... not sure what the word "Celebration" means at BW, because I'm not seeing much. I still have fireworks from the first two anniversaries. I have all of the pets that have been sent out. All of the vehicles. This last year, there was a ship model, and ... that's about it. This feels like the anniversary that was completely forgotten, and then a token gift picked up at the gas station on the way home. I get it that y'all are on a skeleton crew, working on a game built on code that probably can't be upgraded or even optimized due to support for it no longer being available. But if you guys are planning on sunsetting a game, please, Just Say So! We don't need another City of Heroes, where the company running the game basically says "yeah, ok, that's it, we're turning the servers off in a month. Bye." There's still a lot of pain around how that was handled (I haven't so much as touched an NCSoft game since.) As for the 'Vision'... it's time to Read The Room. If your vision for the game is contrary to what the players want to play, then congrats, you now have your own private instance of SWTOR to mess with, cos there won't be anyone else playing it. No subscriptions, no Cartel Coin purchases. No reviews (good or bad). No one following the Youtube channel, or Twitter, or wherever. I started playing this game as a beta tester. Collector's Edition, preorder. I'm the old cranky one in the back, growing old as this game grows old. And no amount of new players can make up for losing the old players. Trust me on that one. --------------------------------------------------

You know, I'd probably be used to seeing balance changes when I come back to playing after a hiatus. This "expansion" (let's face it, it's barely another couple of chapters) was so overhyped, with the alternate powersets, that yeah, I decided, hey, lets actually use that subscription I've been letting charge my account for the past year. Oh. My. Word. What have they DONE? Companions aren't just gimped, they're practically useless unless you actually have some attunement levels on them. Which means one-off companions forced on you by specific instances (Malgus, anyone?) are SO gimped by their L1 attunement that they're barely more than placeholders. Healing = better grab the aggro and keep it or you lose your healer in one shot... but they're not healing worth a plug nickel so if you do that, it's faceplant city and a medical droid. Tanking - same deal, you MIGHT stay upright for a third of the fight instead of just the opening salvo. DPS? Do the words "Glass Cannon" come to mind? Yeah, that. What do I have to do, research all the gifts that Malgus likes, and then empty my legacy stores AND my credit balance getting him to level 10 so he's not useless??? This is ridiculous. He's an Epic Character. He should be able to hold his own against a bunch of pacifist Jedi archeologists and scholars. And then I decided, hey maybe it's just high-end content, let's try rolling a new character and see what the early levels look like. Oh. My. Word, What fresh hell is THIS?? Power/abilities progression = huh? The starting planet levels, where new players (remember "new players"? they're the ones that bring this thing called "more money" into a game) would be trained how to manage aggro, how to manage crowd control and the like. No New Abilities past the first two for Nine. Levels. You're off the starting planet before you get past spamming a blaster or swinging a practice sword, and occasionally triggering something with a long cooldown. No newbie is going to find that fun, or engaging. They're going to say "This is a grind like all the other bad MMO's. Oh, if I don't subscribe, my XP is gimped, so it's twice of a grind. Forget it." And then they'll go back to WoW or FFXIV or Black Desert, where at least they get decent mechanics and some fanservice to look at. Or they'll go play Star Trek Online, which is the major competitor to SWTOR in the MMO space, also being a sci-fi based MMO... and find that it's balanced, and fun, and not gimped to unplayability. This is a stain on the Star Wars brand. A BIG stain. Honestly, if the devs don't sit up and take notice of what the players are telling them, this game is ready to have the plug pulled. And I honestly hope it doesn't come to that. I have enjoyed SWTOR since it was in beta. I may have gotten a bit ... vocal... about the way Space Battles were implemented, or Galactic Starfighter, or PvP over the years. But it's always been a great story that with a bit of effort was easily progressed, which means it was engaging. Now? If you can't get past a stage because the mobs are OP and the companions are basically rodeo clowns with no barrels to hide inside... the story ends. If you can't get engaged by the gameplay right out of the gate, there is no story to be told in the first place.

