Simply wrong. Directly contradicts what the Devs said at the San Diego Cantina tour, the NY Cantina Tour, and a couple of others that I can't be bothered to watch the videos again to confirm. To quote the Dulfy wrap up of San Diego: Q: Any plan for new ops? A: They want to have new ops but at the same time they want to ensure they have a solid operation foundation. Revamping current ops/fps first and then after they will have new content. They said operation cadence is very important and once Fallen Empire drops they will start working on new ops. The Devs said repeatedly that the reason they were not doing new ops is that there were too many problems that still needed to be fixed in existing ops. The bugs that put people off of Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice were just the latest in a long line of very buggy ops, with issues that didn't get resolved. SOR launched on Dec 2, March 3, three months later, Ravagers was still so bugged that they had to cancel the tournament because of the bugs, with Temple of Sacrifice being just as bugged.

You mean like Eternal Championship?

That wasn't the reason that the tournament was cancelled as you have repeatedly, and falsely claimed. It was the REASONS(more than 1) that the central focus of the tourney wasn't made another op. Reason 1) Only a fraction of the players who are in Ops at 60 are in ToS and so we wanted to make sure the first round was accessible to as many people as possible. Reason 2) our plan was that the finals (the second round) would be played in ToS so that the Revan encounter was a part of the tournament finale. The clarification that came a half hour later does not contradict the previous statement. The tourney wasn't cancelled, as you have repeatedly and falsely claimed, due to a lack of raiders, it was due to bugs in Coratani encounter.

Where does that state that too few people were doing it?

Didn't deny the second quote, which was a clarification giving TWO reasons as to why TOS wasn't made the central focus of the tourney. However the reason the tourney was cancelled was not, as Slowpoke stated a lack of raiders, it was bugs in the Coratani encounter.

Here we are again with guess work being passed off as statistical fact. Let's try this again. Here is the exact and full Dev quote on why they cancelled the Tourney. You simply are making stuff up and denying the simple truth in that quote.

Do you have any proof for this statement? Well first I wrote: To which you responded: However you are either confused or being intentionally misleading, as the stated reason for the cancellation was: That's right, the Coratani bug. Only then did they give two reasons why they didn't substitute Temple of Sacrifice, neither of which was given priority over of the other. YOu are making stuff up, and you are moving the goal posts when you get called on it.

Your point? BW has never released hard numbers on raiding. Only on those doing ranked pvp which last season was 18000 subs. You are making up statistics. Stop it. Maybe you didn't play at that time. SOR released and the BW Dev team went on vacation until the first week in Feb. During which the famous(infamous) Coratani exploit occured. The fight itself wasn't bugged, the finale of it was. That wasn't fixed until March. Again BW didn't say that people weren't playing, they didn't give a number of people playing ops or different ops content they said: Again you are making solid statements about populations based on, at best, very vague information.

Not judging your ability, just your experience. You may be an able player, but have you ever seen the fight before? Do you know where to go, where to stand, ect? Leaving aside your fallacious illusions regarding the health of the raiding community, simply put an achievement is not a measure of ability, but it is a statement about experience. It means that you have some level of knowledge as to how a fight is going to go. Perosnally, the only achieves I ask for for HM content is the SM achieve. I want to know you at least know what the basic boss fight looks like. That you aren't going to sit there blithely pounding away on Brontes when Kephess spawns, or be staring off into space wondering what the pretty shinies are that popped up in the Terror from Beyond fight. Frankly if you haven't done the op in SM you don't belong in HM. At least on my servers no one asks for achieves anymore as they become pointless in 3.0, but they do say be geared and know tacts. Which requires that you have done your homework. Personally I've switched to what I call a 3 wipe rule. We wipe on any boss 3times for the same reason in a PUG run, and I'm out, have fun, good luck, I'll make a new group and start at that boss if I really want to clear it. That way if some gunslinger can't comprehend melee range in Styrak or Brontes fights, I'll save my creds. Again I'm going to say it. New players would be better off in guilds, especially guilds that seek to teach people the game. You are correct. Which is the point of a guild. So that players can progress quickly and efficiently, with experienced players there to help them. Lots. I know my two guilds(see signature do). We have 700 active members in each guild(so room for more). Gladly take anyone geared appropriately on HM runs. As well as having set prog teams for those who want a more structured envronment. Here's a thought, most of the best guilds for this sort of thing don't bother advertising on forums... They do it in game. Such as, hey look that pug we picked up to fill the 16th spot because Rich is sick doesn't have a guild, ask him if he wants to join... As well as the more onerous flogging guild on fleet and various world chats. Again you are quoting these statistics like 10%. Stop pulling junk out of thin air. BW has NEVER said what percentage raid in SWTOR. Please stop making up statistics to fit your arguments. All it does is say that you are willing to tell untruths in order to win a debate... Ultimately it hurts your position.

