f13.net

So far what's gone right:

1. Servers running smooth as silk. (Except for Baron Deathmark, currently down).
2. Game client feels polished. Target of target option is in settings now.
3. Server status page correctly lists the servers on which you have characters and puts them at the top of the status list.
4. Early access "wave" emails seem to have gone out based on pre-order code entry date, for the most part, as advertised.

Wrong:
1. Possible pvp/warzone XP-gain bug or exploit.

chime in...

This isn't 'really' launch though or at least it's limited access. I'm not saying it 'won't' go smoothly but I'd like to see how things fare when the floodgates open.

I'd say this whole pre-order-early-access-invite-in-waves-because-we're-not-stress-testing-the-servers thing qualifies as part of the launch since it's clearly part of a launch strategy.

The hardest thing, clearly, has been managing community expectations but StephenReid is at least communicating BW's responses to the crush of inquiries/complaints/questions.

However, I don't think they communicated clearly enough at all in the week leading up to today. They did have a plan, but seemed terrified of being specific about anything until the absolutely last possible moment. ("They have a plan." Echoes of the Cylons in the Battlestar Galactica reboot.)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/mj_popcorn.gif)

The only thing wrong with the launch as far as I'm concerned is that I was not allowed to start today.  :why_so_serious:

It's starting to look like I might actually get in earlier than I had expected (I was originally thinking on day 3 of the 5 original days, and I might be in tomorrow now) - but I can't help but feel that generating all this drama at launch has been a bit pants-on-head silly.

Sure, kids at home are being asshats. What did they expect though? Poke an aggressive dog and it'll bite you. Sure, bad dog, but who's the retard?

All this drama?

Personally I am coming away feeling pretty good since I'm going to get in earlier than expected and everything is going smoothly by all reports.

Think this is a pretty damn good idea for a launch.  String many of the people out over the course of a week as you can, then have official launch day within the week where everybody is usually off somewhere else unable to play anyways.  Doing the standard "All 10 million players log in now!" MMO launch would have been a very bad idea for this one.

Just don't read the forums. Or people sending reeeally angry tweets to @SWTOR  :awesome_for_real:


Edit: I can't fault the mechanics, I just think the psychology was ... predictable. Tell people they'll get in one day in the next 7, and most will secretly believe they will be getting in on day 1, then be disappointed when they aren't. Sure, stupid, but it could have been handled better - tell people in advance when their day is, then if you want to let people in earlier, give them a nice surprise.

What's gone wrong, at least for me, is that i continuously pick what i think is the darkside path and end up getting lightside points.  How the hell is poisoning the stupid hungry monster giving me lightside points? as far as i could tell the other option was trying to help him.

Exactly, Jherad.  The best customer service happens from setting expectations up front.  Bioware failed at doing that well, so now you have angry customers.  They knew where the batches were going to fall, so they should have sent the emails last week with the assigned days.  To do otherwise is just mismanagement.

No panties in a twist, just a critique.

Riiiiight, how is helping the hungry monster not darker than mercy killing it? Did you pay attention to what the guy said would happen if you helped him?


Also if you REALLY can't tell, mouse over the options, it will have a light side/dark side symbol to tell you straight up what that choice is going to do. A lot of the Empire choices come down to "kill them quick" versus "let them linger" or "fuck one person" versus "fuck a LOT of people" for their dark side/light side shit.

Agreed.  If you want to be even lazier, there's an option you can turn on that will flag the LS/DS options without even mousing over.  But still, yeah, had you actually been reading the story, these things would make sense.  This isn't Azeroth anymore.

That is quite helpful, thank you.

You're welcome! You're playing the side that has a lot more grey in the quests (well, sometimes), so it's actually sort of understandable. I had several quests where I was like "oh god, THAT'S my light side choice?  :ye_gods:" Good times!


EDIT: Er, on topic, I do think it would've been better to give people set dates and then happily surprising people by letting them in earlier if it worked out that way. But that probably would've caused different nerd rage somehow, because if there's something nerds are good at, it's raging about stupid shit.

They'd totally bitch they scheduled their holidays wrong based on the misinformation, and aren't able to play during these extra days :grin:

Yep! Or if they wound up letting some people in early, but then needed to go back to people "only" getting in on their scheduled day for some reason, the shrieking would be glorious.

There should also be an option in the settings that will put the light/dark symbols right next to the dialogue choices. There's also another option to turn every dark/light warning off, if you want MAXIMUM RRRRPEEEE.

Seriously.  I pre-order to get early access yet I don't get early access?   :oh_i_see:

Man the turning it off completely is sort of tempting, but I'm pretty good at not letting THE POINTS dictate what I do. Most of the time. It's mostly a tie breaker if both options are stupid/horrible/depressing/sensible.  :why_so_serious:

Yes.  You and you alone won't be let in until next Tuesday.  :roll:

There is.

This.

Even a "weekend" head start (letting everyone who pre-ordered in on, say, Friday the 16th through Monday the 19th) would have been asking for a weekend of misery all around.

But that's also part of the fun.. Being able to say "I was there on day 1, it was crazy!" is a symbol of pride. Being able to crash a server being a bonus.


And then conversely they should let you lock it on "Maximum whiteness" and you can watch all the dialog like the move it's trying to be.

My lauch was worringly buggy actually, worse than beta.  My sound didn't work (except in cutscenes), my smuggler was stuck in a crouching position so he was sliding all over like that (I saw others having the same problem), there was loot lag and a couple other things I don't remember.  It's all sorted out now though.

Not sure why everyone is angry today, they should have been angry when they announced this hare brained scheme.  I saw some complaining then but nowhere near what's going on now.  Can't imagine what it's going to look like when the head start is over and the lack of grace period kicks in.

Really? Really?  When have you ever really enjoyed reminiscing about the last time you did this?

You don't brag about your red badge of courage. You gather around a campfire with other veterans and compare them.

I got in at 7:10 am, played all day without 1 crash or bug and leveled to 19

What, you couldn't push through to a nice, round number like 20? Slacker.  :why_so_serious:

About the only thing I can fault them for is they should have said that everyone would get in early by at least X days. But it's hard not to just break out laughing on the 13th when people are raging that they aren't able to play a game that releases on the 20th and who's early release was set to start the 15th.

The way my week has been going that wouldn't surprise me.   :awesome_for_real:

If they had announced the days you'd get in days (or weeks) ahead of time they would have lost pre-order sales. Lots of them.

On another note, could anyone tell me if there's an option to disable the auto-rotating camera yet? There wasn't any such option in the two weekend betas I were in, and I really dislike not having full control of the camera at all times.

You can probably find threads on this forum where WoW launch veterans have told stories about the crazy crowds, energy and ability to surf around the landscape in "flower picking pose" for half an hour. I mean there's a reason people pre-order rather than wait to buy it once things have stablized.

The reason doesn't include any of those things you listed, though.

I think it's a great way to roll out the launch, it went quite well today. It's hard to overstate how hilarious the reactions of some folks have been, but that's humanity for you.

Remember, most of those people drive and have the right to vote!  :cthulu:

They also can have babies!

We'll know the final outcome on the 20th, but so far so good. For a development team (based on my experience in observing previous launches and reading the comments made by developers), "smooth launch" means:

- Client firing up correctly, no immediate crash to desktop and similar problems ;
- Log in process successful and immediate;
- reasonable queues/waiting time;
- Almost no lag in starting areas/no excessive competition for mobs (overcrowding) ;
- First steps into the gameworld that leave a good impression (but this is more about the gameplay)

Is TOR achieving all of the above? Again, we'll know for sure only after the "real" floodgates open, but so far yes, it's a success all across the board.

I played 4 hours yesterday and really only experience a couple of "issues"

- In a couple of the caves on Korriban, the fogging effects dragged my FPS down to pretty unacceptable levels.  In general, while I think the game looks pretty decent, I think there is room for some performance improvements.  These textures don't seem super detailed to me.

- On one mission where I had to provide a beatdown on four acolytes, and then speak to one of them afterwards...the one I had to speak to was in a crouched down position, and one of the larger sidekicks (much larger than her) was crouched down in the exact same geometry...so she was kinda hidden and I couldn't target her to complete the coversation.  Took me a few minutes of manipulating the camera before I could finally target her.  Really wierd.  Probably just a freak thing.
- There seems to be some lag when dragging and dropping to equip items and move things to the toolbars.  Annoying, but not game breaking by any stretch.
- The free color crystal offends me with its existence.

Otherwise, pretty damn decent.  Not of the other usual problems.  Sith Warrior story is awesome, and

I had a pretty flawless run today.  I got in first wave and luckily my server wasn't plowed full of people.  I made it to 21 and was the first person to Balmorra and Nar Shadda.  It was nice having whole planets to myself.   :awesome_for_real:

Ah, thanks for that tip!  Will definitely turn that on.

My one persistent issue with the beta on the stress weekend was the game's inability to shut itself down properly, I had to force-quit via end task in Task Manager every time but once. I don't know how many other people had the same issue so it's entirely possible it was just me/my hardware configuration.

Any problems with quitting in pre-launch so far?

No, but my issues quitting stopped about halfway through that weekend. I had the same issue where quitting from in the world locked up, but logging out/quitting from the character window worked fine.


edit: the only hilarious bug I've had to far is related to crafting and the space game. Halfway through a space mission my companion finished his assignment and.. spawned behind my ship and proceeded to glitch out for the rest of the mission.

I had the exact same thing happen to me this morning. And during the beta stress test weekend. Sith Warrior right?

I wonder if the glitch in one of the NPCs for the Jedi Knight cutscenes is still there, then.   One of the council members would walk in and be SUPER TINY.  It was hilarious because there'd be this empty chair with a voice.   I actually preferred to think she's some space-pixie race and was too proud to have a tiny chair made for her to sit on the table.

one of the other toons I played also had a tiny character - maybe it was the annoying one that shouts at you on the soldier storyline? Yeah, I think that was it.

Saying ahead of time when people would get in would have obligated them. Holding back and sending out waves on your own time frame means you can better manage the flow.

Yeah I had that happen with both him and Satele in the last two beta weekends. I'm guessing the character model is getting accidentally flagged with the 'handheld holocommunicator size' flag.

Fake edit: found a screenshot of Satele

Spent all day playing yesterday and had zero problems - smooth as silk. I was expecting it really because beta looked better than most MMOPRG launch-day clients a few builds before the stress tests.

I'd classify the "early access launch" phase a huge success and I have no reason to think this will not continue to the "real launch" on 20th December.

On a less happy note, the official SWTOR forums broke my heart...  :heartbreak:

I was aghast, agog and amaze at the vitriol....  :ye_gods:  

Are they blind? I guess I'm just getting older and have no time for that crap any more - even last year I laughed at things like that, but today it made me sad...

Fortunately, BW/LA appear to have real winner on their hands here (and such has been a long time coming our way) so I don't expect to spend much time on the forums outside the Dev Tracker and the crafting forums.

The forums are like the dark-side cave on Dagobah. If you venture in, chances are you won't like what you see and your weapons won't do you any good.

Good Launch all around.

My evil evil, Shoot First and Cut off Your Head Second Bounty Hunter is starting to get glowy Darkside eyes!    :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

Actually matches her auburn hair!   :drillf:

You have to understand why some people on those forums are mad about not getting early access.  They want the rush of everyone in the same area at once.  The utter chaos and madness is what feeds them.  If they don't have a big audience how can they enjoy being an e-thug in chat or killstealing someone's quest spawn?

On the positive side we get to enjoy their QQ on the forums.

It doesn't really exist, since they instance the zones at N population.

I don't think these are the ethugs, these are the people who just really really want to enjoy the game, and are flipping the fuck out at the uncertainty of this system. Which I kind of agree is silly (just tell people order date/probable join date, christ.), but it's not rage-worthy.

Forum people don't understand "probable". If you show them any sort of a number in your post, as far as they're concerned you've committed to it, cross your heart and RAGE upon your ass if you're as little as a second late.

My boss reminded me today of something (related to work, but seems to apply to forum behavior, too). Sometimes people just like to have a lot of control over their lives, and anything that makes them feel out of control -- like not knowing exactly when they will get in -- gets them upset. Add in the usual MMO hype machine, mix with the game-addicted/beta-withdrawal state of some of these players' brains, and spice with the desire to escape from rampant holiday "cheer", and you have a recipe for MMO forum meltdowns.

I think it's as simple as "Some people will find anything to bitch about".  The same group raging about not being in on day one would be on the forums raging just as hard about queues, or lag, or lack of mobs, or whatever, had BW just opened the floodgates, and let everyone in at once.

And like anyone with ADD... just wait a few seconds and they'll be off on another topic.

If they'd given everyone access on day -7, those who pre-ordered on the first day of pre-orders would have bitched that their efforts weren't rewarded by earlier access than everyone else.

 :awesome_for_real:

My computer is utterly stumping me.  I didn't have time in November to play beta, but I cannot download the client.  Every time I click on the launcher, it just hangs for eternity (nothing pops up) until I go into my taskbar and shut it down.

I've tried playing in network-enabled safe mode, deleting patch directory, deleting all appdata temporary files relating to SWTOR, running as administrator, opening all dev-recommended ports on my wireless router, shutting down windows firewall and antivirus software- nothing.  Can never get anything to pop up when I click on the launcher.  Having a Japanese OS that I mostly can't read doesn't help.

Not worried yet since I haven't gotten in (didn't preorder until very early December) but this is worrying me....

How long are you giving the launcher? Have you rebooted? It can take like a minute to come up for some strange reason.

I had that issue come up last night when I was doing my initial install. The launcher just hung at the initial updating screen and would not stop. I ran the actual root program (not the desktop shortcut) as administrator and it immediately fixed up.

So, no Australian release date yet  :uhrr: but Austria is all go.  Anyone heard a confirmed release for the land downunder?

If you take a look at the server status page now, you'll notice they're adding a shitload a lot of new servers (while keeping them offline at the moment) both to the NA and EU area. Just sayin'.

Makes sense, they said that the early start servers weren't going to be all of servers they would launch with.

Nope.  Teh rumor mill is saying Feb, but internet rumors and whatnot.

A lot of us have just gone to Amazon.  With postage its $75, which isn't too bad.

What do you mean by "running the root program?"  Clicking on the launcher icon in the actual folder, as opposed to desktop icon?  I think I"ve tried that, but I'll try again. 

And I can't even get an "updating" screen.  If I click on the launcher, nothing (no error, no message, no launcher) ever pops up.  The program will hang on the task bar for hours and not do anything.

It did for me today.  This was a triumph.  I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS!

Are you still in Japan? I thought I read that China, Japan and Korea are all IP blocked from SWTOR, but not 100% sure.

Yep, in the actual folder. Right click, run as administrator, it worked. I had been sitting for like 20min too

One minor hiccup I've found: They forgot to disable the debugger  :ye_gods:

If you open your Task Manager, you may see two copies of SWTOR.exe running.  One's the game, the other (the one using less memory) is the debugger. The work-around right now is to set the debugger to a lower process priority (right click it, Set Priority, Low).  If you have a multi-core system, set it to only use 1 CPU core (right click it, Set Affinity, uncheck everything but one CPU core).  I noticed an ok boost when doing this.  A little less studdering and whatnot.

I'm not really compent with that kind of stuff but...Are you sure? That would be quite an oversight, wouldn't it? Have you tried to write a topic on the forums or something?

Not in Japan (in America), but I wonder if it detects the Japanese OS somehow.

Their stated policy is no IP blocking by region last I checked.

I hate crafting.

I love crafting in SWTOR because I don't have to actually do it.

This is great.

Also note you can keep all your crafting shit in your vault and it will use that too.

Only complaint I have after a couple of days is that my server (Terentatek, East Coast PvP) is so heavily titled towards Sith that we're getting Huttball 90% of the time as it's the only one that supports same-faction battles.

Doublecheck you don't have anything like peerblock etc running by accident.

I thought the login servers were down for hours and was wondering why nobody on the forum complained.  :uhrr:

Seriously?  Awesome.  I've been carting stuff around. 

That's a really nice feature.

I got lucky with reverse engineering and netted my first purple recipe. Unfortunately, I was just shredding some old belt, so I have a lvl 9 purple heavy belt recipe for the BHs :) Ras got the first one. Got quite a few blues, enough to keep me in pretty good gear. The anti-clown button would be nice, though. Red/blue/white/orange.  :oh_i_see:

Well, those belts shour be worth quite some cash once everyone is leveling their 2nd/3rd whatever alt.

So, let me see, do I understand crafting right. You can only reverse enginer crafted items, they give a bluebrint one tier above the original, then you craft that one, deconstruct it again and get a purple one ?

Bazinga.  Though it's not a guarantee that you'll get an upgraded schematic everytime.  More like a 1/10 chance.  So be prepared to craft and break a lot of shit if it's your intention to learn every recipe out there.

It's a great way to raise your skill while trying to get schematics though.  I tend to focus on the items I would use, then alts/companions, then when I have spare mats everything else.

You have to be careful to balance it though since blue and purple material missions can really eat into your starting cash.  There was this time I couldn't afford training because I spent it all on missions.

Yeah, that happened to me in my first beta weekend. Right now my PURPZ will come from happy accidents. I am shooting for blues, I like the variants you can get...so even if you get one blue recipe from an item, there are alternates you can get. I got one that was +Power and another that was +Crit.

And of course if you're really looking to be a master crafter, you must craft it until you crit it so it has a mod slot!  :grin:

Enjoying the system so far, my only gripe is that it's slow with only one companion. 5 blues can take Mako out of circulation for 15-25 minutes!

The crafting system is a little weak until you have two dudes to send out (one to play with, one to craft) imo. But I really like it. And I get far too much of a kick out of the fact that YOU, the HERO would never actually loot a crafting node. MINIONS! PICK THAT ROCK UP!

I'm focusing on purple stims and medpacs right now.  I LOVE how they are all reusable.  Fantastic!

Yep, I had a REAL hard time between armormech (arpee, mandalorians and their armor) and bio stim goodness. Purples are only usable by the creator or someone with biochem, though, right?

Reusable stims and medpacks?  It's day three and I've already screwed up my choices!  I didn't know what to do so took all harvesting in the hopes of making money later, harvesting always seems like the moneymaker.

I took cybertech but now I'm beginning to think I didn't want to.  I can't remember for the life of me.

I know I wanted slicing, though.  So slicing, cyber and scavenging it is.

