Did a search to see if this was listed anywhere else here or on the forums abroad and found nothing; In the additional performance recommendations it says to install DirectX 9.0 runtime alongside your updated version, however any attempt to do so simply returns a message saying a newer version is detected and no install is required. Any Ideas? Windows 7 Thanks

I've actually been thinking about this since launch; you're definitely not the only one.

Yeah while some people will try and tell you it's 100% one way or the other my personal opinion is anything could happen at this point. Maybe EA/BW will surprise us, there's just not enough info to know for sure yet. As for new games coming out? I think the F2P model can work, and even though we're mocked right now For rocking the boat, publishers are feeling it out and we need to be voicing what we find acceptable and what we don't. If everyone just bailed and tried another game, publishers will just do it again because dissatisfied numbers will get lost in the shuffle. On top of that they're coming out honest about their payment model. Subscribers will steer clear if they prefer not to do the f2p thing, or they won't feel burned and they'll give it a shot, and maybe become converts.

Nicely put. Just curious, what happens at step 3 if people paying their sub don't feel their getting the value they deserve out of it? Back to step 1? More if the same if you don't like it shut up and leave mentality? There's certainly a time to leave, but if are expected to just sit down shut our mouths and take whatever their throwing at us should that not translate into life in general? Do you often pay expecting one thing, in some cases valid in others not so much, but receive something different and just grin and bare it? If your ISP cuts out for 2 weeks of your one month subscription do you just shrug and pay your bill like a good little consumer? Personally I call them and let them know I generally like their service, but this is unacceptable and that I expect them to make it up to me somehow. I think most companies appreciate that as opposed to just saying screw it you messed up once and I'm takin my business elsewhere. In fact I know they do, I've gotten plenty of calls from multi million dollar companies saying hey, we get you were unhappy with something we did, here's what we're fonna do to fix it.

Agreed, but not solely because of the subject matter. Every second post contains some sort of dismissive insulting label to some previous poster. Troll/fanboi/hater blah blah blah bs.

I think part of the problem is very few people feel they've gotten what they paid for up until this point. I tend to agree with them. It seems so simple to me that any sort of handouts would be tiered. The problem is EA/BW is trying to, I dunno exactly, save money? Anytime your giving anything to one portion of the player pop it should tier downwards. They often seem to skip that for some reason, and just arbitrarily give out gifts and rewards without any real discernible pattern aside from, they didn't really think it out.

Thanks for clarifying something. On that note, maybe pass this on to the big wigs. Cut the foreplay and save the headache and ill will. Tier out the compensation. CE gets all the items and the 1000 cc DE gets all the items and half the cc SE gets some sort of item(s) and a quarter of the cc No, it won't please everyone, but it's the most common sense thing to do. And for gods sake stop selling the bloody game to people. Make the trial only require the sub to continue playing until f2p launches. Then just don't give anyone that subs after today's date, extra cc for box purchase.

Yes and no. Wow released into a desolate market where not a lot of options existed. TOR has launched into a saturated market. I played a few months of wow, and there's some really fun stuff in there. It wasn't my cup of tea over all, but I think it would be assinine to suggest it was a bad game. What it was however is an anamoly. I 100% beleive we will never see another game achieve the landmarks it has, it was a perfect storm. I think I only played a few days just after launch and then came back later, from what I understand of the history, wow had some MAJOR issues with polish, performance and content at launch. But it was only one of few options, and while I've heard blizzard wasn't exactly quick on a lot of them, they did seem to listen and provide what people wanted.

Can't say this isn't true. I don't like the way BW has handled some of this stuff, but I also see a lot of the completely irrational freak outs people have.

Hmmm. Yep some people may have said something similar, though I think the general sentiment here is that now its about more, easier money for reduced effort and a sub par product. Being concise is great, but over simplifying and being dismissive simply to have a point serves no one, least of all you. While profit is a good thing, profit through unethical and shady business practice is not. There's a difference between ambition and greed, a line that can get blurry and is easy to cross. Am I to understand that you think the ends justify the means, profit is the only standard by which to conduct ourselves and any and all practices to obtain it are acceptable? Because if so I think there are some countries you might be more suited for. While businesses in many places may feel that way, the general public still does not. In the US as well as Canada I think the general pop still wants business to conduct themselves ethically. F2P, micro transactions and DLC can all be awesome ideas and serve both businesses and gamers, but not the way they're trying to go about it. Companies like occasionally need a smack to let them know they're out of line or getting close. They'd charge you 300 bucks for a glass of water if they knew they could get away with it. It's our responsibility to stand up for ourselves and let them know what is acceptable and what isn't, through both our wallets and our feedback. That's what's happening here. Though the fact that you think it's all good and are giving your feedback and money as such is awesome, let's not start deporting people just yet.

