As an altoholic any regional merge (eg. SS <-> SF) is going to be particularly painful as it would require me to cull 20-30 characters before I can make a new one. I've already started this calculus because I'm near my limit. The unlocks are still crazy expensive on the GTN and I'm not about to drop 200-300usd worth of CC just to get back to my pre-merge capacity.

That would chase away the new and casual GSF people that want to play. Flying stock ships w/o upgrades is utterly miserable which has been a festering problem ever since the mode was introduced. While my muscle memory is coming back I can still barely scratch any vets and I get popped if they so much as glance at me. I tried to do last week's GSF medal based GS objective and gave up. Between getting only two objective based matches and the above design defect it just wasn't going to happen. I think I managed to squeak out 4 or 5 defense medals after several hours. While that same objective is in the list this week there's also a number of matches based one this week that I will be completing on two servers.

One of the SW:TOR devs did a launch post-mortem at (IIRC) a GDC a year or two after the fact and they pretty much pointed at a bad assumption by the dev team. The devs expected the players to play most or all of the class stories before dipping into endgame. What happened was that a large chunk did one story and then went "Where's the beef?". That wasn't the rush-to-endgame crowd either.

Keep in mind that this week's conquest is skewed towards heroics. Check to see if you've gotten CQ from non-regular objectives.

The choose a 2nd combat style one counts which I found somewhat amusing.

One must ask what was left out of the latest patch notes. Perhaps the change to infinitely repeatable also comes with a nerf to credits and tech frag payouts.

When did SW:TOR get per day pricing? (It didn't. It's 15usd whether you play one day or 30 days)

Blows about 6 years worth of dust off the account. I was in the mood for a Star Wars game. Played through both Jedi Academy and KOTOR. I wanted the action of the first and the story of the 2nd so I decided to do another play through of the first three chapters here and hopped on as Preferred. When I left the cap was 70 and I was getting dangerously close. I also had it in my mind to unlock the post KotEE content. So here I am. FWIW my first alt wound up at level 77 before staring at the mission to go to Ilum. I'm not really here for endgame although I'm starting to get the itch. That said, if I wasn't here I don't think I'd be playing any of TOR's competitors. FF14's raids are more akin to synchronized swimming (pattern memorization + flawless execution) than a coordinated effort to defeat a challenge. None of the others really appeal to me. I haven't found that to be the case. In retrospect I may be leveling faster than most. I've been doing a fairly comprehensive run: Both class and planetary, most side quests including exploratory missions and I have multiple sets of the 50% xp boost armor. Both the class and planetary chains drop a major experience boost. In other words I'm probably blowing past the skill gaps. I am decidedly not a fan of the design decision to make skill choices exclusive. Rather shameful how hilariously uneven which classes were forced to "choose" between core rotational abilities and which ones escaped that madness.

IMO that's a bit nitpicky. FWIW "Kephas" is really close to Ciphas (TFB council fight) so maybe he conflated the two. Also, was it an actual meatspace meeting or did they chat over email? Could have been a cut&paste quote. Would not surprise me in the least that Boyd pooched it. Regardless let me just pull this howler from the article: oh... mah... dog...

Def. had a couple superhero phases. Oromunroe (Lightning Sorc, duh) and Jubaleigh about two years ago. Recently Jenn Walters (pub) and Shulkie (imp) which are Mirialans, ofc. Two of them because I had originally meant to make her Imperial but goofed and got Jenn through Coruscant before I realized my mistake Mostly I hit the random button until I get something I like then modify it a little.

Just a bit of speculation but I think that's pretty much this year's plan (raid boss every other month) but I think they're also going to release additional companion reunions along the way. But what makes the GC joke even more hysterical is that I would have been perfectly fine with that schedule had they not transformed this MMO's end-game gearing into a system you'd see in the worst of the worst predatory mobile games.

Let's assume for a brief time that they're sincerely trying to improve the game (I know it's a stretch but bear with me). Twitter is great for soundbites. What should have happened was that the detailed post or posts were made first and the Twitter announce should have linked back to the detailed overview. But of course Communications are such a disaster that the Tweet went out like a turd from a flying buffalo with the player base getting nothing but dead air. OTOH if we assume they're doing their utmost to kill this game then they've done a stellar job. A guildy sent around a screenshot to some of us with a severely depleted fleet population. On Harbinger. It's time to vote with your wallets folks. Apparently the huge loss they experienced at launch wasn't enough of a message. They need another reminder how much you hate GC and what it's done to this game.

You praise a toddler for using the potty. Congratulating an adult for doing the same is weird.

Ow ow ow ow... hot coffee out the nose. Go slap on some crafted 230's, do a few WZ's and tell us how "fun" and "exciting" the experience was.

Time to put this game back on the shelf. When and if (ha) they get back to making an MMO I may consider returning.

Congratulations on destroying another guild. What little I got to play of 4.0 was enough to get me to resub. The story was crap but that's not what I'm here for. 5.0... I tried to make it work but it was only a matter of time before the insane grind burnt me out. Ultimately the RNG frustrated one person too many in my circle of friends and things collapsed. I feel... free. LOL. Let's try something novel: You get back into the business of making an MMO and maybe I'll come back. Oooh, it'll be fun to use the "Soon™" phrase on you guys. (I promise I'll be as timely as you folks).

Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. ... [imdb]

People who dislike the game just go away quietly. "It's not for me". No rage, no screaming. Maybe a buh-bye. That was me and WoW. After 3-months I just walked away which was somewhat painful because it meant leaving behind a group of folks that I loved gaming with. Rage is far, far better than apathy because when it gets to the point where the player doesn't care anymore it becomes extremely hard to get them back. While you do need to attract players, assuming that there's an untapped demographic large enough to replace your existing population 2+ times over is about as naive as pushing RNGearing 2.0 as an exciting innovation. The people you see complaining don't dislike the game. We're letting EA know that we're not happy with the direction they're going. We're letting them know that our friends are walking away without saying a word to them. And we're letting them know that the game has been neglected to the point that the only thing keeping us here are our friends. If they can screw up the Star Wars IP that badly, why should we trust them to make any other game? On a personal note: While I'm a big Star Wars fan I'm here because it's the closest thing I've found to a sci-fi WoW clone.

It's fairly simple to divine: They're still working under the delusion that RNGearing is a viable primary. UC's are at best a gap-filler intended to get that last piece of gear. Until they start acting like adults and admit their failure we'll just have to suffer. Or leave. I'm seeing far too many people getting exhausted with this crap and just giving up and walking away.

In a word: Ew. SW:TOR's level-sync and tactical FPs are awesome ideas, brilliant even. You can group with anybody, be effective, and get something useful (xp, mats, gear, tokens, etc.) out of it. Yes they got a few details hilariously wrong (ofc). Level-sync should be zone based not planetary. The sync level is at least two levels too high, flashpoints assume certain utilities are available (cc break), and many aren't suitable for non-trinity groups are just some of the goofs. If something needed to be tweaked it was this. The Companion revision was another good idea in general with some poorly thought out details. I -love- being able to use who I want instead of who can fill the role I need. Influence should have been capped at 20. Not zOMG overpowered but still very useful. Normalizing weapons was a huge mistake. Blizz without his rocket launcher is a travesty. KotFE stripping them from us and then flooding us with a small army of clones was awful both story-wise and mechanically. I like ToS much, much better than DF and DP. I could have done without the whole Keeping Up with the Valkorians story arc. (Although Iokath looks cool).

No news means the Community Manager is not doing his job. As predicted the brief uptick in communications has yet again fallen off the cliff and we're back to crickets. Competent CM's never have "nothing" to talk about. While some of it is inconsequential that's kept to a minimum. When you sow apathy guess what you're going to reap?

Not even in the slightest. If it wasn't for EA at best I'd have a mild curiosity. When Bioware existed for real it told a good story. The problem was that they kept telling the same story over and over. ME:3 happened and then had to rework the ending try to explain why their vision was good and still couldn't. KotFE and KotET were "ok" if you ignore several glaring missteps not to mention an amateurish attempt at drama. Whatever storytelling skill Bioware had died with the rest of the studio when they sold out. Then there's EA. In the last quarterly report they gleefully paraded their mobile gaming profits. If you don't think all of their games are going to be infested with predatory gamble boxes you're dead wrong. In fact that's already been announced for ME:A. So good luck wit dat.

Unassembled Components come from participating in ground PvP matches and Galactic Starfighter. Base award favor GSF over PvP but I find ground PvP yields quite a bit more due to being able to hit the minimum number of medals to qualify for the bonus. Oi. No not silly at all. This is a rather complicated question to answer. The best short answer I can give you is: It shouldn't or if it does the effect is not at all significant. Aside: Back in the day one of the recommended sources of randomness (aka entropy) were the low order bytes returned from a drive temperature reading. Bascially don't sweat what opening those heroic crates will do to you. In the highly unlikely event they do have a noticeable effect it'll screw up the next poor sod that opens a crate.

RNG: Random Number Generator. It's the programming algorithm developers use to "roll the dice" so to speak. When you open a command crate the system rolls separate dice to determine slot, rarity (green,blue,purple,gold) and type if it's an earpiece, relic, or implant. To "win" you need to get the best rarity of the tier (purple for T1, gold for T2+), you need to get a piece for slot that you don't already have and in the case of earpieces, relics and implants you need the specific type you use. As you accumulate pieces the probability of getting a repeat increases. This makes the ultimate odds of building a set appropriate for the content a team was progressing on ridiculously small. Here's the thing: You've had some outstanding good luck while people who actually need the gear for the content they're running get greens or the same piece over and over again because their luck stinks and Ben's RNG loves to wave a giant middle finger at them.

I completely agree that the problem is that even if you do PvP and/or GSF the drop rates are far too stingy because we can't have that showing up the brainsick RNGearing idea. As an aside: I've been using a blue 230 barrel in my mainhand (same stats as the purple). I recently got a 234 (bleh) drop from a DisintiCrate™. Since I don't do Ranked or NiM I'll probably contract somebody to make me a pair of 240 barrels.