I have this problem on occasion. I think it is traffic-related. What I have started to do is rotate my VPN's servers. Some servers have better days of service than others. Another thing I do is use BleachBit before I go online to flush the software cashes - which seems to help things run more smoothly.

A part of SWTOR has been to make LS and DS choices max out your alignment. But it surprises me that there has been nothing offered in the Cartel Market to expedite this. And so, here is my suggestion: The Paragon of Evil Alignment Bundle - Contains a token to instantly grant the player's character maximum DS alignment, a legacy-bound armour set with a pulsating black-red full-body aura, a Dark Side Altar legacy-bound decoration for the player's stronghold, and the "Child of Bogan" title. The Paragon of Balance Alignment Bundle - Contains a token to instantly grant the player's character a true neutral alignment (maximum LS and DS), a legacy-bound armour set with a swirling red and blue full-body yin/yang aura, an Altar of Bendu legacy-bound decoration for the player's stronghold, and the "Child of Bendu" title. The Paragon of Righteousness Alignment Bundle - Contains a token to instantly grant the player's character maximum LS alignment, a legacy bound armour set with a radiating full-body white-blue aura, a Light Side Altar legacy-bound decoration for the players's stronghold, and the "Child of Ashla" title.

The tunings for weapons are great, but I would love to see armour tunings added to the Cartel Market to mix and match with the weapon tunings. Floating Force Ghost Armour Tuning Rakghoul Plague Armour Tuning Full-body Light-side Aura Armour Tuning Full-body Dark-side Shadow/Smog Armour Tuning Full-body Force Lightning (The Starkiller look) Armour Tuning Cross-legged Levitation Armour Tuning It would be something I'd definitely be throwing Cartel Coins at!

I recently managed to obtain the Mek-Sha stronghold (I love it!) and immediately started to experience the following bugs: Placing decorations sometimes causes the game to crash to the desktop. (This does not happen in any other stronghold.) Upon placing a decoration, you cannot change it's position or pick it up. It's just there. You have to close the hooks UI, and re-open it to make the sliders and pick-up button appear. Sometimes I have to re-log. (This does not happen in any other stronghold.) The GTN kiosk decorations are hit-or-miss. Sometimes they work and you can place sales or buy things. Other times, the kiosks are unresponsive and I am forced to re-log to get them working again. Some pets are being mis-categorized as npcs and cannot be placed due to the error regarding exceeding the npc limit. This is happening even when there are no other npcs in the stronghold. (This is apparently happening in all of the Galactic Seasons strongholds only.)

If we all are going to be charged for travelling to and from strongholds (and you are also looking for new credit sinks), shouldn't every planet currently in SWTOR have its own dedicated stronghold then? For example, I'd gladly throw my credits at: a Gree-inspired stronghold on Ilum. a Section X stronghold (exclusive to Section X unlock owners). a Hoth stronghold. a Zakuul Penthouse like what Kaliyo has. a Balmorra fallout shelter. Come to think of it, I have always wanted to have a Kashyyyk Treehouse, but you'd have to include Kashyyyk somewhere in the game (hint-hint). I apologize if I sound like a broken record. Don't punish the players who don't have the credits, but give the players who have the credits to spend something they can spend those credits on. What I have noticed during the ten years that I have played this game is: there is nothing in the game worth 1 billion credits. I'm not talking about Cartel Market items being sold on GTN for 1 billion credits but ordinary in-game items such as Prestige Tier Strongholds for veteran end-game players. Why even allow a 1 billion credit cap if there is nothing in the game that even costs that much? The economy in this game is unavoidably destined to balloon because once you hit level 80, there is simply nothing in the game to work towards in order to dump credits into and slipping in fees and charges will not even make a dent in what is already there. Instead of throwing in a truck load of fees and charges that will only hurt New Players (which will only cause New Players to start even more flame wars in general chat at the veteran players), give us Prestige Tier Strongholds that cost up to 1 billion credits to swiftly drain the overabundance of credits from the game. Problem solved.