While there's certainly some merit to the OP's argument that the MMO community by and large has created much of the landscape themselves, what's happening here and now comes down to poor management, and a flat out dishonest developer and publisher. Ten minutes browsing the forums you'll find link after link sourcing Bioware or EA Lieing to the customer base about what was going on with this game and where it's headed. On the flip side they've remained completely silent about some pretty serious issues players have been raising regarding a variety of things, with their only real response being, "Hey, we're listening to you". What makes me so sad is that I do like the game, I've supported it thoroughly, and I MAY continue, depending on how on the level EA/BW show they can be. I'm just so sick of people ripping other users apart and saying everything is just fine, attaching all sorts of labels to anyone who notices there's a problem here, and can eloquently and maturely quantify it.

It's pretty common for F2P games to only offer customer service/tech support etc to paying customers. Of course it isn't f2p yet, and we are.... Paying..... Customers?

I'm not lol. Look at the stuff being posted in these forums, it's anarchy compared to the stringent controls even just a few weeks ago. Welcome to the new game and the new service level of EA/BW,

That actually gave me a little more insight into the benefits of the system, but reduced my hope that EA/BW can follow those practices. Glaring out is the idea that in order for the system to work properly, it's almost a requirement that it be designed for it from day one, as opposed to tacked on later as EA is about to do. Time will tell I guess.

It's definitely possible.

There's a bit of a gaping hole in the logic, and I'd love to be educated about it. If certification, disc production and shipping takes 6-8 weeks, in which a dev team is actively producing new content for DLC, is it implied that that DLC does not require certification? This is even more important a question in regards to on disc DLC. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Ummm no. Sorry but I think you misunderstood what he was saying. Not that it's impossible I'm wrong but; He's saying that you, as a consumer, six hours into your game, are not price sensitive. Your brain does not throw up any red flags about the purchase. It's why slot machines are the biggest money makers in casinos. Low cost, and fast. Your brain doesn't trigger the same at the amount you losing.

Unless I'm missing something it's only 6 months and a week.

