I saw that and I'm not too hopeful. It seems like its going to stick with two difficulties and if its the same number of bosses as the current operations, I can see the same thing happening again two or three months down the line. I'm also concerned that it won't be tested properly due to it releasing next month. 3 - 4 weeks hardly seems like enough time to fully test a brand new operation. There's a reason Blizzard has their raids up for so long on the PTS and I just hope Bioware don't rush it out, we really don't need another pre 1.2 Eternity Vault right now. Its also a little sad that they didn't mention a feature that's approximately 3 months late. Their definition of "soon after 1.2" must be a lot different than what we thought.

I didn't mean for my post to come across as "lets bash HM denova" and after re-reading it I can see your point and for that I apologise (I usually end up going way overboard with posts like these). I'm just frustrated that we haven't heard anything of substance about a feature / piece of content that was supposed to be out "soon" after 1.2 and its getting to the point now that most people that care about it have cleared HM and have effectively ran out of stuff to do for a good two - three months. I want a reason to log in again as I still like the game but seeing my guild of 3, almost 4 years, come over here expecting faster content production due to it being a new game and the sheer size of the dev team, only to be faced with the same situation as we had with Icecrown, no content and people quitting due to boredom, a situation that almost killed us the first time. Only now we don't have an expansion a month or so away to help us rebuild. But on topic; I really hope they can at least get some solid info out there soon to at least let people know that the concept hasn't been scrapped and is still coming before its too late.

For me personally, and to some extent my guild, this entire situation has just destroyed any enthusiasm I once had for this game. I'm sick and tired of the lackluster endgame content, with mechanics generally being easily bypassed even on hard mode, the glacial pace of content production and the actual amount of content that is released once something of substance does come out (4 bosses... still can't believe they did this for an entire tier) and we're expected to believe that they're going to shove out even more content with a massively reduced development team. I loved this game and to some extent still do, but I'm slowly seeing my guild dissolve out of pure boredom with the current content, all 20 of us are full campaign or near enough and we've been running Denova for 3 nights a week for the past 4, closing on 5 months. This week for example out of our 20 raiders, 5 turned up.... 5! and the general attitude of those that did was "Do we have to?". Its a sorry state of affairs when a raiding guild doesn't actually want to raid any more. Lets say for a minute that they actually announce 1.4 at gamescom next week, the content most likely won't hit the PTS until sometime in September following the various previews and hype building that they usually do with these patches. If indeed it does contain the new operation it will be on the PTS for at least a month, if not more like 1.2 was meaning that it will most likely be released sometime in October. There's also the possibility that they'll release it with little to no PTS testing resulting in the content being completely broken. I'm sorry but that's just not good enough. By that time we'll have been stuck with 4 bosses for 6 months with a damned free to play conversion on the horizon a month or so later. Then what if its just NM Denova? or if Terror is stupidly small like Denova before it, we'll just be repeating this whole process over again only with free to play to look forward to, but don't worry, we'll have new hats to keep ourselves occupied with! I'd like to say I'll stick around for that long but I'm not going to kid myself any more.... I think I may end up re subbing to Rift. Say what you like about that game but at least it has an endgame with more than 4 bosses at a time.

And you believe that? Do you honestly expect them to fully test and release something of substance within the next 3 weeks. If something does come out, it won't be anything major or won't be properly tested and completely broken due to not going up on the PTS.

All they said that's coming this month is a world event and honestly I don't see them releasing anything of substance until at least October - November. Most likely some new content will get announced at gamescom next week, then they've do all of the previews like they did for 1.2 and 1.3 which usually takes 2 or 3 weeks meaning it won't hit the PTS until sometime in September. 1.2 was the last content patch and was on the PTS for around 4 - 5 weeks I believe which means if tested properly the new stuff won't be out until October. I'm sorry but in the same way that ranked warzones or HK doesn't count as content, a world event most certainly doesn't count either and there's no way they would be stupid enough to release a new warzone and operation without any testing.

I'm sceptical, without incremental stat increases you eventually lose a sense of progression once you hit max level and once you lose that sense of progression people start to get bored, once people get bored people quit. Now this may not be that big of an issue for arena net since guild wars 2 doesn't have a sub, but they need players to spend money on the cash shop, less players = less money from said shop. At the end of the day, the RPG genre at its core is about character development and progression, why should mmorpg's be different? I guess I'm just one of the few people that actually likes the "gear treadmill" as it gives me a reason to keep logging into the game once I've cleared a dungeon a couple of times. But anyway, finally remembered what I came here to post: I just hope that this new fix has actually been properly tested for once. How an issue like this got through in the first place is beyond me. Do none of the developers or testers actually play the game?

Great idea except that the story sucks, all of the gear is the same stat wise as soon as you hit level cap and the only thing you could consider a raid in that game are the zergfest "dynamic" events, everything else is ether PvWD, PvP or 5 man content. Its also not free to play since you have to pay a premium price for the box and server access.

It can't be that much over 500k though if you think about it. Surely if it was closer to say 700k they would have said below 1 million but well above 700k despite 500k being the cut-off point.

