I almost thought this threads title was a rhetorical question because the cheating has been so obvious lately. I'm sure it's related to the DvsL event because it seems to have gotten really bad right around the start of the event. (This was also the case on a few of the servers back when the character transfers got so cheap) As far as I'm concerned the exploiting/hacking has made warzones nearly unplayable recently. First off, I've been playing since early release. I've got 5 characters in maxxed out PvP gear with purple 40 augs in every single piece of gear. I have a crafter of every kind except Armortech and keep my toons in on level gear (but only blue quality) until I hit level 65 by which time I usually have enough warzone comms to deck them out in 208 gear. I am no "pawnzer" PvP'er. I'm a fairly casual MMO'er but I have about 12 years of MMO-PvP under my belt including several years playing Dark Age of Camelot PvP pretty extensively. (loved my scout). I don't think I've ever posted on the forums and actually came here to do some digging on exploiting to see if more people thought there was a problem. To answer a few of the questions in this thread, all just my honest opinion of course: (To put it as short as possible on each account so this doesn't turn into a novel) YES, I do believe there is a damage reduction exploit of some kind. I have seen it with my own eyes, 1 person soloing 3 other players in a warzone because their health simply stopped reflecting any damage at around 60% health. There is damage reduction/popping adrenals and then there is ceasing to take any damage for an extended period of time. I have personally seen a few toons that simply stop taking damage and not only did they not take damage from other players but they have been stunned while standing in Huttball slime/fire and took ZERO damage from it. So IMHO, the answer is YES, there is a damage reduction exploit out there. People are using "coordinate" exploits. I have seen people teleport through solid floors/walls to get to places that they couldn't have reached through legitimate means. (like force leap or being pulled, etc) Speed hacks. I don't think there is any doubt about this one. I was in a warzone where we got outnumbered by 3 and the warzone got cancelled after about 20 seconds with us the victor. An IMP toon beat me and another sorc (yes we used force speed) to the middle node and capped it (Novar Coast) before we even got close enough to see it happen lol. The warzone just cancelled out of no where and we were awarded a win. The other sorc says she assumes a CSR was watching and caught this person exploiting and awarded us the win. I tend to agree that's the most likely scenario. Crit damage and damage chance: NOT SURE. I say not sure because I'm not sure if that's what they are doing or if they are using some kind of lag inducing technique (called window dragging in DAoC) to dump excessive amounts of damage off in a very short window of time. All I know is that there are some particular toons that are doing some excessive amounts of damage (like 3 shotting an on level geared sorc with Force Barrier just refreshed). I say 3 shotting because it's happening in a matter of 3-4 seconds or less and with a LEGITIMATE GCD that's only enough time to get off 3 to 4 abilities, even if they are instant activation. This is solo vs solo, you can't really get paranoid about getting thrashed down quickly in a bit chaotic fight because the damage can be coming from other players as well. It's only solo vs solo that should raise an eyebrow. Window dragging/lag switching whatever you want to call it. YES, this is definitely occurring. You can see toons CONVENIENTLY lagging away their way out of danger on a consistent and perfectly timed basis. Sometimes you see people that are just plain old lagging and then other times you see people that are lagging only at opportune moments. Again having a sorc myself I know what abilities people I have, I know what these abilities look like when used and I know what kind of cool downs they are on. I might not could pass a comprehensive test on all the abilities and their cool downs and attributes in SWtOR but having a full geared lvl 65 sorc myself II know that a sorc class shouldn't disappear and reappear out of harms way 5 or six consecutive times in a window of 30 seconds or less. Same as above paragraph and possibly the source of the one before that, the lag induced damage dump. People are either offloading a bunch of damage client side while under intentional lag and then blowing it all at once when the server catches up or they are using an outright damage exploit like the abnoxious crit damage and % chance exploit or either they have found a way to totally go around the GCD and activation time on their abilities. I'm inclined to believe that using lag is the most likely because it's probably the most easily exploitable. HOWEVER, I have seen evidence and agreed with some others who have experienced what seemed like players bypassing the GCD. I don't know if it's possible but it has certainly appeared that way before. Also related, bypassing ability activation times. There are complimentary skills that can significantly reduce activation times for certain abilities. However I have seen instances of sorcs for example running wide open and then stopping for a fraction of a second and dumping off a whirlwind ability waaaaaay to fast. Even considering the sorc has a decent alacrity ability/etc, it was just way to fast. On that same token I've seen some healers casting abilities while stunned (they were even thrashing around on screen from a stun while their activation bar filled up two or three times and healed themselves). Now one might consider this was simply an illusion created by lag but there was no other indication of lag. When the stun was up on it's usual expiration the player began running around from that very spot with no indication of server/client misconduct. They just simply stood there stunned activating abilities under the effects of a stun. Node/objective insta capping exploit. NO BRAINER HERE YES! How many times as anyone who even just casually PvPs seen this? I've seen it right before my eyes, I've seen the same player do it over and over, I've seen players cap objectives while being blasted with damage and I've seen them win warzones by disappearing and capturing the final objective