Actually, there are tests for common seizure triggers that most video games get tested against -- particular rhythms of flashing lights, particularly red or yellow tones, that are common triggers. But this is one of those half-truths, like the notion that people with migraines can't drink coffee -- if caffeine is a trigger, no you can't -- but if caffeine isn't a migraine trigger, it's actually therapeutic to a lot of migraine sufferers as a remedy for migraine pain. Similarly, immersion in a videogame environment for people with seizure conditions or with chronic pain can actually regularize either chaotic brain activity (similar to meditation) for the seizure folks or ameliorate the pain by distraction or other mechanisms. Virtual world "games for health" have even been specifically created to help kids with severe burns play in arctic environments (hey, just send 'em to Hoth!) because the effect of imagining being in a frigid environment actually keeps their bodies more comfortable and less reactive to the extreme trauma from major burn damage. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/01/31/snowworld_a_experimental_virtual_reality_game_to_distract_burn_victims_from_pain_.html This kind of research is just staggeringly wonderful. But it's amazing how easily "video games make kids violent" will get major press, but a story like this barely gets legs in mainstream media.

Oh, that is so scary -- I got that as a reaction to an anti-convulsant medication and it nearly killed me! But it didn't reach my eyes either. I thought I was going to burn to death and then I thought I was going to itch to death for weeks. You poor thing! And I was in my 50s, so at least I could understand what was going on pretty much... But that's why they can't medicate my seizures fully -- there are whole swaths of drugs they are afraid to try me on because it might kill me, because so many are in the same general family (Stevens-Johnson being an allergic reaction -- you get it once, it will generally nearly kill you and the second time it just does.) A lot of me looks like I have reverse freckles -- places where the skin is white and wrinkly in tiny speckles from no pigment where it was burned. Most people would never notice it unless they really looked closely, or touched the skin -- I'm a redhead, before I went gray, so my skin is pretty pale and what's not white freckles is tan or freckle-freckles, so it's really lizardy, in a way. Maybe Qyzen would like it. But happily, none of the burns were on my face much where it shows, that didn't heal up well. I took much better care of those! But just so you know, you might not have gotten it because they loaded you up with drugs -- people can get SJS just from taking a tab of Ibuprofen. It's not discriminatory about what you get a reaction to, or how many drugs are in your system, or how exotic the drug is. So blaming the doctors or the weirdness of your health issues isn't something to hold onto. It's just a tragic horrible thing no matter why it happens.

Hiya, folks! I have temporal lobe epilepsy and wicked bad migraines, neither of which is fully controlled with meds, both of which stem from a brain injury -- probably shellfish poisoning -- back in 2007. Gaming helps me immerse in the game and sort of forget about my body when the migraines get back (but no grouping for me! omg... I get evil and unreliable alas! Good thing I'm a carebear in part!). So, after a very busy career, I'm writing and caring for my elderly mom (Parkinson's, various -- she's in her early 90s) and gaming a lot of the day. If it weren't for the migraines and all, (well, and the cut in income -- whooosh!) it would seem like a very pleasant early retirement! We live a couple blocks from the bay in a little New England town, all very nice, two aging geek grrls (mom was studying botany at UCLA in the 1930s!). Both of us are probably on the autism spectrum -- I'm diagnosed ADHD, but am probably further along the spectrum than that (they didn't really diagnose Aspie's among boomer girls -- I didn't even get the ADHD diagnosis until I was 40). Mom's likely ADD/inattentive. I'm highly social, used to be a VP/Marketing and worked in international affairs and various, though. An introvert -- it was all roleplaying, lol! My last position I described as a "human rights LARP." I've been working online for over 30 years, and feel rather good that I've spent part of that time advocating for digital divide issues including access for low income/disabled folks. Turns out I would need it.

