I more than understand that hesitance to speak when you either don't have much information to say or when your gut's telling you what you do have to say's not going to go over well. I remember when the Bioware forums were around that at times it seemed like any of the community team couldn't even comment on the weather without getting raged at. But just letting us know anything whether it's a 'we're looking at it' or something more detailed is always going to be better than silence. Case in point, a couple of years ago I bought a Meditation Chamber from the Cartel Market that ended up bugged where it would bind to the character but not show up in collections. I checked the forums and saw a lot of others having the same issue. I filed a ticket and customer service directed me to file a bug report with tech. I heard nothing since then and would occasionally check if the issue got resolved by seeing if it would eventually unlock to collections. It wasn't until last month it finally did so I could unlock it for account. While I'm happy it did eventually get fixed, it would've been nice at any point to've gotten some notice or email letting me know that my bug report was still open or that they were still working on it. I do like the idea of sending everyone a survey for a full out feedback response to get an idea of the state of the game and what people are wanting. I'd say even make sure people who've cancelled and not come back even get one since for all we know might be enough for them to return and see what changes happen. I'd also like to see once surveys go out, another infostats post or graphic so we can see the state of the game as well like the one that was posted some years back with what classes get played, what content's played and so forth.

I would love to see anything along those lines made available. Best we can piece together is the original Sith culture was militaristic with a caste system so we can guess that they would likely hold concepts like honor and duty as important. Since the Jedi and Dark Jedi are the big stickler's for an interpretation of a Light side and Dark side, for all we know the original Sith interpretation of the Force is just a really useful tool to accomplish things with whether it's seen as good or bad being dependent on it's usage. For example using the Force to shape an animal to be a better beast of burden for one's settlement would be seen as good, but turning that animal on an enemy would be seen as bad from that enemy's perspective.

Will the issue regarding the duplicate companion with the correct influence level being removed be addressed with this patch or is that still a work in progress?

I had originally planned on skipping the Zakuul stuff except for what came out after Throne just because I know after a certain point I'll be fried out on it, but with the choices made for autocompleting not fitting what my respective characters would take, I've been prepping to get as much done before taking the Zakuul plunge. Part of that's finally getting my Legacy banks in order of which like two and a half tabs have been nothing but stockpiled gifts I've picked up from rewards and crew skills. My Quinns are about to hit the 30 mark from just clearing out room from gifts, companions I like are around 15-20 and I left the ones I don't like wherever influence they're at. Even though I've never bought gifts off the GTN, I'd be miffed if I lost a companion I spent those gifts on. I figure by the time I'm ready to start the Zakuul stuff, hopefully they'll have the companion issue resolved since I know with my luck, I'll be the one to lose a companion I didn't want to through some new glitch.

Going from what I've read on the removed companion thing, it does seem connected with skipping part or all of KotFE/ET up to Ossus. Considering what I've also read about thier being two coded versions of the companions in the system which changes from the originals to newer with the Zakuul content, it has to be something not ticking where it should when that content's skipped.

I do have an Inquisitor who's stayed single in hopes of getting a little more personal with Talos. She's more of the Knowledge is Power and More Power's More Better type so they'd work out well as a couple of history nerds going off on digs together or honeymooning exploring old Sith ruins.

This isn't the first time I've heard the theory that there's something going on behind the scenes. Only logic I can see as to why there's not a conspiracy is this is Bioware, it's long known that the playerbase for it's games have been more diverse than the standard video games player stereotype and they'd know they'd be hurting themselves. With that said though, I can definitely see them being a bit clueless, short sighted and fumbling when it comes to making adjustments the playerbase wants. Case in point, Dragon Age 2 had the DLC where your character can meet an elf prostitute who talks as if the two of you had met before at a brothel. Players thought this was possibly bugged since the dialog popped whether you did go to the brothel or not, and it ended up that it wasn't bugged. The writers/devs genuinely didn't think that anyone not only would not have gone to the brothel, but that they'd definitely take the elf prostitute option. Here in SWTOR, the devs were majorly surprised that a substantial amount of players wanted to side with Darth Malgus during the Illum content since they felt Imperials would be all DS options and Republic would always be hating on the Empire. I can see Bioware not thinking of backup plans for if the real life situation changes and they can't provide the same level of content as they've had and winging it the best they can. I can see them pinning hopes on Koth, Lana, and Theron being enough to soothe any upset if they weren't able to return all the classic companions. I can see them hoping the ambitiousness they were taking with KotFE/ET would be enough and scrambling when the content wasn't as well received with a sizeable chunk of the playerbase and taking the route of short sighted choices such as 'players want to kill off Koth so let's give it to them' and then opening that can of worms of allowing LIs to be killed off. After all, look how long people have been kvetching about wanting to kill off Quinn. I can see them planning on still doing content for companions who can be killed off but hitting the stump of when it comes down to crunch time for releasing content, it's easier to rationalize 'skip content for a companion since not everyone'll have them' until it's down to the only one without a kill option is Lana and people know all bets are off once she's given a kill option. Lanamancers have seen what we complain about and don't want to have that happen to them, and Bioware's in that bind of not wanting to set off another segment of the playerbase as they have us. After all that said, the situation is still somewhat salvageable. Doing the companion emails are a good way for us to not feel like we're being cast aside and they've been well recieved. In addition to the standard expansions, they can also do chapter/mini expansions centered around a particular LI. For example, we can do do a short spy mission or two with Theron with some personal time between him and our characters.