My beta impression was Arms and Armor techs were largely useless.  If you get multi slot items as drops and you can unslot mods at will why bother with gear that only has one slot, and that one slot you have to crit for!

You can make the orange gear with armortech and armstech.


I took Cybertech because you get to make droid gear, two of the mods for gear, vehicles, some cybernetic implants.

Ok, but you get orange gear all the time anyway, and they come with mods!  I have 3 orange guns.  What is the incentive for crafters?  If it is appearance only that is fine, but it will hurt the market value.  

Ah I did want cyber then.. I knew I was waffling between bio and cyber. The vehicles & droid gear were what swayed me, even though the mods will likely useless once you have a few crafted and raids are happening.

Thanks for the reminder!

Cybertech gets custom vehicles, so at least you can appeal to collectors.

Who gets droids and or what are the parts used for, is that just pets?

Droid parts are cybertech, if that is your question.

Everyone gets droid companions

My sound's weird and I'm stuck in a queue listening to the same ship go by over and over.

Armstech is still good because you make the rating mod for weapons yourself, the barrel.  Artifice is even better making a rating mod, hilts, and two general mods, enhancements and color crystals.  Armortech/Synthweaving really are just all in on appearance with is okay with what I enjoy most with crafting.

this seems important.   :mob:

Bloom effects caused a huge framerate problem on my machine. I had to turn that off. Runs like a charm now.

I am right now wondering why I bothered to preorder it at all.   I understand what they are doing.  I understand why they are doing things in the manner in which they are going about it with early access.  However from their advertising, I thought when I paid that $5 fee that I was going to get in on the 15th (I also don't want to hear about Origin saying up to because it didn't when I preordered).  I am right now wondering what the hell that $5 fee is for.  Also I am wondering about whether or not I am going to get to play with my guild at all.  From what they are telling me the queues are hideous and I am fully expecting that by the time I get to play I will not have the ability to choose the server they are on.  

I really regret paying EA anything in advance at all.  Had I waited, I would get access cheaper.  I would have the certainty of an access date.  I would feel more at peace with the anxiety of not being able to play with the same people I have been playing MMO's with since AC2.  I would be more at peace with it since it would be by my decision.  Right now certainty is better than limbo.

So speaking only for myself as a gamers perspective, launch or prelauch such that it is or is not is not going well.

Seems to be either computer-dependent or some freaky accident (double clicking the launch icon twice or smth?) because i'm not experiencing that. Tabbed back and forth a few times, didn't see anything like that in the task manager.

I do have 2 running.

It's a deposit.

No really, it's a deposit. You should read their pre-order FAQs and the bit about "what happens if I cancel my pre-order" where they say they'll refund it to you. I linked it to Numtini in another thread - I CBA to find it again.

Did you not sign up for the guild preplacement thing?

The game is down for maintenance while they add more PURPLZ.

Question to all:  Is it related to whether or not you wiped out / clean reinstalled the client a few days ago?

Wait, what?

Bind on create?

Jesus christ.

That is only for the reusable stuff, though.

No, to be honest I didn't know  anything about it.  Been working way to hard as of late, even my forum time has went way down.

This doesn't make it ok.

I don't see the problem. For a biochem crafter it is only added convenience. That is their perk. They are not more powerfull, you just don't have to make them over and over again for youself.

If they were BoP, sooner or later everbody would own them and nobody would buy their stuff anymore.

To clarify, the reusable biochem items I've seen require the minimum Biochem skill to make them to use them.

That said (because the other professions do have Bind on Pickup things) I don't see what the issue is with maker-only items if we accept item binding in the first place.  It provides a clear perk to choosing that profession on that character over just gathering and using friends or crafting alts.

I didn't realise the only difference was that they are reusable.

Still doesn't sound like much of a perk that he guy who can make biochem shit at will doesn't need to make biochem shit.


Death to all binding mechanics.

However, I agree this is no worse than all the other terrible Bind On XXX mechanics. Supposed to be a multiplayer game etc.

WoW had this; you craft certain armor and items and the recipe shows that the item will be "bind on pickup" - and guess what, you "pick it up" as soon as you make it.

If unlimited, reusable stims and whatnot could be made and given to anyone, there would be no need for anyone but a handful of people to take up the craft and dominate the market.  Don't over-analyze this...WoW's already done most of the experimentation in this department.

WoW has _exactly_ this. Alchemists have ulimited use potions that are bop.

Yes. WoW also has terrible binding mechanics which are a cancer within the game. Not sure why people are telling us this, I don't think anyone claimed otherwise.

why are the bop/boe mechanics a cancer within the game? I strongly disagree.

Arbitrarily not being able to transfer gear in a multiplayer "rpg" is completely retarded and brings no benefit to the game.

The game is mostly the gear. It is not arbitary - all craftable gear is boe, it can be freely traded. Practically all dungeon and raid gear you have to go and get with the character you want it on. Anything else leads to so many issues I can't imagine someone even considering it.

Equipment is not 'freely traded' if it is BoE.

And it doesn't lead to any issues whatsoever. Nobody ever sat around in EQ saying 'holy shit this game is crap because I can trade my old gear with my friends'.

I'm sure everquest had some pretty major timesinks that wow doesn't.

The way the game is setup and the relative power of gear, it wouldn't be half as popular if I could just drop down my old sets to an alt or a friend that's never been in a raid dungeon. Your gear is your reward that you've done the dungeon/raid. I'm sorry but diablo style twinkage is just retarded design.

Someone find ONE issue, no matter how small, and your statement is disproven.

You meant to say 'diablo style twinkage' is fun.

And even aside from that the gear is a hell of a lot more central in Diablo, which I notice didn't die just because you can trade. Other games that similarly didn't disintegrate for this reason include EVE, UO, DAoC, EQ 1&2, GW and oh hey just about every game ever that didn't choose to use this terrible mechanic as yet another way to polish the dicks of a tiny community of poopsocking raidtards.

If the content, the act of raiding, isn't fun enough on its own then your game is shit. And you need to fix your game.

Binding gear helps keep crafting alive; if gear wasn't bound, the prices of every crafted piece of gear would drop very quickly as people could auction their old shit instead of having to vendor it and allow a new piece to come to market.

Gear in SWG wasn't BoE, and it had a vibrant crafting community.

And it had nothing to do with the BoE decision. Come on.  :awesome_for_real:

Gear in swg also decayed after use(this changed a bit with anti decay kits and then completely changed with the nge), so you had to keep buying crafted gear, which is what created the "vibrant crafting community".

Queue's. This is prerelease where half of my guild isn't in and there's already hour+ waits. What I don't get is why they didn't lock servers to char creations. They know how many people are in a guild, preordered or not, and they know what the population count should be. Have a pool of xyz number of random unguilded people then soft lock it for release with a buffer new chars to make each server "medium" on day 1. "Not expected the popularity" is bullshit when they had all the groundwork done on guild preregistration etc. It's just poor planning and going to be horrific day 1 on the high/full servers at the moment when the rest of the guild members wants to just play.

Game client runs way better but it's still buggy as hell. Every alt tab messes up the screen resolution so my windows bar is half way up the screen. Few crashes so far, its a step up from beta but not much.

From the sheer volume of unguilded people, I think part of the issue is just that there's a large pool of unknowns for destination.

But charlie sheen hasn't slapped me with a queue yet, thankfully. Boring server names ho!

The raiding game is plenty fun, thank you. The two things that make the raiding game fun are encounter design and defeatable difficulty. Both (or either) of these can be made irrelevent by overgearing an encounter. The first bit can also be "gone around" by using particular classes to make certain parts of the design easier, hence defeatable at lower gear levels. If you could _at all times_ have all clases at maximum available gear you can practically cheese any encounter mechanic and that would indeed make the raiding game un-fun. So there's reason one.

The way the game is setup right now, if you're a more casual player you get most of your gear on your main character from dungeons. In come I, a member of the tiny community of poopsocking raidtards, polished dick out, glowing and sparkling gear on display. I procede to need and take all of your loot, because I have decided that today my Paladin is getting a healing spec. And why would I go through the trouble of running dungeons on her, if I can come in on my main and practically solo the thing and get the same loot for the character I decided to ding today. Faster. So there's reason two.

I can keep going for quite a while and in much more detail, but those two will suffice, as they cover both the casual player that runs 5 dungeons a week and does some pvp and the more hardcore raider. If you have a problem with WoW and the raiding community, that's something that can be discussed, but that has no relevence on the viability of the BoE/BoP design, which is flat out better design. And we'll have to agree to disagree on the diablo thing. 

Again you split it down to 30% unguilded 50% guilded 20% launch accounts or something like that and spin up a bunch of servers with that criteria and balance out the traffic. They have exact numbers of guilds/members thats going to be on a server throw an extra 30-40% buffer for unguilded people or whatever the real world number is (they have pre-registered vs pre-registered and guilded stats).

BOE/P was related entirely to raiding.  It wasn't done in EQ because everything was in the world, not instanced.  That was an automatic break on the supply of equipment into the economy.  Avatar of Zek, the Council, etc.  All could only be killed a limited number of times per week - ONCE.   The LDON gear

Instancing changed all of that, even in EQ.  IIRC all the LDON gear was BOP to control item inflows - or the augments were, I can't recall which.   If you don't have item decay to uselessness or BOP restrictions you have to accept that your game's economy will be trashed and useless.  

I'm also fairly certain that EQ2 had bind on pickup - NODROP.

You're arguing that ice and minerals should be unlimited in supply in 0.0 space here.  That's how big of an economy wrecker non-bop gear can be in an instanced game.

Just think of the item and economy bloat if all items were tradeable.  That would be quite ridiculous.

I'm a biochem guy, and I have started making these purple things.  Thank god I can't sell these things because then I would eventually have no customers to buy shit later.

Hmm checked again and this time i do have 2x swtor.exe running. This is on fresh client install, never was in beta.

Hard to say if it's intentional, maybe the other one is their equivalent of the Blizzard snooping thingy?

There can be a lot of reasons to have a second process watching the first. The only real concern to me would be if it's actually churning CPU and memory, and not just being a watchdog process.

Even for a prelaunch, this has been pretty smooth.  I think I've had one crash and that was exiting the game.  My FPS have been sky high and the lag is really minimal.  And somehow, they made BH combat way more fun than it should be.   Death from above is the best skill in any game, ever.

Still, I sure have a fuck load of different abilities.  No idea what I should start culling at this point.

Yeah even at only level 20 my BH has maybe 8 core rotational abilities and a couple cooldowns. I can only imagine it'll get worse, particularly with no macros.

I think they've put up too many PVP servers to be honest. When I played last night, all the servers with huge queues were pve, and the pvp ones had availability.

My PvP server had 45+ minute queues last night. 12 of the top 20 pop servers are pvp.

Top 20 pop servers:


ø 3.36   The Harbinger (PvE)
ø 3.27   Tomb of Freedon Nadd (PvP)
ø 3.03   Bloodworthy (PvP)
ø 3.02   The Fatman (PvP)
ø 3.00   Jung Ma (RP PvP)
ø 2.92   The Swiftsure (PvP)
ø 2.86   Darth Traya (PvP)
ø 2.80   Legions of Lettow (PvP)
ø 2.80   The Red Eclipse (PvE)
ø 2.78   Frostclaw (PvE)
ø 2.78   Iron Citadel (PvP)
ø 2.77   Dark Reaper (PvP)
ø 2.58   Hrakert Rift (PvP)
ø 2.55   Darth Revan's Mask (PvP)
ø 2.53   Jar'Kai Sword (PvP)
ø 2.53   Sith Triumvirate (PvE)
ø 2.53   Vanjervalis Chain (RP PvE)
ø 2.50   Mind Trick (PvE)
ø 2.50   T3-M4 (PvE)
ø 2.49   The Shadowlands (PvE)


From http://www.torstatus.net/

I had those issues in Beta, but not so far in release. I completely uninstalled the game last week (even though I'd played on the turkey day weekend and didn't need to), and downloaded the new bits. Can't say that would fix things for you, too, but if you didn't start with a fresh install it could explain some of the wonkiness.

It's a fresh install and latest video card drivers.

I was having the issues with tabbing out changing my UI location. I had to change the game client to run in the same resoultion as windows and it fixed that.

So far no real issues. Client downloaded quick and installed to my D: drive easily.
Game is running so/so with only sporadic lag but when it does hit the lag hits baaaaaaad.

Havent encountered a single cue or problem getting into game.

Sounds horrific, 8 isn't nearly enough.

Of all the little issues, my biggest launch complaint is that they left the pre-order color crystal as that terrible yellow/black thing.

1hr 20min in the queue and still 353 away (800 when I joined), the estimators are not a real world indicator.

700ish in queue, time to find out what my computer thinks of playing Skyrim while SWTOR is launched.  :ye_gods:

Finally got in, 2h20min in queue  :uhrr:

Is that for the BC server? I haven't hit a queue yet for my selected-at-random PVP server (Valker Highway or somesuch).

Nope, The Fatman server assigned by the bioware for a friends guild

Well, the beta stress weekend was pretty much a silky smooth experience. Tonight, however, is much more what I'd expect. Horrible lag-spikes, a ping of 55k ms before being forced out and now after restarting the game, I'm stuck on the loading screen before the server/char choices and have been for 5 minutes. The 20th is going to be interesting!

Oh, and the game still can't work out how to shut itself down half the time.

Ahh, I think I have some coworkers on that server. Fortunately for me I have no desire to deal with people from work in my MMOs so I rolled elsewhere.

Are you sure your connection problem isn't local?  I'm not having any trouble at all tonight.

SCREW THIS FUCKING LAUNCHER!!  I've never had login problems in any MMO I've ever played, until this steaming pile of voodoo shit.

I finally got the launcher to get me to the login screen- to do that, I only have to delete launcher.exe from the original download, take another copy of launcher.exe from a USB (taken from a computer that successfully downloaded and patched SWTOR) and save it to my computer, THEN save a second copy of the identical file from the USB drive (named "launcher1") then try to use launcher1, it tells me to rename, I do, and then the FIRST TIME ONLY after I rename when I click on the launcher it gets me to the login screen (if I want to go there again, I have to uninstall everything and redo everything above).  Really, it doesn't work if I don't do each and every step above- even fucking naming the first USB file launcher1 manually and then renaming it later doesn't work.

After I got to THAT point, the launcher now tells me "unable to receive patch data- check your internet connection."  I think I'll shoot myself instead, or sacrifice a fucking goat on my computer, or something. 

Considering how long you have been around f13, I'd think you would at least have understanding what usually going on around release (or pre-release if you want to be technical) time of any mmorpg.

If things like that enrage you, I suggest you re-visit TOR not sooner than in 2 months, maybe 3.

Have you checked their forums, specifically support forums?  This kind of sounds like something on your end.

Didn't you say you were running a Japanese OS?  How is that at running non-Japanese software?

I'd scandisk to check the hard drive for errors, then reinstall (or copy) the whole client, not just launcher.exe.

Something is up with Taris. I've been experiencing huge fps drops and intermittent freezes today, especially when opening the map - but only on Taris, and only after having spent a few hours there and having done a lot of the quests. There are reports on the forums of people getting perma-stuck on the planet and crashing upon login, even. I'm not there... yet.  :awesome_for_real:

Is anyone else having issues with windowed full screen? I can't tab out of the game. Wondering if it's something on my end or it's an issue everyone has.

My wife's ancient Japanese laptop (while it couldn't run SWTOR in the end, given it lacks enough cores) could activate the launcher and patch fine.

5 hours tinkering last night, time to start again...

I noticed that myself. It's behaving like regular full screen when I tab out.

Not I. Only LOTRO does that to me. I'm running Win7, no other apps running when Alt+Tabbing out.

I think I spotted something on a Dev tracker post responding to people getting stuck on Taris, or crashing out/memory leak.

For the windowed(fullscreen) issue, change it to actual windowed mode, apply, and switch back.

The iPhone security app is available now, btw.

Queues are absolutely horrible, over two hours tonight. I was able to play two LoL games while waiting for access.

^That is pissing me off. I try to shut the game down and I end up with a black screen and the SWTOR mouse pointer.
I have to manually alt-tab out of the black screen to my desktop and then use task manager to close SWTOR.
WTF!?!

Oh and while running my first Ellessee (spelling?) instance today I lagged so bad at the closing that I had to restart the client while someone held the instance open so I could run back in and finish the quest. I lagged in the cut scene at the end and it broke the client. Couldnt get out of the cut scene.

I had trouble shutting down in beta but I haven't run into that problem once since the game went live.

PvP instances seem to lag pretty badly, at least for me. Skills activate 0,5-2 seconds after I press the corresponding button.

When I lag its like hitting a brick fucking wall. Nothing works. Whats really weird is even the music slows down, which you would think would be all client side controlled and impervious to lag going on between the client and server.

The client doesn't handle desyncs very well.

I would describe the number of issues I've encountered as shockingly few. The most annoying one is the guild roster does not update/display right so if I want to accurately see who is logged in I have to relog.

Use crtl-u to turn the ui off and on, it's faster than reloading.

Do you know by any chance if the Android version is available?

They've said they are working on it and it's coming "soon". You can always check this page:
http://www.swtor.com/info/security-key (http://www.swtor.com/info/security-key)

They updated it very quickly once the iPhone app was available.

There is a DETAILS button on the top right side of the guild screen. Click that, and it opens a new window with the correct listings. Close the details page and then the main listing will be fine.

"Issues" (if you could call them that):

1. I've been in 1 queue so far, it was less than 10 minutes. This is obviously dependent on each person's server selection, starting play time, etc.

2. Gathering from crystal nodes in Coruscant is buggy -- some nodes are present and indicated as nodes on the radar, but not "harvestable". I can switch to a different instance of the area and sometimes the same node is there and is harvestable.

3. Viewing a couple of cosmetic items in the dressing room (after clicking the item in a chat link), made that part of my toon's body invisible in the dressing room.

4. A Hilt mod in one of my lightsabers disappeared. It's possible I didn't mod it correctly (i.e. hit the wrong button in the UI and closed instead of applied).

5. The appearance kit I selected for my droid (when you get a choice of one of three after a mission), was not the appearance of the one I had selected in the reward window. :(

6. Running Esseles, myself and another Jedi force leapt at one of the big droids near the end of the run on the Empire ship. We both were instantly teleported to the bottom of the shaft near the droid, and stuck there. We both dropped the group, were kicked from the instance, reinvited to the group, and teleported to a proper point close to the group and were able to keep going.

