My guess is that they put a hub down south because they plan to have a different hub in central Asia when they make the different language versions. It is a bit different to text based MMOs, a lot harder to convert a lot of voice acting for different dialects. I used to play on a MUD with a lot of Singapore players way back, they were fantastic people to play with.

I don't think the ping would be any better than it is to the USA from some asian countries.

This is not the patch you are looking for.

You get around.

They need to increase female breast size by at least 250% for the Japanese market.

I feel a little disappointed only because I really enjoyed the level experience and after Act 3 the game reverts to regular MMO mode of daily and raid/operation grind for minor gear upgrades. The end-game isn't innovative at all, the way the planets were done there is no scope for exploration and discovery, there is no sandbox element so players can't really make their own content so the game is totally dependant on developer content. I wasn't even expecting next-gen, just taking good concepts from more than one existing mmo which have been successfully executed. The sandbox elements of EVE allow those who enjoy PvP to pretty much create their own content and takes the pressure from the developers to constantly release more content to entertain. I'm not a big PvPer but I don't like the mindless PvP for rank or tokens/currency for... gear upgrades. There just needs to be a bit more substance and what you do needs to have some kind of impact. The die/zerg/die/zerg cycle is kind of bland, there is no real consequence for what you do.

Bioware wont leave us hanging... remembers launch... oh, scratch that.

That could be an option, but issues while you level are not as problematic as they are at say operational or end-game pvp level. But you are right, WAR had chronic issues even for levelling, so you could detect total stink with a new character. I wonder what would happen if i tried to move characters over when i had characters there, because I have a full set on the US server. I also have characters on a few servers, how would it decide what you can move and where?

I am nervous about moving to an Australian based server due to how bad WAR handled here. Would it be possible to accept on a character by character basis? I wouldn't mind moving one over to test the water so to speak before committing everything.

Everyone in my guild has fps issues, the number that post about them non-stop = zero. Does that mean the problem doesn't exist? No. People are resorting to move cache files to ramdrives to speed up performance, that doesn't suggest it is a problem with individuals, but is a problem with the game engine/3d engine/design of the client. The game doesn't handle high load very well, it isn't designed from the ground up to run well on any machine remotely close to their recommended settings. Lowering the graphic quality isn't the answer, but it is a cheap/quick solution. If they come out and say they need to re-design the engine and it is going to come 12 months down the track in a paid for expansion then people will give them the bird.

Is maintenance still going to be smack in the middle of our prime time?

I don't make rig decisions based on one game. The only thing I changed recently was getting a low end video card as my 8800 didn't support DX11 and it was becoming an issue for a number of games. I just got a cheap GTS 450 on sale until I am ready to upgrade the rig, which I will do when the ivy bridge processors come out as my E8400 and 4gb or DDR ram is getting a bit dated. It should be about the same time the new Nvidia Kepler GPU based video cards come out so should be a good time to upgrade. Will give the 450 gts to my nephew or keep it in case i pop the new card. I usually don't have any graphic issues at all, the only problem is my card heats up too much, i will probably look at a better cooling system in my new pc. I

That is the main advantage of FTP, you don't have to commit financially to it in order to keep it alive so-to-speak. Whenever you are bored you can log into it. They make most of their money from sales for cosmetic and convenience items. It is a lot harder to stay in touch with sub-based games.

Everquest 3 years Good: Raiding/Character development Bad: Devs/slow evolution Was too old school, was basically a MUD with a GUI slapped on so it was built around spending a lot of time developing a character in a grindy repetitive fashion. Back in the day when most of your exp was acquired through just killing camps of mobs over and over. Star Wars Galaxies: 3 months on and off, more off than on. Good: Crafting/Sandbox Bad: Everything else In hindsight, SWG was decades ahead of it's time and Sony couldn't pull it off, they ended up dumbing it down into a laughable console level of complexity. DAOC: 6 months, on and off Good: PvP Bad: PvE/Nerf-a-thon Darkness Falls was one of my favourite experiences, on one server I played on where control frequently changed hands it lead to interesting times. Given the crap technology at the time the size of the battles was pretty epic. The problem with PvP, for me at least is that it gets repetitive and boring after a while so it has very limited playability for me. World of Warcraft: 7 years Good: PvE Bad: Time/Dumbing down/Ghostcrawler is a moron Played WoW since original beta, was a fantastic game, was sloppy at first but became a very polished game of a high standard. However, they have made it so you can play the game in a coma, even raid in a coma and are moving towards having more or less no real character customisation or effort involved in character development other than a skin you choose. EVE Online: 3 years Good: PvP/Sandbox/Trading Bad: Egotistical developers One of the few games where PvP had any real interest to me because what you fight over is more than an achievement or title. Goes to show that you don't have to spend hundreds of millions constantly making content if you give players the means to make their own content. Developers had a great simple concept and executed it well, but they started to believe their own ******** and took the game places nobody wanted it to go. Guild Wars: 5 years on and off Good: PvE Bad: Too instanced Probably more a limitation of expensive bandwith cost at the time combined with no sub, for what it charged it is a fantastic game and definitely look forward to GW2. It probably relies too much on the competitive PvP thing for constant interest which wasn't my cup of tea. Lord of the Rings Online: 5+ years Good: Tolkien influence Bad: Slow development/poor endgame Game is fun to play and is more of the journey than the destination type game. Since going FTP and Turbine being bought out by WB they have had more resources to put into development. I think the let down was the lack of sandbox given the end-game was fairly weak. Being FTP it is a game I still contribute financially towards where I don't with subscription games I do not play constantly There was some overlap between MMOS obviously, late in EQ I think I started DAOC and headed to WoW during beta, stopped playing DAOC prematurely due to WoW. Played LOTRO, GW and EVE during slow periods of WoW but took a long break from WoW during WotLK and ended early in Cataclysm after the first tier of content.