For my first point, take Steelseries or Razer peripherals. Yes they are brand names and are damn expensive but by in large they are expensive for a reason. The Sibera V2 headset for example is around £60 - £70 more expensive than a standard headset, but for the most part is worth the money because its more comfortable, has more features and has better sound / mic quality than a headset you can pick up for £10. Yes there are cheaper alternatives to this example, but for the most part you get what you pay for and in my experience cheap or even free products tend to be inferior to their more expensive counterparts. I believe its the same way with games in that for the most part games you pay for are a lot more polished than those that are free. Second point: Every game has these sorts of people infesting it, however free to play usually attracts more of them. Sure it means having more people to play the game with, but for the most part these people do more harm to in game communities than good due to the way the approach the game. Especially on RP servers, I'm already seeing it with the trial. Yes you get the trolls usually but since the trial started there's been more xxLordVaderzzxx and xxBubbaFettsxx running around than usual. As for the third point id like to clarify here, I did not mean this as a way of saying "Screw this I'm unsubbing" because I'm not, yet. At the moment I feel cheated. My, and by in large everyone else's sub money was supposed to be going towards developing new content and features to improve the game. For the past 4 months, we've had no new content and have been stuck with the same four bosses week in, week out in Denova with no sign as to when the new operation is coming other than "soon". With this free to play announcement its been revealed that the sub money has been going to something that I didn't want, that you probably didn't want and I'm pretty sure everyone else content with the game didn't want. I of course mean Free to Play. Now, if content actually starts coming out at a decent pace again and they somehow manage to keep the cash shop clean from the Pay to Win stuff I'll be happy, but at this point I'm sceptical and will be taking a wait and see approach just to see what these micro transactions entail. I still enjoy the game, and despite being bored with endgame content I'm still logging in to level my imp alts.

For the first time in a long while with an article like this I actually found myself in complete agreement with what the author had to say. To me, if something is branded as free it usually something that's not worth paying for in the first place. Its the same with games. If a game goes free to play, I look at it as a message from the developer basically saying "Look, we tried to make money off it using a standard business model but we failed, so now we're going to give it away to try and get people to play it". Its the same if a game was developed with this in mind. To me the developers are saying "We've developed a game that we don't think is worth paying retail price or a subscription for, so instead here's a shop with stuff you need to play the game properly". Its different with guild wars 2 in the sense that it uses the bog standard buy to play model that games have used for years but that's not the point here. The people that usually go for these games are not the type of "customer" you want in that they have no loyalty to the product in question and are at best a source of short term revenue due to exploitation via micro transactions. No, the customers you want are those attracted by the sub model, people who are actually willing to pay for a game in the long term and care about the game they've invested both their time and money in. Unfortunately by making this transition most developers end up alienating this demographic in favour of one that doesn't care about the product and instead is looking to leech off content which is effectively paid for by those who bought and subbed to the game for X amount of time. Sure, no free to play game is actually free and you still have to pay for content, but by making a game free, developers to me at least, are admitting that the game they developed is not worth paying for, that they'd rather make the game free than try to improve the product and make it worth paying for again. If they have so little faith in a game to make such an admission, why should I have enough faith in a game to continue to pay for it? If this is indeed the future of gaming, I want no part of it and as someone planning a career in said industry I find it down right sickening.

After reading that interview with the new lead it seems like the "content" this month will be a world event, whether or not this means we'll get Nightmare EC or Terror remains to be seen but at the moment its not looking good, especially seeing at stuff like this usually needs extensive PTS testing. Link to interview: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/feature/6609/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Free-to-Play-This-Fall.html

My mistake then, just did a quick search and for republic it seems to be "Journey to the Belsavis Depths" kind of long winded for the name of an operation. I'm also half expecting Terror from Beyond to just end up being called Asation for the same reason.

The operation is called Explosive Conflict, while the zone itself is called Denova. Its the same situation with KP, the operation is technically called Hutt Hospitality while the zone is just called Karagga's Palace. Its stupid I know, I don't understand why they couldn't call the zone "Explosive Conflict" or the mission itself "Operation: Denova" like they did with EV. But meh, its not like it matters much anyway.

What he means is that they should really add more bosses to the next operation, not change group sizes. I don't see how adding more bosses would prevent people from seeing the content. Unless I just misunderstood your post, in which case ignore everything I just said.

Hello, and welcome back! If this is your first time doing any sort of group PvE content at all, then I would probably stick to the level 50 normal mode flashpoints, just until you can get comfortable with how things work. Otherwise, you should be fine to jump right into tier 1 HM Flashpoints and perhaps Story Mode Operations (KP & EV). As for your second question, PvP gear should be fine when just starting out with HM flashpoints and SM ops, but you'll want to get that replaced with a mixture of Tionese and Columi gear for the set bonus and for generally better itemisation than PvP gear. A full set of Tionese gear can be bought relatively easily using Tionese Commendations, which you can get from doing the daily and weekly terminal missions for HM flashpoints and SM operations as well as SM operation bosses, and Tionese Crystals which drop from pretty much every boss in HM flashpoints. Bosses now also have a chance of dropping the actual pieces themselves which if your lucky should make things easier. Columi gear can be obtained with tokens that drop from the final bosses of every tier 1 HM flashpoint (for a full list go here: http://dulfy.net/2012/06/27/hardmode-flashpoint-loot-list1-3/) as well as SM ops bosses as well as certain pieces being up for sale for Columi Commendations, which you can also get from the terminal dailies and weeklies. For dailies, if you don't have one already you should try to do enough to get one of the campaign relics from the daily mission support vendor for 200 commendations. Aside from some of the top end PvP relics, these are currently the best in game and should probably be used along side a matrix cube from gathering datacrons. Along with this you should try to do the Black Hole weekly mission for 6 commendations a week. These commendations can be used to buy Black Hole gear, which currently acts as filler pieces for the current top tier PvE set. It also might be worth trying to find a group for the +10 fleet datacron for a pretty big boost to all major stats and as I mentioned earlier you should try and find enough datacrons for you matrix relic, a guide for which can be found here: http://www.swtor-spy.com/guides/matrix-cube-guide/1047/. After you're fully kitted out in a set of Columi gear it would probably be most advisable to find a guild that suits your schedule so that you can start doing HM operations as well as the Tier 2 operation and flashpoint. Hope this helps and once again, welcome back.