That solved it perfectly! Thanks very much for the help!

Hi Guys, I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but if so I couldn't find a thread that looked quite like mine. First, some background - I haven't played the game in about 3 months or so. I was in the middle of the KOTFE storyline and events in life (a separation) forced me not to play for awhile. Last night I finally decided to log back in. The game patched before I launched. I'm not sure *how* many patches have been applied since the last time I logged in. After the game launched, the KOTFE image pops up on the screen briefly...then vanishes, to be replaced by a spinning "loading" icon. It will stay that way forever. I can't Alt-Tab out, hit escape, nothing. The only thing I can do is press Alt-Ctrl-Delete, and click on "Task Manager." As soon as I do, the KOTFE image pops back up, the character select screen appears, and I can now get into the game. Has anybody else experienced this? If so, do you know of a way around it? I really don't want to have to bring up the task manager every time just to force the game to load.

Please, PLEASE make the new music available for purchase? I'm hoping there's a lot of new music, and I really dig the music when approaching the Eternal Throne.

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/omq

I'm a little irritated that this thread has been threadjacked, so I want to make something clear: This thread is NOT intended to be another thread where Story and Lore people (and casuals) get into spats with those who favor Warzones and Ops. To Recap: I'm one of those guys who would be considered a casual PLAYER (but a die hard fan and hardcore lore guy.) That said - I'm casual because my life forces me to be. I want to make ABSOLUTELY CRYSTAL CLEAR: I made this thread because I SYMPATHIZE with the folks who are warzone and operations fans! With that stated, I want to frame the discussion this way: First, regarding PVP: I am not a PVP player. Never have been, probably never will be. Even so, I think Warzone players have a very legitimate beef. Going this long without updates, having the preseason and other seasons mishandled, having your 8v8's taken away, and the ongoing rage fests about class balance seem fairly ridiculous. Second, regarding Operations Players: While I undersatnd that some people really enjoy grinding away at challenging Ops, it's a mindset that I've never really understood. I don't get the appeal of constantly replaying content just for upgraded gear and bragging rights. Even so, I understand it's a playstyle that a certain subset enjoys, and I think they're entitled to continue to see some support. Understanding these things, I want the Operations and Warzone players in this thread to try and meet me halfway in my thinking. I feel that there's a lot of people making some pretty wild claims about how much Ops and Warzones contribute to subscriber retention. But, for the sake of argument, I'll agree to some wild figures. My *suspcion* is that the rough amount of the paying subscriber playerbase that are dedicated PVP or Operations players is somewhere between 2-5%. (This is mostly guesswork, but also based on statements made by Bioware both informally and in other statements regarding their metrics.) I'll even concede that you can discount the metrics if you believe that confirmation bias is playing a part - and that the reason the numbers of Operations and Warzone participation being so low is because Bioware have ignored and/or crippled those portions of the game. So - lets' say that I agree that the story/lore players make up 60% of the paying subscriber population, and Operations/PVP players make up the remaining 40%. I think anybody could agree these numbers are MORE than fair. From the Story/Lore side of the house, we have ALSO felt neglected. Yes, we got expansions - Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadows of Revan DID expand the story/lore side of things, but (as happy as I was to get these updates) they did not live up to the initial game launch. After all, what could? I think the biggest mistake that Bioware made at launch (short of launching prematurely without critical systems in place) was that they had grossly underestimated how quickly consumers would grind the content and reach endgame. I'll concede that this lack of endgame content and lack of replayability is what drove such massive subscriber drops shortly after launch. But here's what I suspect Bioware found in their metrics and feedback: Firstly, the overwhelming subscriber base requests were expanded class story and non-gated story content. Secondly, I'll bet that what they found most interesting was that the metrics bore out that when expansions were launched, lapsed subscribers came back, I'm betting in significant numbers. Sure, they may've left after the finished story content, but the point was, they DID come back. So...knowing that....I think Bioware has massively frontloaded the amount of content in KOTFE. If each of the chapters in the new expansion is midway between the size of Ziost and the launch content of Shadows of Revan, then I would expect 3 chapters would equal about 1 chapter of the original story. If that's the case, the first nine chapters of KOTFE should have roughly the amount of content that the game had at launch. If I'm right about how they're trying to integrate the various systems (companions/legacy) and secondary systems (GSF/Conquest) and targeted grinding for recruiting those companions (Warzones/Ops), AND gate it behind reputation dailies, then you control the pace of users ability to grind through the reputation tracks AND allow the players to do it the way they want to, PARTICULARLY if they allow you to field companions for Ops content. So...why do I keep hammering on this? I guess it's a roundabout way of telling the Ops and Warzone people - look. I don't think it's an either/or thing. I think this game CAN please everybody, if it hits the right balance. Yelling about who's getting screwed over more doesn't help anybody. I'm trying to ferret out creative ways that everybody can get some love, and I think it's very possible. The main reason is this: I felt that TOR would never meet my expectations. Nevertheless, I kept subscribing. Since launch, I only canceled my subscription two times, and both times it was because I was short of cash for awhile and needed to be responsible with my money. I thought it was hopeless that we'd ever really see an expansion of class stories. I figured that was pretty much dead. Then, they announced KOTFE. It's the first time I feel like (probably) misplaced faith actually paid off. I voted with my wallet...and for once in my life, it worked. If they can do that for us story and lore guys, I believe they can do it for you Ops and Warzone people. After all, Bioware IS a business first and foremost. They have a vested interest in keeping as many people happy as they can. All I'm suggesting is - have patience. I *believe* they've put the things in place that will make it easier for people to play in the playgrounds that you want. Whether they'll actually capitalize on that is something that we won't know until launch - but if my faith can be rewarded, I believe yours can be too. Sorry for the long rant...but we're all passionate about this, or we wouldn't be arguing. May the Force Be With You.

