Sept. 7th

You can only do that part of the mission during the Rakghoul event. They did change it so the event runs every month though, so you'll just have to wait until next month to complete it.

Here's another list, every speeder updated to 1.6 http://www.trippintheforce.com/guides/vehicle-guide/ As for the quested speeders, there's a mission terminal on the Fleet where the speeder/space ship vendors are at that offer 4 missions you can pick up there for 4 different Aratech speeders.

1: If she used to be a subscriber, she'd restart her account as a preferred status player. 2: All credits over the cap are placed in "escrow", which means they are not lost and can be accessed if she becomes a subscriber again.

Beginning of the False Emperor Flashpoint^^

Noticed a few items on sale that weren't mentioned in the patch notes. I try to keep an updated list on Trippintheforce every week. Here's what I noticed though at first glance: 25% discount on Customization Control: Display Titles. Cost: 75 Cartel Coins. 10% discount on X-3 Techmaster Armor Set. Cost: 1080 Cartel Coins. 10% discount on Orange-Yellow Crystals. Cost: 810 Cartel Coins. 50% discount on Honored Champion’s Robe. Cost: 162 Cartel Coins. 20% discount on Major Valor Boost. Cost: 40 Cartel Coins.

I really liked "Scorcher of Worlds" but they took it out

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet, is that the two new outfits also have a moddable belt with them. The other sets may have mods in them, but they're all 5 piece sets while the newest two are 6 piece sets. There aren't a lot of moddable belts out there either, especially ones with no class restrictions.

Short answer: Voss, Dark/Light vendors, Outlaw's Den has some, GTN, etc Longer answer: Currently at 59 different speeders listed http://www.trippintheforce.com/guides/vehicle-guide/

I actually posted a long discussion on Trippintheforce.com about F2P and changes the game needs. You can follow the link in my sig for the whole thing, but since it's not 100% on-topic I won't link the article here. In the article I mention mini-games though, and its my opinion that SWTOR sorely needs some, and soon. Like another poster above mentioned, you need this "fluff" and "filler" content in an MMO to keep people busy between content patches. Even if you play casually or aren't in a cutting edge guild that's clearing brand new Ops on the hardest difficulty 1-2 days after they're released, you're going to go through content faster than any company can create more. If you figure on maybe 2-3 new Ops in a year and 1-3 new Warzones, that's multiple month gaps between new things to do. This is an even worse gap for people that solely like doing one side of the content only. Having mini-games available helps to break up the monotony and stave off burnout by players. When I listed to the live Q&A the other day, it actually made me kind of mad that Hickman felt stuff like this and guild features aren't a priority for them. As for the chat bubble thing, they actually HAD chat bubbles for a very short time during closed beta.. I wanna say it was around June/July 2011. No idea why, but they were causing massive lag issues so they had to take them out. I guess 1.5yrs hasn't been enough time to figure out how to fix that.

Republic - Balmorra cantina social vendor Empire - Taris cantina social vendor

Actually it was mentioned at the Summit as part of their future guild plans. The only thing for guilds coming in 1.2 for sure are the banks. Guild emblems, calendars and capital ships are down the road still.

Hmm.. I don't think any of the ones you're looking for are currently in the game, unless they're rare drops or hidden items. There's definitely a lot of companions with odd, missing numbers. Could go either way though, incomplete customizations or well hidden.

Here's another list that breaks it down by vendor and again by companion. www.trippintheforce.com/guides/companion-customizations/

Collision detection in most game engines is also one of THE largest drains on system resources. In an MMO environment where characters have collision detection turned on for other character models, this can cause a lot more lag. Another good example are steps. Look at almost every MMO where you see an area with stone steps going up to a temple, or a staircase in a building. If you turn the camera and watch your feet, you're actually climbing up a ramp with one slope instead of multiple little steps. Creating a jagged step-by-step collision model would greatly increase the amount of resources needed, so why bother when the illusion works just fine? Final Fantasy XIV had player collision detection turned on at launch, and throughout beta I commented on how idiotic that was. A few months later they finally disabled it and guess what? Like half the lag in the game vanished from that one simple change.

Think I was in Squad 238 as well, found an old badge image from it. I definitely agree that a lot of the fluff type of content was ignored when we constantly complained that more and more was removed or restricted. I know the match color system was pulled because they DID have some issues with it that needed to be fixed, but I don't see why it wasn't back in by launch. The color crystal thing really boggles my mind as well. In earlier stages of Beta there were plenty of options from a lower level, yet by retail almost everything that wasn't blue, green, red or yellow had been yanked from the game or relegated to end game only. I remember just before release a dev posted that there were 'dozens and dozens' of colors we haven't found yet. One of the biggest things that irks me coming from beta to retail was just how much fluff was removed from the game. A ton of speeders were removed, like half of the titles in the game, match color to chest, a robust modification system, more color crystals that could be had before lvl50, a couple of pets you could buy, quality of life things like GTN and trainers on every planet, etc. This is probably one of the only closed beta games I tested that actually removed more fluff from the game before release than adding it in. I still don't feel 100% ignored however. By the time they had more testers in September, the devs were posting less and less, because there were just too many testers at that point and every dev post was being leaked within minutes. I was also in the Beta for Final Fantasy XIV. If you really want to know what it feels like to be ignored by developers, you should have been there instead. Square Enix is still paying the price for completely ignoring the screams of every beta tester there. They literally did release and unfinished and horrible game and I honestly don't know if they will ever recover from it.