I like the game and think it has potential but I struggle to find the motivation to log in, i think there are a lot of little issues which annoy me rather than any single game breaking issue. Rather than burn out and leave angry I will likely let my sub run out over the next three weeks and give it a bit of a break and check back a bit later when they have ironed out most of the issues and hopefully added some more non-repetitively/grindy content. The level aspect is a lot of fun, being at max level not so much for me. When I picked a PvE server, it was not out of fear of being ganked, it was because I wanted a PvE experience, there is too much emphasis on PvP on PvE servers, other than duelling there should be no pvp on pve servers, those that want to PvP should grow a pair of balls and go on a PvP server.

You will still suffer the dps drops even with a gtx 590, the issue is the swtor engine, not your gpu or cpu. Read the thread on swtor and ramdrives to get a better understanding of why the fps drops and what can be done to improve on it.

Why do you have a water cooler on a stock i5? That stays fairly cool with just air. I've never had issues with Nvidia cards. I used to be a AMD and ATI fan, but had nothing but problems with these for years, eventually switched to Intel/Nvidia, just got tired of all the headaches. I think Nvidia drivers of late have been sloppy to say the least, would not want to let the trend continue this way.

Because Unreal is just a different engine which has a whole host of issues itself, ie go to the Sony DCUO forum and you will find more engine based ************ and moaning than you will find here. People need to realise it is not the 3d Engine itself that is at fault, it is the custom code developed by the MMO developers that interacts with the engine. The game will perform well or poorly based on the quality of the code, not which engine is used. The only difference between engines is the built in library of functions that they contain, it doesn't matter if it is used for an MMO, FPS, RTS or a game of brickout. MMOs struggle due to the complexity and evolving nature, they also throttle back the use of graphics because they can't always control the number of objects in the camera view, if you use the Unreal engine with ME3 level of graphics your PC will keel over and die once you go into fleet. In a MP/FPS they have absolute control over the number of polygons that need to be rendered, in an MMO environment you do not always have complete control. Blizzard have just had a lot of time to refine their engine, they use very low polygon models which do not stress most PCs but it limits the quality/style of the graphics. Their engine is good because they have invested a lot of time and money in developing it, if you can build a 3d engine from scratch odds are your code which integrates with the engine itself will be good as well.

$10 is not bad, a big improvement from their old 100% markup. Developers have been ripping people off here since day dot, digital distribution has highlighted the depth of it. Complain to the ACCC, if people don't complain then nothing will change. They should set a price for their product in $USD and let exchange rate dictate what it costs everywhere else, they had been double dipping for a long time, especially when the USD was strong.

I have a sorcerer with biochem It is not that biochem is insanely OP, it is just that i am lazy and I prefer to use inferior resuable items than make blue ones constantly. My sorcerer is also part heals, part dps, don't do either thing insanely well, but it is just a lot of fun to play. Not everyone is worried about min/maxing out the most pimp character. For what it is worth, I think the Merc and Operative are comparable in terms of healing and dps, they are just not as fun or visually stimulating. BTW I want florescent blue Emperor Palpatine lightning, not hot pink swtor lightning.

I am in Australia and play with a close friend from Arizona but we are in an Australian guild, we have evolved from EQ to WoW to now SWTOR and we also have some players from Texas and Central USA who shift work and tend to play same time as us. I know it is difficult to get a one fix that works for everyone but perhaps if a guild has a number of oceanic players you could perhaps offer everyone in that guild a move to the same server. This is more a please consider than run around ranting, i will likely leave my characters on the US server (which is nice an quiet) and just re-roll a character on the new server if it is going to be too much hassle. P.S. I hope the oceanic server is functionally a lot better than the WAR Australian servers, the US servers offered a better playing experience in that game.

Crew members should follow your own option to turn helmets on/off, at least. It would be better if there was a box next to the player one, but it 'should' be a fairly simple fix to just apply the player setting to the companion as well.

The article said it was the game engine that was at fault for making you immune to damage while dancing. Really? How dumb is the author?

Piracy for mmos is still very difficult and the number that use pirated private servers is quite low. Blizzard said they didn't care about private servers who didn't try to just re-create a free version of their game, ie, people who reverse engineered the functionality of their server and created a different game experience. Getting on a private server and summoning a dragon and having some laughs for a while isn't really something they give a **** about, if you establish a server with many thousands of players and providing the same content as their paid service then they will come after you. MMOs have proven to be the best form of anti-piracy, console games are probably pirated more than MMO subscriptions.

GB My first computer had 16kb ram and a 2mhz processor.