In our world, a warrior at the top of his game trained in the best academy is able to operate in the world of politics and diplomacy - this is the product that Annapolis or Norwich University would produce in a field officer, and I don't imagine Korriban would demand less, in that culture. Likewise any candidate fi r diplomatic service had better have read Clauswitz and taken enough military history and military science to at least have good relations with his/her counterparts. You don't have an empire based entirely on mad Sith. It isn't consistent with lore or good sense. Trust me, our own colonial history, which inspired much of the empire setting, was Dark enough with exactly this sort of coldly pragmatic thinking. It is the exact basis of most of what is called evil in the world today - not madness, but power plays within selfish contexts, and the rest of the world go hang. Nothing else is required for the world to go to hell. It's fun to play a totally mad Sith, as a player who doesn't get that stretch presumably in real life. But were it my empire, I'd be rooting out the powerful truly mad ones early (and there's also evidence of that in lore - madness overtakes Sith later, and many are ruthless, but only so much waste of resources is tolerated without self-policing). You seem to mistake power for a lack of intelligence or self reflection. They are not exclusive in the extraordinary individual. The warrior can be played as a rugby jock, but the storyline wraps itself around a dark version of Peter Deth Wimsey very nicely -one of the great joys of Bioware games. And I write about my work as an academic reference. It shows where I am drawing information from in a lore based discussion. If that sounds like bragging to you, then maybe you haven't got relevant experience and come from some culture where talking about your work implies you are better, smarter, richer, higher status? That's what you brought to that, my dear. I am just relating my experience in decades in academia and NGOs for the most part - a career that does not make you richer and by dark side interpretation impairs your advancement, probably implying poor things about your intelligence. Your ego has nothing to fear from the likes of me. Shava Nerad

Sometimes I feel like an alien... But part of that is, I spent a good deal of my career working in politics and international relations, and it colors my interpretation of the warrior storyline. My post on the Transponder Station in the Warrior forum here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=5260293&postcount=100 is probably a whole different take than 99.44% of the player population. But I hold to it as more consistent with Sith and storyline reality than the alternatives. Enjoy!

No way I'm going to catch up with this thread...but I suspect that at this point you can kiss the class story SSRs goodbye. Voicing the SSRs would be hugely expensive and SWTOR isn't making the money to do it. As a former marketing VP in the entertainment industry (licensing but I can do this crude a version of the math) they couldn't justify calling back the talent and doing the production. It would be like making a sequel movie. Can't move the money with the beating the game has taken in the game press and on the money it's made. If F2P turned the game around as well or better as happened with LOTRO just *maybe* -- but honestly IMO (and I'm very friendly to the idea of SSRs) I think they'd put the money into fixing issues with the engines and doing expansions to the general class quests on a level cap basis before they caught up with the SSR fanbase. I'm just calling it as I see the odds. I could see Bioware -- the old Canadian company -- doing it if they had funds in the bank. No way in hell can I see Disney/EA/Bioware doing it. le sigh

Honestly it's the behavior as much or more than the names. Like Landroval in LOTRO I come to RP servers as much for the tenor of the culture as to RP myself. I can RP in a guild on any server, but it's the cultural consensus that's most attractive. Enough wtfCHEEEZBRGRlulz types and that goes away.

"Spamming" is used in two connotations. One connotation is commercial speech -- someone trying sell game currency for Euros for example which is against the terms of service and a bannable offense. The other connotation is speaking in channel in a way that makes the window scroll rapidly. People may have the perception that people who speak in a foreign language are spamming because the window is scrolling by without perceived content. Or they may just be expressing it that way out of frustration to be dismissive.

This might have been an adequate response five or so years ago. However, this is 2012, and your customer base is used to a knowledge base approach rather than a list. Please create a section of the knowledge base for known issues and relabel the "known issues" as "hot issues" and refer people to the knowledge base for what are truly "known issues." It will save you and the player base a lot of grief, and retain significant player good will over what you've squandered on this sort of thing in the last year. You don't need to let us into your scrums or bugtracker, but put *something* in a section of the knowledge base in concert with what you describe above, and you'll save in CSR time, forum heat, and retention. Respectfully and with great love for the game, Shava Nerad 30 yrs on the net former indy game CEO probably running CSR groups before you were born still somewhat regretting not getting the game testing/QA position at INFOCOM in '79

Cathar? I have an alt slot reserved...