More Credit Economy Suggestions: 1.) Introduce new Legacy Character perks as a Credit Sink. Advancement - Improved Heroic Experience I, II, III, IV and V Travel - Priority Transport unlocks for Mek Sha, Onderon, Ossus and Dantooine. Convenience - Field GTN Kiosk Droid I, II, III; Field Guild Cargo Hold I, II, III; Field Combat Respecialization, and Improved Combat Running I, II and III (for PvE combat Only). 2.) To prevent players from being stranded in a hostile area on account of lacking credits, set up Legacy Storage at every Med Center. That way, if a player has squirreled away credits in their Legacy Storage, they can at least withdraw credits from it. 3.) Make sure there is no chance of a player being accidently stranded inside their stronghold with no credits. If we all are going to be charged credits to go to and from our strongholds, there must be a safeguard in place to keep players from being trapped. Perhaps there should only be a single one-way charge just like when we visit a stronghold of an opposing faction.

One change I would make is to remove the travel charge from the starter-strongholds of Dromund Kaas and Coruscant. Why? No newly created character has 100 credits right off the bat and remember: Ftp/Preferred players can't mail credits between alts. New players who might want to make an alt wouldn't be able to travel directly to a stronghold immediately after character creation to get geared up before starting the new class story. Having a travel charge on the more advanced strongholds is okay because by then, you'll have a lot of credits to burn through, but keep Dromund Kaas and Coruscant open for free use for the little guy.

I love the idea of the Mek-Sha Safehouse stronghold. I've always been a fan of Turner Classics' Film Noir Alley by Eddie Muller, and I couldn't help but think of some of the great old detective movies in particular. May I add a couple of suggestions? 1.) Introduce some stronghold decorations called: The Mek-Sha Detective's Bundle... complete with old-school window blinds, ceiling fan, filing cabinets, and a blond wig-wearing droid secretary seated at a desk. 2.) Place a blinking neon light outside the stronghold window to give it that extra noir vibe. 3.) Seriouly consider creating a Mek-Sha Detective class available for both factions. You wouldn't need a whole bunch of voice actors for the class missions because in film noir, the story is sometimes told in monologue fashion from the Detective's point of view. The male voice actor could sound like Humphrey Bogart while the female voice actor could sound like Lauren Bacall. Cut scenes could be shot in grayscale and the music could be John Williams' Star Wars music played to a slow Jazz beat.) Just a thought. Keep up the awesomeness!

Regarding the over-abundance of credits and inflation, I would make two more suggestions as viable alternatives to tacking on a whole bunch of credit charges to the game. I love those battle walkers from KotET and Iokath. And so, what if you were to introduce them to the PvP instances of other planets? Add a "walker rental" NPC to key areas in the PvP instances, and <channeling shifty used-car salesman voice> "For the paltry sum of one million credits, you too can pilot a walker into enemy territory to lay siege to an enemy base." But for subscribers (Alert: Subscription Incentive!) , they will get their very own battle-walker that they can summon anywhere... and can customize by buying exclusive temporary upgrades (armor/shield/missle launchers/grenades/beem generators/walking speed booster) from the same NPC: costing one million credits per upgrade. Add an NPC in Outlaws Den who sells cosmetic versions of the SWTOR 1.0 Stalker armors at the cost of one million credits per piece. (I would literally be throwing my credits at those glowing armors!) Like I've said before: Go after the players who have the credits to spend; not the ones who don't.

That's odd. I've never had any trouble finding groups in Satele Shan... especially late-night on the weekend. But consider this... There are an estimated 43 million people in the world who speak Spanish as their primary language. Now, one of my former guild members (who hails from Brazil) stated that he knows many Spanish-speaking gamers where he is who would love to play SWTOR if it wasn't for the fact that they would have to learn English first in order to do so. As a result, many of them have given SWTOR a hard-pass. (I can sympathize with that. I'm not willing to learn Japanese in order to play those JRPGs not yet available here in the US.) If there are already dedicated servers for German and French players, I don't see how having a Spanish server would be that much of a problem especially with a potential world-wide customer base of 43 million Spanish-speaking people to recruit new players from. The answer is clear: To eliminate the over-abundance of credits in the existing servers, To reduce per-server inflation, To significantly boost SWTOR's over-all revenue with new potential subscribers, ...adding a new dedicated Spanish server makes the most business-sense.