Kubernetic; It seems in your haste to pick apart my opinion piece and succinctly counter every statement I made, you missed the point of the post as a whole. There are also a couple points, where I simply think you're wrong, as no doubt you feel about me. To be honest I was about to begin being as haughty and pretentious as I felt the tone of your post was, but as I've stated before, I'm not really upset with any one demographic of the player base, trolls/fanboys/haters whatever, even those who assume they're smarter than everyone else. There's only one place for blame to be placed, and while all the fighting between people who clearly love the game, but can't seem to accept any perspective on it aside from their own short sighted experience makes me sad, I don't need to partake in it. Your overall conclusion seemed to be, that you were concerned as well, but have somehow reconciled that. I applaud you. You state, some of us are jumping the gun here, and while in the pursuit of common sense I would totally agree with you. But if I'm to play devil's advocate you must understand that your optimism is as rash as any of the doom and gloom being touted as fact. The simple fact is this; NOT ONE OF US KNOWS WHAT WILL BE AVAILABLE IN THE MARKET, OR HOW IT WILL POSITIVELY OR ADVERSELY EFFECT THOSE WHO HOLD A SUB (formatted to insinuate your lack of understanding) Which, if you read carefully, was the the perspective and context I had spoken from. I've been gaming for awhile as well, upwards of 25 years, we both seem to be adults and I assume you're a pretty smart guy, and despite the tone of your last post, you're probably not an ******e. Let's cut the games and get to the point. We look at entitlement very differently. Entitled in my opinion are the people who think that the free to play model should be just that, 100% free. Everything. Unlimited content. They expect to play the game, at no cost, with no monetization, and no restrictions. That's entitlement, and they're wrong in my opinion. As an aside, I look at free 2 play, as stated in my previous post, as a design ideology as well as a payment model. Now I'm someone who has preferred even up till present day, a subscription model, despite having tried numerous F2P titles. I on the other hand bought and paid for a product. I bought a product based on a reputation and a belief, one built on the marketing and information provided by the devs, that this game was a subscription game. You're absolutely right that they could have had no way to know in 2007 what the MMO climate would have been today. But the fact is we're not talking that far back. They were asked repeatedly in interviews even a few months before release if they felt F2P would be a better option based on the current MMO landscape, and they indicated without interpretation that they knew their game would thrive as a sub game because they were providing a service! They were asked the same things after launch and continued to unquestionably dismiss F2P for the first 4 months of live. Then they began to imply that they were interested in a long term plan for the game, and that while they could never say never in regards to F2P, that they was no way a payment model change was in the near future. In fact only 45 days ago James Ohlen was quoted at E3 as saying that F2P in an existing game was very difficult to do, and that there would be NO abrupt changes on their payment model. 45 days. Let me ask you how many things they've been able to deliver in that sort of time frame. So I continued to support their product, on a trust that they were of the same base design ideology as myself, not because I assumed this to be the case, because they flat out stated it. So when you tell me that they don't owe anyone anything, I say you sir are wrong. I say that any time you buy a product it is based on a trust that said product was produced with the ideals represented by the company you're purchasing from. If I buy milk, it had better not go sour in 2 days. When I get on an airplane, I do so under the belief that the company that produced it, and the company that owns and maintains it have the same ideology of safe practice that I do. If I buy a car, and have 4 different recalls in 3 months due to failing features, there are going to be issues, and that company has every responsibility to make good. EA/BW not only sold me a product, they asked me to continue to support that product long term, because their beliefs and goals were in line with my own, simple as that. EA/BW misrepresented themselves and mislead their customers at best, and flat out lied at worst. Period. You can place the burden of proof on me all you like, you're in no position to do anything about it if I provided the source after source of their "stance" on f2p since launch that google can give you with a few minutes time. That's no conjecture, it's fact. Again, perhaps reading a little more carefully would have made things clearer. I absolutely get that it makes sense for a company to monetize. My point is that eventually, the greater revenue stream of microtransactions will adversely effect the content available to subscribers. That's common sense. If you design the coolest looking helmet, and have a choice between giving it to those already paying your fixed sub, or providing it to a multitude of people for single purchase, you're going to make more money. Of course there is the option of providing both, but I haven't really been seeing that happen in current hybrid MMO's. Secondly, F2P is not beneficial to anyone but the extremely casual gamer that plays so infrequently that they will actually save money purchasing content a la carte. Add up everything from any in game store currently available and the total is FAR more than any box price plus multiple years of sub fee. But you see the "evil ulterior I'm over dramatic" companies are marketing it and SELLING the idea to gamers, as if it gives them the power. When in reality, they reap untold profits on beyond minimal investment to create something. Let's say it costs them 5k, literally 5000 dollars to produce a gear set. Personally I think that's a stretch, but I'll be generous. That's a set of items with no material cost, no production cost (beyond the paltry initial development price), no storage cost, no transport cost and unlimited supply with instant monetization and deployment. It's genius, and it only serves the company. To top it off, you don't even OWN it, they can discontinue it, shut it down, whatever and whenever. The same shady marketing and community peer pressure developed around DLC when it first started. The companies said "oh this is so good for you the customer, it gives you faster cheaper access to new content!" People who questioned it were insulted and ostracised much as they are now. What was the industries reasoning for DLC? Dev houses have nothing to do for a couple months while physical media is produced. Look at us now, on disc DLC. Huh? Now they're literally producing content, in games of every genre, and every playstyle to sell after, or more often lately, with the launch of the game. They used to call that, designing a game and selling it. Now it's designing most of a game, and selling the rest of it separately. The kicker? The masses are eating it up. But companies are smart, they have the money to study people, why know your weaknesses, they know your psychological triggers, and they quantify and monetize it. Watch the video in my sig, they know how people tick. This doesn't even make sense to me. As you offhandedly remark at the end, we have no idea what they'll provide in the cash shop. It's a moot point. Irrelevant. My point was that the quality content would be skewed towards microtransactions simply because they stand to gain far more revenue that way. Again, they've posed as a sub game since before day one, so I, as a subscription consumer continued to support their product. I'd be shocked to hear that when you play an MMO, you don't expect to be investing your time into it for a long time frame. You're investing more than just dollars. While I'm not exactly sure who you think you're informing of this "concept", I don't think it pertains to what I was talking about in my last post. I totally agree with you, I will NOT be pre-ordering, let alone pre purchasing, anything from EA/BW again. I make those purchases based on a companies integrity and ethics, and a trust developed between them and myself as a consumer inregards to their products and their support. BW had this, all the way back to the original BG. Now they don't. The bottom line is, I think it's great that you seem to be ok with the F2P switch. I think it's great that there are others that agree with you. I on the other hand, and many others like me, do not trust EA/BW to be transparent and honest about how they plan to run things under this new model. They have not been a model of honesty up until this point, I'm not sure what reason I'd have to think they're going to start. I'm reserving judgement, because I don't have the full picture, but funny enough I needed to type a thousand word essay to reiterate to you, that I'm uneasy about the future of the title. Bioware as a company no longer exists to me, it's just EA with some extra letters.

It absolutely boggles my mind that you can have audio of the CEO in charge of the game we're playing and discussing (if you can call majority of what happens on these forums "discussion"), and you can claim it has no relevance to the situation and laugh it off. I'm not positive where all this will end up, but to act as if there's no valid reason for concern is astounding. "Honey, HONEY WAKE UP! There's a man outside our bedroom window with a hockey mask an a knife!" "Go back to bed woman, there's no evidence he's going to come in here..."