I have seen a lot of new people rolling characters on The Progenitor with names and attitudes that have nothing to do with the environment of a roleplaying server. Please remember that this is a RP-PVE server, and consider another server if this is not your preferred play style.

There has been a lot of grousing about non-English language chat in General recently, and I have been vocal in my support of the international community. I'd like to clarify several points here. First, in the US, there are no language-specific servers because there is general language diversity. The US has no "official language" and in general, official documents must be made available in a dozen or more languages. So EA/Bioware is accustomed to a polyglot environment and supports it. When they created the language labeled servers in the EU they did so to gravitate various language communities to those servers for the sake of community and to ease their burden of support -- it was not meant as a lock on what was allowable in chat. Ever. And I clarified that with a CS droid yesterday. No one minted and sealed this server as a ghetto for Brits and Anglophones. Sorry. (No, I am not.) General chat is not meant to be English only. It's not in the terms of service and I suspect was never contemplated to be and never will be. It's also not "rude" to speak other languages around you. Get over yourself. General is a commons; it's like walking on a public street. If you are in any big city (and I suspect Coruscant or Corellia, these are big city equivalents) you would hear Basic, Huttese, and a dozen other languages. Guess what? Real life is like that too. If you find that objectionable, that is an issue with *you* not the other person. CS recommends if you don't want to hear Polish or Russian or Spanish or Tologu or whatever it is that is scrolling by, you put that player's name on your ignore list. Problem solved. However, if you harass them for speaking a non-English language two things will happen -- you are liable to go on other people's ignore lists for being a parochial git, and you are liable for being ticketed for harassment. Interfering with another player's enjoyment of the game because of who they are for ethnic or racial identity is harassment, and some of us are logging and ticketing this. Your ignore list is a far better option. You can ignore me too, I won't miss you and you might be on mine already. Also for those who think f2p people should "get a room" and create a channel -- they can't. So thank EA/Bioware for that brilliant decision, perhaps. I do notice that most of the non-English discussion is people trying to find a non-English speaking guild to get away from the hostility. I'm sadly disappointed with my community on this point. There are a lot of issues with F2P but this is a really trog element in the player base from my point of view. The Star Wars saga is about a struggle for freedoms for a diverse people over corruption and narrow mindedness, and on an RP server I'd expect more people to have their brains wrapped around those principles, especially on the Republic side.

I don't understand what the big whoop is. When you start a pug, ask folks, spacebar or cutscenes? And then work it out ahead of time. It's like figuring out who is main tank and who is healing whom and so on, it's just negotiating tactical point of grouping, for the style of the folks involved. Hone those social skils for those *social points* kids!

So, I know most player spacebar half the dialogue. And they don't really care or remember the details of the lore. And probably by level 50 they don't remember what their character was doing at level five. And most people don't play multiple alts, maybe. But I do. In fact, like a number of nutters particularly on the RP servers, I'm running through all eight storylines, largely in parallel, although my smuggler and warrior are ahead on their respective sides. And for those of you who are not aware, the storylines are interwoven in really peculiar ways. In a lot of ways the stories are more intricately and oddly woven than Lost, and with a really surreal sense of humor. The process of storyboarding this game must have been *insane*. I was impressed with it before, but last night, my level 50 Sith Warrior/Juggernaut ran into a reference in a post-Darth quest that was a ROFLMAO reference to an event in the teens in the general Republic sidequests on Coruscant. I nearly fell out of my chair. Total throw away line in the middle of the dialogue, that would mean absolutely *nothing* if you had never played a republic alt. Bioware rocks. Too bad EA has been sucking all the juice out of them... Someone should create a spoiler wiki just to be a concordance for this game. Wookieepedia doesn't really have the right structure.