in Voidstar when they haven't even made it across the bridge yet lol. Again YES this cheat exists. In short, some people just seem to have permanently full resolve bars even though their icon shows none. You have to be careful with this one because there's been alot of new abilities added to the game that give certain classes practically or technically immunity to CC when in certain stances or when using certain abilities. However sometimes the immunity seems to be waaaaay excessive (and on certain toons of the wrong class) and makes me wonder if there is an exploit for resolve. MACROS. Yeah. I'm gonna say this is one of my more definitive affirmations of exploiting and it's reactive macros that make it so bad. As a sorc I have a few escape tactics the simplest of which is getting the heck out of dodge with force speed. I have force stunned people only to hit my force speed key and be stuck in place, like literally they supposedly activated their version of a "purge" and then root/snare/stun before my force speed animation could get started on my own client side machine. I literally didn't even get a step off. I've also had some spells interrupted before my activation bar even full displayed on screen. As an ex college athlete and career athletic trainer I have seen some pretty impressive reflexes in my days. However the truth is 99.99999% of the population has a reaction time that is within just a few ms of the human average, for visual cues it's about .25 seconds. With internet lag, input lag, server processing time on client and host server, video load and lag etc that's pretty impossible. Ok not pretty, it IS impossible. If it happens legitimately it's not because someone was fast enough it's one of those instances where plain old luck and coincidental timing created an unlikely result. A reactive macro can pull this off because it over rides a few of the most time consuming processes in this scenario. the PC picks up a packet from the server that indicates your target is casting a spell and instantly triggers an interrupt packet back to the server. In doing so it completely bypasses your video cards processing time, your visual cue time (.25 seconds) to recognize the event, then whatever time it takes for your physical self to initiate a response, then the input lag of whatever you're using (mouse, keyboard, game pad, etc). Totaled up that is quite a timing saving work around and is the only logical reason for CONSISTENT occurrences of what I described. I imagine there's a few other things I can think of that I've seen that is definitely exploiting but that's a pretty big list already. NOTE: Just because some of these exploits are available doesn't mean someone is unquestionably cheating if you see something suspicious. If I "suspect" a cheater it's because I've seen that one person do suspicious things over MANY warzones and their suspicious activity has covered 2 or more of these propose exploits. If you do PvP enough you will definitely start to notice patterns in these peoples play style. I've noticed that the people I suspect are most often compulsive bunny hoppers. They are constantly jumping in circles, jumping while attacking, etc. It's just jump jump jump all the time. You'll also notice someones character never seems to move right, it's almost like watching someone run through a slower than normal strobe light, like watching a film that has 1 out of 5 frames chopped out or something. Anyways, that's my current experience with PvP over the last few weeks. There is a lot of false accusations going around in warzones about cheating no doubt. However that is kind of an expected result of there being so much legitimate cheating occurring. Eventually when the source for the unexplainable is proven to be cheating then ALL of the unexplainable starts to look like cheating.

Sweet A!!!

I was about to but won't even bother. I'll just give the short version. Being someone who has cherokee and choctaw ancestry (although admittably distant) I can say without a doubt many native americans were given a raw deal. However I can also say that the stereotype that the native americans were a bunch of peace loving, nature cuddling hippies is complete and utter BS. They fought savagely with each other over land before europeans ever started coming to NA. They took scalps, they killed enemy women and children, they *****, they pillaged, etc. Plenty of pioneers were attacked by the more aggressive/savage tribes of indians for no other reason than a pirate attacks a ship. To steal booty. The whole "europeans going to the Americas were tyrants" thing is based on the sole fact that Europeans were the technologically advanced savages, if anything. When you're a Spanish Catholic and you see a new culture of less advanced people brutually sacrifice a 10 year old girl to make the bean crops grow then yeah, you're probably not gonna have all that much of a humanitarian concern for those people when conflict arises. Sorry for the derail, so back on topic: Yes it sucks to have to change a name. So far I haven't had to change one. I did have to change a legacy name though. What really sucks is that I came from a server with a fairly healthy population, that is it was healthy until the transfers. So really my community and I ended up being getting the shaft in general. The only reason some of the servers ended up being destination servers is because the initial transfers jacked up their numbers. So really we ended up being forced immigrants simply because our one community wasn't as large as 3 or more combined was. :-( However I'm not sure there is any actual way to do it differently. You'd have to do alot of coding make a alot of changes to the game. In the end you should have a list of names you like and have used in MMOs. I have like 23 different names I've used across different MMOs. I am ok with using any of them as they all have meaning to me. If you are going to have this one flagship name across MMOs that you just gotta have to be happy then you're going to have to use common sense and make it super unique. There's no point in complaining that you couldn't keep the name Katelynn. I don't care if that is opening day for a game or during server transfers. You're going to have to come up with something more unique than that (for example), otherwise you're just setting yourself up for disappointment if not today then tomorrow.