Quoting to hilight this issue - sending sensitive information to the wrong person can be a major headache. I've seen the results of a number of intercepted tells though thankfully haven't had to repair any great harm... yet. I know you're swamped and have a million important things to do, and that just as likely this has been grouped into an "enbiggen chat functionality" project - but this I feel, is one of those stand-out issues - it has a significant impact not only on the game in general terms (making conversations feel 'buggy', that we need to constantly be on our guard) but because of the social problems attached to it... a few words in the wrong place can be catastrophic to a relationship. Text chat carries little enough of the meaning we try to convey, it really is important that the system supporting it be as cohesive, reliable and complete as possible. For now we bandaid the situation by keeping all sensitive discussions to VOIP but that carries its own caveats. We've also considered the guild rank system to isolate such talk to the Officer channel but that still really doesn't address the issue for people like me who act as counsel / advisor to officers and the GM and to members in general. In other news, I'd love to see a more fully-featured chat system

This has been a growing topic for quite a while, GhostCrawler of WoW answered questions about their stance on this just recently in response to a growing chorus on their side of the fence (note, quoting here for lack of BW comments): Player: 13 pages and counting. Peoples' opinion is clear. Now it's your turn! I'd appreciate reading, atleast OP. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5847925038 GC: I read that forum regularly. Ultimately, we want WoW PvP to be about skill and gear and not just skill. We can tweak numbers but we like the feature. (Source) Ultimately the real answer seems to be that like it or not (I'm in the 'not' camp), gear grinds are extremely successful at maintaining participation rates - i.e. getting players to log in frequently and to grant them a feeling of ongoing involvement & achievement, as well as clear goals to aim for. Gear grinds are arguably on par with story as fundamental features of MMO's or even RPG's in general, the gear meta-game has evolved through the decades and features quite prominently through (nearly) the entire games industry all through it's history. Some games have occasionally broken the mould by varying degrees but more generally speaking nobody has yet found a truly viable alternative which addresses player participation and motivation anywhere near as successfully as vertical models. Having said that, if there is a viable alternative I'd love to hear about it, as I'm pretty confident a number of other people would too.

This is worth re-itterating, as I'm sure in the flood of comments, a great deal of negativity probably comes across - we really do appreciate having servers in our region, it really does make a very significant improvement to our game. I rolled a new character on one of the other US servers just to feel the difference and 200-300ms latency, I guess obviously enough does (especially by comparison) make the game feel decidedly syrupy. Thank you BioWare, we really do appreciate it.

Some lightsabers seem to make an annoying 'squirt' noise when wielded. I'm confident that my computer's audio is working normally - I haven't made any changes for a very long time. It seems to have only started quite recently. I find it difficult to believe, but if this is some kind of deliberate change, as I suspect it may well be... I'd have to offer my feedback and say that not only is it annoying, but it's utterly awful in concept - it bears no resemblance to any theme I can think of associated with lightsabers, it's weak and watery and aside from being quite impressively unattractive it's totally unremarkable. For BW's reference, the Jedi Council Lightsaber makes the sound I'm talking about - there are plenty of others but I don't know their specific names. edit: I speak too harshly I think, I've heard some of the other new weapon sounds and some of them are pretty awesome... perhaps this particular one could be reviewed - I had the impression there wouldn't be nearly as much diversity and that this unpleasant sound would simply be 'the other' lightsaber sound.

The stun-fest that is ToR PvP is complete and utter garbage and it's been like this for far too long; it's infamous across the gaming world - you've lost boat-loads of players and frankly if my preference were PvP, I'd be completely and utterly out of patience. As it is I only try an occasional game here & there because it so often is simply an exercise in frustration. The public face of PvP so far has been Gabe and he seems like a nice enough guy, it'd be a shame if all this negativity had to focus solely on him, on the other hand he is supposedly in charge. To help the poor, overworked hamsters at BW I propose that people start posting the frequency with which they're stunned each game - BW should be able to produce the stats themselves, whenever they want; The only way I believe we'll see any action on this issue is if we keep talking about it. If not a count of the number of times your stunned per game, rate ToR PvP on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 incredibly frustrating / bad to 10 being flawless.