7. When I ended the Jedi Knight lightsaber mission and defeated the forge guardian, I was left in a "crouched/cowering" animation, even after I left the instance. I logged to the character selection screen then logged back in and it was fixed.


Everything else has run well, and the same goes for the 6 other folks in our guild.

Lord Samus, the Sith trainer has some pretty serious manboobs.   :grin:

Well, duh. By now everyone knows that Samus is a girl.

Every male in the game must have manboobs judging by how puffed out all of their chests are.  They're all sort of angular too, like they are wearing those pointy bras from the fifties or something.  It's stupid.

I don't know yet if it's visible to other people, but as a Jedi Shadow when I stealth some lightsaber hilts still stay completely visible hanging on my belt.  I noticed when I had the hilts shadow by itself moving along a wall last night.  :uhrr:

Hai Guyz Lvl 50 and game sucks
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3759616170

Exposed by armory feed not logic lol.

Troll post with lots of people taking the bait.  :uhrr:

A 1600 word troll post surely deserves points for effort. Or insanity.

That doesn't always work, alas. But! The UI thing seems to, so thanks for that, Helm!

Only problems I've had so far are two un-salvagable objects in Coruscant, and that my guild was assigned Harbinger :-P

I've run into a LOT of broken gathering objects.  But then again I'm running 3 gathering skills too.  :oh_i_see:

Broken slicing nodes make me  :crying_panda:

Game could use a /hood command. No, that isn't a launch issue really, but I don't care. I am whining anyway.

I've had the node issue too, it is infuriating sometimes.

So when I finished my Coursant storyline and got my ship I had two "class" missions to do.  I took the harder one that was a level or two above me (Nar Shaddar instead of Taris).  Ran it all, got lots of levels and gear, and get a new companion.  So then I go to do the other class story line mission.  I quickly realize I did them out of order because now I'm on Taris and all mobs are about 8 levels under me and give no XP, all quests are grey and give 5xp and no chat choices give any plus or minus to my new companion because I'm assuming I'm not supposed to have him yet.   :ye_gods:

/follow doesn't work :oh_i_see:

I've seen a ton of broken Archaeology nodes; not as many in beta (70%+ were broken in the big stress test weekend) but they're still frustrating. I've learned to mouseover them from afar and see if the icon changes before clearing to them.

Thrawn I just hit that moment; I'm running through the lower one first (I was level 18, the breadcrumb was level 15) doing only my class stuff and skipping all the sidequests. I figure by the time I'm done on Balmorra and head to Nar Shaddar I'll be 20+ and can go back to doing all of the quests.

Sjofn there are some robes with the hood up, although I agree that a toggle would be nice.

My follow hotkey works (I bound it to F), but I've never tried /follow.

So uh, the auction house interface is TERRIBLE.  :mob:

Can you actually auto-follow more than 20 yards without getting "stuck" and stopping?

The interface in general is quite poor, but the auction house takes the cake for being a real pile.  There's nothing worse than trying to browse the auction house, send companions on missions, and compare stuff in your inventory to your characters equipment/auction house items.  Amazingly frustrating, as whenever your companion gets back from the mission the fucking auction house window disappears with your search along with it.  Not to mention you can't have your character window, inventory, and auction house open at the same time (at least at the resolution I'm playing at).

Don't forget the fact you can be browsing things and at LAST have all your filters finding the right items only to have a companion return from a mission and auto close everything when his mission window pops up.

It's pretty bizarre. The work is already done-- just rip off the most popular WoW auction mod.

The only way to explain how crappy the UI is is they hired people who have never played an MMO before (except for maybe EQ) and were forbidden from playing any while working on the game to do the design.

I feel similarly about whoever designed/tested/approved Slicing, it's so completely broken in it's current state.  It will wreck the economy by itself if they don't figure it out.  It's a gathering skill that pays you very well to level it up.  "Oh, you spent 700 to send someone on a mission?  Lets pay you out 4,000 then to make up for it and throw in a few blue/purple items for you to sell on occasion too."

Balmorra has this "bonus" missions after you're done, so I thought what the hell, can't be much more than a couple. At some point I had like 15 active quests and my OCD was kicking into overdrive, so I decided to quit and see if I can skip them when I log back in :)

I'm a bit of a fanboy, so you get the Fox News Fair and Balanced version from me:

Things going wrong:

- Archaeology nodes not working (duh).  I just pretend that some filthy BH scum beat me to the node.  There are enough nodes scattered about that this isn't a big concern.
- Disabled AA....seems my ATI card on my laptop forces it.  The GTX 570 in my desktop does not.  May have to try the trick posted earlier somewhere.
- Sometimes random NPC conversations (talking amongst themselves) trigger only after I am way out of range.  Kinda strange.
- Surprisingly rare, but sometimes the companion AI has a little trouble finding the target I am hitting, such as if it is just around a corner from where she is.  Not a biggie.

Going right:

- Game has been buttery smooth for me.  No lag, no queues, no hiccups, no crashes, no FPS issues.
- The story - for the Sith Warrior at least - is freaking cool.  I like it even more than I thought I would.  It also gets me very much in an ARRPEE mood*, which no MMO ever really has for me.
- I  :heart: the companion implementation, both how they have integrated the crew skills, but also just in general.  Even though I am trying to be a very dark Sith, I find myself compromising certain actions when I know Vette's watching me.  Sometimes I send her out to search for treasure when I know a particularly nasty conversation is about to happen.  It is fun trying to strike the balance of being definitively evil, yet still remain in her favor. 
- I know we are supposed to hate all the yukky DIKU combat, but I don't.  It's snappy enough, and I feel that I am raping an appropriate amount of face.  I feel wonderfully powerful, which is something that a surprising number of MMOs fail miserably at.

 *My character (Crunch) is an elitist,  arrogant, unapologetic, somewhat naive and fairly racist (purebloods only!) dick.  His only redeeming quality is his loyalty to the cause...although, Vette is giving him second thoughts on the whole slavery issue.  At least as it pertains to her specifically.  I am going to try to be consistent with that.  Thanks to those of you that have played along so far.  Apologies to the rest of you who, probably just think I am an asshole.

My Sith Warrior has gone pretty much pure light side and same as you it's because of 'Vette. I just can't kick puppies when she's watching me.  And I really like how the story accommodates itself to my choices.

The bounty hunter story is a bit schizophrenic, made worse by the itemization demanding light or dark side. I'd really love to play a "the job gets done, always" kind of character, but...

I'm having MUCH less fun with my sithy sith since I realised I don't really like the dark side corruption visual effect :(

I think they should offer up some alchemy/sorcery options that (for some kind of investment of time or money) allow you to keep your normal appearance.  It wouldn't be unprecedented for Sith to do such things.

THey will still know, even if you send them away. Kaliyo had some minor disapproval for me after doing a flashpoint, even if she spent the entire time unsummoned.

Take your disapproval hits like a big bad sith you are, or slap her for questioning you if she dares :why_so_serious:

You can turn off sith corruption in preferences.  It's on the social tab.

yap, a tad buggy as I said above, but you can. I just wish I could have the red eyes without the veiny shit.

That may be so, but then she isn't actually watching me.  It makes a difference.

(I already removed her shock collar.  No idea if the punishment command still works, I don't have the heart to try.  I own her no longer)

Yeah, I had a series of the ones with the hood up, I wanted to put it DOWN. I don't mind looking like a space nun SOMETIMES, but a girl needs variety!

Once you're out of Coruscant/Dromund Kaas, your class quests will finish around 1/2-2/3s of the way through a planet. If you skip those you're going to end up missing a lot of content.

Balmora had a very difinitive end, that coincided with my class quest finishing. As I was leaving there was this basically random NPC at the starport, that I thought I had missed earlier that went OH NOES THE RESISTANCE IS BACK. Also the quest is called "bonus" Balmora. Is that the standart?

Anywho, if my next planet is already in the yellow, and the extra quests are green, isn't it better for me to move on?

The "bonus" designation is new to me, I never reached that far in any of the newer builds. My statement is really just a guideline; some planets have very little to do and others have a lot. Tatooine for the republic is also in a similar situation, just before you leave you get one last quest for no good reason  :grin:.

I don't think there's any drawback to not doing the quest, it just depends on whether or not you want to see what happens. My personal opinion is to ignore the quest level requirements and just enjoy the game. Getting to 50 won't take long.

It will the way I am playing.  I feel like I've played a ton, and I'm only 19.  But there has been a lot of content crammed into those 19 levels.  I already feel like I have played close to the equivalent of maybe...2/3rds the way through a KOTOR game.  This game is delivering in spades on that side of things.  I can't even imagine how some of you poopsockers are getting as far as you are!

In my other PvP guild (buddy in RL has been in it since WoW), they already have members into their 40s.

You always have players who will push and push and play hours on end just to get to the top.  I wouldn't be surprised to find they were skipping some cutscenes and not doing flashpoints, warzones, flying or crafting in their push.   

Although I'm 23 after having gotten in on Tuesday and I haven't totally catassed.  I spend a lot of time hanging out in stations waiting on crew missions, crafting or warzone queues.

Speaking of warzone queues...do you get xp for PvP?  Is it a reasonable alternative?

You have about two levels of XP if you run through the ballmora bonus quests , I had the same thing, huge list of quests to complete, but the first four or five are all in one area, and you pretty much finish them all at the same time, indeed, they are linked as you travel, i did them all, then moved on to the next planet, I've only done the first couple of quests so far, but my xp is still coming in as fast as i would expect.

As Draegan noted on his site, there's a guy on a EU server who reached 50 on Friday morning. He played Beta so knew where he was going and seen the story so he space-barred his way through the missions. He said he didn't do any PvP or other XP advancing tricks. He also said his first play session was 35 hours straight.

There's already a 50 on my server too, I noticed this morning.

Yeah, it's on-par with running a space mission IIRC.  If you don't dominate then a 15min game of Huttball will probably cut in to your xp/ hour.  However if you're playing with that mindset you're also skipping cut scenes and missing the entire point. So I wouldn't call it a 'reasonable alternative' so much as 'a fun diversion that still gives xp.'

I do it just because it's ridiculously fun when nobody knows what they're doing.   Watching people go back and forth, not passing the ball and just trying to run with it or swarming an objective while the other 2 are taken behind them.  Fun now, but frustrating later.  So I'll queue a lot now while folks are trying to figure things out then stop as it gets srsbznz at the endgame.

Though I'm beginning to have /less/ fun as I get higher levels and people get more CC abilities. Sitting there stunned/ shocked/ stuck for the time it takes 2-3 people to beat me down while my team runs ineffectually around me gets frustrating.

ed: also, this game has too damn many knock-backs.. which you discover as you play huttball.

Huttball is giving me war hammer flashbacks.  The good kind since in both games I was the one with the aoe knock back.

Ugh, Balmorra took forever. That bonus stuff really sabotaged the previous questline completely. You've routed the rebellion, the planet is ours! btw the rebellion is about to overrun us! Still, I got a pair of modifiable pants that matched the top I got from a previous questline.

Yes, while Treasure Hunting is a losing deal despite also returning lock boxes.  I did get a ton of awesome gear from the tier 1 missions, like four orange pieces, but tier 2 seems to return jack squat.

Admit it, you're like me and have all your orange outfits in your spacebank, just in case one goes with something in the future :P

I'm seriously considering dropping two skills to get slicing and treasure hunting before they get fixed, should I not do it for treasure hunting?

That's the advantage of the early access people - y'all gonna be rich with 1 million credits within 2 weeks, then they nerf everything and the rest of the playerbase will barely be able to scrape together 20k.

Treasure Hunting can return some nice items.  It just doesn't seem to consistently pay out nearly as well as Slicing, and Slicing can be used in the world at large.

Meh, money gets.. odd in this game. The costs go crazy high for everything, and credit income scales the same. By the time I bought my speeder training, I had ~1,000 credits left. By the time I left that planet 1 level later, I had 70,000 credits again.

As for skills:

Slicing gets credits. Tons of them.

Treasure Hunting finds orange built items, and random other shit just by virtue of giving you lockboxes that may have anything in them.

Underworld Trading finds crafting recipes for Armortech and Synthweaving.

When I trained for the speeder, I had 70 creds left in my account. It makes picking the rp options to demand more money (and please Mako) MUCH EASIER. Papa needs cash, we're running a business here, I gots bills to pay.

At level 26 or whatever the heck I am now, I haven't trained a skill (at 8k/pop) in three levels. I have maybe 10k in the bank. Hell, I had to bank an orange because I couldn't afford to remove the mods from my previous orange. I had to wait to put in my commendation mods because I couldn't afford to remove the mods.

Should get a bit better now that I'm over that hump, but it's a rough patch for sure.

is the launcher working right now? I wanted to get the game here at work, so I can do the slicing thing, but it says that the login servers aren't working.

I figured this out over the weekend. Map marks the nodes, however it makes no distinction if its been harvested or not. So ones you can't grab are still respawning and were harvested recently.

It's more than just that. When someone harvests a node, it disappears from the terrain and that map immediately. The bugged ones stay on the map and in world, but don't do anything. Minor issue, but a little annoying when you run out of your way to find one really isn't there. Still, I had almost 70 archaeology by level 14, so there's plenty of nodes to find. Not that I have any clue what a higher skill in Archaeology gives me...

Otherwise, launch has been pretty awesome for me. No queues, no lag issues. Only other bug I noticed was an empty Guild screen.
Am a little annoyed that my 4600 series card can't handle Shadows at all.

I don't recall any of the nodes I harvested going away ( Visually ), I could just not be paying attention though. Still, it needs some fixin'.

I should probably drop Biochem and just pick up slicing and spam it.  Keep Diplo/Bio as-is.

Regarding credits, there are no cents, right?  So maybe they're planning that 1 credit = 1 copper, 100 credits = 1 silver, 10,000 credits = 1 gold.  If that's the case, the average 10,000 gold in WoW would be = 100 million credits in SWTOR.

They'll probably still nerf slicing or whatever the skills are that make people so much money.

If you're running out of money for your speeder, just stop training your skills for a few levels. The skill increases are very marginal.

Anyone know if there's a way to keep the cover bar from reappearing even though I shut the option off?  (cant find it in the system uderdata cache ini either) This tends to happen during relogs.  Matter of fact, quite a few UI options are borked if you logoff/restart.

My options only bork if I crash/force quit. They seem to save on actually quitting out of the game properly. May not work for you though, that's just a beta observation.

I haven't tried turning off the cover bar because COVER IS FOR PANSIES I rarely use it.

My Win7 laptop won't save settings for quite a few of the x32 programs.  I keep having to re-accept eula for MS Office 2003 and PaintShopPro X2, and I can't disable Java's autochecking for updates through its control panel.  It's annoying.

I get the same thing happening with Corso's harpoon skill. Resets every time I transition to a new area.

The same thing happens with the Guard ability of BH tanks.  You went into an instanced or story area? Reset your guard.  Had a load screen? Reset guard.   Mako sneezed? Reset your guard..  :why_so_serious:

A-frickin-men.

It's slicing for sure, I easily hit over 100k at about level 20 without putting any effort into it other than sending my ships droid on missions while I'm playing.  The economy is shaping up to be...really bad so far which would make me very sad.  Hopefully it shapes up quickly once more people get higher levels and things get tweaked.  Playing the markets is half of my play time in MMOs usually.

It is going to be at least a couple months before the market really solidifies, IMO.

I'm fine with that as long as it eventually stabalizes.  Making really good profits on the market currently selling stuff for way more than it will end up being worth.  :oh_i_see:

I haven an orange with no hood I could send you? I like the hoods.

Server seems to be melting at the moment.

?

Getting 16000 MS pings.  :awesome_for_real:  Had to log.  First real lag or server problems I've encountered. 

Had some last night for about 20 mins, but then it straightened out. Command delays and rubber banding pretty bad while doing a heroic.

Yes, I am totally stockpiling all the orange outfits I find in my spacebank. My smuggler is starting a giant pile labeled "stupidly named weapons Corso has given me," too.


If you don't want it, I'll totally take it. I am currently rocking a no-hood one now, of course. I don't mind the hoods, I just sometimes want to see my pretty face and my pretty hair.  :why_so_serious:



Also I would like a way to turn off companion hats. Some of them are Unfortunate.

Hood-up looks great on my Rattataki, and the first item I got from the Black Talon was an Orange Overseers robe.  Black with Lavender trim.  It's awesome.

Tell me about it. Kira now looks like she's starring in an adaptation of the Canterbury Tales.

My trooper is starting to be a close approximation of the "deal with it" color matching picture. An amusing minigame is trying to "match" armor to a country flag. I could replicate Italy (rotated), the Netherlands, Spain and Hungary (obv) so far with any 3 consecutive elements of the helm-chest-belt-legs-boots sequence. Germany would be doable if I hadn't trashed that black-trimmed quest reward a while ago... :awesome_for_real:

I can't be the only one that spent the 15 minutes before server shut down convincing people in general chat that the maintenance was to wipe all early release characters because a large group exploited a bug to get to 50 in hours.  :oh_i_see:

The true launch is nearly upon us. It's time to get ready http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juYeC7O5k3A

Dark Side: +50

Vette: -15

Kaliyo +50

I played the entire pre-release and didn't hear WoW mentioned once.  Bet I can't say that tomorrow.

Just missed hitting 25 on Tatooine before the server shut down.  So hopefully I'm far away from the masses.
EA has a big hit on their hands.  I've been seeing lots of SWTOR commercials on TV.  No, it's not too groundbreaking, but it's a fun game with tons of story set in the SW universe. 

General chat told me that you don't troll with WoW comments, you say that NGE was the best thing to ever happen to SWG.

I usually tell anyone talking about how SWG was great to get the fuck out and that they have aspergers.

"Yes, I'm sorry you can't be 'that hermit who makes the best blasters ever' in SWTOR. Go away."

Okay one major amateur hour problem.

You do server maintenance/update and it simultaneously brings down your website and your entire community forums? WTF?!?!
Really your website and forums are all hosted on the game world servers?  :uhrr:



So since I can access the website anyone know what time the game is supposed to go live again?

Magic 8-ball sez "midnight", since, you know, midnight release for the game and whatnot  :oh_i_see:

11 PM Central, actually.

Here's something "wrong" I've realized today as the servers go down.  Okay so, you parse out your early access folk over 3+ days so that the servers are nice and even and stable.  Fine, though kinda silly in some ways.  But, to make it more silly you shut the servers down for 5hrs tonight so that the regular launch crowd can storm in at 12:01am and essentially undue all your fancy pre-release work, since they're gonna log into a nice fresh unpopulated server swarm.  e.g. They're not gonna know which servers to choose since they've reset everything for release.  They'll all say "LOW" to everyone that tries to login.