No, I won't complain about just anything. Only the things I know something about. On the other hand, you are complaining about me. Andryah, I'm the former VP of marketing at an Inc5000/Urban Inc100 entertainment marketing company which was 3rd fastest growing private company in Oregon at the time, and former CEO of an indy game studio (now retired). So this is a place where I think maybe I'm speaking from professional expertise and not as just some random fan. You don't roll out this sort of thing to test the web site incrementally. There are far better ways to do that. You do this to get press. Which they did. Google the whole cartel coin thing and the game press lapped up the press release and regurgitated it like good little lapdogs. *barf* All over the web. But on a community basis, *here* it plays the community for idiots, and I resent that. (You should resent even more that it works so well?) It's a move aimed only at the press -- that's the only logical product and profit for them from the strategem. If they had even shown us the respect of saying, "And look what this will get you!" and publishing a couple examples, it would have shown a consumer facing heart to it, but instead, we see the black Sithy manipulations of EA under the former glory that was Bioware. Either that or maybe there's an entire crew of folks there just too dense to live, I don't know. They are still advertising for a F2P analyst in Austin. Maybe they decided how many coins we get and haven't figured out how much that gets us in value themselves, either? Now *that* would be pretty funny. In a sad sort of way. I like this game, I really do. I'd just so... fallible... If I weren't retired and they weren't EA...and in Texas...(even Austin...) But I think I'd rather play the game and complain upon occasion for as long as the ride lasts, tyvm, and hope they pull out of this. But yes, sometimes I want to say, you know, Palpatine is bare butt nekkid, anyone notice? Just to see if anyone else is awake. *sigh*

Why are they even telling us how many cartel coins we get when they haven't posted a price list for the cash shop? The number is entirely meaningless. I can't believe how many people are excited and/or upset about the number when it's not based on anything I can see atm...

hmmm.... Seems like the series is broken but I'll just jump in. My warrior is: Lord (at the moment) Dorje Triskelion Dorje -- loosely, Tibetan for thunderbolt, also male principle/yang, the moment of enlightenment/epiphany, a symbol of tantra, a sorcerous weapon. A brass representation of a dorje is one of the standard altar furnishings of Tibetan Buddhism. The symbol appears often in the hands of boddhisattvas and dieties as a symbol of power. Triskelion -- You know the yin/yang symbol? Have you ever seen one with three droplets instead of two? That is the triskelion. It is a symbol of the world in motion and change. Dynamics. Sometimes people say it implies chaos but I think those people value comfort too much. In some cultures it is a symbol of wind and other things, always motion, change, movement. In Christianity it shows up as a symbol of the trinity -- that wasn't my implication, though. Parallel evolution.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=5260293&postcount=100 He might have a good reason. It might not be exactly what you think. Sometimes I think the bioware writers are more clever than we give them credit for, but there isn't a way for them to do a lot of explication in the game. Did they end up leaving something out here?