Thread necro: Gault: Ever heard of Hylo Vyz? Male BH: Uhm, she was some kind of spacer, right? Gault: Sure if you're into massive understatements. She broke the Mandalorean Blockade blah blah blah... and not because of altruism, she got paid a LOT of credits. Male BH response: "Oh. Is she single?" Mako (in bg) "I heard that!" Gault: (looks grumpy, goes on to reveal Hylo was his partner AND his wife and how he screwed her on the payoff after the Blockade deal). ------------------ Gault's "win the fight" lines are awesome: "I'll be signing autographs once the smoke clears."

Statement: The game has been both fun and challenging since I started playing in late Beta. Thank you. Assertion: SW:TOR will kick Cyberpunk:2077's implant-riddled meatbag butt in terms of longevity.

None. I'm aiming to seduce *ahem* recruit Empress Acina to my side.

The game studios would love to get cheaper rates, but then you take a hit in quality. There was a Comic-Con voice panel a few years back, where they all took turns reading the SW: A New Hope script, using voices they'd done before in cartoons and such. It's hilarious, but it also illustrates something - these folks have to make their voices their CHARACTERS, and not just 'talk normal.' And they have to stay consistent, from reading to reading. AND they have to keep themselves from stressing their vocal cords. Think of someone who hauls furniture for a living. They get paid by the hour, but only if they're actually hired for a job - the rest of the time they sit around waiting, not collecting pay. There's a high risk of injury, and an even higher risk of chronic problems developing over time, which they are not insured against or provided treatment for. You think a hundred and fifty bucks is too much to pay for that delivery? Your brother could do it for a six pack? Right, that hundred and fifty gets split three ways, after the truck company takes their cut for gas, truck maintenance, and profit. Each one of those dudes might be able to get a few beers with their share. This is why, when I read the comments from people who say "X makes too damn much money" or "They should get cheaper people, it's not hard", I just shake my head. A lot of us DO live on a shoestring. A lot of us would love to get $850 for four hours work. A lot of us apparently have no clue how much these people have worked, how much training they've gotten, how much they've paid to actually BE a decent VO artist... how much THEY may be living on a shoestring. I looked into broadcasting school once. The cost was insane, simply to teach you how to talk clearly over a radio mike, and not stammer when you hear the playback delayed a few seconds. I've done radio ops before, but thankfully didn't have to hear my own transmissions, else I'd have been a wreck. So... I support these folks. Those that don't... I welcome you to try to get into the same industry. Come back and comment when you've made your play, success or not.

THIS! This this this. (I know there's a "lean on lightpost" toy, but the emote would be stellar.) Also: Can we get a 'take a drink of something" emote WITHOUT the 'raise a toast' text? The Smuggler "Who, me?" emote ("Who's scruffy-lookin'?") As for the newest "toy" where you carve the crap out of it with a lightsaber... can Non-Force Users get a different one, where one pulls out a blaster and shoots the damned thing? "Uhhh...-POW!- Boring conversation anyway. LUKE!" Speaking of the Force... how about the "Jedi Mind Trick" handwave?

The Jadus encounter at the end of Act I has been bugged (in some form or another) since launch. My first agent got to deal with invisible floors and objects on the bridge of his ship (making him untargetable unless you were up close) which made life as a sniper... "difficult". You would think that with this specific encounter's track record with bugs, someone at Bioware or EA would be saying "No more bugs in Class Story Chapter Endings". Doubly so when they push for 12x XP and getting people leveled quickly by means of class quests only. Oh yes. let's not forget, legendary achievement = every player must level up an Agent, and thus must go thru this encounter. In other words, before it was only those interested in playing Agents, now it's practically every player who gets exposed to Glaring Bugs In The Production Code. I suppose since this is a quote bonus quest unquote it's not on the Quality Control people's radar. It SHOULD BE.

