It can not be hard to track all credit transactions higher than -say- 490,000 credits and review them automatically: if no item or items of low value where traded, flag both players. The eventual banning would still be done manually, you never know if it's legit. But I'm pretty sure that if they wanted to stop it, they'd stop it. There are even credit sellers on ebay as we speak... exactly how hard is it for Bioware to sent a mail to Ebay, asking to take those sales off? And this is true for any game. Which is why I always wondered too, if the gaming compnies don't get a piece of the gold-selling pie. But sometimes, it's best to be a little bit naieve and not ask too many questions, lol.

The patch added a problem for me, the upper left corner of my screen sometimes shows totally white on my character screen. Oh, well, I'll wait it out till f2p, if it's not fixed by then, I'm off.

You, on the other hand, seem like a nice fellow For me, actions speaks louder than words. When 2 million people left, you can't say ''well, good riddance'. Then your game has a problem. Sure, the game is good enough for you. But, clearly, most people have higher standards than you have. If Bioware does not respect their wishes, you will be playing pretty much on your own in a few months.

This! Well, for me the perfect solution would be to have one server were only subs can play on. But apperently, they don't want that. We'll see if the angry f2p-ers are annoying or not. But if they are like they were in LOTRO, they got a big problem: that was simply unbearable the first few weeks.

If I were them, I would go all out on this. Charge you coin for every time you visit the shop AND sell special hairstyles for coins. It's one of the (rare) features where I do not care that they charge money. If you want to pay 50$ to look different, by all means, please do.

Yeah, this game as too few tanks and this is indeed one of the reasons why: at low levels, people can not tank decently. So maybe they never get to 30 (altough I can imagine most people spec for DPS while leveling). Metrics may or may not proof this point to be corrrect. But there is another reason, much harder to fix. In SWTOR, there are only 4 people in a group, a tank, a healer and 2 DPSers.. So you need 1 tank for each *2* DPSers, that's more than in other MMOs. I do not know why Bioware made this decision, but in my opinion, this is the main reason why there is a shortage of tanks: the game design of a 4-man-group, so that 25% of the players must be tanks.

You pay 15$ a month. That's 2 cents an hour. Tht's 8 cents so far. Even if you loose 20% of your weekly gaming time, that would be 1 dollar. A liiiiiiiiiittle perspective is a good thing to have...

<nods in agreement>

First of all, let me say that I respect your job. Comming from a medical parent myself, I know it ain't a walk in the park. But a paramedic and a IT operator for a gaming company are two totally different jobs. No one is going to die here. It is a game. One that people pay 15$ a month for. That is about 2 cents an hour. So far, after 4 hours, we lost 8 cents. Not our lives. I am always the first to call Bioware out when they do something wrong. My post history speaks for itslf. But we are talking about 8 cents here. That's all, 8 cents. Big deal.

No. Any company that knows what it's doing has back-ups that they can reset. The worse, worse, worse case scenario is that they have to reset everyone to what they were a day or a week ago. Once f2p hits, this will be harder, because people will have bought items with real $$$. So they got to reimburse the items that people bought in that period. It will be harder, but not impossible: a compnay like EA will do that correctly in f2p too.

Because, as much as I support the cause, it is only a very small minority that a) wants this in a game and b) finds this more important than -say- end-game content.

Lance was the one that cheated everyone for 8 years by doing drugs, right? Not exactly the type of person you want to learn about in schools...

Probably everything... I counted the republic side... Level 1 : 56 people Level 2 : 48 people Level 3 : 63 people Level 4 : 59 people Level 5 : 38 people Level 6 : 23 people Level 7 : 11 people Level 8 : 4 people Level 9 : 1 people Level 10-50 : 27 people. The status on the server is now FULL by the way. Which is odd, because there aren't alot of people on.

Yes, indeed. Question: are the pacific servers also ''high population servers'?

<nods in agreement> Smartest words in this thread. edited: well, that was before the servers went down and after more than an hour of down time, it was said that it will be another hour before the next update of the message.

Noob is not the first word that comes to mind when decribing someone that paid for a game that can be played free for the first 15 levels.

For me, it will be impossible to get him because I'll be damned if I play the dark side. I do not understand why they demand that you play the evil side too. Maybe the marketing people demanded that they came up with more ways to make people roll alts or something. Another patch with no content for me

You don't need a tank nor a healer for any of the single content. I only use DPS companions. And I spec as DPS too, when I play solo. Kill them and kill them fast: they can't kill you when they're dead!

This is not just ''one person'', lol. This is the boss of the content. If he says (translated) they are not working on end-game but on alts, you know they are doing just that. But maybe this is the only way for the game to survive for a while longer, get people to play alts. That's what Bioware is best at, the story-telling and single-player aspects. Focus on that. Just don't bill it as a MMO, just because a few thousand people are on the same servers.

Actually, we do know, if you read the FAQ. You got to unlock them, else you can only do one.

You're at PvP end-game. Hardcore even. Congratulations. But PvE is a little bit different, imho. Especially for casual players. I see few PvPers rant about lack of end-game content, most are PvEers.

Yes, but that is because you had to use 3rd party software. If Blizzard would provide that sort of tools themselves, you wouldn't have this problem. True, people like to play the blame game. But I personally saw these tools as a way to improve myselve. How can I know if I am a good DPSer or a good healer if I can't compare myself with others? If I would make a MMO, I would have some basic tools in the game to help people get better. Like a some sort of meter that shows how you did in a dungeon and also showed how other players with your class did in other groups. Or a meter that shows your DPS and the other people's DPS, but not their names. In SWTOR, all you can do is see people's gear and hope for the best. I remember the first FP HM here. Someone inspected my gear and said ''yes, she's ready for HM''. I was like ''but, but... I got no clue what to do''. Bottom line, that type of tools can make people become better players.

That is probablynot so easy to do, but... I totally agree with this. 100%. This should have been caught by their testing team and solved before it went to the test server. Apperently, it didn't. Okay, then plan B. Solved it on the test server before going to live. That didn't work either. Now they are at plan C: try to fix it in live, while costomers are complaining. Needless to say, that's the worse of the worse solution. I can only hope that they have learned some valuable lessons with 1.4. - On one hand, I do not have the feeling that they did learn something, I did not see in any post somthing like ''we know our testing failed, sorry, we'll do better next time'. - On the other hand, I can also not imagine that they are NOT aware of all the complaints on the forums the last two weeks: every other post is about it! It can't be fun for them to read all this, but surely they must be aware that they did something wrong. Hopefully, they will learn their lesson, even when they don't communicate about it. For me, f2p is the main cause here, together wit their inexperience in MMOs. They put too many people on the f2p team. These bugs are the price that we, loyal subscribers, pay for the f2p decision.

No, there are mobs that always drop a commendation. Guaranteed.

I think that would be the best approach as a new character, yes: slicing to make money with gathering & missions, Biochem to save money with your reusable medpacks and the a second gathering skill (doesn't really matter which one, so it might as well be Bioanalysis cause that's what you'll need for your reusables). For the rest: first, buy a moddable weapon ASAP for you and your companion and get the purple hilts & barrels for your level (upgrade every 2 or 4 levels). You will kill ALOT ALOT faster like that. ALOT. Moddable armor on your tank (you or your companion) is good too: buy armoring with your commendations. Ideally, you would buy purple armorings for your chest, leggings and helmet, but that may get too expensive for a first character to do every 4 levels.