I say keep 'em. It makes the traditional blue crystals look unique.

Feel free to create your own custom chat channel, and invite whomever you want. You can even protect it with a password. Problem solved.

I think it's more a function of gear design. In general, it seems BioWare's art team assumed all Consular characters would be female, and all Knights would be male. I'm still holding to the forlorn hope that one day my Shadow will get some gear that looks Shadow-y, rather than making him look like a demented Christmas Tree angel.

ANY set looks better than the Consular's Rakata set.

Sorry. Want me to enclose the info in a spoiler tag for you?

It's the sound effect that is triggered when you switch from normal running speed back to Sprint Speed. (Sprint is only usable out of combat.)

The PvP has always been Guild Wars' big selling point. From the beginning of GW1, the marketing blurbs on the retail box touted the notion that you didn't have to go through a long PvE grind or gear grind to jump into the PvP. GW and SWTOR are basically two very different games, with very different core selling points. In SWTOR, the big selling point is the storytelling. Unfortunately for BioWare, they are discovering the hard way that it's EXTREMELY important for a MMO to have an even richer gaming experience AT THE LEVEL CAP than anywhere else, because that's where the players accumulate and stay, until the company either raises the level cap or the players get bored and move on to other games. And I think a big element of their strategy for fun at max level crashed and burned when the battle zone on Ilum proved unable to support large-scale PvP.

PvP "flags" are nonexistent on a PvP server, where you're pretty much always actively PvP-enabled, unless you've sat in a friendly base for five minutes or more. (You'll see this status change in your character's overhead name display, which changes to blue when you're not PvP-enabled.) Once you set foot outside the base, you go back to being PvP-enabled. On PvE servers, you're not PvP-enabled unless you do something to activate it. This switch to PvP-enabled status is what people are referring to when they say you're "flagged" for PvP. And yeah, there are a few players who stalk enemy-faction players. Part of the "charm" of being on a PvP server. Best way to deal with it is to group up and stomp him. Do it maybe 3 times, and either his rez timer will be so high he decides to do something else, or he gets tired of picking on groups.

This sounds like a bug to me. In which case, a ticket to Customer Service is appropriate. Now, if this wolfpack was deliberately TRYING to trigger your PvP flag by huddling around you in hopes of triggering this or some other bug (such as hoping you'll use an AoE attack or standing on a NPC you're trying to target in hopes that you will inadvertently targeti one of them, or using a ground-target AoE attack on your companion), that's a form of in-game harassment. My from-memory approximation of the relevant passage in the ToS is, "attempting to harass or 'grief' players by exploiting elements of the in-game architecture or systems to induce results not intended in the game design." Attempting to induce non-voluntary PvP-flag activations is a notorious example. That wolfpack won't find their fun so fun if they wind up with, say, a 3-day suspension or some other whack with the banhammer.

I know that name. I've never seen him myself, but I've seen Republic players discussing his actions in global chat. So, I have a question for you, Bogle. Since you felt this guy's actions justify your invasion of the Republic Base Camp (fuzzy logic, but hey, PvP is PvP), I think I should ask you: do you feel similar annoyance over the IMPERIAL player or two who are were doing THE SAME THING in the Republic heroic area for a couple of weeks as of that weekend, and had been at it again all afternoon that day? (I can give you the offenders' names via PM, if you care.) Or is this Quinlynn's actions just another excuse to (try to) grief Republic players? At any rate, if you were releasing back to the med bot under the Imp walker near the Base Camp, your group by definition wasn't the group I was referring to. That group was a foursome that had been roflstomped repeatedly inside the Republic Base Camp's building, and had repeatedly rezzed in place.

This isn't what was happening the night I was talking about in my original post. There was a foursome of Imps inside the base. I and several other Republic characters killed them off once, and a couple minutes later, as I was doing misc. stuff on my character, he was struck by a tranq dart and ganked by the same foursome, who HAD rezzed in the back corner of a side room. it may have been a different night that you saw this Quinlynn fleeing into the base, because I didn't see any character by that name. And I don't recall offhand the guildname of the group that was doing it, so undoubtedly it was some other group of lowlife/exploiters. But whatever. If you want to try to roll Republic bases and brag that you will "soon" take over an entire planet -- well, give it your best shot. Hope you like being roflstomped. Assuming, of course, that Republic players can be bothered to fight you in the first place.

