Basically your hope at this point is that the profitable Cartel Market, the revolving door of tire kickers and storyline tourists and everything else you described, will subsidize continued improvements in the things you care about, albeit at a slower rate. If that happens, and if you can stomach the loss of the game you once hoped to see, you can stay around a long time and have fun. If not, well, it's a big market out there these days.

Also, if you get a Google Voice account, you can sit on hold with CS all day for free

At the risk of repeating the obvious, this is why skipping the PTS is penny wise and pound foolish.

Look on the bright side - instead of having just one PTS for this major update, they've got 20 of them.

To paraphrase The Princess Bride: You keep using this word "calm down" -- I do not think it means what you think it means

Unfortunately, there's more to a .x release than the event.

I am well aware of their financials, but cash shop games are actually more tightly bound to concurrents (logins) than subscription games. Subs can be parked en masse (see: PandaQuest®) and still bill as revenue, but you pretty much have to play actively to spend at the cash shop. So they need those numbers up, especially as the initial binge of account-wides and unlocks gives way to a leaner diet of consumable boosts, passes and mount-of-the-month.

I'm not surprised at the precipitate release of 1.7. Concurrents are shrinking again - the post F2P surge may finally be fading, and this title is on a short leash nowadays. Major releases always boost the numbers. I think they'd rather take the heat for bugs than risk further attrition. We'll see how it goes.

If you haven't read the first "sale mail," the second "money mail" overwrites it in the inbox, so there's only one mail. You only see both mails if you're actively playing and checking mail during that hour.

These days they're using the PTS just as a preview server for major point releases, which makes sense for a skeleton staff. The community is basically killed, but testhaters got their wish -- there's always a silver lining somewhere.

Well, they just updated the PTS client with a big new build dated today, but the server's not up.

1. Remember that when you toggle Background Audio on or off, you have to exit and restart your game client for the new setting to take effect. 2. Make sure you aren't running something else - like a music player - that might want to take over your PC's sound when you're tabbed out of SWTOR. 3. If all else fails, reboot your PC. 4. If something like this ever does break, it'll happen after a patch, not in the middle of a quiet week. 5. There is a Tech Support forum for this kind of question. 6. Works fine for me.

Regardless of your feelings about RP in general, the in-game description for RP servers explicitly says that there are no extra naming rules enforced there. An offensive name should be reported everywhere, but an OOC name should not be reported anywhere.

Oh yeah, look at that - good catch. Well, if they're Malgusified already, who knows, maybe we'll have little thimble-shaped Vettes and Cedraxes before too long!

This thread's title is misleading! LEGO® Star Wars is a huge seller in its various releases. If you just discovered it, congratulations. As far as I know, their deal is only with the LucasFilm properties, up to and including Dave Filoni's excellent animated series. They don't do Old Republic era stuff. A shame really - I'd play it