Then in comes the pre-order folk to play late tonite or tomorrow to overpacked servers and queues.   :oh_i_see:

This is something I've always wondered with these pre-order/launches.  What truly is the point of the server maintenance just b4 launch??  I mean, typically not a damned thing changes serverwise unless they have some special starter-zone event they need to upload, yes?  Otherwise, all you're doing is risking a flood of newbs in your already established playerbase.

Would be nice to have some kind of indicator of how many players are rolled on each server, whether logged-in or not.

Why do you assume it won't recommend the new servers to new accounts?

EDIT: In a lot of ways it is actually *better* if they don't see which servers are already populated, because people tend to pick busy servers, not empty ones.

Looks like the kids in my neighborhood  :why_so_serious:

That's when they sacrifice the goat.

I would assume they need the maintenance for:

- new servers
- the registration process
- nerfing whatever they need to nerf
- maybe bugfixes

Not sure what client version the CD has, but they'll probably increase the LIVE version number by 1 and make everyone patch.

Yep, I'd expect a "launch" patch.  Probably won't be a huge one though.

I'm convinced it's planned just so they can all go enjoy whatever launch event they have planned.  Similar to my company being mysteriously unavailable or in a meeting for 3 hours last Friday.  It had absolutely nothing to do with the party and alcohol in the lobby.

Having fun, someone asked earlier if lvling via pvp is viable and my 2cents up to lvl 21 is yes.  The issue I am running into is that my lvling via pvp is reducing the pve content into trivial easymode.  Not sure how it will scale in later levels, but from what I have seen you could pvp to 50 while doing random questing in between pvp warzones.  Huttball is a blast when you have 2 teams that have a clue and are evenly matched.   When it is bad, it remends me of Warhammer's Kill The Dude with the Thing - Lava level, or farm group Warsong Gulch.

If endgame open world pvp on the pvp planet(??) is as fun as pvp in the Moors in LOTRO is then I can see myself sticking around for awhile.  Especially if I can aquire endgame gear through pvp (and no, not the "you must be this tall to buy" cockblock arena WoW gear).

I have no clue what this really means:  But at lvl 21 I have a full set of pvp gear for myself and all but the inplants for my Green Toady companion, about 80k credits, a valor rank of 20 (I am assuming this will be the cockblock to high end pvp gear is valor?), as a Sith - Sorc healer with 2x bio and diplomacy.

Personally I hope the endgame pvp gear is gated based on valor level and not some ranking scheme, because, frankly I am not good enough to ever see the endgame pvp stuff if it is based on a rank, but I can grind Warzones with the best of them.    One thing that I really appreciate in warzones is that if you lose, you still get XP, commendations, valor, and Credits.  Enough so that even if you lose badly it will still have been worth your time.

Perhaps I am just getting too old, but anyone else find the pvp to be very fast?  I know with time I will get used to it, but I intentionally went with a Sorcerer to avoid needing the Twitch chops of other classes, and I am still finding myself going "wow this is fricking fast".

cheers.

Leveling up via pvp sorta completely misses the point of the game.  Although it is really good exp.

/shrug I am having a lot of fun in pvp.  And as others have mentioned, a few months down the road and Huttball is going to be filled with NBA top picks, where I will only get to play in the first half as a Harlem Globetrotter. :why_so_serious:

More like a Washington General. ;D

For those of us who werent in the Beta and havent checked out the PVP yet could someone give us me a run down on whats available and some general details?
Sounds like there is something called Huttball and some kind of capture the flag or battle royale thing? Details?

Thread title isn't obvious, but try here: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=21692.0

I was finally able to subscribe tonight.  Went with the 6 month option since I plan to play at least that long.  Also was able to upgrade to the deluxe edition, which is what I wanted originally but didn't see it on Origin when I pre-ordered.

my server has a queue at 8 in the morning  :sad_panda:

Shien has a queue at 5:21 AM

It's the midnight launch, I expect the servers to be insane for a week or so, then get worse after xmas.

What server are you on Wolf?

whoa whoa, 400+ queue on my EU RP server (and during pre-launch it was a "very heavy-full" with rare queues). Very expected, anyway: it's noon CET. Sigh, goodbye PURPZ  :crying_panda:

EDIT: "Your saga begins" launch documentary (8 minutes long):

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/your-saga-begins-launch-documentary

Hydian Way-PvE Empire side, in a nice little guild ran by some swedes I know. I'm sure we can take you in, so just poke me if you want to. But like I said some pretty ass queues, yesterday evening before launch it was 500 people ~6'30 cet.

Was just wondering. Happily ensconced on Trask Ulgo for now (although should guild transfer to a new server happen, I'm sure my guild will be jumping at the chance given the current rumblings on our forum)

Yeah ours has to have been singled out for something.  I was going to do some quick checking of auctions and put my minions on a few missions and had a queue.  Meanwhile there were many, many other east-coast servers that had no queue and light load.  Only 4 were labeled as "full" and ours was one of them.   Very odd.


Except it's not all the servers.

Thought I'd look before heading in to work. 5 PST/8 EST: 32 servers listed as "Full" with queues on 15 of them.
Oh well, it is launch day, and I don't think it's just our server.

Server list looks longer today than it did yesterday pre-launch; there seem to be more servers.

Just a few (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=525813#edit525813)  :wink:

Okay, I had not played in beta, and I was a little skeptical, but doing the first FlashPoint on my way off of Hutta was pretty great.  Grouped up with two randoms (another Agent and a Sith) and generally had fun cutting through the mission.  I *love* the group cutscenes.  That was always on my wish list for FFXI -- loved the epic mission stuff but was always annoyed that while you needed a group to complete it the cutscenes always made it look like you were there all on your own.

Also, I love that there are male character customization options beyond "ugly", "angry", and "scarred."
(http://frotz.net/misc/quintonn.jpg)

Speaking of amateur hour....

Collector's edition don't need no product reg code =p
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=54633

70 new servers added today for launch.


That sucks.  But mine had a code in it!

My friend got this pending quest bug and he couldn't accept anymore quests and had to burn fleet pass to get off his ship. lol
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=38481

And apparently that sticky has been removed a few times but people are still reporting the problem.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=20021

Wonder if they have some forum limit on the number of stickies...

Wow, the amount of people upset or not understanding why they have to add a subscription is astounding. Me thinks a good chunk of non-mmo players have arrived. I guess the part I find surprising is the backlash that feels like its from 10 years ago.

I think it's because the new generation was raised on free mp3s and not on Columbia House billing =p

Yep, same thing happening on some italian (non-MMOG specialized) forums: "what do you mean I have to keep paying AFTER I purchased the box???"

How did you do that?

e: NM.  When you subscribe you get an option to 'Upgrade Now!" with the Class trainer Caret+ icon.

e2:  All set up, deluxe upgrade, security key ans 6 mo sub.  Now all I need is time to play...

I'm a bit puzzled about the subscription thing.  I punched in my activation code and it notes I have 29 days of gametime.  But it also claims I need a subscription or prepaid card to play, which seems weird when it clearly has gametime credited to my account.  And it's still letting me log in (though I'm rotting in a queue at the moment).  Confusing!

Quinton!

lol. You always have to have a subscription lined up when starting MMO games. You will not be charged until after your 30days that came with the box. Its just been like this forever. You can always cancel right before your 30 days are up.

 :heart:

You have played an MMO before yes?  They always come with 30 days for the purchase of the box.  After than runs out you need an ongoing subscription (or pay month to month with game cards).

lol.

Oh I certainly have.  Just commenting on the somewhat confusing language and description used.  Also, mildly curious if in the new free-to-play and kinder-friendlier-more-soloable post-wow world things were any different.  I'm not particularly surprised or offended that they're not. ^^

You trollin me bro?  :why_so_serious:

Indeed though, in the dawning of the F2P, CCless activation, SWTOR does I suppose feel like an old duck when it comes to subscriptions.

So I am trying to log into Shien and sitting in a queue.  20 minutes or so.  GO TO WORK PEOPLE. 

Seriously though, that is strange.  I wouldn't think it would be Full at this time of the day.  Something wierd going on.

(http://cdn-www.swtor.com/sites/all/files/smilies/mon_calamari/trap.png)

I cannot stop yelling "IT'S A STAAAAAAP" every time I break out my speeder. I need help.

Yah, it's called releasing a Star Wars game. Plus:
a)  should've had a server pop. indicator for newbs b4 launch or just not have a 6hr. downtime
b)  should've had those 40 extra servers ready AT launch... not at 8 am this morn.
c)  ALL THE KIDS ARE OUT OF SCHOOL NOW DUMMIES
d)  edit:  they're herding us like cattle to the new servers

As for Shien specifically, we've got some pretty big guilds there like "Dominion" that likely have large launch invitationals.

"All is going as I have foreseen it."

Lemme know where the BC new server will be.    :oh_i_see:

Fucking 630+ queue on Lord Calypho  :sad_panda:

I thought I'd recognized a few big guild names while running around the station and figured I was just imagining it since nobody else had commented.

I logged in and played for 1 hr this morning at 7:30 EST.  No queue, no lag, just logged right in.

Christ I am hoping Shien levels off soon and the kids get tired of waiting in line. That said, there were this morning, more RP servers in the high>full range than not, which I can see but still surprises me.

I also have to note that I have a character in a guild with my RL buddy up the street on Twin Spears (queue as well there) and the community is fucking horrible on chat - though there are way more incredibly funny one-liners that pop up on there than Shien... but the quantity of drivel and Barrens-worthy chat is overwhelming.

From the various announcements about servers they've posted, the between-the-lines message seems to be "We're really afraid of ordering too many servers, only to have them end up empty 1 month after the launch like with WAR.  So, to avoid that, y'all are going to have rather long queues for a while."

From how fast people have been levelling, I'd say everyone getting bored about 2-3 months from now is a possibility.  But, they're going to get quite a few more people this evening at prime time, and a crapload more this weekend, so the number of servers they've added will probably not be enough.

Judging by the number of servers so far, it seems to be a success, as far as the size of the playerbase.

The forum rage is approaching critical mass.  Frankly, don't blame em.  You get thrown into a 3-day emailed early access queue for a guild assigned server only to be met with 3+ hr. queue times a week after "launch" and no possibility of transfer.   BW couldn't be tasked with installing a reconnect feature either... so if you crash, have fun with the queue again.   :headscratch:
To top it all off, there's little to no CS interaction ingame save for the occasional "server comin down" let alone any forum interaction.  So those who'd like to know wtf is goin on so they can make an informed decision, cant.

Why is it these same problems keep creeping up at these launches and some studios just dont seem to learn? (Trion was fairly learned though)  maddening

I always found the announcement "servers are coming down in 2 minutes for 4 hour maintenance. Please see log into the forums for details" hilarious.

If folks are leveling just to level for the endgame, yeah, I can see dying out in a month or two.  That's part of why I'm taking it slower. 

However, if you want to see all the class story lines it'll be a bit more.

They seem to be countering this by pointing out that the entire development team (including voice actors) will continue to work on the SWTOR and nothing else, and the launch-beardy Danno Erickson (honestly, that beard of his looks like one of inspector Clouseau's less convincing disguises...) pushed the point in their launch video - basically more content is coming and fast.

I'll be intested to see how much and how fast.

The entire game is fully instanced, including common areas. Why couldn't they just allocate more blades to each server? In fact, why do they need to have separate servers at all, why doesn't it just work like Guild Wars with one mega-server per geographical region? There must be some technical reason.

Wookie hookey.

Server count, launch day (EU+US): 214

U.S.: 123
E.U. : 91

Do not taunt Happy Fun Lantyssa.  :drillf:

Because wow didn't do that.

I just wish they chose to copy WoW's auction house UI and not its antiquated server architecture.

This. So much better.

That said, queue? Really? Get the fuck off my lawn, you goddamn late starters.

Might be time to roll a Republic toon on a different server for me, until the tide washes back.

This is what I've been asking too - I don't see how the amount of hardware changes by having a few big servers with lotsa instances instead of lotsa servers with few instances .. though I guess it'd be really big chat servers too unless they restrict General/etc to instance only.

Yah, I'll probably taste a low pop. pvp server tonite just for something different.  Time to dig up some ol' guildies and find out where they are.

In re. server architecture, you've gotta remember they're using Heroengine.  Though, I'm not sure if their frontend is Hero-based or not, let alone the architecture.  It's a tool that comes with everything, albeit in a fairly simplistic, vanilla package (pretty much WoW 1.0 as they say).  NOTHING like Trion's setup, which is likely the most robust of any MMO to date.

This has to be the reason things seem a bit antiquated nuts 'n bolts wise.  It's kinda like polishing a turd rather than innovating.

Megaservers allow for more efficient resource utilization, too. Right now you've got a bunch of popular shards sitting full with hour-long queues and a bunch that are completely open with low usage. If they were replaced with a megaserver, more people could actually play the game. There are other benefits, too-- you can always play with your friends, the auction house economy is much larger, it's easier to find groups (assuming some sort of LFG or LFD tool is implemented) and so on and so forth. The whole concept of separate shards is simply unnecessary once you start instancing everything ala Guild Wars or SWTOR.

There are arguments against megaservers too, shard identity, smaller communities, etc. But those are really arguments against instancing too-- once you cross that line and instance everything, and players aren't in the same physical gamespace, you're putting up walls between players anyway. Might as well have the conviction to go all the way. Otherwise you get all the negatives and none of the positives.

What happens to large databases like the AH when they get even larger?  That's the only reason I could come up with.

That and someone still wants to promote the e-peen "Server First!" culture.

When warhammer came out they pulled the trigger on an option to buy enough hardware to double the number of servers they had to fix queue times, then they had to start merging and shutting them down a few months later because so many people left.  They're probably not going to make that same mistake twice.

Of course not, they have opted to make the entirely new mistake of having casual players (like my wife) just quit the game because they aren't going to put up with a queue.

As far as magnitude of mistakes go that one isn't anywhere NEAR as big as a giant capital expenditure failure.

EDIT: Also the PR implications of this issue are wildly different. "This game is so popular there are queues on every server!" vs "This game is so unpopular they had to close 100 servers!"

Something that's been bothering me as I wrap up my agent's time on Nar Shaddaa is the difficulty ramp-up of quests and such.

Starting out on Hutta, there was a handful of quests that were marked as Heroic+2.  Didn't take long for people to figure out that these quests could be 'soloed' with you and your companion.

Now on Nar Shaddaa, that's certainly no longer the case.  In fact, the Heroic+4 missions are basically micro-dungeons, in that if you're not packing 'the trinity' in your group and/or group with some fail people, expect to either not finish or take a long f'ing time to do.

While I understand your companion doesn't count as a full PC, I think allowing people to do it from the start and then beating them over the head later gives a bad impression of PC/companion mechanics.  

They are hoping casuals won't ragequit on day one and come back in a few days when queue times aren't as bad.  They have no good options really.  Maybe a future game will use something akin to amazon services where resources can be easily scaled up and down with demand but that tech was too new and unstable when coding started on swtor.

The auctionhouse isn't a great example; WoW allows players to straight-up download the entire auctionhouse for their faction, and it's never over 200-300KB or so. There are other datastores that are much larger, containing character-specific data, customized items, quest states, etc, but instancing means you don't need to access all of them simultaneously, and the vast majority of transactions would be reads anyway, allowing for a great deal of scalability. Of course the game would have to be architected with a megaserver in mind-- if you started your game looking to clone WoW and decided to instance common areas later on, it would be a huge undertaking. And that's probably what happened.

Meh. Maybe.  But I imagine the optics of paying 60 dollar to spend 2 hours in a virtual amusement park line simulator every night isn't going to win them too many PR points either.  With the amount of money they are raking in would it be so terrible to allow free server transfers for folks who want off high pop servers?

That is fucking crazy talk. Don't you know server transfers market the first step to the destruction of the game....?? Unless they are paid transfers, then it is ok.  :why_so_serious:

But yeah, I am still trying to figure out this huge push to Shien. All I can assume is the rest of the guild members from the megaguilds finally got in automatically because I fail to see why anyone new to the game or the genre would see WAIT TIME and click anyway with the huge amount of servers on the LIGHT end of the scale.

Do companies really believe this?  FFS WoW Vanilla did this to address this very problem!  (Maybe that argument could convince them because they are so uppity to be WoW all over again...)

Everyone just loved my Slap recruitment threads on swtor.com, sorry. :(

I posit that since SWTOR is such a story-based heroic themepark that they didnt want to muddy the waters with large omniservers.  You cant get that special snowflake feeling if you've got gamewide AH, chat, instances, etc.

Where they fail is their execution, control, and UI.  It's almost like they really dont have much flexibility at all with what they have.  No dynamic events, no real ingame CS, no real feedback, etc.  Then they roll out servers too late even though they KNOW they've got "x" amount of players waiting in the wings.

Someone's head should roll if you've essentially got to double or triple your server farm come launch day.  Those blades should've been ready to go from pre-order day 1, otherwise what's the godamned point in having them since no one will populate them a week later.  I dunno, common sense does not exist in Austin I guess.  It is Texas after all eh?   :awesome_for_real:

If servers were coming live on launch day, it means they're ordered them 3-4 weeks ago. One does not simply buy servers at the local big box store. Running power/extending your datacenter and actually getting the hardware in takes a lot of lead time. Someone's head should only roll if the initial numbers said "holy shit lots of players incoming." If they said nothing and it just turns out everyone bought it without a preorder, there's very little they could have done beyond buy servers for every physical box shipped and pray they didn't just spend an extra million on hardware they're just going to ebay next week.

All that said, they should have been designing a server migration plan when ordering all this new hardware so there was an orderly way of making sure everyone had a place to play. I dislike the idea of "you've only been playing for a week, pick up and move!" I mean sure, it wouldn't be more than a week's investment lost but I don't think many people will actually migrate servers without a server transfer option.

Well, let's see.  Each server holds what?  2000 players?  They had like 80-100 at EA day 1?  Do that math and that doesnt even cover the amount of preorders they had in the 1st week preorders became available.   :oh_i_see:  

Doubling your infrastructure 1 day after launch with the retail numbers they had is dumb.  There's just no reasoning not to have that stuff in place during early access unless you're so skimp you wanna save a few days leasetime.