Mostly my achievements came from guild runs, where a guild raid leader taught me tactics. Now I am a raid leader in those guilds and have spent up to 5 nights/week teaching new players how to run those same ops. No I don't want to waste my time on someone who wants to be carried. I don't want to waste my time on someone who doesn't want to commit the guild community. When I set up a random pug rug to gear one of my alts or to try and get some missing 224 pieces, I don't want to wipe repeatedly. I want to get the op over in as little time as possible, get the gear and move on, normally because I'll be leading a raid in an hr or so.

So pure supposition based on the guilds that felt the need to post on forums... A good number of guilds and raid groups simply don't feel the need to post their progress on forums. So wait. A month into 3.0 launch not enough guilds were clearing TOS yet? That is your proof? <Zorz> wouldn't clear TOS for another month. They canceled the tournament not because of lack of people playing the content. They cancelled it because of the Coratani exploit, that was the Coratani issue they referenced. Then like I said, even the most Hardcore Prog guild that was in game at the time hadn't progressed all the way through TOS so timed runs wouldn't make much of a contest... You are piling on lots of suppositions, with no factual support for your statements.

I'm sorry I was pretty sure that BW never released its metrics on the numbers of players who partook in HM/NiM ops. Could you please link these numbers for the rest of us? If not please drop this line of argument as it is purely speculative with nothing substantial to back it up. No really its not. But you keep repeating this like a broken record so... have fun with it. Again you have no substantial proof that the reason there are no new ops is that too few people doing them. The only metric that BW has released is the number of people that take part in ranked pvp. Last season it was 18k out of 3.5 million subscribers. That is less that less than half a percent of total players. Yet 2 new PvP arenas were released, so even if only 10-15% of the subscriber population took part as you claim, clearly 0.5% is enough to garner development work, 20-30 times that many players would surely do so...

My guilds(see signarture) run nightly raids. We also have 3 going on 5 progression teams with more planned to form in the next couple of months. Guild raiding is where it's at now. Used to be I pugged more than I raided with guild. Now finding a pug group, even with the achieves is becoming increasingly difficult, but I can still count on at least 1 raid per night on either faction with my guilds. No, achievements haven't become a tool to block people. You could still do the same thing I did, when I got mine, or you could join a guild, or you could form your own prog team... ect. Achievements are a tool for PuG leaders to try to sort folks and figure out how has some idea of how mechanics works. It means less headaches of needing to kick someone from a pug run when they show up and are clearly incompetent. If I want a fast gearing run, like when I'm running alts through priority HMs trying to get that delicious 224 gear, yeah I don't want to spend 200-500k wiping to teach a newbie how to run an op. That's not why I'm there. Will I take inexperienced folks along on prog runs? Sure so long as they are willing to come onto Team Speak with the prog team and listen to tactics. As has been said, you can always form your own group. Sit on guild and shout for a group. Is it hard? Does it take time? Yes to both, but hey that is the nature of pug ops these days. Took me over an hr to put together a DF group for group finder the other day, and that was with it giving massive conquest rewards. PUG ops are simply a dying animal in the current climate where there has been no new content in going on 2yrs.

Achievements don't block people from content, people block people from content, and most often people block themselves from content. I have cleared all HM and NiM content in this game at level. My methods were simple: 1) Read class guide and studied rotation 2) Practiced rotation on practice dummy regularly(tried for 15min/day) 3) Join a guild of people who like doing what I like doing and that would at least take me through SM ops. 4) Say to PUG leaders, I don't have achieve but know and can do fight. If I don't pull my weight on the first go ask me to leave and I will no questions asked. 50% of the time that will get me past the "please show achieve" gate. 5) Chose to play classes that are in short supply like Tank. After PUG leader has been shouting on fleet for an hr or more for that last tank, whispering him with the above point, usually gets me entrance. I actually cleared HM and NiM Dread Fortress, and Dread Palace at level with this tactic. To be honest checking achievements is a handy tool to tell you whether or not people are going to have at least a basic understanding of complex mechanics. In PUG groups lacking voice coms it is a good thing in my opinion. Personally I usually say show achieve or be willing to come on TS to people I take along as pugs.

