PvP by nature is more likely to result in people ignoring each other. If it was just one person on the entire server ignoring people, it wouldn't wreck the system, but if on average, 1 out of every 16 players uses their ignore feature (a low estimate), over time it will become harder and harder to make matches.

The lack of logical thinking in this thread is depressing. If a "hacker" - or more accurately, an account thief - has your display name and password, he may be able to log in IF he got past the security questions, but he still needs your e-mail address to gain a foothold. If you log in with your e-mail address, then the thief already has your e-mail address... and that's two birds with one stone. Changing login to display name prevents them from learning your e-mail. What's all the about?

There's no way to accomodate for everyone's special play-styles. There was an MMO I once played where some players refused to level up their combat-related skills at all, but that was their choice. If you have played since launch you should remember the special promotion they did a while back, where everyone with a level 50 character was given free gametime. They realized this wasn't fair and extended the policy to also include accounts of a certain Legacy level. So, Bioware is well aware that not everyone is going to reach 50, rather, spending their time on many characters. However in the case of the armor, there's no helping it. It's high-level armor, and they want it set up so that players who were a high level during time period X are the only ones who can have it. If you are that worried about it, buy some EXP boosts and speed your way to 50. It's the only solution to your dilemma.

bump; hopefully bumps are allowed after several days of no replies. If not, someone please let me know ,so I can avoid breaking the rules...thanks.

I'm sorry, but the hypothetical explanations I thought up in my previous post make a lot more sense to me than the one you just proposed. A companion's gear isn't for playing dress-up-doll, it's an essential part of every player's combat effectiveness. It doesn't seem fair to compare giving a powerful item to a companion with vendoring it to a shop. Player 1 wants to equip a lightsaber to himself; Player 2 wants to equip it to his companion. Both players' combat effectiveness will increase regardless of which one won the roll. What's the difference? A good reason could be "because companions are practically never used in Hard Mode Flashpoints and high-level play; powerful gear is wasted on them". But telling people that rolling for companions is bad because they're just companions isn't going to convince them of anything...

I don't know why hitting Need for companions isn't allowed, it's still putting the gear to a legitimate use on that person's character, but I guess that rule was necessary. Otherwise everyone would use it as an excuse to Need for everything...and Companions aren't used in HM/Ops anyway...meh.

The type of thing described here about chests is a common courtesy thing, it's not required. If someone sees a bag of money on the ground in real life, someone else can easily run up and grab it, not caring that the other guy saw it first. Or, the guy could be nice and congratulate him. It's not actually breaking any of the game rules. The post above mine is a good example of how people take the concept of good MMO manners and try to twist and manipulate them to their own advantage. His friend wasnt around so everyone is supposed to wait? Ridiculous. There was something that happened to me when I first started playing. I was trying to do a Heroic 4 on Balmorra; the only objective was to loot a piece of machinery. I advertized for a while in general chat, but no one wanted to help. I tried doing the mission alone, and got pretty far - all the way up to the objective, which was of course guarded by quite a few enemies. Then I saw a group of 3 players in a guild heading my way. I asked if I could join them, and they ignored me. I whispered one of them, and he also ignored me. So, I lurked around until they engaged combat with the enemy group, and then I looted the objective. It respawned after about 20 seconds, but those 20 seconds were apparently enough to propel the guild out of their silence and into a rage. The group went on the General chat saying that I was a ninja, a coward, and someone with "horrible MMO etiquette". Even after I told my side of the story, everyone seemed to agree that I was the bad guy that should leave the server. I didn't hurt anyone and only cost them 20 seconds of downtime, and they had every opportunity to invite me to their group - they had the room. So, the point is, don't get overzealous about this sort of thing, and remember that not every case is black and white. Even a loot ninja might have a reason for stealing a chest...or more likely, he just doesn't care, but you never know.

Are all guilds created before the free-to-play update came out automatically "subscriber guilds"? Is there any way to downgrade to a free guild? From the FAQ: Only Subscribers may be guild leaders of Subscriber Guilds in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. If you plan to become a Free-to-Play player, you should ... pass your leadership on to a guild member that plans to remain a Subscriber. If you do not do this prior to your account status changing, the system will automatically pass guild leadership on to the highest ranked active Subscriber in your guild once your account changes to Free-to-Play. Q: ◦If my guild becomes a Free-to-Play guild, what will happen to the items in our guild bank? A: The article you requested was not found. It may have been updated or removed That last bit makes it seems like there was supposed to be a way to change a guild's status...is it impossible now?

$15 is not "nothing" no matter how much money you make, it's $15. $15 a month for a year isn't "nothing" either, it's $180. If your significant other or kid or whatever happens to play, double that to $360. Furthermore, last I checked, video games weren't an exclusive, adult-only medium. No doubt many of SWTOR's players don't have an income, and have to ask their parents to add $15 to their monthly bill so they can spend more time on their computer. Seriously, just because you view dollars as pennies doesn't mean the rest of the world does.