"Soon" is in regards to our desires, time and money. "Shortly" is in regards to EA/BW's.

Someone didn't get the memo.

Obviously I can't answer for everyone, but I'll try and give some perspective on my own position. Also please forgive any typos, I'm on an iPhone so you may have to think a bit about stuff if the auto correct nabs me. First and foremost, why I'm opposed to F2P specifically for TOR; I bought and paid for a box only months ago, as did everyone. I'm not going to debate the compensation of the CE vs the DE vs the DDE, though for the record only the CE holders are being copensated in some way for THE BOX PURCHASE (which they should, but to a lesser degree so should everyone who bought a copy). So James Ohlen has been saying for awhile now how time consuming, expensive and difficult implementing f2p is after a launch, or more specifically if you haven't designed for f2p from the beginning. Now we're six months in and they are only a couple months out from launching their f2p option. That tells me that they either designed for f2p from the beginning but wanted to see how much revenue they could gather in a sub model first, or they've known abou this since shortly after launch. That means EA/BW has taken at minimum the purchase price of the box + however many months subbed from every person in here to recoup their dev costs, beta test their game (because honestly, even at f2p the state of the software at launch wouldn't have been well received) and help to finance their transition to f2p. We've payed them to set up a way to give other people for free, what we bought and paid for. As far as I'm concerned, one way or the other, they lied to me. To all those who disagree with the beta test point I can only say this; make no mistake, f2p will be a relaunch, and marketed as such. As to why I'm leery of f2p as a model; The industry tells you this is good for the consumer, that it gives us choice and a chance to vote with our wallets. It has been shown time and time again that this model is a benefit to the company. Even by John Reccitelo's (spelling) own admission this offers far more financial kick for the publisher. Why take a static 15 a month when you can have someone paying 2 to 3 times a sub fee, while still collecting the base you were if not close. I have never seen this many giant corporations push so hard for something that isn't going to line their pockets. They aren't in the business of giving customers more, their in the business of making customers think their getting more. Then comes the design paradox that is f2p, especially freemium variants as this one. If you're making more money from microtransactions then you are from subs, and most companies report this to be the case, what are you going to be designing for. Your design will inherently lean towards encouraging the the purchase of microtransactions, it's common sense. So while the switch may not negatively impact subscribers in the short term, I believe over the long term it only makes sense that it will. We may get more frequent content updates, but those updates and the features and systems introduced into the game will most likely (and logically) be tailored to the greater revenue stream, microtransactions. Yeah you'll get your 150 - 200 coins a month, and after 5 to 6 months you might be able to buy that new shiny that cannot be obtained in game through your sub. But 90% won't be patient enough to wait and so will sub AND purchase currency for the store. The companies know this and bank on it. I'm not raging, I haven't unsubbed, but I very well might. To be honest EA/BW got everything but one of my own personal prerequisites to keep me subbed should the game ever go f2p, but it's a big one. As an SE purchaser I will not be compensated in store currency for my box cost, and with f2p being this soon I really feel we all should be. But that's just my opinion. While I'd like to think unsubbing matters, 100 people will sign up and spend 5 bucks on currency, so I'm pretty sure my opinion doesn't matter to the suits. Now I just have to ask myself if I can handle that, or if I'm going to support a company that's honest about the product they're selling me and what the payment model will be. Gw has a store, I know that. TSW has a store, and I know that, and have known since before they sold it to us. I definitely don't feel good about this whole thing.

You're missing the point. Everyone got screwed. The only people being compensated for their box purchase are the CE holders, as they should, and personally even they got screwed imo. CE/SE/DE/DDE and even those poor shmucks still purchasing through the trial have gotten screwed. We ALL paid to recoup their dev costs, beta test their product and help to facilitate and imlplement their switch to F2P. They said it themselves; F2P is expensive, time consuming and difficult to implement if you don't design for it from the beginning. One way or another we've all been lied to, the fact that we turn on each other as a result is sad. Not one customer here is the bad guy. Not the trolls blasting out "I told you so", not the purchasers complaining about feeling cheated, not the fanboys or the haters or the indifferent. EA/BW are the guilty party. Some will see it, some will flame all who suggest it, it doesn't really matter.

I'm a busy guy. I've never understood why people with time constraints don't just log in early... I mean, I somehow doubt you're walking in your door and sitting at you pc to play, so walk in... turn it on... log in... join queue.... go shower..... wash up.... have something to eat.... talk to your family.... do your chores, all the while checking in occasionally and clicking to join or moving to stay logged in. I sometimes stay logged in doing crew skills all day, just checking in every 15 - 20 minutes to stay logged in or update my missions. /shrug