As with many guilds, we have members in various time zones. We typically start at 7pm AEST but with Daylight Savings we've pushed that back to 8pm AEST. Experience with MMO's in general will hold you in good stead, most of us for example have moderate to extensive experience of raiding in WoW. Contact us in-game, as noted above Reya and Enjinn are our primary contacts for recruitment or for any other queries people may have of the guild.

Yes, we're still recruiting. We've had a good response and we're quite happy with the people who have joined us but we'd still like a few more.

Inspired by Halo but many games make use of these kinds of features, Halo terminology is most familiar to me and I suspect the people who'll read this. The modes need not be just the ones I mention, I'm sure there are lots of alternatives. By example, what I mean by this is that you could allow us to spawn an 'oddball' or 'Hill' (or migrating 'Hill') within the areas that allow duelling. Anybody in the area who flags-up could join in simply by being flagged in the area - not for any special rewards, just fun. Alternate modes in existing warzone maps seem like a logical extension.

It's an interesting problem - if it works, it may save the game we love and offer a great balance, particularly for people who want to focus on just one area of the game. - if it works, it may set an important precedent for the game industry (i.e. you can save your big budget project by turning it into Farmville) - if it works too well (unlikely, yes) the game industry (looking chiefly at M$ & EA to lead the 'charge' here) might well turn F2P into a much more comprehensive & granular Pay to Play. - either way it has potential to greatly undermine the subscription model - a significant motivator for many people to participate is to get nice things that make their characters look better - Subscribers get a stipend of coins of course, but the motivation to participate in challenging content, general participation levels and desire for challenging content may be significantly subdued when one can simply purchase the rewards.

B1: Dagnammit Billybob! Ya know we ain't done fixin' t'e karteel koin thang! Why'd ya go ahead 'n push t'e Publish button y'all? B2: *runs outside to chase butterflies*

Coding for hardware is super easy, you should get a book on it, read some over the weekend and create a solution. While you're at it, I hear world hunger is a bit of an issue... you should be able to knock that over as well.

I'm disappointed... I was hoping somebody would spark up and point out that the star system may have a 'failed star' or a brown dwarf-like companion which provides enough light to make the day/night cycle far less noticeable. The Rakata did some crazy things, might be nice to imagine they engineered the collapse of a gas giant...

We're not too worried about specific classes - thanks to alts we frequently work out compositions as the need arises, lockouts allowing. What we're really interested in is people. If you're a skilled player and a good person we can build everything else.

Thanks for some great instances & challenging play, very much looking forward to more.

"It's difficult to make things easy" is never more true than when applied to rules-based games, though arguably 'intuitive' is the word we're really looking for. People generally don't want to dwell on the minutia, ultimately some of the complexity underlying the game must be exposed to the player for them to properly understand what's going on and upon which to make informed choices. How much and how well it can be done is more an art than science, everybody has a different threshold. Game companies are starting to get a better feel for how much in a given game is appropriate. The method of conveyance is still very primitive. A diversity in abilities is important to add both depth of play and to engage players in a logical frame - we do want to play skilfully - by using the right ability in the right order at the right time. There's a great satisfaction to be had in cleverly countering an opponent or setting them (or your team) up for some spectacular play. You're right that too many abilities can simply make things complicated - there's an important distinction between complication for the sake of having choices and complication for the sake of making valuable decisions - which ultimately shouldn't be complicated if they're well presented. Gear grinds are a fascinating phenomenon, they've proven to be a very effective way to keep people engaged and motivated, everybody loves new & more powerful (impressive) gear. The margin between motivation and grind however can be a very delicate balance. They're also somewhat effective at gating progress though the success of using them in that context can be extremely difficult to map out or control. Numbers based combat - I suspect what you're really getting at here isn't the fact that numbers are used to determine success on an attack-by-attack basis but that "the guy with the biggest boots always wins" (paraphrasing the (frequently awesome) game critic Yahtzee there). Skill > gear is widely acclaimed as the most rewarding kind of gameplay but (unfortunately?) it's generally not compatible with gear grinds. I personally still hold hope that we can have a situation where Skill isn't steamrolled by Gear but that leaves quite a serious question mark over the issue of player motivation, investment and reward. Talent Trees - The premise of Talent Trees is entirely worthwhile, they're an opportunity to shape your gameplay (arguably the impossible mission of Stances fall into this situation as well). Talent Trees are notorious for failing their core purpose, most games have talent trees because most games have talent trees, not because they're a good solution to a specific need or problem - somewhat ironically, this has lead to talent trees themselves becoming a problem. I'd offer other solutions but this post is already too long. Ultimately the answer to your question is 'no, we don't like those things' but they're the rough edges of RPG's and while RPG's have been around for roughly forty years we're still figuring out how to make them work well.