Also they let us off the ruskies server. Warsong. Never forget.

Although I have to admit to treasuring the memory of chasing after a druid telling him in very broken russian to remove my disease  :why_so_serious:

Have they confirmed 2,000 is the server count of active connections? If so, that's really odd back end infrastructure.

But what I'm saying is "hey, this is the hardware we'll wind up needing per current numbers + growth projections" plays better with your boss than "So anyways, I bought us a 45T SAN, and it turns out we only have 2T of data and about 10G growth a month. Hey, why are you looking at me like that?"

Having to double your systems on launch pisses a few players off, and statistically doesn't seem to impact your retention much at all. But it generates AWESOME PR. Having 2,000 ghost town servers on launch has the opposite effect.

edit: Looking at the status page, the entire problem seems to be summed up as "we didn't think RP servers would be that popular." They seem to have a pretty normal percentage breakdown of pvp/pve/RP-pve, but the RP-pve servers are all heavy/full while the pve servers are about balanced between high loads and light loads. Turns out a game with a heavy story emphasis may pull RPers out of the woodwork. Or they're all people named MalReynolds who want to avoid servers with stupid player names.

2,000 is extremely low, especially considering phasing and instancing.

 

What.

Also the ability to toss up 90 so servers in a 5 hour window really throws your armcharing right out the window.

You haven't noticed he's been pulling doom & gloom stuff out of his ass for a week?  It's like he's only going to feel validated if the whole thing collapses.

Anyway, 200+ servers up and stable at launch is no mean feat.  I gotta give them credit for a job well done even if there are day 1 queues.

Googling "WoW realm capacity" seems to indicate 3000 / server (in 2008), so I would guess the full realms could probably be 5000+ with today's improved hardware.  My estimates are they have approx 4+ million subscribers, but I guess nothing will be confirmed until they announce something.

One of my ways of dealing with this for now is creating only one or two classes per server instead of all classes on the same server.

When I get home tonight if the server with my Jedi Knight is full, I'll hope there's a Light load server on which I can launch a new class (BH, here I come!). If not, /shrug.

Queues suck, no doubt. But all the people raging about this need to settle down. Its release day, and the kids are out of school. The queues will be gone, or at least minimal, in a week or two.

True enough. However, for those people who have been plugging away at it all week, to come home after work to a 2-3 hour queue... well I can understand the frustration; given the fact they released new servers on retail release and those sit fairly unencumbered while the ones from pre-release are rammed. For all the gating BW did at first, you'd think this would have been somewhat avoided.

And no, I really do not give a shit about a queue right now... I expected it at some point. I will just roll a republic alt somewhere else to fuck around with since I do not know any of the storylines on that side yet.

Fuck that fake mature higher-ground bullshit, I paid for the game and I expect to be able to play it. EA fucked up and deserves to be raked over the coals.

Player volume didn't come as a surprise. They knew exactly how many players they'd have during the pre-order week, and they were unable to handle the players that they literally  just let in. There's no excuse for that. No valid explanation other than simple incompetence.

Now that the game is released, you could argue that volumes are no longer predictable, or at least not to the same degree. If they had handled capacity better during prerelease, I would be inclined to swallow that explanation. But now? No way. They fucked up, and you need to stop apologizing and start frothing at the mouth. Or at least quietly simmering away like most of us.

It's kind of sad that with all the guild assignment stuff and such, it doesn't seem to have really helped any. I thought that would really balance some of this out.

I could buy SWTOR now, it IS a game I'm interested in playing but I'm waiting a couple months for people to stop hammering the newbie zones and queue times.  If I bought on day one and had to wait an hour to play I'd not be a happy camper, I bought skyrim and was bashing heads 5min into booting it up.

I concur. I really thought they would do something akin to what Square did with FFXI, only with guilds instead of players. *shrug* Oh well... Everything stays the same...

Honestly, after the queues, the zones are rather roomy as far as population goes.

Yeah I would hardly call it crowded. The queues seem more like an 'encouragement' for new people to try a different server than anything else to me.

It's not overcrowded at all, and (so far at least) the game is perfectly playable, once you get past the queues.

If the conspiracy theory is true and they're trying to "encourage" people to start characters on other servers, why not push accounts with characters over level 15 on that server to the front of the queue? Pretty simple solution. But they didn't do that. Nah, there's no subterfuge here, they're just trying to keep the game playable for people that get in. Which is great, except hour-long queues are inexcusable.

I'm pretty sure thats exactly what Mythic did with WAR.  :rimshot:

Also, im hopped up on cold medicine and cant tell if I fell in the sarcasm or not.

So I just got home, and no QQueue on charlie sheen at all yet. Go east coast!

200k+ pre-NGE SWG lovers.  200k with all the bugs.  Now take the people who couldn't put up with all the bugs and ever-changing systems...

I haven't actually hit a queue once while logging into the game.  Of course I'm PST, but still....

Nothing personal but, really?

What my inner curmudgeon wanted to say was:

Fuck this fake shove-it-up-your-ass-BW rant and emo-eye-liner-pity-me request to conform to an asstard's idea of what it takes to get riled up. I'll fucking froth at the mouth when I'm good and damn ready and not a fucking moment before and not because some pussy-mouthed dickwad has got his panties in a bundle because of playing a make-believe-pixellated cartoon for a goddamn week and can't stand the idea of having to either wait to play or dealing with the insane misery of rolling an alt. A month from now you'll just be scratching that oh-so-angry-because-I'm-simmering cheese scum off your balls and rolling it between your fingers and sniffing it while wondering what the hell you were so upset about in the first place.

Dang, that's way to long to put in a profile quote, and it would just seem wrong to edit it down in any way.

If your inner curmudgeon has a newsletter, I wish to subscribe to it.

It's 1734 hrs EST where I am.

I just logged into Shein.  No queue.  Your arguments are irrelevant.   :drill: :why_so_serious:

No. Brevity is the soul of wit. That was witless, but fun. I love talking in faux-F13-speak every now and then.

BW and EA could have done much better at planning, but it's not the end of the world. I have no knowledge of who's really doing what over there, but I still think their MMO newbness is showing, but they're doing OK overall.  Someone over at TRION (whether that's Hartsman or whoever) has more MMO-savvy chops, but even they have issues from time to time.

Sometimes the people closest to the game development can't see the gaping customer-service or customer-experience issues, or they minimize them because, deep down, they don't know how to solve them. No matter what you do, from capping server side percentages (a la AION), to preventing any new characters from being created on a server, to making everything one giant universe (a la EVE, with laggy over-populated trading hubs), you don't satisfy everyone. The holy grail is "100% uptime, 100% lag free, queue free, play anywhere I want, any time I want, with whoever I want, in whatever way I want. And it better be cheap. And now, dammit." Who could deliver all that -- at once?

Just encountered the memory leak issue on Taris. My main character is effectively locked out, as I CTD within 10 seconds of logging in. I'm told if I can manage to untrack all the quests the issue will go away but after a bunch of failed attempts I gave up. Looks like I'll have to play an alt until they fix this rather gamebreaking bug.

Taris memory bug should be fixed tomorrow.

That's all very clever, but "it'll be better in 2 weeks" doesn't amount to a whole heck of a lot when I want to play now. They always say you should express your feelings, so let me say in the nicest possible way that telling me to calm down and wait gives me the urge to somehow reach through the internet and shove my fist down your fucking throat. But hey, thanks for not being sanctimonious and taking the higher ground. Much respect for slinging it down in the mud with the rest of us.

This has never, ever, worked. Even if it is the full team they had years of development time for content that is being consumed in a month or two. To believe you can keep ahead of the player base with high quality content is destined to fail. The extent to which their end-game can mask repetition and keep people motivated to keep investing time will be the interesting test.

Can't accept any new quests, 77 pages of people with the same problem, some for days now. Customer service response is to put the word "blueberry" in your ticket. Seriously fucking clownshoes.  http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=20021

Counterpoint: quest layout/flow in this game is vastly inferior to WoW in every way, so maybe the game is doing me a favor.  It's like they were designed by someone who thought vanilla Barrens was awesome, but would be even better if the objectives were spread further apart and the zone was littered with impassable walls all over the fucking place. 

Taris is really the only zone I've noticed shitty quest flow/walls in. (Republic side anyway.)

Could have done better at planning? no, they plan for queues during launch.  The traffic now is magnitudes higher than it will be at any other point in the history of this game, queues are the norm.  The other option is the warhammer solution, launch with ten times as many servers as your game actually needs.

8:30 pm EST day 1 of retail, 210 in queue which it says is <15 minutes.

Hardly the end of the world.

e: I'm timing it, so far I've advanced 50 places in 3 minutes.

e: 14:55.3  just made it. :-)

eh, it is an MMO, it just released, there is a line to check out the cool new ride just like at Disneyland.

Did I miss something? When did we start not expecting a cluster fuck at the launch of a major MMO?

After all the queue qing (ho ho ho) I was expecting a long wait, and there was no queue at all.  :oh_i_see:

Welp my friends guild already have slated to move away from The Fatman, people have rolled on other servers and people with a few days of /played is now grumbling as The Fatman has over an indicated 2hr queue.

Really wish they had soft capped at 50-75% at prelaunch on servers to better prepare the load for launch, its a total mess now and I have a level 25char that's pretty much a writeoff.  :uhrr:

it seems like Origin has run out of codes for the digital copies  :why_so_serious:

I keep reading people talking about RIFTs flawless launch and how it was the paragon of pre-access/launch planning.

So was the RIFT that had launch day queues a different game or what? I'm confused.

(http://www.zam.com/Im/Image/189695.jpg)

One small clownshoes moment... when signing up I made a typo in my CC billing address. Noticed it before hitting confirm, but after I'd entered the CC details.

There is no way to rectify it. You can click "Change" next to either the CC which lets you select or enter a different card, but you can't enter the same CC number again as it says that it's not unique. You can click "change" next to the billing address... which does exactly the same as clicking change next to the CC. No option to edit the address or re-enter the same card with corrected details.

In the end I gave up and just hit confirm with the wrong address assigned to my CC. Went through without a hitch. Be interesting to see what happens when it comes time to actually bill the card!

Knowing how "secure" transactions are, so long as the #'s right it will probably go through.

What's weird is that I'm in Goon Squad and our server hasn't had long queues whenever I've tried to log in in the afternoon. I mean, and this is a server with two Goon guilds, and a NeoGAF guild.

Um, when I log into swtor.com and go to My Profile, I can click on Subscription, then Show Billing History, then there's an EDIT option by the credit card, and clicking it pops up a sub-window that lets me fully change everything - name, address, etc.  Alternately, under swtor.com My Profile, I can click on the left on the Contact Information Complete!!! graphic and change my address, phone number, etc.

Not sure why it's not working for you.

A friend of mine, who preordered on Origin, just texted me to tell that he hasn't received his key and likely won't until the grace period runs out. My physical copy arrived last Friday, so it's kind of funny.

Their wait times were VASTLY over estimated, that queue was probably 5 mins long.

It was more to make a point that there were repeated news articles and comments about login queues when RIFT launched with reports of 1hr plus wait times. I just find it amusing that people keep making reference to what's implied to have been a flawless, queueless launch when it quite clearly wasn't.

Origin codes should have been sent by email a few days ago.

(edit, code sold)

Don't forget AIE.  It's like BW intentionally put all of the supergroup internet guilds together on one server just to see how you all would get along with each other  :grin:

Is that the Digital Deluxe version? Yeah, I might be interested.  (EDIT: Sent you a PM)

Yep, I ordered on Origin as well and got my code a couple days ago.

Same, I think I got my code on the 16th.  Whoever it was who says they didn't get their code should check back a few days/check their spam filter.

My Origin retail key was sent to me on the 16th.

I'm on Veela where Starfleet Dental is and it had queues at 8am yesterday.

Didn't join the Goon Squad server since for some terrible unknown reasons they rolled on a PvE server.  :ye_gods:

So I ran Hammer Station for the first time last night and it was a huge dissapointment.  Esselles had a nice story line too it, cut scenes, social options, choices, flowed really nice.  Then Hammer was just a 100% typical MMO short run through, tank and spank, everything done.  No storyline, no chats, no cut scenes, nothing.  Did they just make Esseles really nice and story driven and then get lazy on everything after?

So far, everything I've run has been like Hammer Station. Hardly any interaction other than (there's a group of x in a room and if you do y they live and you get light side points and if you do z they die and you get dark side points. It's quite disappointing after how interactive Black Talon was.

I wonder how many people got on board thinking everything is like Black Talon. I know I did before I was corrected here.

For a VERY VERY VERY long time, black talon and esselles represented half of the flashpoints in the game-- each faction had only 2. This was one of the top items I really wanted to break NDA to talk about, but then a couple months ago they added quite a few more flashpoints, so I figured they fixed it. If the new ones suck, maybe not so much.

Part of me was hoping, the other part of me was too busy yelling at the fucktard PUG to select a fucking response so we could get on with it...and of course, there was always that one person who was lagging so badly that everyone would have selected their responses and we'd have to wait 5-10 minutes for the guy's network to function. While I liked BT a lot from the story perspective, it did not go without its frustrations.

Hmmmm.  Some rambling thoughts...


I also ran Hammer Station for the first time last night. Our grouped mused about the lack of dialog and were all OK with it being a straightforward combat mission, especially after the 2 hours it can take to run Esseles in full-dialog mode. We liked the idea that there might be some variety among the "dungeons" -- some more combat oriented, some more story-oriented. We're looking at doing the Athiss flashpoint next. So you're saying it's just another combat-only dungeon, and so are all the others to come?

If so, my guess is that they ran out of time to make every flashpoint as fleshed-out as Esseles, or they concluded that adding more flashpoint content after launch would be too time/resource intensive if they made every one a VO-fest. So to set expectations, they launched with "minimal" story flashpoints as well as a couple of VO-ones. This way, if they deliver a VO-flashpoint in future content, people will be happy. If they deliver a non-VO or minimal-VO flashpoint, people may complain but won't be expecting every flashpoint to be a VO-flashpoint.

They also might have been second-guessing themselves on how willing/interested people would be in groups/pugs to endure multiple runs through VO-flashpoints. Too bad, since the heavy story and dialog options in Esseles made it more memorable, IMHO, than Hammer Station.

We liked the combat challenge of Hammer Station compared to the ease of Esseles, but we also enjoyed the story elements of Esseles as a new kind of "group experience."

I'd like to do a PvP version of BT, where the end boss is a Republic group instead of the NPC Jedi. We win the mission if we can defeat them, they win if they can defeat us (and save the general).

Nice small PvP encounter rather than the masses in a battleground/huttball.

I'd love a PvP Operation/Flash Point like Darkness Falls in DAoC. Tying story elements into it would be fantastic, but a pipe dream I think.

But what happens to my dark side points from that "decision" then? And I dunno how well this would be received outside of PvP servers... there are a lot of people who don't like PvP in their game.

I didn't say it would be *required* but it would be a nice option.

Your decisions still stand, you might just miss out on the final 'capture him alive' or 'kill him' dialog choice if you lost the encounter with the other group. Or maybe there'd be an alternative one. (like the option to kill the captain for a second time, since obviously he didn't send enough troopers to support you).

I have done the black talon 3 times, and it has gone three different ways ( Literally ). I was quite happy about that.

So far I've ran Eselles, Hammer, and Athiss and yeah I'm kinda disappointed at the lack of interactive story stuff in the latter two. I'm kinda torn though since as mentioned it takes like 1-2 hours to get through Eselles even with a good group. When you're running these later in heroic mode to get gear to raid you'd want to set yourself on fire if you had to sit through like 30 minutes or so of cutscenes and DS/LS choices every time; especially if your gear didn't drop.

So far the answer is "meh". I think as a guild GAF doesn't like us but I've had questing groups and instance groups with them and it's been fine.

Also, has anyone noticed the utter lack of healers? I mean, the tank to DPS ratio is actually really respectable and something like a 1:2, but finding a healing SPECCED healer is like trying to find a unicorn.

I guess I'm a unicorn then.  Although I would  :heart: to pickup a DPS-spec and go to town with my solo missions, the utility I get and group invites from being a healer-speced healer are  :awesome_for_real:

I also agree with you on the dungeons.  It seems like BT/Eselles were love letters that look like a lot of time and compassion went into them.  Everything since then has been a WoW-dungeon knock-off  :uhrr:.  As far as heroics go, have your group agree that if everyone's already done the dungeon before and cares not for the story, everyone spams the space-bar for the dialogues.  If everyone does, you can skip through all that noise pretty quick.

So I guess I should make Hob a sage heal spec? Will people love me then? I need some attention on the republic side....

This has the potential to cause friction in the future. EX: New guy gets invited to a dungeon run and gets dropped from group because he won't spacebar spam past the cutscenes.  

I hate people.

There's no clique. TOR doesn't even have mouseover macros. Lots of WoW healers won't deal with that.

New guy needs to form his own group and call the shots then.  The game never actually says who's holding up the group...just "Waiting on Party Members."

There's also a problem where people don't "get" the other healers.

Sjofn apparently gets PLZ HEAL US tells all the time. I'm hanging out on the same planet as a healing specced smuggler, and have yet to get a single random tell about such things. People in general ask for sage healers for their groups, and seem shocked that there are actually two other healing classes.

Actually, every group I've been in so far had two healers, and one was fakedpsing.

Yeah, never see anyone healing in PVP especially.  I normaly play a healer, but as soon as I saw you cannot mod or customize the UI I just went "fuck that" and rolled a tank/dps.

I mostly want raid frames. Can I force them on in some way on group parties? It drives me insane, and I'm so used at playing whack-a-mole I very often forget to heal myself, because my health is way on the bottom.

Op Frames.

You can force their raid frames on in parties, yes. It's in the UI options, very bottom.

Note: you cannot bring companions to raids, so for some fucking stupid reason this means that if you use the raid frames YOU CANNOT SEE COMPANION HEALTH IN PARTIES.

Oh, and your bar does not appear in the raid frame. That would make too much fucking sense.

I think some people do "get" them, because a lot of number crunching has already been done as far as the three healing types go.  The Sage/Sorc style has been deemed the most developed and efficient, one that doesn't require a master's degree in computer operation in order to do well at.  IA/Smug's come in second with Pally-style heals, and BH/Troops third due to the whole heat/ammo thing that eventually stop-gaps them if they're not careful.