I snapped that one up last year and it's not bad at all. My only complaint is that first chapter's still penned by one of the Dark Jedi and filtered through her perspective. To the History Major in me, it's the equivalent of the account written by the Roman trader about those pants wearing hairy barbarians they saw on thier last trip. It's a pretty close compared to something written centuries later but not quite on par of a person of that culture's documentation.

I've often wondered what happens if you bought an item like an armor set in good faith off the GTN and it turned out it was a duped item. Do they take it from you or what?

Back when I started with online gaming, I always treated it the same as anything online with hiding anything remotely identifiable about yourself even to the point of not even using a voice chat just on the chance anyone online could be some maniac who'd track you down and leave you dead in a ditch somewhere. I know this isn't normal, but my family's always one to automatically think the worst so when it doesn't happen, then you can be genuinely happy. It wasn't until years later when at a past job talking with my co-workers we all found out we all were playing WoW Hordeside and ended up forming a work guild. Made for some interesting times when we couldn't have a team meeting at work due to scheduling so we'd have it in WoW while running something. I still laugh at getting told how my phone stats were with a need to work on my call times and keep an eye on my threat since it's getting up there. That was the start of my opening up a bit once I got to know guildies better. It's ended up with friendships that have lasted past our time with a particular game, we're facebook friends and keep in touch to the point if I go over to Europe, I'll have places to stay and people to show me around same as if they come to America, they're welcome to crash at my place and I'll be happy to show them around. Stateside we've had get togethers for the hell of it. We mail each other for birthdays and holidays with gifts and cards, and I've even gone to a few weddings. Last one was for my old Raiding guild leader from WoW and yeah, he introduced me and my fiance to her as 'zombie DPS and Orc tank'. As I get up in age, I have made a list of phone numbers and emails of my online friends so if something happens, my family knows who to get in touch with. My eventual funeral's going to be a wierd one with my family sharing stories and my friends sharing 'there we were in a game' stories.

Apologies for the thread-necro but I just noticed it. I agree that how Sith are portrayed could be so much more complex and detailed compared to what we have in game. Starting with the Sith species, they had a thriving albeit militaristic culture before getting first enslaved by the Rakata and later by the Dark Jedi who ramped things up with mind control and genetic manipulation to breed out traits like empathy to mold the Sith species to be more like them, then start breeding with them to harness how naturally strong with the Force they were. What we mostly see if the Sith: The Order, it's just built off the Dark Jedis equivalent of a teen's rebellious overreaction which has pretty much obliterated any perception of Sith: The Species as having once had its own culture. Not helping either is the Jedi inability to deal with any culture's interpretation of the Force which isn't thier own and reinforcing the concept of Sith: The People = Sith: The Order. I'd be very curious to see more of what a culture that had it's own interpretation of the Force shaped by a people where everyone had some degree of ability with it as well as being able to sustain themselves from it as if it were food. So far we've only seen a little of the Sith Pureblood fear of becoming extinct with Lord Abbadon's quest on Korriban, the Red Reaper flashpoint, and dialog like Lord Praven's about the Jedi wanting to genocide the Sith people.

Last one I remember, it started on Samus' gender and then mushroomed into how good/lousy the various Metroid games have been.

Oh you are not wierd, there's plenty of us horror fans out there in all flavors. I'm a little more partial to the older ones since it seems there's a better chance of coming across a well written one. My top fave is Pale Luna because I remember the software swaps from back in the day and that adds a layer of 'I can see this actually happening' angle to it. I haven't watched much on Youtube since I'm more into the short horror films. The Local58 series is my top fave.

I started playing after f2p was announced but before it actually started. I really wasn't originally interested in the game but my fiance's a Founder and I guess I spent more time than I thought looking over his shoulder when he was playing to the point he surprised me with getting a copy set up on my computer with a month sub so all I had to do was change the password and just start playing. Since then, I've been on and off with the game depending on real life situation and interest. If they ever offered a Lifetime Sub, I would buy it without question since unlike other games I've dropped, I always keep coming back to this one. My first character was a Cyborg SW that I think only made it up to Balmorra before I deleted her for some reason. I'm currently at a total of 16 characters, one of each class on two servers. Used to be more but with what server consolidations/mergers over the years, I crunch things down to 8 a server. My favorites are the Imperial classes and the Smuggler because I've always felt like everything we see in the franchise is filtered through the Republic/Rebellion/Jedi perspective and this game offers something different. I play LS leaning on all my roster just because I can't bring myself to take the Stupid Evil choices that so much of the DS options are. Most of my roster are Sith Purebloods just because I find them fascinating.

On my first Inquisitor, I was very let down that there was only the one flirt with Talos and it went nowhere. They would've been a great couple nerding it out over Sith history.