This thread makes me miss my neighborhood & house on Tatooine in SWG.

I couldn't agree more. If I have 2-3 hours to play I don't want to feel like I need to do a bunch of quests first to get tokens for gear. I'd much rather just run a HM Flashpoint and hope to get some gear drops. But apparently the daily tokens seem to be more important.

Up until looking at this I thought all Flashpoints had Hard Modes. I'm glad I chose to run them all while leveling up.

The first thing developers ask when you are having any sort of issue with the game is to disable any 3rd party addons. With all the current issues it would be a horrible idea to allow 3rd party addons at this time, and only make it more complex to iron out the bugs/glitches.

With the amount of instancing in this game you'd think Ilum would have something set up to limit the amount of players inside, and create a new instance if there is enough players waiting in queue. It's been done in other games...

I was thinking the same thing watching the video. It really sucks though for the Republic players who venture into Ilum for the first time and end up getting permanently stuck there.

Well played. lol

I have a 6870 and have the exact same issues regardless of graphic settings. I use GPU-Z to monitor GPU load and noticed when in the imperial fleet my GPU usage is around 0% which means the CPU can't keep up with the tasks it has to process causing a bottleneck. Take a read at this thread, some people were very helpful in explaining things. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=153310

I always roll greed for companion gear. Reason being is everyone else in the group has multiple companions too, so odds are every piece of gear is "needed" by someone. Only "need" roll on gear you want to use on your actual character. If you are specifically running the flashpoint to gear your companion, then I would state that from the very start so the group can decide if they are OK with it or not.

Vote: 4 - No. Obviously not enough is broken to cause you to leave, otherwise you already would have. Just get a job and pay the sub. Yes this game has a lot of bugs/glitches but anyone who has played any other MMORPG will know Bioware really hasn't done that bad at all. Please do not compare this to FFXIV ever again. FFXIV was completely broken in every way and shouldn't even have been released which is why they were forced to go F2P for a while.

Thanks Koogan. Very nice.

I'm at 310 Artifice and this is wrong up to that level.

Forcing AA is not a bad idea at all. However I do agree if you are having any graphic/performance issues, the first test would be to disable AA.

I'm pure Dark and was thinking about switching to Light just for the saber color. The only option seems to be running flash points and Black Talon is probably the fastest option. I'm personally not going to do it, not worth the grind. If I was you, I'd make a decision and grind out to either side and leave it at that. If you aren't finished leveling to 50, I'd just continue your journey and stick with the same choice moving forward.

I had the same problem.

I downloaded GPU-Z and tested it for a while. Generally GPU usage sits around 60-70%, however when in the middle of the Imperial Fleet its at 0% (~9FPS). If I stand around the GTN area my FPS increases to 25-30 and GPU usage shows ~30%. To my understanding this would put what rmack said spot on.

What app is that?

Fair enough. I guess a few of us took the term budget in the wrong context. I'm at work right now and the screenshots (I guess for an older version) didn't show that. I'll take a look when I download it at home. Thank you.

Thank you for explaining that. Forgive my lack of knowledge, but what specifically in GPU-Z tells me the GPU usage/load? Everything seems to be about temperature and voltage. I bought it when it came out. It was considered top of the line but at today's date I know its not high-end. However calling it a "budget GPU" is wrong. That would be calling a nVidia GTX560Ti budget as well... http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html If a 560Ti is budget, then a 570GTX is low-end and 580GTX is mid-range to you? Not much else to work with... lol Anyway lets not make this an argument about where to class my GPU.

I was thinking this which is why I didn't try a Crossfire setup. My confusion is why is my CPU usage and memory usage not at 100%. I would assume it would be if its bottle necked... Is there software that I can use to see if my GPU is under performing due to it being bottle necked?

Same game settings and resolution?

Current system specs: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 @ 2.5GHz 4GB DDR2 memory Radeon HD 6870 (1GB) Windows 7 SP1 64bit Game Settings: Everything on High (shadows off), 4xAA, 1920x1080 (native monitor resolution). For the most part my frame rate is always above 35FPS, probably more around the 45-50FPS mark. However when in areas with a lot of people like Imperial Fleet, I get between 5-20FPS. I realize in dense areas this will happen because there is far more background calculations going, but I thought it is handled by the CPU since reducing my graphic settings to Low and disabling AA doesn't improve my FPS much at all. I've started monitoring CPU usage which never seems to go above 70%, and Memory usage is at about 3GB (~2GB of it being used by SWTOR). If the game isn't even using all of the resources available to it, would upgrading to an i7, new mainboard and 16GB DDR3 ram help increase my FPS in this situation?

I apologize if my reply came off harsh. To be honest I read your entire post, I too had the exact same questions and found all the answers I was looking for in the two sticky threads. Based on what I've read, I would suggest darkness to 31 for PvE hard-mode flashpoints/operations. If you plan to PvP more, then a split to Madness is a better choice for sure.

The sticky post for Darkness is next... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=78826

The second comment at Torhead.com got me through this. Reply By Bludwyng at 2011-11-28 13:30:24 The shuttle is due north of Outpost Ghrent (Southern Cliffs). Go west from Ghrent, then north and east to get around the river cliffs. You can also go east to Elysium Thranta, then cross the river. Either way is about the same. Not too difficult, just kill everything and take the artifact from the Organa Vault. The Thul vault is just kind of a casual gift. Take it, too. After, you may have to wait to use Quick Travel to get out of here, as you probably used it to get from Secret Redezvous to Ghrent. If you go back to the Shuttle, it takes you to the Glarus Valley Shuttlepad (where you came from). Source: http://www.torhead.com/mission/9MPHJPt#comments