Thats a pretty significant improvment, thanks.  Might make healers playable for me.

Smugglers actually appear to be the most efficient, what Sages have is the ability to react instantly to the unexpected. That's pretty much the big change between Sages and the others: your group playing poorly punishes Smugglers and Troopers more than it obviously hurts Sages.

But from the playerbase commentary, there seems to be a mental disconnect that sawbones is even a spec. You don't see a commando or scoundrel and think "a healer!", you think "a dps!" the same way people see a sage and act stunned when they're DPS specced.

Ugghhh.

I was going to give this a pass, but I'm breaking down!  Quick, more bad things about the release!

This and no dual-spec.

Unless I'm permitted to stand around like a pylon, I don't think I have enough hands for targetting, healing, and moving.  I guess some folks can, but I can't...at least not for any sort of challenging content.

I used the focus target option quite a bit in beta when I became aware of how it works. Strangely, it works rather smoothly, but only for one player. So defaulting it on the tank while keeping the target as primary does in fact work well. Definitely need to hotkey that modifier to something in the opposite hand or thumb though... made that mistake first group I tried it in.  :ye_gods:

Right, if you spec healer you need to level as a healer too. That's actually possible, with a tank companion, but certainly much slower. And you're spending your time micromanaging and healing a NPC rather than killing the mobs yourself-- no thanks.

I'm actually leveling as a healer with a dps companion right now, and tanking the mobs myself.

Scoundrels get kind of absurd at 30 with their instant heal.

I ran Eselles for the first time last night and I was very impressed with the story aspects of it.  Once it was over I commented about how cool it was and then immediately got my hopes dashed with, "Yeah, the rest of the flashpoints aren't like that."  For a few minutes there I thought I would be spending more time grouped than I've grown accustomed to.  Also, since it seems you can get the flashpoint boss drops for commendation trade-ins there isn't even the siren's song of phat-lewts to get you in the door.

Unless you want to miss wide sections of each zone where the best xp, missions and loot rewards are you will probably be grouping.  I am enjoying the game but I really don't like the "forced" grouping.  Perhaps it's just because everything is new but I also find that the classes don't work well together, at all.  I don't have a coherent way of explaining that, it is just the way it feels to me.

I disagree.  From my experience thus far across five planets, each one is broken down into sections/quest hubs.  Each hub has at most 1 maybe 2 Heroic quests which require either 2/4 people.  None of the heroics have any impact on your story progression or even on planet progression.  They've all been independent stand-alone quests, where if you do them, great!  If not, it's not that big of a deal.

Yeah, the heroic 2/4s should be skippable... flashpoints too.

I've done Esseles, Hammer Station, the Ord Mantell heroics, maybe 3 Coruscant heroics, and 1 Taris heroic... didn't touch any group content after that. I was still consistently overleveling the current planet the class questline sends me to by 2-3. I just hit 41 and I'm still overleveling them by 1. I used to do the bonus objectives of the 'solo' missions religiously, but got too lazy to do that once I hit Quesh and Hoth.

Haven't done any space combat either, and only a handful of warfronts.

So today I learned that if you have anyone over level, you can burn through flashpoints in seconds because even squishy classes are simply impossible for even the bosses to hit.

So if you're bored one day.. and know a cybertech... you can basically put all your companions in at-level oranges in an evening. :P

There's no forced grouping at all, I dunno what to say about that.

Interesting, there's no Billing History option for me, and I can't edit the CC address in any way - just checked again. I can edit my home address, but that doesn't change the billing address. Different implementations in different regions maybe? Doesn't really matter, I've submitted a support ticket detailing the issue, they've got 29 days to respond and rectify, that will surely be sufficient.

 :awesome_for_real:

This is going to be your paypal thing all over again, isn't it?

I was one of the first hanful of 50's on my server and I did it all solo.  There was just no one around to do the heroics and stuff with anyway.  I spent over 90% of the time on a planet by myself or with one other person.  lol

Healing as a heal specced merc is tough. Focus target will likely help, but trying to heal 3 randoms in a pug just made me say 'Fuck you all' and drop group. So I'll heal in BC groups, but anyone in a pug I'll claim to be dps.

Lol, I hope not! If it is I'll just keep it to myself, don't worry.

I feel bad for even posting about it in here cos it's such a minor thing compared to how much fun I am already having with the rest of it. I just thought it might be useful for people to know about so they can be extra careful not to make typos in their CC address entry for now.

Yeah Merc healing isn't so great.  We have Kolto Missile, which is a ground aoe, which is a pain to use in an intense firefight.  I am thinking of speccing out of Bodyguard, at least for a while.   The shield is nice, but it's on a cooldown and only lasts like 12 seconds.

Then if you overheat you 'run out' of healing.  You can shoot your healing bullets without heat, but the healing amount seems a little too low.

Healing on BH's/Agents is all a mana-management game, if you are good at it you can do it literally forever.  You can burst, but you better make sure your instant energy/heat return is up so you can get back into a good regen area.  Also, it is far easier to level a healer than a dpser, because your downtime goes down to zero and dps pets are usually pretty good at dpsing.

My only complaint so far is that in 2 person groups pets do not show up on raid frames and are a bitch to target, and the raid frames are borked in the battlegrounds so you never know who needs healing.

First big complaint:  When I got my box I entered my code.  I've been playing fine.  Today I log in and it says I need a subscription to continue playing, but it says I only have 27 days left.

So because they didn't have the billing stuff set up pre-launch, it's counting down my time but locked me out of the game.  And their site isn't responding at six in the morning....

Seems they finally released a security app for android. Their site mentions certain android devices... no clue wtf that means, but the Market has it up. Downloading and installing now... we'll see what kind of clusterfuck this will bring...

First thing I did when setting up the UI keybinds was to remap "Target Party Companion 1" to F7 and "Target Party Companion 2" to F8.  Doesn't help that they don't appear in the frames, but it makes it easier to target to check them.  You can also enable overhead nametags (and health bars) I think.

As far as the subscription, I think they considered a 2-day leeway to be sufficient for everyone.  They figured all of us would put in our code and set up a credit-card subscription on the 20th, and their 2 days grace period was an unnecessary favor.  I bet the boards are going to be full of complaints today, and maybe they'll learn.

Maybe it doesn't support 2.1 and earlier Androids or some stupid shit.

I already predicted this like months ago in the closed thread.

Probably true. Of course, now that their website is giving me the finger and putting me behind the velvet ropes with the rest of the rabble, it'll be awhile before I get a chance to test drive it.

It was plenty of time to enter my code, which I did, back around the 16th.  That I need a sub to play my 30 free days, however, is silly.  And that they're counting down despite not letting me access the game.

They didn't even take any useful steps to make it clear that I'd have to enter CC info.   I put in my product code days ago and thought that was that.   They should of forwarded me to the payment page right away when I put in the code.   Now they have everyone trying to do it all at once with the expected results.

Also why have the forethought of putting in a web page queue but not adding it to the subscription pages?  :uhrr:

Yeah, unfortunately, the "counting down days even if you can't access the game" is par for the course for MMO's.

Their account registration webpage had big graphic buttons, in order, for Create Account, Answer Secret Questions, Type In Game S/N, Set up Credit Card payment, Add a security keyfob, but you had to "get" the mindset of the web developer to understand what was mandatory and what they wanted you to do.  I'm getting the same feeling from their UI - like, what's missing isn't functionality, but rather the fact that in WoW you could do each action in multiple ways (casting a spell for example, could do it from the spellbook, from the action bar with mouse or keypress, with a macro, or could type /cast x), and in SWTOR there's ONE way to do something, and if you don't guess it, you're SOL.

For example, when you set up keybinds for the action bars, the UI does differentiate between 1-0 and numpad-1-0, but no indication is given.  It is, however, quite possible to have the bottom bar set up with 1-0 and the right bar with the numpad keys.

I guess you could modify the social dicerolls during the cutscene dialog wheel choices.  You spacebarred?  -15 to diceroll.  It has no effect except for who gets to decide for the group though, so they'd have to add some carrot-on-a-stick mechanic to it I'm sure.

Well, a -15 would be a stick since you get more social points for winning the roll.

This is just becoming full on retarded.   They put in a website queue but the actual subscription service is through EA's account system.   So they are trying to throttle people getting into the EA site except that isn't working because of a few hundred thousand people clicking "continue" over and over.   Then of course the whole process craps out and you go back into the queue all over again.

Hm, so I won't have access when I get home? I figured the grace period was "time to enter your live code", not "time to feed us a credit card that we won't charge anyways"

I should probably set all that up then.

How are you people having these issues? I got on last night at 5PM and had zero problems with the site to enter in my info or my CC or my keys?

You not only won't have access you won't be able to enter your credit card info for about 5 hours.   I've been trying to do it for 2 hours now.   What's going to happen at 5pm is going to melt their whole system right down to the PCB's.


They shut off access for people who haven't entered CC info this morning.   Of course you could do it fine when nobody was trying to do it.

I was on last night, but there was a note saying that at 2am EST we had to have our codes entered. I assumed that just meant "code entered" and not "feed me sub info"

People that wait until the last minute get kicked in the teeth. Film at 11.  :awesome_for_real:

No, they announced "grace period to enter your code", I think, but what they meant was "grace period to enter code AND credit card."  It's stupid, because you should be able to play for 30 days w/o a CC, and the game should just stop letting you in once that expires in January.  And it's rated G so it's not like they need your CC to verify your age or whatever.

I have a feeling the real reason why they've done this was to confirm to the suits how many actual subscriptions they actually had, as a way to justify the more servers they added.  Riccitiello must be terrified that it'll be a flop like WAR, or something.

I entered my code days ago.  There was no waiting until the last minute here.   They basically just didn't tell anyone and then cut everyone off all at once.   Almost nobody has entered their info early like you because of this and the results are what you'd expect.

I'm fine with admitting it's my mistake. I thought the grace period was to input my code, and if they needed more the code entry page would have said "now do this, bitch"

I should have read the notices more carefully, but I'll still laugh about the idea that they are blocking access even though their system clearly knows that the account has game time remaining.

edit: All of the long form communication I see says "sign up for a sub", so it's entirely my own fault. I only read the headlines of "dude, activate your accounts", and did what I assumed was activating my account. My bad, but still kinda funny to me.

Almost nobody logged into their game when they got it and updated their accounts? Really?

No, you are exactly right.  When I dutifully entered my code yesterday, I only by happenstance noticed some vague wording to the effect: "might be a good idea to give us your subscription info."

In no way did I think that it was necessary, but since I was there I figured I'd save a trip and click on the camouflage grey icon that they definitely were not highlighting as IMPORTANT.

You don't have to "update" your account.   You have to ENTER credit card info.   Obviously a lot of old vets had the forethought to add CC info with nothing telling them to do so.   That's a pretty freaking small percentage of players though.

? I think what we're saying is that we DID. I got my live code, logged in immediately and redeemed it. I've been chilling on my Digital Deluxe Segway for most of the week. However, when I entered said code, the site at no point said "Now enter your credit card information and pick a subscription plan"

I thought I had activated my account by entering the live code with it's 30 days of gameplay attached. Let's consider it a game time card and product code in one, in my mind. According to bioware, this is not true and I have 30 days of pre-paid game time on my account, but I am not able to log in as I have not selected a payment plan. I find this silly, but it IS documented.

Hate to break this to you guys, but when you got done with the key, there was this box right below that which said "Enter your CC info here!"

I think the order was:

Pick your security questions!
Enter your key!
Enter you Subscriptions CC!
Download the client!

Anyway, they will figure it out. No big deal.

Maybe they added that by the time you got around to entering your code or something.   There was no such box on my page.   Talking to like 20 people in vent right now who don't remember such a box either so it must of been pretty hidden if it was there.

This was my experience as well.  I entered the key and then a new placard appeared that wanted me to subscribe, and I was like "Oh yeah, subscription based game...duh!"

This really is an issue. You drop in your game code and at no point does it automatically force you over to the sub page, which it should. We all have been around the block and know this is how it happens, I can't imagine what these MMO virgins are going through wondering why they see they have time but can't log in. Luckily, after I punched in my number 2 days before launch, I thought it odd that I didn't set up a reoccurring sub at that point.... 2 days later. Yesterday, I realized I should probably look into it and luckily got on the website to put in the info. Very strange to structure your pay-to-play game without funneling the masses through the process automatically. I'd put on my tin foil hat and suspect BW did it on purpose to shave a few play days off people's accounts but don't see how they'd profit off of it, so I just assume it is the same clownshoes operation that actually puts you into a queue to visit the god damn forums....

speaking of which, are those official forums going bye bye? I heard rumors. If so...  :roflcopter:

sinij, is that you?   :why_so_serious:

 :oh_i_see:

 :ye_gods:

Sometimes I wish there was a way to kick my own arse really hard...  

I connived an afternoon off work to play... thinking last night "all my registration is done, I'll put in my card details tomorrow...".

 
 :facepalm:

Well, I guess Luckton and I were the only ones in the galaxy  :awesome_for_real:

It may be a different method of redeeming the code, but I had no such page.

I hit redeem code, had one box to put in a code. When entered, it dumped me to a single page that said "activated DD code" and had no other text beyond a button that would return me to my account settings. At that point, I closed my browser because I was done there.

There was a continue button on that page.

The account setting had the boxes.

I'm looking at the page right now.   The "button" or plaque or whatever you are talking about doesn't actually appear even now.  I've to scroll down about a page worth to see it.   So congrats for scrolling I guess?  Why are you being a dick about it?  Their method of doing this was clearly retarded and there's no reason to defend them.   I've no problem with them requiring CC info I just think they should of bothered to send me to the subscription page earlier.

Their twitter feed says the login page for their website has been turned off, has been for 3 hrs ... and no, I didn't put my CC info in when I redeemed my game code. It didn't ask me to.

Hurt fanboys need to channel their passions somewhere when their old games no longer satisfy.

They turned it on about 30 minutes after that message.    People have been getting in randomly.  About 30 minutes ago they seem to have throttled the queue further to at least let the account server not die.  Just got in a bit ago.

We'll see! I've been in "queue" for 10 mins now.

Once you get through the queue and get to the page where you can click "subscription" open that in a new tab in case it blows up on you.

Yeah got in and it worked OK using PayPal - no issues - just took a min for the paypal transaction to finish.

Was speaking to some friends on FB... some have been in the queue for 2-3 hours.

 :ye_gods:

wtf... are you in EU?

Probably because I entered my key a week ago.  I didn't know they needed my CC info.  Nor did the other million pre-order folks who already entered their codes.

So their websites are exploding.

This is pretty much exactly how it looked to me.

Set up security questions
Enter game key
Enter subscription
Activate authenticator

Though, to be fair it didn't say you HAD to set up the last two steps and would let you continue without.

There wasn't, a week ago, when we entered our codes.

They didn't have the subscription option up until launch day.

Shrug, I entered my key and CC info just now. I sat in the web queue for maybe 10 minutes. Such a non-issue.

I set up a paypal subscription 2 days ago and I've been in this queue for 2 hours.  They're just not ready for prime time.

The website queue? Really?

Or did you mean a queue for your server?

I set-up my code 2 days ago and there was a box then.  It's a failure of the system being turned on right when they allowed early sales if it wasn't there prior to official launch day.  Silly EA, you're so big your right hand never knows what the left is doing.

The sub option was definitely there by the 18th at least, since that's when I did mine.

So I guess all this explains why there's only 33 people in Nar Shaddaa right now.  I'd hate to be one of their web techs right now.  They must be hating life right now.  Merry Christmas!  :awesome_for_real:

On the bright side: Think about all the experience they're getting that they can apply to launching Mass Effect Online  :grin: :why_so_serious:

Well, I guess you can either take this as a learning experience to put in your CC info when you sign up for a game that has a subscription, or blame the company.

I can guess which most people will do.

Are you guys really stuck in the website queue for hours? I waited under 15 minutes, input my code and CC#, and was good to go. I suppose I may have just been lucky, but given my karma, that just seems so unlikely.

Which?  Is there some world where both aren't the correct response?

I think the blame has to be split between us and BW.  For instance:

1. I got a key when I pre-ordered...which was not the game key.  It was a pre-order key.
2. I beta'd.
3. Kept the beta client installed because I made the cutoff day for that to work
4. Got my invite to play early access, but did not have a game key yet.  The first few times I tried to log in, i got the message "no active sub"
5. Went to my account, but couldn't activate sub because I didn't have a game key, just a pre-order key.  Then I checked the forums and found I was not the only one having this issue.  The GM response was "we are mailing out game keys tomorrow."  I thought to myself...why did I get an invite today then?
6.  Tried one last time to log in, and it worked.   Began playing.
7.  Got the "activate your game" email the next day.  Ignored because it seemed fairly activated.

I still entered the key before the deadline and all is well.  However I have to say that things weren't very clear.

I am poking at you because I think your hair is on fire over something that is/was/will be relatively simple to solve.

I don't even recall what it looked like when i put in my key but i put in my cc also, like you do for every other game.  I would remember if there was something out of the ordinary with the whole setup.

I've been back in for a while so I'm hardly in a big huff anymore.  I just see no reason to defend their method of handling this specifically.

I got my game code and input it and my CC info on the 16th, so it's been up since then at least.

Which part of THERE WAS NO FUCKING OPTION TO ENTER CC INFO WHEN WE REDEEMED OUR BOX CODE do you not understand?

Yes, I was in the queue at 6:00 when I thought I'd play a few minutes before going to work, then from 8:00 until I gave up and closed the window around 10:30.  They finally got their shit sorted enough to actually gate people properly so we can file through now.

Part of the issue is confusing messaging. From their own post on the matter:


Now, if you read past the bolded cliff note at the top, they say "oh, and add your subscription information", but the lead in text for all their notifications has only said "remember to enter your live product key", not "and a credit card"

The reason their site is getting mauled right now is because there are a fuckload of people who entered a product key thinking they were golden.

For reference, this is the email from three days ago, all text involved in it:


At no point does it say "and add a subscription"

I'm taking responsibility for my part: I should have read the long form of their website posts, not just the bolded summary bit at the top. But for their part, their communication skills SUCK.

edit: now that I'm on the site, I see their other UI issue: it lists the items in order with HUGE GRAPHICS. So my entire display? Check boxes saying I'm good. Oh, you mean if I scroll down I'll see not red Xs, but just greyed out things saying I'm not good? A solid UI would either make this fit in a normal display, or display some form of "incomplete" tag at the TOP of the checkmarks.