The Odessan PvP map rewards seem to be broken. You get the same number of coms and amount of valor whether you win or lose, unlike other maps where the winners get significantly more. Considering the spawn rate of this map, please fix this.

Thank you for your advice. I did a full format and scrub of the HD drive today and reloaded win 10. Everything worked fine until Win 10 updated(only SWTOR and Win 10 on puter at the moment). Then same problem all over again. I have a feeling the problem is Win 10's latest update.

Well I reinstalled the game... took several hours and missed a guild raid. Was able to get in after the intro movie played. Then logged out. When I tried to log back into game, same issue.

I keep getting an error message saying: "A connection error has occured, if this problem persists, please visit http://www.swtor.com/support to contact our customer service team." Aside from the annoying bit that you can not longer contact customer service from that page, I have gone through all the trouble shooting steps given there repeatedly and still get the same error message.

Actually that isn't what the Devs said. To quote Michael Backus: Aspirational: Adjective 1. Being ambitious. 2. Desiring success. According to what he has said they are designed to be something for which you have to be a bit ambitious and willing to put in some work both on companion affection and gear. Though he did not say it, I'm going to say you probably are going to have a fair understanding of your rotation, and a general understanding of tactics, but nothing that he said indicates that it would be out of the reach of any player.

Your analogy doesn't work. In SOR you had the choice of killing Revan solo or in an op. Either way the end was the same, the Emperor reborn, and heading off to Ziost. You were not locked out of any content dependent upon your choice. Here you have no choice. The only way you can complete the companion recruitment mission is to do the Star Fortress H2. To quote Eric regarding recruitment missions: In fact I couldn't access the Lokin storyline on one of my Operative because he hadn't done the H2s. Nor can I pull a non-canon version of that comp from the terminal. So there I am being locked from content, both further story and comps that I want(actually want back) because I don't want to gear my Operative as I only play it for story, but not endgame content. Or the cutscene when you first enter your base, in which they tell you that the Star Fortresses must be destoryed in order to properly build an alliance(which is after all the point of chapter 9). Honestly though I really hope that you are a press secretary for some politician somewhere(if not you have seriously missed your calling), because you are great at spin.

Please provide a quote from the Devs where they say that the Star Fortress Storyline is fluff, and only tangential to the main story, especially as that is primarily all there is to do in chapter 9, Without said quote you are simply dressing up your assumptions as their intentions. You have to understand that they said that group content wasn't going to be included, at leas in the initial release, of this expac, and that it was going to take a back seat in general to single player story. Having had my 2 main progression guilds quit enmasse, and fold from said announcements I totally get just how little they were worried about raiders. I see nothing to indicate that this is the exception to that. Again you are dressing up your assumptions as developer intentions. Oh and as a serious progression raider in this game, you calling those either fun or challenging is quite the laugh. Soloed it right after 4.0.2 was launched without buffs ect, to see if the <one for all> acheive was still within my abilities. Out healed my comp 3:1(I play an AP PT btw), and put it down without too much of a hiccup. Hardly the challenging or riveting content tbh. Just long and tedious. No serious progression raider is going to do them for anything but LOLs, and to get the achieve. Its not content that will keep them coming back, especially as there is no gear progression there. At last when(lamely IMO) they tried to keep our interest with the Monoliths there was actually a 204MH at the end of it.

Incorrect. The solo star fortress is the first part of a three part story arc. In the solo mission, you gather information about said star fortress in preparation for destroying it. The H2 on the other hand is where you actually destroy the thing(thus completing the story arc). Further the H2, and destruction of the Star Fortress is how you finish the recruitment of said companion. So not even close to serving the same purpose which is a major reason for the outrage.

Common theme, 216 gear. Speaking of balance, why should anyone need 216 gear for a mission that drops 208? Please retry in sub 208 gear and report back. When I see more than a handful say they could do it in sub 208 gear, I will consider it well balanced.

