I can't say I'm happy about this, but I can understand why. - A "preseason" on a production product is kinda a bad idea. They should polish it before they release it. - The "8 man teams only" thing sounds bad to me, given that my guild doesn't even have eight human players (lots of guys quite already). I'm hoping that they get cross-server warzones figured out soon though. I've spent more than 2 hours in queue only to give up.

I'd say there are large parts of Corouscant that feel like the Presidium from Mass Effect 1. Especially the Justicar area.

Anyone know what it takes to got a PAX East badge? I'm in the area, and I've got nothing better to do tomorrow. EDIT: Looks like they're sold out for Saturday, and I've got family obligations on Sunday. Shoot.

Why does it matter? Is the enjoyment you get from the game worth $15/month? If yes, pay the man. If not, go do something else with your $15. - I'm sure server costs are significant for hosting a game of this scale. Rack space in a datacenter aint free. If you consider the cost of the physical servers (and replacement hardware as needed), power, cooling, bandwidth, etc., plus the network admins, system admins, application specalists, and DBAs required to maintain something like this, you're talking about significant ongoing costs. It wouldn't surprise me if a game like this has several thousand servers (between physical and virtual boxes). - Developer cost (labor) is also very significant. Bugs don't fix themselves, and this game is too large for a single person to know how the whole codebase works. It's going to take a lot of people to provide both ongoing new feature dev and L3 support. - Speaking of support, someone has to pay that droid to send useless responses to /bug reports, answer the phone, etc. - Artists, designers, etc., to actually design the new content in addition to developers who actually code the new features. - Testers (and high quality software products typically have almost as many testers as developers) is also very significant. Most software testers have similiar skillsets to the developers. Tracking down and writing detailed bug descriptions that can be actioned by developers is not an easy skill. - Plus all the overhead that goes with those human workers. People managers, human resources, product management, IP lawyers, accountants to handle payroll, marketing, etc., etc.. But in the end, the only real question is: "Is this game worth $15/month to YOU?"

This expains a bit. Anyone know if the "war hero" gear also has the endurance gap?

I'm pretty sure snipers also have a ranged interrupt...

And all players who can't put in the ~100 hours to get full battlemaster gear are at a disadvantage in PvP. And all the players who are running old computers are at a disadvantage in PvP. And all the players who are on slow connections are at a disadvantage in PvP. Life isn't fair. Not everyone gets a prize. And we're not talking about huge amounts of credits. I'd expect a full set of crit-crafted gear to cost under 1.5 mil for all seven pieces. Considering you can get 105k/day off daily quests, that's a two week grind. It's not that bad.

As a commando, I think the changes are good and probably not even a nerf. Yes, it will be harder to play a commando well, but good players (such as those who completely read the patch notes) who do play well will do as well if not better in v1.2.

I like it. Some are definately better than others, but the Sage PvE, Bounty Hunter PvP and PvE, and Sorc PvP and PvE are big improvements. The rest are decent. Before this, Bounty Hunters looked like they'd been chewed on by a dinosaur, and Sorcs were just running around with those silly feathers on their heads.

Between the changes to the core Grav Round ability (+0.5s cast, -1 ammo cost) and Barrel Fluting (-0.5s cast, +1 ammo cost), effectively it's a 10% damage nerf. I want to see the exact change for Curtian of Fire, but more Full Auto sounds like a good thing. On my commando (mixed Tier2 + Tier3 gear): Full Audio - costs 2 ammo over three seconds - deals 1139.5 DPS Grav Round - cost 2 ammo over 1.5 seconds - deals 1108.66 DPS (1663 dmg / 1.5 sec) So these changes should make us more energy efficient (more Full Auto), have a marginal effect on damage if any. We'll be using less nerfed Grav Round, more Full Auto (which already does better DPS than un-nerfed Grav Round), and Heat Seeker got a buff. The reduced cost of Field Aid is good; it's good to un-stun Huttball ball carriers, and no one likes stuns. If I'm reading this right (please correct me), I don't like the effective increase on the Concussion Charge cooldown from 15 to 20 seconds in PvP gear, but I can see the need. Throws and pulls in Huttball were getting pretty crazy.

