Well, I consider myself a fan of both the Exile (Meetra) and Revan. I think of her as more an equal partner to Revan at this point, though obviously he took the spotlight -- it's his book, after all. So yes, more was made of Revan and his great knowledge of the mysteries of the Force, but Meetra was still very capable and generally was the one doing the rescuing, rather than the other way around. Just looking at her death, in and of itself -- yes, it was basically a cheap shot, a rather sudden thing. But then she goes on in death to become, in essence, the one guardian that could remain and not be thwarted by the Emperor or any of his cronies, true and loyal beyond death itself. Maybe it was a "cheap" death just taken alone, but her actual "ending" was very powerful and worthy of her story, IMO. (I would liken it to Obi-Wan's death -- he was cut down pretty unceremoniously by Vader, but as he said, "Strike me down and I become something more powerful than you could ever imagine." Meetra's fate was much the same.)

Social Points -- any plans to create more content with greater amounts of dialog that award them? As it is, even grouping, I find it difficult to build many Social Points without grinding the Esseles (or Black Talon, Imperial side) flashpoint. IMO, the issue is that you put all the cool dialog/interaction into these starting FPs, and left the rest rather plain combat-fests. (IMO, and all.) Very much want to see more dialog/interaction in more places in-game!

Awesome! Thanks for the laughter. It was some good fun.

I have a friend who took part in some of the Beta-testing, but chose not to buy the game and play retail. He'd like to take a look at things now, so what I want to know is, would he be eligible for the Friends trial? And as long as he is, could he use the same account he set up for the Beta, or would he need to create a new account?

I don't know. Personally, this seems like a lot of drama over nothing. But I've come to realize that not many people (at least not many -vocal- ones) have the same kind of outlook that I do. I don't really -care- about all your awards and achievements. I don't play to get a shiny, I play to HAVE FUN. And the reward is NOT the fun. The fun is in the doing. You can hang whatever uber-powerful, mega-rare thing you want out there, but if the -gameplay- to attain it isn't FUN, then I'm not going to want to do it. (It's just a bunch of pixels and data -- who cares?) On the flip side, as long as I'm having fun as I play, I don't really care that much what I get at the end. I just want the fun to continue. It really is all about the journey, IMO, not the destination.

Well, as far as I can tell, there are a couple different issues being tossed around here. One is the high-res vs. medium/lower-res thing. Frankly, I feel that's already been hashed out more than enough in other places. And honestly, I don't think that's the main issue with the color of this piece. (Edit: Then again, perhaps it's the issue with the Republic Dancer's set. The Nar Shadaa 'Slave Girl' set is a bit different though, as far as I can tell.) Simply put, it has different colors based on . . . something. Exactly what the criteria is and whether or not it's fully intended -- nobody but the devs knows for sure, and so far, they're not saying. I see this set on other people, and I see white on some, a rose color on others (that's what I got) -- it's not a different texture set, it's all in standard game play, passing each other at the fleet, non-cutscene stuff. That's not a different res texture coming into play. (Yes, there's LOD, but that's another thing, and I've been standing right next to many of these folks.) And yes, I know there's both the Nar Shadaa and Republic sets which are very similar, and I've inspected people to verify which one they were wearing. It's generally the Nar Shadaa 'Slave Girl' set I'm seeing this with here. My own best guess (and it's just that -- a guess) is that the artists who did this piece made the color dependent upon the wearer's skin tone. It seems to favor greater contrast, as far as I can tell. Pale-skinned wearers like my own character are the ones I see getting the rose color, while the darker skin tones are the ones I see in white. Still that doesn't account for anything like that silver/purple in the pic that was linked earlier in this topic. I've never seen that in game at all though. Kind of wonder if it was a Beta pic of something that isn't around at this point. But I really don't know All in all, it'd sure be nice if one of the BioWare art folks would let us know just what's up with this. Personally, I'd sure like to have a choice of color from a decent few options. But . . . who knows?

IMO, the stats you keep quoting are isolated and have no context whatsoever to give them any meaning. Now if you were to look at a bunch of other stats for other games in the first 7 weeks they came out, and compare the curve of each to the others to see how much more/less 'successful' TOR has been, that might start to have some significance. Though even then, it's hardly proof of long-term success or failure. All IMO, of course.

I'd really like to see a level-matching feature in the game to promote grouping with friends of varying levels. (For example, the 'sidekick' system in City of Heroes.) Is this possible and/or likely in the near future? Think it'd be a big boon to the game.