The Rakghoul event has it's World Bosses. The Gree event has it's World Bosses. But what about Life Day? I would like to propose the following to the development team: Introduce the Life Day World Boss. I have in the past shot the occasional Overheated droid (okay, a whole lot of them) in the futile search for a possible hidden achievement or title unlock. Sadly, no such achievement or title exists. However, why can we kill Overheated droids if there is no consequence? Enter the Life Day World Boss. Inspired by Futurama's Robot Santa, this Life Day World Boss is summoned to exact Kaiju-esque revenge upon all those who would dare to kill 25 or more Overheated droids. If you are defeated by him, you gain the "I Got Missle-toed" achievement. If you defeat him, you gain "The Holly Jolly Joy Killer" title. Just a thought.

I would like to see the following added to SWTOR's Steam Achievements: Ownership achievements and a "100% unlocked" achievement for each (currently available) stronghold. Ownership achievement and a "Level 50 Influence" achievement for each (currently available) companion. Ownership achievement for assembling HK-51. Virtual Meatbag achievement for HK-55. Achievement for dispatching (one or more) companions with extreme prejudice. <Cough: Quinn> Achievement for dispatching a companion who is at Level 50 Influence. Datacron Master achievement. Achievement for becoming a Guildmaster. Did I miss anything? What would you like to see added to SWTOR's list of existing Steam Achievements?

One other suggestion that might help reduce the abundance of credits in-game is to establish an official Spanish server. There are a considerable number of Spanish-speakers in the US/EU servers. They've been asking for a server of their own for YEARS. Well, by giving them their own dedicated server, they would transfer their characters (and more importantly, their credits) to the Spanish server which in turn would cause a sudden over-night reduction of credits in the US/EU servers! Even if that represented a drop in existing US/EU servers' total credit count by one-quarter, as a quick-fix for the credits problem, that's still nothing to sneeze at. Furthermore, from a marketing standpoint, finally introducing an official Spanish server to SWTOR would open up the game to Spain, Mexico and South American players... And, like the idea or not, SWTOR needs more people playing it right now. It is just a thought, but I believe it is worth taking it into consideration as an alternative to bombarding new players with a truck-load of credit-charges on... everything.

I believe that the proposed approach to fighting in-game inflation is a terribly flawed one. As a ten-year player of SWTOR, I have personally experienced a considerable animosity from newer players who apparently have the opinion that long-time players like myself are somehow responsible for their not having nice things in the game. They think that all long-time players are somehow at fault for the inflation on GTN without ever considering that it took us ten years worth of gameplay to get where we are at. The introduction of new credit charges will only serve to hurt these new players (who have little credits to start with) while not impacting seasoned and veteran players who have an abundance of credits. This in turn will only re-inforce the hard feelings new players have towards seasoned and veteran players and give them just one more thing to blame us for. I would suggest that instead of punishing the entire playerbase for the actions of a few bad actors, you could do the following to help remove the over-abundance of credits from the game: 1.) Introduce the Gravestone Stronghold which would serve individual players the same way a Guild Flagship would, travelling from planet to planet (at cost of credits), offer a group summons feature (at cost of credits) and a multiple-choice 24-hour bolster (at cost of credits). It would be the most expensive stronghold to date, not including the additional cost to unlock its expansions. It would be the penultimate player status symbol players would genuinely want to throw their credits into. 2.) Restore class-skill trainers to their original purpose of selling class skills for credits. I myself began this game buying my skills as I progressed and never understood why that was ever removed. 3.) Introduce a character tatoo parlor on the fleet where we can buy custom tatoos for our characters (regardless of character race) using credits. 4.) Introduce speeder dyes and paint jobs that can be purchased using credits. 5.) Add more stronghold decorations that can be bought with credits. 6.) Regarding those new players with the bad feelings towards us old-timers, introduce for them an entry-level beast mount vendor, beast companion vendor and droid companion vendor on the starter worlds: Tython, Ord Mantell, Korriban, and Hutta. These wouldn't be like the Cartel Market versions but it would give them "something cool" to start with. Overall, to fight inflation in this game, you need to go after the players who have the credits to spend; not the ones who don't.

1.) Team up in a real-life crossover with Fish Tank Kings to design fishtank decorations for SWTOR. 2.) Add craftable traps and mine decorations in Cybertech for use in strongholds to make the Rishi Stronghold PVP zones much more deadly. 3.) Add playable droid race to character creation race selection... because Marvel has the Vision, so why not? 4.) Add a World-Between-Worlds Stronghold inspired by Star Wars Rebels. 5.) Add a Kashyyyk Treehouse Stronghold for Life Day... (Not all of us hate the Star Wars Holiday Special.) Any other ideas, folks?