I don't know. I didn't read any of the other responses. Were they complaining about the fleet spam? Were they complaining about being infected against their will? Other? Fleet Spam: In my opinion, that's just an ad for the event, not the event itself. It was annoying, but it didn't affect my gameplay in any fashion. It's not like CDC agents periodically swarmed the fleet, quarantining random NPCs for a period of time to isolate a plague outbreak. Now that would have been cool--and annoying to some people. ("Oh noes! Can't buy speeder *right now* cause speeder guy has the hiv!" Plague-griefing: I fail to see how that was a big deal. I think the people complaining about that are overly sensitive and in need of a grip. What exactly was the detrimental effect of this "devastating" plague? For all the hysterics on the news you'd think being infected would affect people's gameplay in a noticable fashion, maybe a progressive stat or move speed reduction, periodic boughts of blindness or stunning, horrific coughing fits that disarmed you. Being infected was no big deal. All in all, I spent maybe 2 hours on Tatooine, exploded once, left for the day, and never returned. The rest of my time during the event was spent on fleet, in WZs and doing dailies. I saw some people cough, I heard some people explode, I listened to the ad--and none of it had any effect on my time playing SWToR that week. I was mildly annoyed by the announcement, but over all the event was practically invisible to me. I understand that some folks are more sensitive to intrusive elements in their gameplay, but the event failed to engage me let alone interfere with or alter my SWToR experience to any meaningful degree. For me this event failed to deliver anything other than the standard MMO fare--boring, repeatable quests and a reward vendor.

To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed. When I think of "in-game events" I think of things that impact your normal gameplay in a significant fashion. As far as I can tell, this "event" was just a series of quests on a single planet. It could be active all the time and it wouldn't change the game significantly. The biggest impact this event had was on the forums where it spawned epic threads decrying infection griefing on the fleets and something about pvp being ruined or whatever. As an example of a truly impressive in-game event, take Amarthiel's invasion of the North in LoTRO. With their first expansion on the horizon, Turbine decided to wrap-up the storyline of their initial release in epic fashion. The main antagonist Amarthiel made random appearances across the land smiting the PCs directly or spawning enemies to attack them. And it wasn't just some random mob. Amarthiel was a GM-controlled avatar that would interact with the players. You could taunt her, challenge her to a duel, bow down before her, send her love letters, beg her for mercy, etc. My fondest memory from LoTRO was while waiting at the Ranger camp in Angmar for a Rift raid to form up. I decided to ride down to the Rift ahead of the raid so I could /afk at the entrance while the straglers arrived. As soon as a I began the descent, I saw a solitary figure striding confidently up the path towards the Ranger camp. It was Amarthiel. Now, bear in mind, I have a huge crush on Amarthiel so I immediately raced forward to lay myself at her feet--and with a flick of her wrist she struck me down! She walked right past me and summoned hordes of trolls and uruk-hai to swarm the camp. I was defeated from the start and missed the whole battle, but it was a blast watching the fight unfold as my kinmates struggled to push Amarthiel back. A less staff-intensive example of a good world event comes from EQ2. As a lead-in to the Kingdom of Sky expansion, ruined portals to the "realms above" were discovered across the land and a project to rebuild them commenced. Players gathered resources, crafted materials, and otherwise contributed to the reconstruction of the portals. When one was finally completed, a dragon descended to destroy the portal and prevent the uppity humanoids from ascending. The dragon was a raid boss and it wreaked havoc on the people rebuilding the portal as well as the ones who had just gathered to witness the finished construction. But the word got out and raids formed up to deal with the dragon. Once people knew to expect a dragon, raid guilds would form up at nearly-complete portals to try to get first crack at the dragon (and the title you got for defeating it). It was quite the show, hundreds of people standing around a portal, some waiting to pull the dragon, others just waiting to watch the action. I guess my point is, if you're going to have a special in-game event, you might as well go all out on it. This plague thing was just small-scale and easily ignored.

Fixed it for you.

I actually had a hell of a time with Zash, much more difficult than any of the other fights in that line (I'm done with it) or the trooper (Voss) or knight (tatooine) lines. I think it was a combination of level (30 or 31) and trying to decide what to interupt. She has at least 3 inductions including a heal. It was like, "gee, do I interupt force storm or wait for force blast in 2 seconds--or wait for revivication a second after that?" I wound up leaving, gaining a level, upgrading some gear and then beating her on the first try when I returned. Good luck!