I am going to be really astronomically contrarian here. I am a professional writer. Also, I've spent a slice of my career working in international affairs, some of it in human rights, in the parts where people die on a regular basis. So really, working with military people and politics and various bits is pretty familiar to me. It really colors my view of the game. And I'm older, retired early for health reasons, so I spend more time playing games than writing, which isn't so bad. That said, I saw this quest very differently than EVERYONE here. Everyone here thinks, "How could Quinn do this? Is he stupid? How could he think that two battle droids could kill me?" Well, postulate this. Baras gets to Quinn and puts Quinn in the position of betraying you or if not, Quinn knows that Baras will just off him. So he sets up a betrayal bound to fail. He knows it has to be plausible to Baras, but Baras in a way is a fool, and if you play to Baras' prejudices and preconceptions, Baras is very easy to deceive. My warrior does this all through the storyline, punking Baras over and over again, and the Darth hardly notices, because Baras wants to think of himself as the smartest man in the room. If you've ever worked in a big business you probably know the type. If Quinn wanted to kill you, all he'd have to do is get you in a boss fight and walk away. But he sets this thing up. And it's a TRANSPONDER STATION -- if you don't know what that means, it means that this is a place where communications signals are transferred. If you don't believe that Baras is watching this from a dozen angles, with surround sound on holo, buttered popcorn and a beer, you are insane. Quinn is going in giving himself a 98.847% chance that you will kill him before you figure out that... this entire scenario is a ruse He says: "After all this time observing you in battle, I have exhaustively noted your strengths and weaknesses. These war droids have been programmed specifically to combat *you*. I calculate a near zero percent chance of their failure." Yet, what's the most common thing Quinn says, after a fight...? "I expected that to be a difficult fight." He never knew, he never understood your limits. He *lied* to Baras. He set this up as a shadow play. He set it up to get him out of Baras' sphere of influence forever. So here is a draft of the more stand-alone version of the fanfic I'm writing for this part of the storyline. ==== Dorje Triskelion was born to be Sith, and there was no point in his life where he knew else. He was born to die a Sith, or die competing to be Sith, or die in the service of the Sith. It was what he was for. It was what everyone in his family was for, in some fashion, for as long as they survived or held their sanity -- and sometimes a bit beyond. There was no explaining to some of his more distant cousins what it was like to grow up so close to the beating heart of the Dark Side. He saw, as through windows one might see kits or puppies frolicking, the children of peasant families in their innocent rough and tumble -- in play, in argument, cajoling a parent for a sweet -- wondering if he were from the same species as these creatures. After Korriban, he crossed paths on Nar Shaddaa with a gray force user, Mirialan, from a line of native priestesses. The Force shown through her like a shard of green glacial ice, clear and cold but neither Light nor Dark, nor judging. He asked her -- after a night of brandy and long tales -- if people ever contemplate what children such as his sibs would be like, the vipers' brood of assassins and darths, born of dark passions and sorcery and raised in twisted smokes of Dark and politics. And oddly she laughed and said, "Dorje, I know gutter children just as Dark as you in the Exchange. I've seen into their souls as surely as Jaesa -- don't be shocked! Desire clouds judgment and Jaesa's gift is rare outside of my kind. "But peasant Darkness is common, as you of rank would term it in your tongue -- a play on words, yes? They are just not as expertly and intellectually made. You are the flower the Empire, the hope of your generation, your peers would oddly say, some dark orchid of a man. But the rank weeds of Darkness (and the helpless flowers of Light!) choke the slum of every undercity in the galaxy, unfocused and without power. You are just a cultivated monster. But in that, you are a rare beauty." That same evening, drunk as the lord he was, he asked her what was the curse of a Sith and what was the curse of a Jedi, since she thought that the Light and Dark were the creations of philosophy, and not fundamental to Truth, and anaethma thereby, reflected in the wars and strife in the stars -- but only the culture of them, not the nature of them. She looked him in the eyes in a way that even to him wrapped him in her universe and said, "Here is the curse of the Jedi and the Sith: That the Jedi shall know Love and never Passion; and the Sith shall know Passion, but never Love. And with that disconnect, all the wars and strife of a galaxy arise, because judgment is entirely lost." This haunted him. He saw love and trust in others and it struck him as a lapse in judgment but this woman planted doubt -- he twisted it to rage, converted her to a trickster, a source of error, and moved on. Yet, here on this sterile orbital station, at yet another pivot of his life, he knew that the last remnant of hope for love was being ripped from him, something he'd hardly known he'd harbored. Never in his life had he trusted anyone in his family -- too many conflicting interests, too much Darkness. And then, years before he was scheduled, he was propelled to Korriban, insanely vigorous from training and tall for his rawboned fifteen years, but converting his fear to rage to survive his accelerated trials. So canny and strong in the Force most took him for his twenties. Service to Baras had been a series of eye opening puzzles -- each test confirming his stance that his master had less notion of this fog of war Dorje operated in, that his "trust" in his gifted apprentice was increasingly dependence on more than Dorje's titanic ability as a child-warrior with the Force, an unholy paladin of the Dark Side, but also on Dorje's unerring instinct and wit as the Force guided him and his intelligence and training in Empire and Sith politics led him in circles, running ahead of the master who had considered himself, previously, to be master of this art above all others. But now, Dorje found himself out played, in the quarter he had allowed himself the only room for relaxation. Quinn -- who a thousand, thousand, thousand times had his life in his kolto stained hands -- was playing by the book, and honorably witnessing his own snug closing of Baras' noose around Dorje's neck, a trap. Sad fussy-*** Quinn. You didn't learn quite enough from me. Learn another lesson, then. And with that slightly detached thought, the last shred of light drained from his soul. He could feel it. His father told him he would know the moment, like a black hole collapsing, like a death, to hold onto it -- but he couldn't -- the attack was beginning and he needed to channel the rage and horror and despair into exactly every stroke and shimmer of Soresu, to not yield to his own pain in this moment, to the betrayal of the one man he had counted as friend in this mortal world, to not sink or slip in his own blood as the droids ripped into him through the heavy armor -- but to dance with darkness and death as his partners, in rage and silence and find the center of the collapse of the gravity, falling, and swooping, sweeping and cutting, one with the Force -- THERE. FLOW. BEAUTY. RAGE. Had any lover ever been betrayed, and so insanely as this? Any battle, Quinn could have simply held back and let him die, let him fall to shreds under the claws or blades or articulations of a thousand enemies they'd faced. And yet, here, he brings me to face a foe he has designed to face his exact estimation weaknesses, over all those thousands of melees... [battle description] see below, he cuts Quinn down but does not kill him to kill him later slowly [consult video for after dialog for nearly kill him and inform crew] PAIN. Distraction. A memory -- how many times, the fussy captain, always calculating, had said, "I expected that to be a difficult fight." He never knew. He never understood my limits. He lied to Baras. Quinn, you are the most obscure creature I can imagine. You calculated...this. In this brief second of consideration, the droids do nearly overcome him and the pain and damage knocked him from his feet -- but he gathered himself and sprang roaring with pain and energy to the fight anew. The first droid crumpled. [,,,] He wondered if he should avoid Jaesa. Deep in his heart, he wondered if what he was feeling wasn't something that his Mirialan friend wouldn't call a glimmer, the faintest Light glow, of brotherly Love. No, Jaesa might not understand at all... And no one might ever speak of any of this aloud, ever. This is the way of the Sith, of the politics and what passes as family -- truer than the family he was born to. His legacy would be in his works, not the brood of vipers he left for Korriban, but this ship, this man who now would tend the wounds he made, these sometimes-loyal crew who put their lives in his hands and his in theirs to make his legacy and the Empire's. Love and Passion. Kolto, not the Force; the military not the Sith -- except as passing storms and shadows. These were the lives of ordinary men. He needed to meditate. He needed a drink. He needed Jaesa, silent as the stars for once -- perhaps he'd compare her lip to Vette's. He needed time he didn't have. He needed time to center. He was needed on Corellia. Now. Peace is a lie; there is only passion. All is Dark.

