It also depends on which faction and server type you are a part of as well. RP servers tend to have lower populations, and people on the Republic side will be facing lower populations (varying by server). On my own server, Republic is certainly the smaller faction, but is healthy enough at the moment that I'm still hitting queues and seeing 80+ people in the fleet during peak hours. The peak zones tend to still have 100+ people in them although I've gotten ahead of the leveling curve at this point and it is getting more sparse.

iOS runs on PMPs, Android doesn't. And Google with their OEMs have been slow to penetrate the slate/tablet market. I know folks running security keys like this one on their iPod Touch, while they still use a dumbphone. According to comScore, because of things like the iPod Touch and iPad, iOS still had a larger install base as of their release on Oct 10th, 2011. http://www.slashgear.com/comscore-ios-still-ahead-of-android-in-total-user-base-thanks-to-ipads-10186635/ In the end it is all academic since it is VASCO's app with a TOR skin on it. I doubt Bioware did much work on it themselves other than disable parts of it. Although VASCO's app is available on Android.

The VASCO mobile app is backwards from their physical keys (and the Battle.net mobile app). Instead of having a serial # in the app, the serial # comes from the website. You get it when you go to link the mobile app on the SWTOR website. If you don't get a serial # plus another longer code when you go to link, you either picked the wrong option or the website is bugged (try refreshing). Honestly, I can see why Blizzard wrote their own mobile app rather than just branding the VASCO app. The VASCO app is pretty badly designed, even if it gets the job done.

The app is actually written by VASCO, with a TOR skin. You should ask them. And iOS runs on more than just the iPhone. The iPod Touch represents a very large number of users that haven't jumped on the smartphone bandwagon yet. I know a few WoW players using a security key on their Touch. It will be available for more platforms, but I think VASCO is part of the problem. Blizzard wrote their own apps, even though they also used VASCO Digipass for their security keys.

Out of 26 shield generators listed on Torhead via Artifice: - 17 come from skill trainers. None of these include a Shadow/Assassin shield. - 9 come from schematics, i.e. Slicing and mission skills. These are prototype-quality. 3 of these are Willpower shields. It's a fairly big gap in itemization, and forces someone leveling as this type of tank to chase the schematics if they want to create their own shield generator.

Sounds like companion customizations. On the upper right of the screen, you should see something like "1 PENDING". You should be able to click that and bring the reward screen back.

Yup, this worked in the Thanksgiving Weekend Beta.

In beta, difficulty was 4 different colors. By numbers, I assume you mean off of TORhead or the Darth Hater DB? The number given is the skill level when the difficulty becomes that 'color'. Orange - "Difficult" Pretty much a guaranteed skill up. The Number in the DB is when you can 'learn' the skill. Yellow - "Normal" Will skill up more often than not. Green - "Easy" Will not skill up more often than it does. Grey - "Trivial" Will not provide any skill ups.

I can see a lot of the lower-level purples being useful for twinking and making leveling a bit smoother, but it is an expensive way to do it. I was only able to craft a couple of purples on my SI by level 17, by buying mats off the GTN. For one reason or another, the mission skill didn't actually provide any actual artifact-quality materials all weekend when I was in the beta.

This is definitely true. Strength isn't 100% worthless for a Shadow/Assassin tank, even if it is sub-optimal. They do still get benefits to their melee attacks, just not the force attacks. I'd expect that for now, you just live with the sub-par itemization up to the level cap and craft strength shields as you go if quests aren't giving you Willpower ones.

One of the key pieces to the crafting system design is that a single character cannot be 100% self-sufficient for their craft skill. They can get >75% of the way there, but they will have to leave one skill on the table. Either it will be through buying materials (common or rare), or having to buy rare schematics. This is actually somewhat beneficial to the economy since it will help produce demand for trade between players. Especially since you can't deck out a character with all craft skills like you can in a game like WoW (someone who goes JC/BS has to buy all their mats for example) which has a similar effect of helping to produce demand.

The specific language from the advertisements is: "Up to 5 days" The announcement says: "depending on when you redeem your Pre-Order Code, you will gain Early Game Access up to five days before the official game launch date." The key words being "up to". Meaning anywhere from 0 to 5 days early access.

Yeup, the Infernal One is Rakata. The Eternity Vault was a Rakata prison. I'd probably be cranky too if the warden left me to rot for 20,000 years.

I have to agree with ialsoagree. Currency sinks in the game help attack and mitigate inflation in the player economy. Much like a government pulling bills out of circulation when they print new ones. Inflation is the biggest reason for price increases over time in a player economy. Players stockpile currency and as the years drag on, it means certain goods become more expensive. And I'm not really sure I see your point that you have to play like the gold farmers do in order to succeed. I was a regular player in WoW. Usually about 10 hours a week, with most of that raiding. But I figured out how to make a decent amount of gold (usually about 600g a night in the Wrath era, depending on the market at the time) with very little time spent. Maybe 10 minutes a day. A huge chunk of that success was by knowing what to produce and sell in the market, finding that niche and finding the best time of day to exploit it. It took time and gold invested to mix up my professions to do that, but I rarely did gathering, and bought almost all of my materials off the AH. It was enough income that I didn't have to worry about gold, as the most expensive BoEs tended to be in the 10kg range when a new patch hit. So over 2 years, I only took big hits to my bank account about 3 times. When I did gather (no more than an hour at a time, because it was pretty dull), I used the AH to help guide me on what to gather. As a game matures, inflation actually helps out the new player who knows what they are doing. People are willing to pay more for materials, which means new players get access to more currency as they level to pay for skills. The reality is that gold sellers aren't trying to corner the market, really. If they caused a lot of inflation, it means what they have to sell (currency) is devalued, meaning they get less real money per 'block' of in-game currency. That is counter to their goals. If anything, they tend to create deflation in a game economy when it comes to raw materials and random world drop BoEs by upping the supply. Their goal is to convert as much stuff as they can into in-game currency to sell, and if they deflate the market a bit in the process, it is even better for them because it means they can charge more. In SWTOR, because certain materials only come from missions, it places a lower bound on their market price, and discourages farming them by gold farmers (as they risk taking a loss and eating into their inventory for sale). If materials become cheaper than running the missions, that excess stock will usually get bought up, but if materials get too cheap, mission-running suddenly looks pretty good. It is an interesting way to offer checks and balances to the market and ensure that inflation/deflation doesn't get too out of hand. How well it will actually work is still up in the air. I haven't seen enough activity to really form an opinion one way or the other.