Agreed, this was a great day in this game's history, and we should all be proud to witness it. So many things could've gone wrong, but they didn't - everything went perfectly as intended.

You're absolutely right, thus paid name changes will be coming soon* to remedy your concerns.

Exactly. This was really the best thing Bioware could've done in a bad situation, and it's extremely fair to everyone, both individual players and guilds. We're all equal citizens on the new servers now. And they've made very happy people out of their active, long-term players such as myself who bided their time and didn't transfer willingly. The people that are now being forced to rename their characters because of my presence might be upset or unsubscribe, but I'm assuming that if they're really that fickle, they wouldn't have been playing this game a few months down the road anyway.

I'm glad to see so many rational minds arguing against players who are, in essence, saying "I deserve preferential, special treatment just because I happened to be on server X (which no longer exists)! Players from server Y and Z are second-class citizens and don't deserve fair treatment or consideration!" I can guarantee you that most of these people saying they "had a right to keep their names" just because they were "on a destination server" are the same ones who went around trolling threads a month ago with "it's just a character name, get over it". Easy for them to say back then, eh? Welcome to the other side of the fence.

Logically, the game will not die, and will be alive and well for many years to come. People saying SWTOR is going to shut down are just trying to hurt its integrity for whatever reason (angry ex-players, supporters of other MMOs, etc.) The upcoming free-play move will actually be a huge advantage, as proven by other MMOs that have done the same in the past. The $15/month subscription-only model is dying out.

I do agree that all the servers should've been renamed, it would've been pretty cool, and there wouldn't be elitist castes running around saying "I'm native to server X, you're an immigrant!"

Thank you for posting this message. I have no doubt that the game admins are keeping watch on this thread, and people are far more likely to complain on forums than to take time out of their day to say they actually enjoy an update, so I'm sure your happy post means a lot to them.

My account has also been active and paid since the game came out and I also had to rename two characters with extremely common names ("Darkness"). The characters I had to rename were level 12, yet I was given priority on less common character names that were only level 1. Since we're in similar situations, it's most likely just as the developer said - many factors were taken into consideration when determining who had to rename. You & your kid lost names despite your loyalty to the game because the others who had them probably sunk a huge amount of gametime in, in addition to being current & longtime subscribers, so this served as the tiebreaker in your situation.

Guild names on former destination servers have been forced to rename if a guild on another server took priority. Basically it doesn't matter whether or not the server is the "same" or not, because absolutely no distinction has been given between "origin" and "destination" during this process. The system doesn't care whether a guild or a character came from server X or server Y, it'll assign renames fairly to all parties involved. Guilds coming from other servers have kept their entire rosters AND guild banks AND all items in the banks, which gives further support to the theory that this is a new "super server". The process to get a guild bank transferred previously was extremely difficult and required manual intervention by customer support.

Well, their decision may cause you to unsubscribe, but it caused me to stay subscribed, so in this case we cancel each other out, my friend

Mmhmm. How long have you had an active subscription? What level were your characters? When were they created? How many hours of playtime did you sink into them? That's why.

No one made you take advantage of the free transfer service. No one had to "force name change" their characters. It all was 100% optional, and you made your decision. This server merge WAS forced. You're telling me that you, who intentionally sacrificed your character names to transfer early, should have priority over players who refused to transfer because they didn't want to lose their names?

Why don't you wait until you log in before you panic about how few names you have left? If they explained how it would play out beforehand, no one would've transferred early. If I'd transferred early, I would've lost 6 character names. Since I predicted/hoped for something like this, I waited, and I lost zero.

Look at this thread, full of people complaining about having to change their names. I bet these are the exact same people that went around trolling threads a month ago, saying "it's just a name, get over it", because they were keeping their names at the time. So you lost your names even though you were on a "destination server"? This may be difficult to understand, but it's because someone else deserved it more than you, for whatever reason. I bought this game for $65 dollars and now I see it on bargain shelves for $15. I've been a loyal subscriber the whole time. Should I lose my character name to someone who's been subbed for 1 month just because I was unlucky enough to be on an origin server, something I had no control over? So THANK YOU BIOWARE. You've done a very good thing here, and restored my faith in this game and the company. P.S. The same renaming process has been used for guilds. Whichever guild deserved to keep the name got to keep it. As it should be.

I'd like to point out that with today's patch notes, a percentage of the hooded items were finally fixed, but a large percentage remain bugged, including those in the style of Saber Marshal/Dark Zealot and Dark Synth/Elder Seeker robes. Black Talon's style has been patched up. Hopefully they continue to fix the hoods...it's a shame this patch didn't fix them all, but it's better than nothing.

1.3.6 Patch Notes Many hoods that previously stretched or clipped have been corrected. Literally yelled "Oh ****!!!" when I read this. Unfortunately, although many hoods HAVE indeed been fixed, many are still broken, depending on the model/style of the item in question.