First off, all in character. I'm really a very sweet middle aged woman IRL, but my jugg is a very bad man. I've described him as the Dark IV shadow of Peter Wimsey. And he, too, is a perfect fit for Quinn, most of the time -- and as I'm a professional writer, they have their own entire story around the Bioware storyline (which I'm starting to write up as fanfic starting this week http://wiki.swtor-rp.com/index.php?title=Fiers_Triskelion) since my background in history/international relations gives a different coloration to the storyline entirely. I'm going to smack Bioware here a bit, in that I think that there are always more implications than are presented. Dark Science: Who says Tukata aren't force beasts? There are some weird things about Tukata. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tuk'ata Have you considered that Malara is trying to set you up to undermine her master falsely? Listen, she's an IDIOT -- she doesn't know you from Adam, yet she tries to make you implicit to fraud against the Dark Council. If anything went wrong, who do you think would have taken the fall, eh? My warrior had no difficulty making that decision. She seemed like not only a shallow and manipulative girl, but not very bright or worthy of the Sith. Malavai would have agreed. Turn her in. Testing Grounds: What is the nature of Quell anyway? Here, I wonder if Quinn and I might not have diverged? I would have gone with the Sith, no question, and seen the officer as whiny. But Quinn might have seen his appeal as valid. Quinn would have tended to lean toward the judgement of the miltiary man and Dorje (my Jug main) would have leaned on the wider perspective of the Sith. Later on Quesh we find out that Quell is a major product of the mining there, so it must be some kind of big deal as a toxin product, right? But it's entirely a SWTOR thing, there's nothing of it in canon. It's an experiment, you have to give experiments time. It's empirical -- isn't that what the Empire should support? Black Science: I gave her the false data and left the real data with the researcher. For the Empire! Brengle was a twit, and this was obviously not worth simple credits. And, on an alt, I went the other way and she sent me something like 136 credits, which is appallingly slight profit for such a huge advance in science. Anyway, Quinn would only approve of leaving the improvements to field medicine, I'm sure. Light points be damned. This is what Diplomacy was made for. War Machine etc. -- um. I am a weapon that man was not meant to know. I do not think you have properly considered the fear that must be in the hearts of any who see a sith bearing down on them. There is nothing in this universe that can melt, fry, madden or otherwise puree troops that is worse than the Sith Order. Why should I shrink from the implications of mere technology? This is war, not a duel with some silly choreography -- isn't that the argument we have with the damn court fancies on Aldaraan? No. And Quinn would be with me on this one. Advantage Empire, plus to our arsenal. Quiet Kill: I'd kill the wife, she slept with the enemy and gave him access to government secrets. That makes her a traitor, and I don't give a damn if her husband is jealous or not. She is dangerous whether or not she is innocent. Loose lips sink fleets. Those lips won't be puckering up for republic spies again. Problem is, I'd kill him too, and it didn't give me the chance. He left secrets in a disc -- classified secrets -- in his bedside table? Unencrypted, presumably? The idiot. And then he wants to deflect blame. What is his worth to Troida anyway -- it had better be magnificent. So yes, I'd undermine him an inform on him and let his own people sort it out, if that's the only resort I have. Don't let a potential resource go to waste, but put a check on it, make sure his leash is good and tight. If he doesn't get removed, at least he'll be watched carefully.