I think the whole travel issue is a lot less 'simple' than some folks seem to think. Through various posts here, most of the issues are touched upon, though rarely all in one place. FWIW, I do think that travel could be 'streamlined' a bit to trim down some of the places we have multiple transitions, but I really don't think replacing it all with an 'instant travel' button is the way to go. (And granted, not everyone is saying it should be, but some are, thus I state my feelings toward it as one of my own points of view.) I think it's pretty plain what the drawbacks are -- costs in time and repetitive cycles that tend to grow tedious and break up a session of 'fun' with 'drag.' But what about the advantages? Those who jump out and say there are none, just get rid of it, may want to take a moment to consider: Travel is currently the main thing (or at least one of them) that makes our ships important. With the current implementation of ships and space, it's what keeps us coming back to our ships, cementing them in our minds as our 'home bases.' Many of us would like to see a lot more development on that, and it sounds like BioWare intends to add more. I know that I am hoping to see our ships grow into more interactive and interesting places as the game grows. But . . . if we had no reasons to really bother with our ships, needing to travel to them to get offworld and so on . . . heck, interest would wane -- why spend any dev time on them at all? They could just cut the whole ship thing altogether, give us all insta-travel with some quick cutscenes to show us arriving on new worlds, and be done with it. Is that really what we want to see? It's the logical place we reach if we go the insta-travel route, IMO. Now you really -are- taking the Star Wars out of the game and making it into <GenericMMO1001> with lightsabers. Another advantage of the current system, which some folks have hit upon a bit, is that some of these 'static areas' -- the starport corridors and such -- that we have to run through each day provide opportunities for the devs, as storytellers. Much of the time, it's just an hallway you take for granted as you get back to your ship. But then suddenly, -this time- you get jumped by an ambush of thugs hired by a crime lord you just made life difficult for a bit earlier. Take away the corridor, this type of thing could never happen. At least, not in a way to create the same impact, in a way that you'd really 'feel it' as much. To elaborate on that last point, we all go through a lot of 'corridors' in RL -- places we go through because we must and are so familiar with we generally take for granted. We get so used to these routine paths, that when something unusual happens along one of them, it really jumps out and surprises you. If, on the other hand, life were designed so that no corridor existed that -didn't- have some kind of crazy/significant/scary/impressive event occurring, then we would be expecting some kind of event around every corner, and they'd stop being able to surprise us, after a while. The 'events' would become repetitive and boring. To some extent, it's the 'normal' or 'bland' elements that make the 'unusual' or 'exciting' ones seem unusual or exciting. So it's my view that the travel system is in fact a story tool, and each part -- even that one that 'doesn't have any purpose' in the game -- does indeed have purpose. Still, it's clear that many feel there's a bit too much 'normal/bland' in the travel portion of the game, so I do hope that BioWare will take a look at it and find ways to streamline the travel, while still keeping some of these 'average places' where we start to drop our expectations a bit, relax a little and thus set ourselves up to be surprised.

See, if that's all you're really trying to say, then I'm generally in agreement. Thing is, you kind of went about it the wrong way, IMO. Don't blast out a big QQ about Security Key Vendors because there are no companion options for your companion in the standard game. Because the issue is not a Security Key Vendor, it's the standard game! Just post a suggestion/request to the effect of: I can't find any companion customizations for Ashara or Xalek from any of the standard companion vendors in game, while all other companions (AFAIK) have multiple sets available. Please add in some customizations for these companions too! At least, to me, that comes across a lot better and would avoid all the flames you have flying to and fro here. Just a thought.

Well, it can also be an issue in Flashpoints just for getting around, at times. I've had a couple teams where -someone- ran ahead and got into a fight and I was unable to activate a lift to get me to the next area and join in 'til the fight was over. (Lifts are also unusable in combat.) It's true, if you had better coordination in the group, you could avoid that, but it would sure be nice not to have to beat down all the overeager types quite so much. IE, if the system would check for when each -individual- was in combat, rather than the group as a whole.

This is basically the gist of it, yes. It has no significant (I think all Orange armor has about a 7 armor rating as an inherent base) stats of its own. If you really don't like the look of it, then you can likely feel free to ditch it. But if it's a look you think you might ever want to wear, it'd be good to hold on to. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder, so it's all up to personal taste as to which looks you may like or dislike. I'm sure some folks will be happy to stick with one look, others may want to collect a wardrobe of choices -- it's just good to know that the option is available with the Orange pieces.

Actually, I'd prefer to see a way to save/load keybinds. There are times (though admittedly limited) when I actually do want a slightly different keybind for a specific character. But if we can save our keybinds and then load them, we could easily save a standard set and load them into each character as we please.