each to look for a crit that will get you Mission Discoveries. I have 5 or 6 toons that are 400 Slicing (some not higher than 25 or so combat level, enough to run 3 companion missions) and when I make my "rounds" checking each of them, I usually end up with 8-10 Mission Discoveries of various types. Right now, I have a particular need for Krayt Dragon Pearls for my current leveling project and finding 2-3 Treasure Hunting missions at the 175 skill level are a guarantee of at least 2 Pearls per mission. That's on top of what I might get running my Artificer on as many Grade 3 Gemstones TH missions as I can. When I don't have a specific need, I just spread out what levels I run my Slicing Lockbox missions at so I can spread out what Grade of Mission Discoveries I'll get. For instance, although things are pretty tight for my Artificer on Grade 3 purple mats, I already have a cache of 70 Grade 4 purple TH mats for when the toon I am leveling requires gear of that grade. Each toon I create beyond my 6 core crafters is always Biochem/Bioanalysis/Slicing. I rarely have to craft new meds or stims, since I just pass them down, I get even more Mission Discoveries to keep me from depending on the ridiculously inflated prices of mats on the GTN, and the creds I make particularly from harvesting Slicing nodes more than supports any missions I need to run for my core crafters.

Yep, for example, my Shadow Tank's warzone health peaked around level 42 or so at around 16.3k, then headed south from there. Even geared out with my main 7 pieces of armor as level 47 Artifact gear, it wasn't as high as I had it at lower levels.

Both of the above answers sound like they make sense, but they imply some disturbing ideas as for the mechanism of what really happens. In the case of the crit explanation, invoking diminishing returns: what was said makes it sound like the DR curve is affected not just simply on the amount of crit chance you have on your gear, but by your combat level as well. The example I gave was for a lvl27 toon, so someone of a "lower" level who should be benefiting from this effect. If Bolster modifies your gear stats so that it "improves" the stats of such toons, then I should have an effective higher number for my crit chance. If my crit chance is being improved, why does it decrease? I have yet to see a DR curve that actually starts showing "negative" return, a curve away from some asymptote, instead of a much more gradual approach towards that asymptote. Unless the DR curves are different according to what level you are and, again, I have yet to see any DR curves that show different curves based on your combat level ... unless, of course, no one has bothered to calculate these since no one seems to care what they would be if you aren't level 50. As for the explanations about health, again I can understand how such a decrease could occur if you did not continue improving your gear. If the Bolster buff takes into account not just your level and how that should affect your base stats, what skills you have available, and the different average or maximum values your gear can have, as I said I am keeping my toons in the best gear they can have. Equipping a piece of gear that improves your stats then stepping into a warzone and finding that your health drops because of it is counterintuitive to the explanation given. It suggests rather that the bolster buff does not properly "curve" your gear at higher levels and actually debuffs you rather than buffing you at some point. "Diminishing returns" means your receive less for what you put in; it does not mean that you have something taken away because you've put something in.

I've been looking at a number of old threads about the Bolster buff and how it's supposed to work, and none of them explain a few things I have noticed. Case #1: As a crafter, I always keep my leveling toons in Artifact (purple) gear of the highest level they can wear. I have noticed that after hitting level 40 or so, my health in warzones starts decreasing even as I increase the quality and level of the gear I am wearing. I have actually had cases where my level 48 or 49 toon has had their health DECREASE in a warzone from what it is outside of a warzone. Again, these are toons geared in the top-level Artifact gear that they can wear. Case #2: The toon I am currently leveling is a level 27 Gunslinger. Without Bolster, his Ranged Critical Chance is 35.34%. Correct me if I am wrong, but that seems pretty tough to beat for level 27 gear. With the Bolster buff, however, my Ranged Critical Chance drops to 33.64%. How can this be a "bolstering" of my stats? Just curious....

I am NOT a Sithie, nor do I speak or type with a lisp.

Oh, one other thing: could you promise us that you will never, EVER require us to "upgrade" to Windows 8?

Dear SWTOR Claus, Could you please bring me a Mac OS X-flavored game client? TIA, Powaq, Naqoy & Koyaanis Qatsi

He's not saying it's WRONG or INADMISSIBLE to post such here ... it's just not my experience that people do, either. You keep bumping and get no response, so.... No need to toss insults like calling people Mitt Romney and such, that's just wrong