Again, I don't disagree that they're focusing most heavily on story content. What I'm suggesting is that there's more to it than that. As we saw from launch, people WILL power throught he content. I think Bioware is counting on producing so much content that it will be difficult to power through. Even so, their predictions I'm confident will be proven false. Some people are going to power through it by any means neccessary. So how do you keep people subbing, after they grind through the content? You find ways to encourage grinding, but only with voluntary stuff. You grind for the companions you want. And if that grinding involves multiple tracks for reputation, that are offered in a limited fashion (think dailies) you can artificially slow content consumption, while encouraging other styles of play. This buys them the time they need to develop that next years worth of content, while continuing to have people pay for their subs. The way I see it, this rewards the player, the playerbase, the developer, it reduces grind, and it ties together various subsystems that right now work mostly independently.

I agree that Conquest is about crafting right now...and I also agree that it's a great credit-sink. I suspect it may also tie in with the companion system though. (In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if the reputation track to recruit a companion is actually SEVERAL reputation tracks.) Some of them involve grindy content. (Go and collect 5 space-pineapples), some of it would relate to crafting, and some of it would relate to running Warzones or Ops. If you structured the companion reputation tracks through daily missions, you can also control the time it takes to win the reputation, and change it up every day to allow some quest variety. This introduces additional quest content (that is totally optional.) It creates a time AND credit sink, and if you have to do it on multiple characters could also encourage leveling other-class-content.

I'm not sure if fielding multiple companions would work, and that's one of the things that gums up my theory. The issue is, it's relatively easy to issue orders to a single companion during a fight if you need to. I'm not sure how that would work with multiple companions. Another issue (from the server side) is that if suddenly anybody is able to run an Operation instance at any time, that's going to lead to a lot of instancing, and thus a lot of server load. As such, I feel like this may be the shakiest of my ideas, but I DO think Bioware has got some interesting plans for PVP and OPs. I just haven't quite worked out how that would work into the other system integrations.

That's basically what I was thinking. The advantage of moving to this kind of grind is that it's voluntary, and only for the things that you actively want to achieve. Put in more technical terms, I feel like Bioware has spent the last several years developing systems that (in large part) would've been nice to have at launch. The problem is, a lot of those systems felt like they were...isolated? I don't want to say "tacked on", but maybe not "well integrated." I think that may be the ultimate intent of this expansion...to take all of the disparate play types, and encourage the user to play how you want, on the things that you want...but also to increase replayability and play of each type. I see my theory above as integrating the companion and legacy systems. I suspect there will also be some interesting ways to integrate Strongholds, the Conquest system, PVP, and OPs. If my theory about the reputation grind for Companions is correct, it may be that you have to run some missions in PVP or conquest cycles to gain the rep necessary to recruit. And how sweet would it be if they allow you to field companions to run ops now that they've proven that you can use the "Jesus bot" to do story mode stuff? If they just replace the Jesus bot with a companion fielding system, you may be able to run Ops your way as well. Just spitballing...I'd really like to hear the theories of those who are more involved in OP's and Warzones. I really don't think that Bioware is planning to abandon these people. I think they're retooling to try and ensure that they can gain new subs, gain back old subs, and retain them - primarily by allowing you to play the way you want, feel like you're playing the epic story, AND only grind where you want to. For those OP and Warzone players - how do you think these systems could be integrated into a system like this? Is there some kind of Conquest-style system that could be used to advance the narrative of the war against the Eternal Empire?