For those who are versed in the terms of art of business in the games industry, here is the job posting for the architect for F2P analysis for Bioware Austin. The shaper of things to come, as it were. https://performancemanager4.successfactors.com/sfcareer/jobreqcareer?jobId=9327&company=EA If you aren't versed in business terms of art, don't panic, none of this is really unusual in the industry, on a glance. The interesting thing I suppose is that they are advertising this and don't have a full complement in place. More attrition? Less preparation? Who knows. There would be fewer rumors about this game if the EA(/Bioware) folks were just a bit more transparent. The only thing that has EVER gotten CCP in trouble are the few times they've been utter gits and held cards close. It's been over twenty years since the publication of the Cluetrain Manifesto, yet companies with online customer bases still haven't woken up. If you haven't read Cory Doctorow's FTW, this might be a fun time to do so. Cory's site says "Download for free" but throw the chap some money, he's awesome. The book postulates (among other things) a near future where MMOs and Zynga-like social gaming marketing neuromarketing strategies have merged into drug-like cartels. You can see an article I wrote that got promoted to the front page of Gamasutra a couple years ago on this which although it didn't get much comment on that site, got me some really disturbing confessional emails from social gaming marketing people on the side... Bioware is F2P but I assure you they will be finding ways into your pockets. The industry has recognized that F2P is the only way to get a steady revenue stream now that current fashions in MMO gaming are causing the collapse of subscription gaming. Pity really, but there it is. We've become the flavor of the month club and subs don't weather that. And AAA budgets don't weather the migrating herds the ooo-shiny-what's-next (to put it charitably) hoard. So F2P will be what we deal with for the future, whatever anyone feels about it. That, and indy games that grow with genius and innovation (and damned strong loyal community) but not AAA launches or budget (say, Minecraft as an example). Interesting times! If only there were a big studio that were good at creating innovative genius games with strong communities and great story. Oh...damn... That's right they sold out to the American Sith. Return to the Light! It's not too late to revise your models! Meh, didn't work on SOE either. Well, I'll ride this one out. They're still doing better at it than Sony, IMNSHO. But they have time to do worse.