I'd like to add as well, that I was personally getting tired of being in such a long Beta. I really just wanted the game to come out already so I could play it with my friends and not have to start over again and again every 6 weeks. It sucked not getting to play with friends or even be allowed to talk about it since I was under NDA from June until Black Friday at the end of Nov. Having said that though, I really feel like the game could have used another 2-3 months for more polish and additions like the fixed match color to chest, customizable UI and better LFG tools at the very least. What a lot of people fail to realize however, is that these games are more than just entertainment for us. These are products and services created by companies that are publicly traded entities and have to answer to share holders. Had they planned to release the game on Dec 20th, 2011, and then decided to delay that another 3 months in the 11th hour, there would have been series repercussions. Look at Blizzard. They just delayed Diablo III yet again, and because of that their quarterly projections were lowered, which in turn hurts their stock. Now this isn't the ONLY reason, but it was definitely one of the reason why they just laid off 600 people. You can say what you want about Blizzard and World of Warcraft, but that's 600 human beings that just had their lives damaged. SWTOR definitely needs improvement, it's definitely not perfect. The game was also definitely good enough to be released when it was however. It had a ton of content and was pretty well polished. At some point you have to stop adding more and release the game, they were at that point. They've also been very aggressive with their patching and updating of game content. That says a lot to me, and I plan on being here a long time.

Coming from someone that was in the Beta for many, many months and saw a ton of different builds.. I think that overall they listened to what we had to say and they did a fair job at squashing most of the bugs. There were definitely some points of major contention though and things that never got addressed. Removing Force Pull from Guard/Jugg and giving it to Shadow/Assassin was a big argument for awhile. They also had a TON of feedback about how poor the synergy was for Guardian/Juggernaut tanking abilities/skills felt compared to other tanks. We were told some tweaks were coming before the end of Beta and yet we're still waiting on that. There were a lot of bug issues with the end-game operations, and they're still having issues to this day. One of the biggest issues is that most of the end-game content never got fully tested since they always had major issues with generating max level characters to test it. Even when they made some "high level" characters for testers, they were usually in the low 40s and had to start on Belsavis. The "LFG" options in the game were also incredibly lackluster and nothing was tweaked about that either. To be fair though, some people also expected the impossible, such as completely changing Space Combat into Tie Fighter or X-Wing simulation style. Or they said it should be removed completely from launch until something better was made. Personally, some of the things I miss the most that were removed would be the match color to chest option (coming back in 1.2 finally), the old modification system from July, the ability to trade up planetary commendations, GTN terminals and crew skill trainers on every planet and titles for all of the planet arc mission chains. Overall Beta went well and our feedback was heard. If I had to pick out the bigger issues though, I think the lack of character creation options, UI customization, a better LFG method and tools, lackluster guild controls and the lack of proper testing for end-game were the major problems. Not surprisingly, these are also some of the biggest points people cite for quitting or what they dislike about the retail game.

Patch info for the Public Test Server is found in that forum, it won't be in the official patch notes until the patch is live because things can change. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=325047

And the people that are answering those questions and creating the blog post that they will be showcased in? Yeah those people are in the Central timezone and it's only 2:30pm for them.

If it's the race before the Revan camp, that would be the Chevin.. which kind of matches your description and are on Dromund Kaas.

The biggest problem with this is that after they changed how companions worked in beta, losing a companion could be extremely detrimental to the PvE experience. When companions could be slotted with whatever ability you wanted them to have it was one thing, but killing off a companion that has become your primary tank or healer for questing could be game-breaking for some people. It was a cool part of the story and really made things matter, but the mechanic is much better suited for a single-player game than in an MMO where there is no "end." There's also no saving the game before you try it and re-loading an old save if it sucks.

As someone that's played an IA and Smuggler both to lvl50, I have to say the IA story was a lot better in my opinion. I do think both give you much more flexibility in choosing light or dark choices that make sense, but the IA story was just incredibly good. Having played almost every class in the game through chapter I or further though, I still think the IA has one of the best stories in the game. As for abilities.. there's something to be said for kicking enemies in the balls and whipping out a shotgun to shoot them point-blank in the back of the head.

They didn't say they weren't a priority, they said that the GUI team is focused on the customization issues first, then they'll tackle the chat bubbles.

Really nice answers this week. Game Update 1.2 is shaping up to be an amazing patch.