You're such an Alb Kild, such a bloody Alb.  :why_so_serious:


I didn't pre-order or anything, I just went to the store and bought my copy on the 20th and filled out all my info then using their giant NOW DO THIS buttons. Taris is all mine now bwhahaha!

And? From what I understand, it's been on there for 6 days.

Could communication on their end have been better? Sure. Could the players have used some common sense when they signed up for a game they knew required a credit card eventually? Sure. I mean as a company even if I'm giving you a free month, I'm still going to tie a CC to your account on day 1 so I can try to draw in the lookie-loos who are playing for a month to see how it goes.

When I put my game code in, I saw the enter subscription box but as it a) didn't take me to that page automatically and b) didn't seem required as it was down there next to the (optional) authenticator info, I was pleasantly surprised. For once, a company that doesn't ask me to put in my credit card then cancel immediately so I can try my free month before committing to a recurring subscription plan! Oh wait.  :oh_i_see:

I had a new card in the mail, and didn't feel like signing up with something that was going to be invalidated in 3 days unless I had to :P

I'm pretty serious when I say I went to my account, hit Redeem Code, and was simply told I was all done. This new fancy thing with the five giant graphics? Wasn't there when I recieved my product code and entered it.

I'd already redeemed my code, which gives 30 free days as part of the product.  Why would I go back to notice they now had a CC option?

It's not like I was trying to eek out a few extra by entering my code late... which had I done I'd have known I needed a CC and gotten two extra days.

The current trend in this thread has taught me most people on F13 have never played an MMO before. 

 :oh_i_see:

Hey guys, none of this is new at all.  Also, now you have 1.5 million people trying to access a billing system.

See, this guy...this guy gets it.

If 1.5 million players are having problems, it's not the players fault.

I'm floored, frankly. The first thing I did when I got my box was to put in the CC info. Same thing I did with WoW, DAOC, and WAR.

Yes, yes but who could have suspected that their billing system would collapse under stress. Such a thing is unprecedented!

Actually, it is.  Like with bank runs during a panic - it's not cost-effective to provide enough bandwidth for the peak traffic, even if you could predict it.

They should definitely have some sort of in-game contest, or website promotion / advertisement, where a number of people get a few free days added to their 30, to space out when people have to renew, because otherwise come January 22 it'll be a billing outage again.  Then February 22, March 22, and so on.

Exactly.  The fact that they have a working queue system on their website for handling this stress is a nice feat, IMO.  Certainly better than "Shit's broke, come back later."

They didn't this morning.   The actual billing was on ea.com which had no queue system to handle shit and it predictably blew up with timeouts and people thinking hitting submit over and over etc etc.   What they ended up doing was severely throttling the amount of people through swtor.com in the end.

Nobody is blaming them for having their shit blow up.   All I'm saying is they should of auto forwarded me to the subscription page after I entered my code.   Anything else leads to assumptions that CC info isn't required for once.

I don't care about it other than wondering how they couldn't have predicted this happening.  I lost half an hour of play this morning and got a little irked I wasn't able to get in at a god awful hour to rectify it.

What I'm harping on is that Paelos can't seem to understand THERE WAS NO BOX for credit cards.  It did not exist.  'Twas never there at that point in time.

The second he says, "Oh, that option wasn't available when you signed up.  'Kay, I get it." I'll be fine.

1. I think they added the subscription step to the web site this week. I got my box on Dec 20 and entered my game code that day. The steps were pretty clear. I looked once at the product code screen in the early access week and don't recall all the steps being shown the way they are now.

2. And even with the current stuff, I felt some web designer or artist fell in love with their own cleverness of echoing the Nar Shadaa environment and made a set of neon green and orange "process flow" check marks that could have been done with clearer and less "stylish" coloring and iconography.

And now I can't log in to the SWTOR web site any more without my authentication key. I was annoyed at first, but realized this is the right thing to do.

A friend said he had nothing but issues with chrome but it worked and displayed all the boxes fine with IE, totally bizarre.

It's just a problem, it's not anyone's in particular.  Just like traffic.  It always happens, you just have to be patient and not get road rage.

I understand your point completely. You're a smart lady though. You believed EA was just going to let people stroll around the game without CC info? At any point after the "launch"? I mean at some point, as it did with most people, you said to yourself, "meh I'll just do it later." Then, later came when they locked you out, and everyone crashed it.

My point is that I expected the MMO vets to actually have a bit more forethought given their vast experience with these types of games/launches.

I don't know if I even get what the issue is, i think I need to re-read the posts.

I was digital preorder and been playing since Friday.  They mentioned the "grace period" once or twice and also the fact that they were extending it to the 22nd.  I think at least one day the launcher had a message about making sure to take care of it.  So on the 20th I input my retail key, added a subscription plan, had no problem logging in this morning.

*shrug*

Come to think of it there was even a little "! you have no subscription" on the launcher Tuesday that prompted me to enter the code.

I'll TLDR it for you. The answer is that you did the right thing, while other people went WTF EA WANTED A CREDIT CARD?!?!? today and crashed billing when they got locked out.

Product codes went out Friday the 16th, prior to that you couldn't enter the product code which is a pre-requisite for entering CC info.

If you were pre-ordered and set up prior to the 16th you were as configured as you could be, with game time to spare, and no CC info in the system.  I don't always run around looking for places I might have to input my CC that didn't exit the last time I looked, so I ended up tieing up those loose ends this morning. 

Fortunately I didn't miss any of the game experience, the website had the same queue I'd have been sitting in on my server.   :why_so_serious:

No that is not it at all.   Nobody cares that they wanted our credit card info.   You seem to be getting hung up on that for some reason.  The only thing that's a flaw here is that they did not in fact ever even once ask for credit card info.   The box you are referring to was some ignorable graphic you have to scroll down to see on a page that says "CONGRATS YOU'RE GOOD NOW".

I've tried to go the long route of not calling you dumb.

But that was dumb. You complained that the box wasn't shineh enough.

There was, in big bold letters on the launcher, a message saying that you need to enter subscription information.  There was also a pop-up box that you had to click through on entering the game that said you have to enter your subscription info which, after I saw, I went and entered my info, that was 2 days ago.

If you repeatedly ignore the messages telling you to enter your info it's not their fault.

I should also point out that on the box at the bottom, the text says "Valid Credit Card, Internet Connection, and Paid subscription required to play. 30-day subscription included with purchase."

If they had done any of that I wouldn't complain but they didn't.  Not sure why they did it for you.   Seems like maybe there was some spotty things going on there.


Again anything it said was down near the fine print on a page that says "YOU'RE DONE".

I only provided the credit card info when I was specifically asked back some months ago. On a lark I decided to confirm it last week because this is a AAA MMOG with a subscription fee that starts billing 30 days after launch. But that's just experience talking. There was no messaging about this that was obvious for the non-initiated. And there was no button at all on any page i could find.

Yes, different browsers can screw up different page displays and site features. But normally one browser is not going to arbitrarily remove an HTML 1.0-era text hyperlink from a list of them on the right side of the screen.

There was a pre-order code. Then there was a box code. Then they let you into beta. Then they let you into early access. Then sometime on 12/20 during the work day, they told you to have your info all set for go live at 3am on 12/22.

To me, all of this means they screwed up the messaging. It wasn't obvious to people when nor where to provide their CC info, so when they finally told you, everyone basically had 30 hours to do it. I'm sure it's because they are trying to get a bunch of different back end systems and corporate divisions to talk to each other.

Having just come off the godawful screw up that is the Battlefield 3 PC launching sequence, I know precisely where the blame goes.

Who gives a shit? You could register your credit card before noon eastern. It's not ideal, but at most you lost one morning of play. Oh no, I didn't get to check my auctions before going to work. Somehow I got past it.

I mean, hour-long queues for days on end are worth bitching about. Characters getting stuck on Taris due to a bug, definitely a problem worth exploring. If their billing was down all day, that too would be bitch-worthy. But this was just a blip.

I'm having terrible problems with graphics tearing.  V-sync is on and the refresh rate matches the monitor setup. 

Anyone got any ideas?  Some forum posts on the same issue but no official recognition of the issue or reply.

Is this on Tatooine by any chance or always?  Tatooine is really screwed up and wasn't remotely ready for launch.  I get all kinds of weird graphic issues and entire areas full of evade bugged mobs I'm supposed to kill.

One thing I find annoying is that there seems to be an intentional tearing effect on holoprojectors, which my mind interprets as a signal to turn v-sync on, which I already have done and don't need to be reminded about.

If you have a nVidia card, try the latest beta drivers.  Some people are reporting some good things with them.

For ATI, well, I dunno...I have ATI myself...no problems.

It's not Bioware's goof we're mad at.  I would have been done with gripe with my first post on the subject if the point wasn't continually twisted and misunderstood, and I kept being told how stupid I was for not filling in a box that didn't exist.

[And fuck's sake, I've entered my initial code in tons of MMO's without having to start a sub day 1.  It wasn't there at the time.  And every other MMO that required billing info at the time of entering my key wouldn't let me continue without doing so.  I'm so fucking sorry they let me enter my code before they were ready to take CC info.  That obviously makes me a fucking idiot for not being a mind-reader.  Please keep harping on that.]

Maybe I should just make that my signature.  Though I'm sure that would get ignored as well.

The only technical issue I've had so far is that in indoor areas on Balmorra and Alderaan I'll get really low fps. I step outside and I'm fine. Oh, and in some cut scenes on Tatooine, everyone's eyes would go away or turn a silvery color.

I have been getting this since the starter planet. Creepy and anyoing as fuck.

For the record, I was able to set up a sub way back on the 16th.  In fact I even posted here right after I did it. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=21653.msg1019932#msg1019932)

I also believe that I got my sub set up pretty early on, and I got the exact same boxes up as Paelos suggests to complete the CC info.  Me wonders if some of you were thrown off by the Continue button at the bottom of the page after you entered your code.  Didn't see it perhaps?  I think that clicking on that was what got me to the right place with the checklist.

Oh well.  It clearly could have been communicated better.  I will resist the temptation to imply that some of you should have known better (okay, maybe I just did) and rather hope that you get back in the game quickly.  It would be nice to get some group stuff going, if it weren't for the fact that you are a bunch of powerleveling poopsocking catassers.  Come to think of it, here's hoping you are all locked out for a few days.

Heh, got to level 3 the day before, and got to level 6 yesterday.  I ROCK!!!!  Felt the need to explore everything, a la KOTOR, looking for codex entries.  Found a bunch of caves that didn't seem to have associated quests, went in looking anyway.

Also felt the need to practice "not running through all the mobs" to get a feel for my aggro radius (it's not bad, actually).

I entered my code the 15th.  There were three boxes:  Security Question, Redeem Code, Security Key.

Swotr.com is fucked and doesn't let me redeem my code. How did this degenerate into a farce?

Maybe you're typing in the website address wrong?   :oh_i_see: :why_so_serious:

 :uhrr:

I just can't believe they didn't prepare their bloody website for account activations.

edit: specifically, it gives either a 400 bad request or an infinite redirection loop.

You probably need to enter your CC details first. :why_so_serious:

It's apparently a "known bug". Christ, this turned clownshoes real fast.

edit: well that was an easy fix, you just gotta delete your cookies every time you access your account.

I hit 50 today.  I did like 2 respecs around level 20~30.  The cost on the third respec has been going up as I level and it's now 47k.

That's a lot of money even at 50.  I'm going to guess it caps out at 1~200k which means switching on any kind of regular basis will be impossible without slicing.  I'm frankly flabberghasted.   They know they need dual spec but they're going to drive away players before they even get it in?

Edit: I should add the respec was over a week ago so it's not like the price drops.

Servers are Busy today.  3pm EST and a 15 min queue.   :ye_gods:

Yeah, this queue shit is nuts and it's only gonna get worse as we get deeper into the holiday weekend.

Login early, get one of those bobbing birds to hit your move key every few seconds and point at a corner of a cantina.  You'll be all set for whenever you want to play and no queue. *

 :drill:

* I knew someone who did this in EQ to level sense heading.

(http://i.imgur.com/3RCqK.gif)

That keyboard looks ilke a logitech G series so he could have just made an auto repeat macro for any of those keys on the left.

/captainBuzzkill

30m queue over 400 strong at 3:30 in the afternoon?

You betcha!  :ye_gods:

Are you playing with us on Shien? Don't think I've seen you at all.

Rygar, original Nintendo, with one of the badass controllers and enemies that always respawned and came at you in the same pattern.  Taped down the attack key and joystick so you were crouched, turned off the tv and went away for a day or so, came back at some absurd level.

Not yet no. I'm rolling with my WoW guild over on Light Side Hyperspace Cannon.

Stop talking about people entering or not entering payment information before release. It's obvious from the grace period message that was on the patcher that some people were able to enable their release accounts without having entered in that information.

So my end conclusion right now is that playing a JK tank at 50 without even cheap respecs is pretty much just painful.  It's not going to be pretty when the masses hit that wall.  I thought normal respecs were at least cheap.   Dual spec better be coming out quickly.

/ignorant

When you say/said "dual spec", did you mean they've talked about putting in some ability to switch specs on the fly without having to pay the fee?

They've talked about it in the sense of pointing out that the game doesn't have it, and that they may or may not change anything the game does or does not have later.

They haven't come out and said they are working on it.

Ah ok.

I think they've talked around it a lot.    My real point though was as a gamer used to dual spec I was really underestimating how much I need this feature.   Especially as a healer or tank.   When I heard "no dual spec" I was thinking of early Wrath when respec costs were so cheap they might as well have been free.   We're talking vanilla WoW respec costs here though.    In all reality you pick your spec and you stick with it.  Period.

I loved Rygar.  That trick was almost required to have a shot at beating the game.  It also worked in The Adventure of Link.

Stephen Reid answers a few questions here (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=696184#edit696184)


Not really much new there, just confirmation for most things. Number 8 was the most surprising though. While I'm not sure we need a cross-server LFD tool, a server based LFG tool seems like a bit of a no-brainer but it seems BW subscribes to the "spamming /1 LF Healer builds community" theory  :ye_gods:

That's very odd and smacks of there being another reason behind the decision that they don't want to articulate just now. Along the lines of "we don't want people to level just by chain-running FPs" or even "FPs use too high a proportion of server resources so we want to artificially limit the rate at which they're run".

I mean, the gulf between WoW's LFG tool and every single other thing they'd tried in the years prior to it is huge. All of a sudden it just worked and everyone, unanimously, said "finally Blizzard have got it right". I honestly don't believe any dev is short-sighted enough to miss that lesson unless there's an ulterior motive.

That's the thing, I can understand the reservations people have about a WoW-esque cross-server LFD tool (lack of accountability, zero group interaction, world feeling deserted, diminishes server community, etc). I have no idea if those things are being blown out of proportion or not since I never experienced them firsthand, but I can see how they could be problems.

But something like the LFG tool in CoH for example? I'm really not seeing any downsides to that system unless, as you say, there are other reasons that they don't want to disclose. Maybe they're going to release some sort of MT-based group finder that's integrated into Origin  :why_so_serious:

My big complaint with the current (lack of) LFG system is that all of the Flashpoints are accessed from the Fleet, where there is very little to do besides spam /1. If the FPs were accessible from (for example) either the Fleet or the level appropriate planet, at least you could be questing while spamming.

Welcome to the new shit, same as the old shit.

You mean like how all the planets after Coruscant that I've done so far have a shuttle that heads back to the fleet with a droid giving the level-appropriate flashpoint mission right next to it?

You'd then need to kill the timer of the Fleet Pass to something a tad more reasonable than 18 hours, or whatever the fuck it is at now. If you are a healer or tank and run say HammerStation and go back to your planet to quest, that's pretty much it unless you want to port back to spacedock, spend a few minutes running to your ship, another 1-2 minutes on your ship loading back into Fleet, then darting over to the elevator... 18 hours is fine if you are limiting yourself to one run a day of stuff that you want easy access to, but sometimes if you are being asked every few hours to tank/heal/dps.

I just use my guild for flashpoints. Maybe pull in someone standing near the entrance.

I don't think it's short-sighted. I just think right now they've wrapped themselves in a bubble of current-success, so they feel like they have the same shot to learn the lessons in the same sequence WoW did. They may be vaguely aware that they can't take as long to learn them of course (took how long before WoW's LFG tool was done right?). But it's only been two weeks since launch and, really, they're still launching, givne their focus on mission critical bugs they know to be affecting thousands and every one of their forum responses being not-allowed-to-ask-the-Devs-yet responses.

I wouldn't be surprised if after the crunch mode they've been in, most of them have taken this week and next off anyway. Yes the game is live and many are being affected by issues. And yes this is EA's most important launch probably this year and next. But you can only stay in full/overtime-time developement more for so long before the senses get too dulled to be useful anyway :)

Someone in guild chat mentioned buyable Fleet Pass consumable or something, where do I get them and for how much ?

You get the emergency one once you finish your starter planet, something like an 18hour timer on it. The purchasable one was from a vendor... fuck all if I can recall which one. I wanna say the security key vendor, but that seems wrong.

And the android security code generator is nice, but feels cumbersome. Not sure why though. Maybe I got used to WoW's iPod key just generating it on open. Still works.

As Mr. Binary said, even with the shuttle (or your own ship) back to the Fleet it's a pain in the ass. The shuttles are always at the spaceport, which is either a 30m CD or a 5-10m trip away from all but the planetary intro questlines. There should be something in the main city on each planet (the area with the trainers, vendors, etc.) that offers the FP quest and quick travel directly to it.

Of the three direct to Fleet shuttles I've seen (Taris, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine), not one of them has been at the spaceport.  They've all been farther out in the zone, in a central location not far from a speeder bike point.

Iirc, the DK one is by The Wall, so right off a speeder line.

Blows me away that WoW's LFD system is considered 'unanimously' a success.  I hated it and many people I knew did as well.  I think the best solution is a server-wide LFG window where you can easily put exactly what you want to do and what role you are willing to play.  Filterable and sortable.  This way, you actually need to talk and get to know people which instantly raises the quality of grouping past anonymous bullshittery.   Most importantly you can avoid the copious amounts of bad players/asshats out there.

It is from a Security Key Vendor.

On that note, once you get a few companions with you, go check out the Ilum Security Key Vendor (it's inside the orbital dock, no danger).  There are a few more customizations on it than there are on the Fleet's one.  (Presumably to avoid spoilers.)