Force Addicts is a small and friendly progression guild. We're looking for mature, proficient, team oriented players to join our ranks. While we consider ourselves a progression focused, we raid because we enjoy it. We raid frequently, on a flexible schedule (7pm AEST). We're currently 4/5 on 8man hard mode TfB. Building a second raid team is the goal of recruiting currently, but ultimately we want to get some (more) great people on board; Even if you can't commit to much we're willing to invest in gearing and training people with good skills and good attitudes so that we can pull them in to raid on short notice when opportunities arise. Contacts: Reya or Enjinn

Mumble is absolutely, hands-down the best. The quality is great and it reduces the volume of everything else when people are speaking - this makes a huge difference to being able to hear people clearly. It even has built-in support for Logitech LCD's.

It's a tough decision and there isn't great deal to discuss - the pro's and con's are pretty self evident, even this little thread has discussed most of them. Balancing the backlash and negative publicity is a big part of it, BW is extremely averse to doing anything that'll result in bad publicity - I'm sure we would've had server mergers many months ago otherwise. The majority will probably react positively but It's extremely difficult to make any kind of judgement about what the negative reaction will be, make no mistake, no matter how popular it is in general terms, there will be people who react very strongly to the prospect of not having dedicated PvP / PvE / RP servers. Those people would be ignoring the fact as frequently pointed out, that there are generally too few people for those distinctions to matter in the first place, but they'll still be angry.

I'm actually starting to get on board with this - not only for the sake of general participation levels (which are becoming an issue even for our tiny (successful) progression guild) but because I'm 110% behind the idea of removing the great (artificial, resource hungry and ultimately counterproductive) divide between PvP and PvE (and RP) in MMO's.

Hmmm.... planet-based guild ships... world control via PvP... So, if you plugged those ideas together you could potentially have a valid use for guild ships - those guilds which 'control' a given world have a ship in orbit there, to which their members can travel quickly - ostensibly for the purpose of operations (PvE) or world bosses (PvP). On the ground you might fight over landing areas, secure compounds and collect resources (aka dailies) and perhaps weapon emplacements - whoever controls the weapon emplacements can drive away other guilds orbiting ships. There would probably have to be more turrets than the maximum number of ships allowed in orbit (else everybody will have one there and remove the element of competition) which ensure that there's a maximum time any ship may remain in orbit. There's potential there for some kind of competitive space mission structure as well.

It's tough to make a character like Kailyo, I think congratulations are definitely in order. However she never deviates from cruelty, she has no redeeming moments or hint of conscience, she's totally remorseless. Once you get used to the idea that she's 100% psychopath, even her most extreme behaviour loses its bite. She never pauses or has any consideration where there's a line to cross, she's totally oblivious to social norms so again, where she strides across those lines it is occasionally surprising but only because we (the players) see that there was a line to cross in the first place. Jaesa suffers from a lot of this too, she gets closer to showing glimpses of her other side but she never has any kind of struggle or crisis of conscience. Once the "dark side" switch is flipped it's as if the rest of their personality is instantly, irrevocably and completely subsumed. I have a feeling there was a point where Jaesa cries "What have you done to me?!" but I don't remember it clearly.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 at 1920 x 1080 Driver: 301.42 i7 2600k oc 3.41GHz 8GB RAM Windows 7 SWTOR at max settings I've noticed a number of subtle improvements around the game, my frame rates very rarely dip and it handles extremely well in all situations. I do sometimes get graphical anomalies as of 1.4 Of those the most common is blaster bolts disappearing or not appearing at all. Sometimes blaster bolts turn into a straight line shooting off at an angle. On a few occasions I've noticed a 'flare' effect at the base of light sabres... for a while I thought this was intentional (it looked pretty cool, very cinematic) but it's stopped doing that. On rare occasions I get graphical anomalies similar to those you see when video cards get too hot & diagonal coloured lines splay out of vertices. I've also noticed quite commonly that some foliage will lose its finer features and turn the WoW-style wedges - presumably it's downgrading quality automatically, I haven't tinkered with the sliders for foliage. (In case you're wondering, the case has tons of airflow & a serious fan. It might be the card getting too hot but I would be moderately surprised... I'll keep a widget running to monitor the temp).