Just cross faction guilds would be nice. I understand you can't go to the other's locations (banks etc.) but yes, chat, mail to anyone in the guild (as you can with legacies), /w to anyone in the guild cross faction, and so on -- perhaps you could define a category of guild as being "smuggler" guilds? I mean, let's face it, there are a lot of neutral folks in this galaxy, and even Jedi and Sith who deal with neutral entities on a regular basis. Neither light/dark nor Empire/Republic are absolutes for most individuals or organizations. So the majority of guilds should not be all one side or another for any purpose than PvP which is, for good or ill, not the main focus of a lot of people in the game. Many of us are not the ideological droids you were looking for. We want to have legacies and guilds that are cross faction -- in fact, the greatest joy I have in this game is having eight alts in all eight storylines (and no life...but hey...I'm a gamer, it just gives me more cred -- and my highest level is 37 so I'm taking my time!). Is there a good reason left for segregating this with a bright line?

In the words of the sages -- "bump." Also, cross faction guilds. Please. There isn't a good reason any more not to.

I am running into this. My tank has every piece of his gear orange and augmented, just about, at level 37 -- but I have no idea which piece has what augment slot until I unslot the augment in the slot, which costs credits. While I understand that the devs are always looking for clever credit sinks, I think this one is probably neither clever nor intentional. Could the augment slot just list 1-4 please? Thanks!

Actually upon thinking on it further, I had to respond to this more thoughtfully. The sites you are talking about are, I think except for DarthHater (which is Curse, Inc. which is a multi-national dotcom, 19mil hits a month) all at best semi-pro and mostly all fan sites. Fan sites are ephemeral in many games. SWTOR is in the news every day by the professional games press, for good or ill. If the games press were an old-style journalism sort of thing, without comment streams, SWTOR's coverage would probably look much better than it does. However, comment streams make every AAA game out there look like crap, particularly the ones that don't have very crafty and clever social media folks who are both very adept and close to the fans. EA/Bioware seem to just have money at the corporate level, and do neither of those other things all that well. But the current fashion in MMORPGs is that a vocal minority of gamers who love to guild up and raid -- let's call them the Piranhas -- dominate the social media metagame of the online world of MMOs. They spend all their free time that they are not gaming on Twitter, in comment streams, filing scathing reviews on Metacritic, you name it. Their hobby is to be gaming hipsters, essentially -- to see how snarkily and cuttingly they can shred a game to show off how sophisticated a gamer they are among their leet peers. These are the armchair generals of MMOs. So as a game emerges from pre-beta, these guys (and they are by vast majority male IRL) are scoping it like Fantasy Football dudes evaluating draft picks. They start talking about how it is or isn't like WOW, how it's prospects are to be F2P or why it will suck before the company publishes any terms at all. A cinematic trailer at E3 will erupt a crapstorm of vitriol. A change of devs will start doomsaying avalanches. A choice of distribution channels. From a bunch of idiots who really at root know zip about running a business. They mostly just like to listen to each other mouth off wise. So when head start comes or beta or pre-beta, these guys descend like the school of piranha. They will get in as soon as possible. They will insist on top of the art graphics, performance, story, content, support -- but they will SKIP all of the two years of content that the devs put into the game. Within two days, they have raced each other to level cap, where they will be ************ to the universe about how: It's too easy to get to level cap there weren't enough side quests even though they didn't stop to smell the npcs along the way the story (which they didn't read) sucked the end game is grindy and too much *and* not enough like WOW And at this point, with all the variations on the theme (I'm sure you can come up with all the rest) they will call on the producers and the devs to have a summit with all the guild leaders to fix the doomed game, because only they can save the game. They will travel to Iceland or Austin or something, drink themselves silly, insult the female gender in any way they can in the majority, further confuse and ruin the game for crafters, roleplayers, people who like story, people who *do* spend time on content and so on, and then upon returning to the game and the forums, say no one listened to them.... And leave to destroy the next game. I am tired of it. SWTOR did not fail the players. EA and a segment of players failed SWTOR. And that segment of players is failing the industry and will be making it impossible for a AAA game to get VC money within two years, I suspect. It's not a pretty picture in the industry right now. /* retired game CEO and VP Marketing/Bizdev */