Agreed. It is an achievement, it should take some work. Again I mostly agree. First issue I see is that the majority of posts of ppl clearing it without the buffs are in 208 or better gear, yet the mission only drops 208 gear. You shouldn't need gear that is as good as or better than the reward in order to complete the mission. So either the mission needs to be nerfed or the rewards buffed. I'd be happy either way. Second issue is that it is not equally balanced across classes. Classes with CC and strong self heals(Merc for instance) have a much easier time. Classes lacking those PT DPS or Sent are having a much harder time. This is a balance issue that really presented itself in 3.x and that they promised to address. Sadly it has popped up again. I struggled in my PT with full 216-224 Ops token gear which I main in HM and NiM ops without problem. While my Merc in PvP 204 breezed right through, even though I rarely use my merc and I am often hunting for abilities.. This shouldn't be the case. Third issue. When you healing comp just freezes in a pose or goes on the attack when you need healing. Again this shouldn't be the case. Fourth issue comps are doing demonstrably less healing in 4.0.2 at high influence levels(tested ranks 20-40 with all comp stories completed and all datacrons collected) then they were doing in 3.x in Yavin comp gear. Frankly I find this absurd. I'm not asking for a return to god mode, I just want a return to 3.x comp effectiveness.

Level 65 Gear: Head 216, Chest 216, Gloves 216, Belt 224, Gr eaves 220, Boots 224, Bracers 216, 220MH, 220OH(all the above is token gear from ops) 224 Earpiece, 216 implant(token from ops) 220 implant(crafted), 216 token relic, 208 PvP relic. All gear is augmented with 208 Overkill augments. Spec: Advanced prototype powertech. Companion: Lana Beniko Companion role: Healer/Tank Companion Influence Level Rank 22 with 2278 presence Mission: Star Fortress Heroic 2 under <One for All> criteria Personal Experience: In short, bad. Using a medpack, Guard Canon Heroic Utility point and my Kolto Overload, I healed myself more than Lana healed me. According to my combat logs and parses I achieved 1276 HPS, while Lana's highest was 986HPS. Overall I found the difficulty of the mission to be very inconsistent. First Paladin was a challenge, managed to kill him, but ended at 10% health, and didn't use a medpack. Then got to the Praetorian expecting a major fight, bought some medpacks in preparation. Burned through this fight and health never dipped below 85%. Encountered Second Paladine, and suddenly Lana just freezes mid fight, not attacking, not healing, not moving, just frozen. The result was a quick death for us both. Repeated this fives times. Then tried Lana in Tank stance. She was dead after taking four attacks, I followed soon after. Decided that this would have to wait until I was full 224 and a Lvl 50 Lana, that is how lopsided the fight was. Ambush before the Exarch stage, went as expected, with need to take down the adds, and hope that Lana will CC one of the Knights, but made it through that with a dead Lana and me at 25% health. Reactor Phase of the Exarch fight. This took seveal attempts to get past. Once again Lana would freeze and do nothing at various times which was a major part of the problem. In one attempt she did an amazing(ly low) 546 HPS despite dying after me. When she wasn't frozen she was standing in circles of impending doom. Even when successfully clearing one of these rooms I had to resummon her after each because she had died from standing in dmg. The actual fight with the Exarch. Again I healed myself more than Lana healed me. It was a long and tedious fight. To keep Lana alive I had to keep putting her on passive mode so that she would come to me and move out of circles of impending doom. Again she was doing her freeze routine where she would just stop doing anything at all, and usually was holding the pose of the last thing she did. Well kitted out like this, the fight can be done. Technically I can also drink my own urine, the latter would probably slightly more enjoyable. I love a good challenge that requires sound tactics and certain outputs of DPS/HPS ect to overcome. I find them fun and entertaining. I regularly participate in HM and NiM ops, and was probably one of the few that liked TOS as it was released, before the nerf. This is not fun. Hard yes, but fun no. I find it jarring that this former head of Sith Intelligence who managed to make her way into a hostile empire and free me from a carbonite prison suddenly lacks the good sense to step out of the exarch's death ray. As a final note. After the companion gear boxes were added to Yavin in 3.0.2, my Treek or any other healing comp was doing slightly more than 3k HPS. By stark contrast my rank 22 Lana hasn't broken 1000 HPS. I find it odd that 5 levels and a lot of influence later, my companion is underperforming 3.x by 66%. Supporting documents: Combat logs of my initial foray into 4.0.2.