Hi folks, I've been reading a lot of the threads reacting to the KOTFE expansion. I feel like I'm squarely the target for this expansion - I play all content Solo, not a PVP or OPs guy, and was always irritated by the fact that story content was gated by OPs, and that I couldn't complete some Flashpoints without grouping. My lifestyle doesn't allow me to play these types of content in group - I have a heavily disabled child at home, and another child with special needs - I'm lucky if I can sneak in 20-30 minutes to play at any given time, so I HAVE to play casually. I DO play this game for story and lore - and I've supported the game since launch, hoping for this kind of announcement. That said, I DO understand that others enjoy group content and PVP, and I've been a little worried about comments from that section of the playerbase. I've spent the last few days trying to reconcile the needs of the community as a whole with the design goals of Bioware. I've got a few theories, and I'd like to get your input. 1. Grind/Class Content - I think one of the things that Bioware has realized (through both player feeedback and metrics) is that people want individual class story content more than anything else. People played through the grindy/planet content, but it was always to further the goal of being able to move along the class story. With that in mind, I think they've flipped the paradigm a bit. I suspect that Bioware is going to remove a lot of the sidequest/planetary quests for Levels 1-60 while initially leveling. In this regard, the 12XP boost will be made relatively permanent, to allow a person level quickly while moving through their own personal story. Once your each level 60 and begin the KOTFE content, I expect they're going to do a couple of things. The first is that the "Outlander" questline will replace what were formerly filling the Planetary Questline responsibilities - it forwards the overall story of the galaxy, and is the main through-line of the expansion. I think the role of the side-quests gets replaced by unique class missions though...and I expect there will be a lot of them. The reason for moving this direction is that it would allow you to still have tons of personal quest content, while ALSO make sure that the overall Outlander missions affect the galaxy at large and have a narrative arc. In other words...all story, all impacted directly by you and your choices...but without the grindy bits. So...how do we fill in the time sinks for grind? This is where things get a *bit* more complicated. We already know that we're going to get to recruit (or re-recruit) companions, and it sounds like it will be a reputation grind. I think this is the true replacement for what used to be the XP grind/fetch/carry quests. To recruit new companions, we'll have to move along a reputation track, but it sends us back ot the original leveling planets, possibly along what were originally the sidequests/fetch carry quests. This moves along a reputation track, but doesn't grant XP. I could also see this system working in such a way that to recruit a formerly non-class-attainable companion (for instance) that you would have to move up the track on the character who wants to recruit them, and also do the same on the character who would be *releasing* them. This encourages leveling ALL of the classes, and also leads to streamlined play for all of them. If you don't want to recruit a particular companion, you dont' have to do those grindy bits. This allows you to determine for yourself where you set the timesinks, giving you the most value for your time/money. Also, if we do get lots and lots of class content (as I speculate), it also pads the time to play through it. This type of play actively encourages going through each of the 8 class stories. This gives them more time to develop additional chapters. To my mind, this fuses all of the systems that have been developed (specifically the companion/legacy) systems to support each other cohesively. The only part I haven't figured out is how Ops and Warzones play into this...my guess is that the Conquest system will somehow integrade into the episodic release of the chapter expansions, but they'd have to be able to iterate VERY quickly to capitalize on that, if it were to affect the actual story arc. Anybody have any theories into how this could also integrate?

Hi guys, This isn't a feature request, a request for information that you can't yet give out, or anything of the sort. I'm just hoping that you guys will produce some "box art." I'm a big fan of seeing pre-production paintings and sketches, and I also love the box art you developed for "Rise of the Hutt Cartel" and "Shadows of Revan." Is there any chance you'll be producing "box art" for Knights of the Fallen Empire as well? If so, I hope it's something a bit more dynamic than the current wallpaper showing Arcann, but I'll take whatever I can get! Thanks!

Is anybody else getting the vibe that this will mean continuous content release? I notice there are 12 chapters...I'm guessing this means one chapter release per month?

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/omp

I just completed the Fatal Alliance stage 3 flashpoint, Solo mode, and went back to Vaiken Spacedock to turn in. I go into speak to Lana Beniko, but...she never appeared. Is this a bug, or am I missing something somehwere?

Perfect! Thanks for the quick reply, guys!