 :mob:

Good incentive to get one!

Edit: On a serious note, I've had them now for a few days and I actually haven't used one.  Don't go back to Fleet very often now that I've stopped doing Warzones for the most part.

It's free on Droid and iOS now, and the keyfob is $4.  There's really no excuse.

Just checked, it's 12,99 € for me.   :why_so_serious:

There is, if I understand it correctly you have to enter the password AND the security key every time you log into the game or the forums. Which probably breaks the auto-fill in feature of the browser, if the security key keeps changing. As someone who keeps forgetting passwords and constantly mislays the phone, thats just too much effort.

That's the reason they have that vendor basically.   The security cost that Blizzard must deal with is something they want to avoid.   They are looking to effectively force people to use the key.   I wouldn't be surprised if more important stuff ends up on that vendor eventually.

This of course will lead to a proliferation of keyloggers on smart phones.

Honestly what is the problem doing LFG old fashioned way. I never understood this. Blizzard like LFG tool destroys immersion and destroys communities. I never ever had real problem finding groups using group and/or who tool.  But then again I dont chain run instances to milk em for loot I guess

Because spending 45 minutes spamming chat channels stood in one spot is not fun gameplay. Most people don't have 2 hours at a time to find a pick up group and stick it through to the end. It's a bad way of designing a game - especially given the idiocy of the instances only being available from the fleet which prevents you actually playing the game whilst trying to find a group.

And then those folks that don't have the time queue up for LFD and bitch and scream whenever the first little thing goes wrong or if someone isn't overgeared for the instance. That's fun gameplay?

We've had this argument a dozen times now.

While I am firmly in favor of cross-server machine matchmaking, I think that SWTOR may be better situated than other contemporary Dikus to not be completely awful down the line (in my opinion!) without such a system:

- The level distribution may be flatter as a result of the popularity of alts.
- The smaller group size.
- Class design is rather straight forward and lacking in obvious ugly ducklings.
- The pre-launch guild assignment may have put a slight dent in server balancing issues.

I don't think there's nearly enough mitigation for the worst case scenario (mid-to-late levels, wrong side of a heavily unbalanced server) to get to play a non-trivial amount of the game at the appropriate level but it will help.

There was plenty of whining and elitism pre-LFG tool, too.

The probem with complaining about the LFG tool is that it's like the whole UO PK argument: as soon as there was an alternative to standing around town spamming "DPS LFG BRD" for an hour, people dropped it like it was on fire.  The old channels are still there, you can still stand around in town and take twenty minutes put together your community based groups if you want, the only thing is other people aren't forced to do it if they want to run groups.  Any time there's an option to either force everyone do things one way or have a lot of choices with how to do them, I'm going to have to side with the alternative that gives me more options.  Forcing people to play a way they don't enjoy because you personally find it more fun does not strike me as winning game design.

So you saying you dont have 2 hours to run a flashpoint (many of them take about ~1 hour anyway on perfect run) ? Fact that it takes a little bit of time and effort to find a group assures people wouldnt quit on wipe after bad pull.  The only thing I agree with is that LFG channels should be global, not just the imperial fleet . I  dont chain run instances in MMOs, I ran them once per character or so, my experience been positive in game swith no WoW like LFG tool and I like it this way

I don't agree with this reasoning at all, in fact you could say that if it's easy to quickly replace people that quitters are even LESS of a problem.

No. They're saying they don't have an hour to stand around trying to build a group just so they can spend the next 45 minutes running the Flashpoint.

This is very simple. If there's a better way to do something, and someone implements it, that becomes the reference standard simply by virtue of it becoming popular. After that point it's just the semantics of philosopher traditionalists pissing into the wind.

You guys know you can flag yourself LFG and also write what you are wanting to do...ETC. Yeah?

This exists.  People need to use it.  Just go into who, and there's a checkbox to set yourself LFG, a comment box to give yourself a comment (to specify what you're LFG for).  Then people can search.  If I'm LFG for Hammer station I can put 'Hammer Station' in my comment, and anyone who does a search for 'LFG Hammer' will see me.

The only real improvement I think needs to be made is having the ability to, if you are in a group and someone else in your group interacts with the mission terminal at the fleet, get the option to have a shuttle dispatched to instantly transport you to mission departures on the station.

This type of LFG system is not exactly innovative, and quite simply has never worked well. The only one that actually works, that people actually use, is WoW's implementation.

I think it worked well in both EQ and CoX, both of the games that implemented it correctly while I was playing them.  I never had real difficulty finding groups to do what I wanted with those systems, unless what I wanted to do was rare or unpopular.  Now, it wouldn't hurt to add the ability to just select instances from a checklist, so you don't have to bother typing the ones you want, but it's basically the best LFG system I know of, assuming you actually want to interact with the people you're grouped with.

If they're considering the dungeon finder type system, instead of putting in something like that, they may as well just let you take three companions with you into missions.  The effect would be the same, because with WoW's dungeon finder, the only difference between playing with NPC's and playing with other players, is that the NPC's are likely to be more competent.

Edit: Also, I think it wouldn't hurt if they made the ability to set yourself LFG more front-and-center.  Create something explaining it that people would have to do.  Maybe a sidequest like the one that pops up when you get a modifiable weapon, where you receive a reward for reading the lore item (well, opening it, but whatever).  In this case, they could attach a reward to flagging yourself LFG and getting a group afterward.  It would at least show everyone that there IS a way to flag yourself, because it seems like a lot of people do not know about this.

And have you tried that to see how successful it is? Because it isn't. Same as all the things WoW tried before the LFD tool weren't successful either.

This is much more the fault of the players than the game designers though in most cases.

Sucks that they pretty much say they have no current plans for a better system though.

The fact that I didn't know there is a LFG system already in place is bad.  It needs to be obvious.  Bring the window up when you get a quest for the flashpoint.  Make an obvious button on the UI for it.  People will use it if you smack them in the face with it.

I think a big problem here is that there's so few healers playing finding one is a pain in the ass.  Requiring 1 healer per 4 people vs 1 healer per 5 people just makes it worse.  A WoW-like LFD tool wouldn't help things that much unless you were a healer, you'd still have long queue times.  Only difference is you wouldn't have to be social or active at all in actually getting a group, which I admit is a good thing when it takes forever to get the correct composition lined up.

That LFG system (checkbox, comment and search) was pretty much the WoW launch system. I'm pretty sure they realised that casuals didn't use it, didn't get groups and didn't stay around. The LFG systems after that were all about the struggle to get the maximum number of people groups when they wanted them.

And SWTOR will face precisely the same pressure and probably end up in the same place.

Thankfully by that time I will be done with SWTOR. 

Yep. To this date I have yet to run ANY group instances in lotro (aside from the 2 I ran in a full guild group) since I play on a low-med pop server and the only thing people are LFGing for in the global channel are 2 maxlevel instances that I will probably never hit. (NB: I haven't tried lotro's LFG implementation yet, but I assume it will be a lot better 'cos it can't be any worse :p)

In COH I am lucky enough to play on a high-pop server that has a very active LFG community; that, combined with COH's sidekick system makes finding groups feasible. However, COH also implemented its own dungeon finder, which is even more insanely popular.

In wow and rift I use LFD all the time; they work great, and 95% of my groups complete the dungeons without problems, loot ninjaing, or drama. Vanilla WOW pugs were much worse...

I'm sorry, but that's just wrong.

Any time a game dev blames the players for a problem with their game then they are doing game dev wrong, wrong, wrong. And that is the big lesson that Blizzard have finally learned. Players gonna do what players gonna do. Round pegs in square holes just alienates people. You design for the player behavior that you see not the player behaviour you'd like to see.

I've managed to do every Flashpont so far up until the Foundry, (lv. 37) which I haven't really been able to try yet due to some connection issues.  Had a little bit of trouble getting a group healer for Boarding Party, but aside from that putting together a group hasn't really taken a lot of time.  I think it helps that every FP is accessed from the Fleet which is also home to the AH, vendors, trainers, crew skill trainers, your cargo hold, is a rest area, etc...

I have very mixed feelings about that statement. On one hand, telling players to deal with EQ1 era LFG flagging and non-configurable UI, is bs. However, watching the players in Rift push for everything to be 100% exactly like WoW, I'm not convinced that players should entirely be listened to because at this point if you listen to them: they want WoW because a lot of them have simply never seen anything else.

Yep, this in itself is a big deal. I personally think a lot of the UI bugs will be addressed soon, and a good deal of new features will roll out over time in the first few patches. Seems like they were shooting for a stable UI first and foremost.

To be fair whilstRift has copied a huge amount of WoW it's also doing a lot of innovative stuff on its own - especially in its patches. The game now is more different to WoW than when it launched, and seems to moving further away from WoW with each patch. Instant adventures, single player chronicles, adding a whole new zone to the game - Trion don't seem afraid to try new things.

I'm avidly against implementing WoWs LFG system in this game. It would be a complete clusterfuck from the story perspective, the tone of the game, and bring with it the downsides of all the WoW problems that the LFG created.

I have no problem with a flagging system. I have no problem with a suggested matching system. I do have a problem with cross-server bandaids on the fact that there still won't be enough tanks and healers to go around for lazy dps who can't or won't organize a group.

Global looking for group channel and an interface that shows groups looking for people and people looking for groups with options for specific instances or "any." Something easy to use. And honestly, companies need to get over the merging servers thing so there are people to group with.

Four person groups and boring healing classes is a recipe for disaster on grouping, but BW really doesn't seem concerned about about any of the MMO aspects of the game.

Sorry if this has been posted already, haven't been keeping up too much with this sub form, but here is an interview with Stephen Reid from Bioware about Launch/Headstart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCHgrEnkQ14&feature=relmfu (Total Biscuit interviewing)

Dunno about the others, but the Operative / smuggler healing system is actually really interesting and fun to play. It's just a shame that due to incredibly shiity talent design you don't really unlock its potential until level 30 or so - until then it just feels like you are playing half a class.

It's generally pretty easy to do all the instances while the population crest is moving through them. The value of an LFG system is magnified a lot after that time (which is partly why delayed launch is not as much fun).

 :Love_Letters:

I don't know about other folks, but the four person group limit is a god send to small friends and family guiilds. I t means my 8 person guild has enough folks on line to regularly run content, and maybe even raid content eventually.  Seriously, you want a cross server platform to gather 3 other people?  Join a guild of literally ANY size and you will have zero problems finding a group.

So far the game is well-tuned for levels and quests.  Alderan says it tops out at 32 and I just dinged 32 with the LAST quest there! (Might be bonus missions somewhere)

Did that more than once.  Of course my leveling is slowed down now that I'm really cranking out the crafting and trading on the GTN.

Merging low population servers doesn't change that the server population for a contemporary Diku past the first few months is almost all at level cap.  Servers will need to be many times larger to have enough players to run instances between the first one or two and the level cap ones with a mature game's level distribution.

To your point about four person groups, I disagree for the reason above.  I'll frequently get queues as damage on characters queued as healer+damage or tank+damage when running mid-level dungeons in WoW or Rift.  Lowering the group number does mean there need to be more healers and tanks per damage dealers (which is an issue at level cap) but reducing the group size helps everywhere else, both in mid-level flashpoints and in heroic/area quests.

As for boring healers, I've only played Operative but I'm enjoying it in spite of buggy Operations frames.  The mechanics are less complicated than what I'd play with in WoW or Rift, but the execution required as a result of variable energy regen makes it the most fun I've had in years.

No LFG won't stop the community from being shit, it'll only stop you from ever running the low-level flashpoints that aren't Esselles ever fucking again when almost everyone has hit cap 3 months from now.

I'll say that again since you seem to be in the denial phase of "MMO players are 99% shitheads" again for some reason: No LFG will absolutely NOT improve the community or prevent it from getting worse.

You're literally making the case for a slightly less retarded version of the retard-rocks from WoW. The only thing easier than spamming LFG is pushing a button and getting a group; it's just that the former usually takes a lot longer than the latter. Nothing inbetween that will work, as evidenced by the LFG flag thing that NO ONE IS USING.

The haters on the WoW LFG are forgetting just how fantastic it is for the leveling characters. You can make a decent argument that it is 'bad' at max level - I disagree but at least the argument is coherent. You really cannot make that argument for leveling characters; it is unequivocally a good thing for those characters. It's completely awesome for leveling in WoW and would be here too.

Especially after the initial rush of people is past. Leveling dungeons went from "barely done" to "easy to do, if you want, even as dps" with LFD.

This.  While LFD does give the lazy a somewhat 'free ride' at max level, it does make an enjoyable leveling process.

But I think we all agree that something is needed that's better than what we have right now.  As it stands, I feel like I stepped back into the days of command-line driven UIs like EQ and DAoC  :ye_gods:

Technically you really only need one other person, since so far I haven't had any issues doing anything with 2 players + 2 companions, even on 4-person missions.  And with companions able to do a variety of jobs, you don't need any specific role filled, generally - you can choose companions to fill those roles.  May not be viable in whatever passes for raids, but all the flashpoints I've done it's perfectly workable.  Anyone that's complaining they can't find one other person to play with...well, I'm not sure what I can say about someone like that.  Really, just outlevel them and come back later, you're obviously playing this like a single-player game if you can't find just one person to group with.
Considering that leveling characters isn't really the point here, and you'll get there just by doing all your quests anyway, this function of an LFD system is completely pointless.  The 'point' in WoW is to get to max level so you can get to the 'real' game.  The 'point' in SWTOR is to play the story, so leveling characters don't actually gain any benefit from flashpoint leveling.  Sure, you can level that way, just like you could theoretically level by doing nothing but space missions, but the game isn't and shouldn't be designed specifically to support (and especially not encourage) that playstyle.

TOR is a dikuclone. It's not a special snowflake. It just has a somewhat better leveling experience than the alternatives. if you think the point won't be to get to max level "where the real game starts" after the release rush ends, you're simply not paying attention. Otherwise, customers will level up a couple alts and then quit the game.

Mouth-breathers pushing back on LFD sound like the forum-dwelling mongoloids arguing against mods because recount exposed their brain damage. These tools are popular because they're good. Players like them. Players rely on them. They make the game better. Any alternative to LFD must actually be superior to LFD and accepted by players as such.

Flagging for LFG, LFG channels, meeting stones, etc, are not improvements. They are all proven failures.

Is it possible to improve on WoW's grouping system? Of course! Off the top of my head... you could work up some sort of persistent "player reputation" feature to reward good players by getting them in groups more quickly, or to reward more loot. You could build content for groups of 2 DPS, or multiple tanks, or tailored to specific classes. You could create solo instances that expand into group instances and then finally into raids. Any empty slots could be filled by companions and/or NPCs, allowing even solo non-guilded players to see content otherwise unavailable. You could allow players to queue specifically for multiple pieces of content, rather than restricting them to one or random, and give the same rewards.

The game should be built to "support" whatever playstyles customers enjoy. If players love PvP, they should be able to level via warzones. Same with space combat. If these activities aren't rewarding (and rewarding is defined by being just as legitimate, valid, and fast as other alternatives) people won't do them, even if they enjoy them, and you just wasted all that time developing a feature that will never be used. This fact is probably surprising to the numbnuts on the TOR forums, but it's isn't exactly a secret amongst the MMO cognoscenti, so to speak, and the fact that a poster on f13 doesn't know it is a bit disheartening.

So people aren't allowed to dislike the WoW style LFG tool?  Good to know!  God knows, I'd hate to find myself out of step with public opinion.

When you can describe a superior alternative that players will accept, you'll have a supportable position.

The judges are generous today, and will accept an alternative that passes the initial smell test and hasn't already been tried and proven a failure. Can you think of one?

Also, I just thought of another improvement-- when you step into an instanced area in TOR, treat that as queuing for that specific content, and match up with other players in your server cluster. No more "/1 LFG for bantha's trousers and spice spice baby PST". Wouldn't that be nifty?

You only need to find three other people.  Hell, I did Boarding Party (quest is lv. 33) as a lv. 36, with another 36 and a 35, and we got all the way to the last boss encounter with a companion as our only healer.  Besides that, gear is easy enough to get through commendations, crafting, or quest rewards, that you don't need to hit all the Flashpoints as you're leveling, and if you miss one and want to do it for the story, you can always do the hard mode version when you get to lv. 50.

Those tools are popular because a certain hardcore segment of the population likes to use them to play a certain way and beat the rest of the population upside the head with the data.  LOTRO has neither an advanced LFG mechanism, damage parser or extensively modifiable UI and it is a terrific game.  The fact that folks prefer this model to WoW does not mean they are "forum-dwelling mongoloids": they just have a different opinion than you.

Honestly your post illustrates precisely what is wrong with WoW and why casual and friends and family groups are fleeing that game in droves.  

While I agree. Sidekicking would be even better.

Flashpoints in SWTOR currently have a window of just a few hours in the levelling process where you can conceivably play them.

I'm all for cross server matchmaking, but sidekicking so I can play them with the people I actually want to play them with either before or after the tiny level-appropriate window, seems like a much higher priority.

Basically EA need to finish the god damn game before the shiny wears off.

No, it shouldn't be built to support whatever playstyles customers enjoy.  It should be built with a specific idea and concept in mind, or else it tries to do everything and therefore does nothing well. 

It's true that you shouldn't waste time developing features that won't be used, though.  That doesn't mean you should develop a whole bunch of features and ensure they're used - it means you should be selective about what features you put into the game in the first place, so you don't waste time developing a feature that doesn't fit with the concept and idea of the game.  SWTOR's concept is clear: Standard BioWare RPG with lots of players.  And to stick to that concept, no LFD system is needed.

Now, on the topic of sidekicking - I'm not sure if that would be ideal, but certainly mentoring down would be entirely beneficial.  Sidekicking up might present potential issues of seeing content 'out of sequence' where a low level character does something before doing those things leading up to it, but I'm not sure on that since I haven't seen everything yet.  Maybe that wouldn't be an issue, or there's a way around the problem.  Regardless, mentoring down would definitely be something good to implement.

Also, on the general topic of things going right and wrong with launch, I have been experiencing a major annoyance: UI problems.  Even setting aside the lack of basic functionality that all games should have (specifically, being able to move around UI elements to arrange them how you want) the chat window seems to have some major bugs with additional tabs.  And there's the problem with 'show sith corruption' not sticking, therefore needing to be manually reset every time I zone.  Hopefully they can get these UI problems solved soon, as they're some of the most generally annoying issues thus far.