Plagiarism isn't such a bad thing on forums, we want our ideas to be discussed after all. As that's the case, I'm going to support the first section of your post but not other areas like deprecating Hutt Ball and the LFG tool. By all means, let people opt-out (or in, just as the options in the LFG tool allow) of the PvP games. Your bias against the LFG tool is quite hollow though. The inclusion and thorough development of an LFG tool is simply critical (for an array of reasons covered at length in a number of other discussions). I'm a little disappointed that you didn't also take my idea to use companions as quest-givers for daily quests and thereby also extend their interaction with players. (re: your section on Cantinas). The linked opinion article has some validity but it also has significant flaws, not the least of which is a severe bias. TFB I think illustrates very well that encounters can use the core principles of RPG's and still be highly dynamic and challenging and need not rely solely on grinding a bosses hit points down. It would absolutely be nice to have greater interaction with our companions, more appropriate speaking lines would be great but the cost for creating and implementing them is comparatively high. If they can do it, great, really I'd love it but if the cost of that means somebody loses their job or another aspect of the game doesn't get the attention it needs, I'd feel the price is far too high - on the other hand... we've got next to zero information on this sort of thing. Flashpoints - As mentioned first up, I'm glad you've mentioned it on the General forum & added to the idea. Player Housing - the sheer number of SWG refugees demanding this probably means it'll be addressed somehow, hopefully in the context of an optional payment model and implemented in such a way that they aren't garbage tips for hoarders to obsess over. Speeders - totally on board with this, I'd be very surprised if BW haven't already got this on their to-do list. Sprint - is a completely misplaced concept that somehow migrated from KoTOR. It's completely unnecessary. Restricting low level characters to walking speed (approximately) only serves to frustrate people - critically the people you most want to avoid frustrating. Abolish it entirely asap. Holo Terminal - it's almost certainly on a bug list, and far below many more urgent matters. Fleet - the point of the Fleet is that it's a central place for characters of all levels, a place they can carry out all manner of tasks that relate to the social side, crafting, guild management, banks etc.. Most people like seeing higher level characters around, it's inspiring, you get to find out what they're interested in and working on (through general chat). Information overload for new players is a challenge, turning your back on the challenge and trying to get along without that knowledge won't help new players come to terms with how the game works. Far better to jump in with both feet and even cop a few bruises than live in ignorance. Player Role - changing the look and feel of entire zones, let-alone worlds to change as you've suggested would take an absolutely herculean effort; Aside from the vast effort required, I don't even think it's possible with current technology. Sound - I think you'd find you're in a super tiny minority and that hearing your character grunt every time they jump would be worse than tedious, many people would find it seriously annoying. Greater diversity of audio for various settings would absolutely be nice. I believe it's a relatively high cost enterprise though. UI Design - I don't understand your grievance, the linked picture is 404. The current UI and the options to customise it are really good (despite a few deficiencies). There are absolutely things I'd change, I'd love to dive into a sweeping re-design but that would be better serviced through modding - people have very different values and interests when it comes to UI. Voices - voice work is apparently the most expensive aspect of the game. I'd be very cautious about adding more and making sure it's as well used as possible.

Personal expression is absolutely important, StarWars would be so much better if all the characters looked like those from Saints Row. What could possibly go wrong?

The CM's if there were around today, would tell you that this is suggestion has been on their "wall of crazy" right from the start. They'd love to do it but it's just not in the works yet. I humbly submit that this kind of feature would fit in quite nicely with my recent submission for Daily quests to be handled through companions & normal quest areas.