I haven't played my 50-Merc in weeks, but I left Mako geared in the level 40 PvP gear. On my 50-Commando, I've got Elara in almost full Tier2 PvP gear (with a few pieces of Tier1). Overall, I find Mako a MUCH better healer. I can get by with Elara, including the occasional champion, but it was a lot easier with Mako.

Wonderful idea. +1

1. Please post the patch notes somewhere publicly available prior to deploying to your production servers. Ideally at least 24hrs ahead of time. 2. Please post the patch notes somewhere other than http://www.swtor.com. During the update windows you take down http://www.swtor.com and put up an maintenance page, which makes the patch notes posted on http://www.swtor.com inaccessible.

That statement I highlighted in red is a false assumption that the rest of your post is based on. The guys with good PvP gear are NOT the best players, they are simply the players who have been grinding the longest. If you take a guy in full Battlemaster gear and put him back in the blues/greens he was wearing when he ding'ed 50, the guy wouldn't still be the best player in PvP land; he'd just be one more fresh 50 getting rolled by the guys who had ground up gear. PvP should be about competition against humans rather than gear. I want to win half of my PvP matches and loose half. I want it to be a fight for every win. I never want a match to consist of one team completely steamrolling the other team, regardless of which side of that I'm on. I want to see huttball scores of 3-2 instead of 5-0. If BioWare can come up with a way of matching players based on gear & skill in order to get some even games, I'm all for it.

Anyone have pictures of the two different battlemaster cannons?

So considering I'm already running a mix of Tier2 and Tier3 gear, and I've already crafted a bike and ship parts, there's really not much point to staying cybertech. Given I've got 5 companions, 400 Underworld/Scavenging, and a lot of leftover low-level matts, I figure I can level up an Armormech to the point of Rakata in an evening.

Have there been any annonced (or hinted) improvements for cybertechs in v1.2? With the recent PvP change, Wynz-Tek Firestorm grenades lost of lot of their PvP usefullness. Other than the grenades, there's no "BoP" usefullness currently for a level 50 cybertech. Everything cybertechs can craft can also be bought, and relatively cheaply. I'm thinking about grinding armormech for the Rakata stuff.

The Mythic guys also did Dark Age of Camelot. In it's prime, I'd say DAoC had some of the absolute best done open world PvP of any MMO, though I'll admit some of the stuff Ultima Online did (around 2001-2002) was also pretty cool.

The real problem with the gunnery tree is we don't have much else but tracer missile. If that gets interrupted, most of our other abilities are on cooldown. - HiB takes 8 seconds - Demolition Round takes 15 seconds. - Full Auto takes 15 seconds. One thing to keep in mind is that tracer missile has a 1.5 second cast time. That's 50% longer than the global cooldown. I've got full Tier2 PvP gear on my Trooper, and Grav Round does 1524-1574 damage. That's 1016 to 1049 (1032 average) damage per second. Any DPS-specced 50's from other classes willing to post your numbers for comparison? Even though no one complains about it, Charged Bolts actually deals more damage at 1452 to 1836 with a 1.5 second cast (1096 average) for the same energy cost. Charged Bolts just doesn't trigger any of our other abilities like Grav Round does, so the extra damage isn't really worth it.

Number 4 and 5 are wrong. We've got an AOE pushback ("Jet blast" on the BH side) and a single target pushback ("Stock strike" on the trooper side). It's not enough to truely keep a melee character out of range due to the cooldown on Jet blast and the short distance on Stock strike. It's nowhere near as good as the Sage or Vanguard pulls, but it's something. We've got a DoT removal that will work for non-force DoT's. It's called "Field Aid" on the trooper side.

Same here, and it's annoying.

Thank you! It's nice that we've got an official response indicating that this will get fixed.

Great. Thanks.

Currently I'm in a guild with 4 (total) real-life friends. We're looking to expand to run operations. Can anyone tell me if 8 people is sufficient for running operations, or do we need to get 16?

I built a 50 Merc and a 50 Commando. It's nice to know that the problems I've seen aren't just in my head. Now if only BioWare would respond to let us know they are working on it...