Going from the large payload of previous packs to the two-item payload of these new ones, it feels... cheap. Even though the items themselves are likely worth more in aggregate than all the old stuff, it still doesn't seem worth the CC price to get them. Granted, I won't miss all of the boosts I never used (Warzone and Space) and the ones I only used rarely, but the general XP and the social boosts were useful and I do miss them. The Jawa scrap was also useful, but actually a bit TOO plentiful as filler, so that's a mixed bag. The rep items? those seemed to be a way to simply earn the ability to buy things outright, and as such, seperated the haves from the have-nots. I would expect missions, mats, crafting or comms would be better in terms of trading for these cartel-only items. Once you'd maxed rep... they were placeholders. Dye packs in crates were usually good, as opposed to the dye pack crate itself, which nearly always is a disappointment payload-wise, and frankly can be done away with. With the smaller payload, I don't feel like I have to have a completely empty inventory to get thru a hypercrate anymore. But at the same time, with only two items per crate, the odds of getting stuff is still pretty bad. As above, quite a few filler items, not much in the way of worthwhile things. The supercrates are to me just a middle-of-the-road compromise to get people to spend CC's on crates when they haven't the real-world pull to spend $50 to $100 on cc's to snag hypercrates. I'll likely still buy them, just not nearly as many, doubly so now that all of the old crates have been embargoed. There's MUCH less variety when you only have one crate type on the market, as opposed to six. So I'll likely save my cc's for something else that I want, or, blow some on the NEXT hypercrate that gets released... open that, hold off on more until the next series, etc etc. They look fun. Animation and FX departments earned their kudos. Just see above.

I support this. Yes yes yes.

Band items (microphones, large standing instruments). holographic dancer poles. Circular bar arrangements with seats around the outside. a dejarik table that you can actually sit at and activate (like the toy). A pazaak table that you can sit at, deal cards, with poses in the seats (like starship seats, only they are 'card-holding' poses. more varied customers/enforcers.

The derpishness is strong in this thread. Cover me, I'll handle it myself. IF... there are decimal points in the per-unit price, then it's a stack, and you're not paying for one unit. Pay attention to the LISTING price. You know, the whole number that you're going to be paying. any time I see mats listed at insanely high prices, i figure it's a gold seller trying to deliver.

Considering that I use packs to replenish my auction material, I find the boosts (except for global XP and social) to be nigh on worthless, as well as the rep items past the first hyperpack's worth. Nearly everything else is useful somehow, either to boost companion affection or to trade for mats. But yes, the actual item drops are pretty crappy. the armor 'sets' are of course only partial, so the chances of actually assembling a complete set are waaay low. as for decorations, I tend to get overloaded on certain items and never see anything really interesting. So... while the system is definitely a 'gamble', I find that it is often a losing proposition to spend $30 worth of cartel coins on something that might ... might... have something unique and interesting inside. however, most of my characters are worth a few million credits because of what i auction off. Some of it I simply hold until the pack is embargoed, but... that doesn't happen any longer either. So, not sure if I'll keep throwing discretionary funds at CC's for packs. I'll use them to get other stuff. As for dyes... I've got many more good dyes from the cartel packs than the dye packs. Haven't got any of those in a long time.

while the /airdrums solo is fun indeed, we need something to keep time with the rest of the band, perhaps just /drums? also, a less frenetic /sing emote would be nice too, maybe more backup singer hip-swaying while holding a microphone. lastly, what's the instrument max reebo plays? the keyboard thingy. need that.

Since the strategy for the fight's been covered, I have to ask, what kind of resources are you dedicating to your WINE emulator? If you have the ability to do so, I would look into boosting RAM allocation and processor priority for the emulator, as well as looking into driver updates. Not knowing what kind of GFX card your Mac is equipped with, I'm thinking WINE may have to do a lot of heavy lifting to even render the game. Lastly, if you're running into problems running full-screen, run it in a window and shrink it down, this will give the GFX routine less pixels (in both x and y directions) to manage and you might, maybe, be able to keep it from crashing mid-fight.