This isn't the issue. Quest destinations that are too small to reasonably serve the destination's population is the issue. And that's been an issue in many MMOs in addition to SWTOR. I saw it in WoW, I saw it in LOTRO, and I'm seeing it again in SWTOR. The thing is, Blizzard FIXED WoW's issues, and Turbine FIXED LOTRO's issues. Now, BioWare would be well-advised to fix these issues, too. I would suggest doubling the size of the Black Hole District, both north and south, to increase the land area in which quest objects can be placed. I would also suggest expanding the field on Ilum where the turrets are found to the west. Both projects would mean some map redesign in the affected areas, but with the number of players in those zones, it's more than justifiable. These are key high-traffic areas. Once the level cap goes up, they will see reduced traffic as players level up and leave them behind, but the lessons BioWare will learn from optimizing daily-questing zones will be valuable for future areas like them.

GUNNERY SPEC 1. OTHERS' PERCEPTIONS: Gunnery Commandos dish out a fair amount of damage, but in PvE, the big thing everyone expects of them is to keep Grav Round stacked 5x at all times. And with the short lifespan of the debuff, it still dominates their lives, even with the nerf to it in 1.2. 2. MY PERCEPTION: In PvP, Gunners are statues due to the long windups on almost all their attacks. This makes them easy targets for melee types and classes with Force Pulls and harpoons and interrupts. In PvE, my first thought the first time I fired off a Mortar Volley was, "Egad, this is a nerf waiting to happen." The AoE-radius nerf seems to make it a bit less of an "I-Win" button in PvE, so I'm cool with that. But overall, I'd say the Gunner DESPERATELY needs less rooted-in-place action and more run-and-gun action. COMBAT MEDIC 1. OTHERS' PERCEPTIONS: I think Combat Medics have a bit of an overly-negative impression among PvE'ers. 2. MY PERCEPTION: I haven't tried a heal spec yet on my Sage to compare them directly to my CM-spec Commando, but I think my guy does just fine as the primary healer in a group. He excels at maintaining the health bars of my groups, and can recover nicely from large bursts of danage if he's ramped up 30 weapon charges. And this is on a guy who's still pretty early in the "end-game" gear grind -- he only has a couple of Columi armor pieces, the rest being Tionese, but with Rakata earpiece, implants, and offhand item. My only gripe is that in PvP, like Gunnery-spec Commandos, he tends to be too stationary when trying to cast heals. "Alacrity" gear is this game's single biggest joke.

1. MY PERCEPTION: My Sage (Telekinetic spec) was the last of my stable of alts that I've gotten around to levelling up, and I'm thinking it's my favorite. I like the ranged DPS and the gameplay mode. Overall, this Sage plays the content a lot easier than my Shadow did. He's welcome in flashpoints (which contrasts SHARPLY with my experiences trying to get my Shadow into FPs -- a study in futility), and dishes out lots n lots of hurt. He's squishy of course, but only if I forget to keep his Force Armor up. 2. OTHERS' PERCEPTIONS: I think Sages are one of the most-respected classes in the game, second only to the cuurent flavor-of-the-month, the DPS-spec Sentinels and Marauders. My only real complaint at this point is that my Sage's attacks tend to degenerate into either a Force Quake spamfest (multiple targets) or a Project/Telekinetic Throw spamfest (for single targets), with the occasional Disturbance thrown in if the proc is up.

1. MY PERCEPTION: Underpowered, limited to Kinetic (Tank) spec for any hope of viability. And that was nerfed with 1.3. Infiltration spec is particularly weak: inferior DPS, very fragile. Role is basically a one-trick pony, only good for sneaking past enemy NPCs and filching a quest objective. Can harass squishy casters and healers in PvP, but they kill slowly and die quickly. Kinetic and Kinetic/Balancy Hybrids are only slightly better: They die more slowly, but Kinetics kill even more slowly. Most Shadows put at least 8 points into the Balance line to get the extra half-damage rock from their Project attack, just to have one decent attack. And I still resent that 10-ft. range on Project and the default version of Telekinetic Throw. 2. OTHER CLASSES' PERCEPTION: Shadows are perceived as useless in any role/spec but Kinetic/tanking. Hybrid Balance/Kinetic builds are gaining some interest among Shadows desperate for SOME role, but I find their contribution dubious. No healing spec, and their DPS spec is outgunned by pretty much every other class's DPS build.