Yep, there's an option to enable companion comparative tooltips. I think it's under Interface options, but I'm not at my gaming computer so I can't double check right now.

That's nice, dear.

Grats! You managed to read definition 1 of faith off of dictionary.com. Here's definition 2: "belief that is not based on proof"

You do realize, uh.. that destroying all the, uh.. Jedi, uh.. isn't, uh.. all that impressive, uh.. given, uh.. how weak the force, uh.. is.. Maybe Vader, uh.. hired a bunch of, uh.. professional wrestlers, uh.. to toss all the Jedi, uh.. into reactor, uh.. cores.. Why, uh.. do we need, uh.. a Death Star, uh.. if the Emperor can, uh.. destroy, uh.. planets all by himself, uh.. Face it, uh.. little to nothing about the force in the Star Wars universe is consistent with the original series. The original series set "the rules" for the force which everyone since then decided to break because the force wasn't "cool" enough--gotta appeal to the hip kiddies, yo! PS- Faith is believing in something you can't prove.

The reason the prequel fights are more "cinematic" is because they can be, not because they should be. Sometime after RotJ, the Force got an overhaul. Originally it was meant to be mysterious and subtle. Witness the lack of respect Vader gets from the Imperials. These are people who view the force the same way most people view voodoo. They aren't afraid he'll blow up a planet or crash their ship into a star or any other ridiculous thing force users do now. He's a witch doctor with his voodoo dolls and hexes. The emperor's force lightning is a demonstrable effect, the equivalent of raising a zombie. It's meant to be the be all and end all of force powers: the one undeniable manifestation of the force's existance. The prequels and books and video games are all corruptions of the original message of the force: Faith is power. There's no need for faith when every idiot in the universe is tossing star destroyers around like pillows or force leaping skyscrapers or frying legions of droids with force lightning. So . . . someone not named Lucas should remake the prequels to be in line with the originals, not the other way around.

The number in parentheses is the character level needed to use the mod. In this case, you'd have to be at least 22nd level to wear a piece of gear with that armoring mod in it. Cunning +5 or Endurance +7 or whatever are just the extra stats the mod gives you. For instance a Commando Armoring (22) might give you Armor Rating 15, Aim +11 and Endurance +5. In general the higher level the mod, the better stats it'll have. It might help to go into Options (somewhere) and select "Show all Stats" or something like that. With that on, when you mouseover an orange item it'll show you the exact stats of each mod in it.

Maybe you have to select a different companion rather than just send your current one on a mission--the game assumes you've got a companion with you and uses your last selected companion if none is physically present. Or it could just be bugged.

"ZOMG! Publicity stunt!" - Who cares? Pretty cool event either way. "ZOMG! Stop ignoring all the thoughtful, comprehensive feedback on the forums!" - a) 99% of the posters here are rage-fueled idiots. b) 99% of people who play an MMO don't use their game's forums. c) MMOs are kinda complex, and forums don't lend themselves well to the "discussion" of complex subjects. (They do work well for spewing one-sided, vitriolic, moronic screeds, though.) "ZOMG! Why not me? I'm so special!" - No, you're not. Mr. Rogers lied. You're not born special. Specialness is not thrust upon you. You have to become special through your deeds. Anyway, someone shoot me the schedule. I plan on attending just to hang out after hours. Maybe we can turn this into a full-blown event, a la Fanfaire.

This thread is awesome! At least now I know where all the sand from coastal erosion goes.

One of the things another (non-WoW) MMO does is allow you to save multiple graphics setting profiles. That way you could have, say, a "regular" profile with middle of the road graphics options for general gameplay, a "super" profile with everything maxed for taking screenshots or just showing the game off, and a "claymation" profile for raiding, etc.

Yeah, the 2-window-max thing is probably what bothers me the most. Plus the windows open in predefined spots in the order they're opened so depending on what I'm doing, sometimes my inventory's here and sometimes it's over here instead. Oh, and open the map while you're doing anything? Your other windows close. The map doesn't appear on top of them, it closes them. Four quickslots might be enough, but why can't we place them all at the bottom? Side slots are cute and all, but they're only good for non-essential stuff. Also, I like to use empty slots as visual cues between different types of skills (direct attacks, cc, aoes, heals, etc.). Two bars doesn't give enough room for that. All in all, this UI is worse than the one in Oblivion.