Quoted for truth. Bottom line is, Infiltration Shadows are a spec without an end-game role. And as someone on Page #1 of ths thread observed, Infiltration Shadows are also weak in solo gameplay. Too fragile, with not enough burst to compensate. Stealth is fun, but once you've popped out of stealth, it's mostly downhill.

I guess I'm the oddball here. I liked the Consular storyline best out of all four of the Republic classes' storylines. It delves deeply into the anchent history of the Jedi Order, which for a Lore junkie like me, is like manna from heaven. By contrast, the Knight arc seems mundane..

Appearance tabs feel like fakery to me. Mods that can be fully interchanged between light and heavy armor will probably have the same problem, at least in my eyes. I'm sure there would be plenty of characters running around in Slave Dancer outfits, if they could be modded into becoming heavy armor. My ideal would be to have a system that limits characters restricted to certain classes of arnor to at least LOOK like they are wearing the appropriate category of armor. Troopers and Bounty Hunters shouldn't look like Consulars; Consulars shouldn't look like Troopers. And I would make the Slave Dancer set cosmetic/social gear only -- it is NOT armor! Sorry if people disagree; that's my opinion. The BEST SOLUTION is for BioWare to rethink the artwork on many of its armor sets. EVERY class needs a good selection of armors with at least a reasonably-iconic look to them.

Knight/Guardians have two variants of Force Leap: Force Leap, and Guardian's Leap. Force Leap takes you to an enemy player character; Guardian Leap sends you to the side of a friendly player. Both moves require a target. If a Guardian or Juggernaut is "Force Leaping" to an empty spot, it's a clear hack. By the way, there should be no need to save a FRAPS video of the incident. The admin tools in this game record everything. Best thing you should do if you see what you think is a hack is to stop in your tracks and write a Customer Service ticket immediately, so a CSR can go into their toolbox and save the data.

As much as we all would love to see epic battles for control of planets, I don't think it would work in this game, for a couple of reasons. 1. The game engine clearly can't handle large numbers of player characters in one location. This is the reason the Ilum PvP zone failed so hard. 2. This game's worlds are built around Story-based questing. I think open-world PvP tends to destroy this game's primary gameplay mechanic, especially if situations arise in which opposing-faction players "take over" the opposing faction's quest hubs. Until BioWare figures out how to make this game work with large numbers of player characters concentrated in small areas, it would be a VERY bad idea to formulate objectives in such a way that they encourage large-scale battles with open-ended participation, such as city takeovers. This, I think, would bring this game's servers to their knees. My suggestions for objective-based PvP quests would get players out and dispersed into the general environment, hopefully involving themselves in smaller-scale battles like the ones we saw in the Rakghoul Plague event on Tatooine. Not epic in scale, and not a perfect solution; but something. And hopefully, it'd be fun. And even a simple set of daily quests, such as "kill XX number of on-level foes on (name of planet) would be a useful incentive to go to a planet and defend your comrades-in-arms from griefers and gank squads.

No discussion?

If they're taking down the servers, they generally DO give advance in-game notice, with countdowns (15/10/5/4/3/2/1-minutes to shutdown). I've seen it many times prior to the overnight Tuesday maintenance cycles, as well as when they've decided to take the servers down for an emergency fix. Only time I've ever seen the server shut down without warning is if the server crashes.

I think the district should be expanded, both to the north for Republic players and to the south for Imperial players, to give more room for everyone to find and complete the surface-area quests. We can switch to different instances, but that does little good. The district itself is simply too small.

A very well-written post, with lots of food for thought for the devs. Clearly not written for forum trolls with the attention span of a firecracker fuse -- which is just as well. It's written for the DEVS' benefit. Hopefully they will see it and give it the consideration it deserves. Kudos to the OP as well for breaking it up with clear subheadings.

Ah -- well, I stand corrected, then. I hadn't seen any, myself. But I think this issue touches on a bigger issue: the lack of viable end-game crafted products for the other crew skills. A crafting system in which the only desirable top-end crafted item is a healing item is a flawed crafting system.