Darth Hater

I received a Cyan +41 endurance crystal as part of the pack. I waited the 1.5 days and tried to put it on the Exchange. The message I received was "you cannot sell that item". Is this designed or a bug? I was able to put other items on the exchange, but not this one. Any help would be appreciated.

The item is not bound and I have not placed it any gear. The Crystal was sitting in the cargo hold till the timer ran out. The Crystal is listed as bound on equip. I am a sub.

Thanks

 

 

 

Ewoks? holy shit no. please no.

 

Its been a long time since we have seen a holonet in so far as timeline. Do you think we will see a continuation of the story up to launch time?

 

It's too bad Bioware decided to eliminate the ability to kill companions, but I can see their point of not wanting to deal with the massive crying of "I didn't know they would really die!, as pointed out in the last podcast.

But, there could be another solution. Perhaps the first time you attempt to kill you companion they escape and you are forced to live without their talents for a several weeks or as much as a month as a penalty, and then you are given the chance to redeem yourself or execute your original plan. Let's say the companion escapes and time passes. At that point the player is presented the opportunity to hire a bounty hunter to track the companion. After several payments of credits (so there is a cost for the player's actions) they get word of a planet where the companion might be hiding. There could be a quest chain such as one involving the companion's imprisonment by the hut's, and in the end the companion is rescued and is allowed to join the party. Or if you are a true Sith, you recue the companion and teach them escape was never an alternative.

After all of this, if Bioware wanted to give you another chance, maybe in another 10 levels or once hitting max level the player could pick up another companion with the same skills, but as a penalty the companion would be would need to train up to your level. And at that point if you decide to kill that one, you either don't need them or are a dumbass and deserve the penalty.

Since the game in the testing phase it is more likely the decision is final.

<center>First off, who is Relational Investors, LLC ("RI)? RI headed by Ralph Whitworth and is an investment fund based out of California with around $6.4 billion in assets under management. While we do not know their current list of investors, in the past known investors was CALPERS - The California Public Employee's Retirement System, and CALSTERS - The California State Teachers' Retirement System.

The second question, what does Relational Investors do? In short, they are an Asset Manager. They manage money for a variety of entities with the purpose of garnering returns better than the S&P 500. Funds similar to this have clients such as pension funds, hedge funds, foundations, and possibly high net worth individuals. Typically these types of managers charge an annual fee for managing the money and secondly most of these types of funds also get a bonus return for exceeding their target returns. While we could go more in-depth it is not necessary, in short they get paid extra for doing their job well. Not dissimilar to many of us when we look to or hope to get an end year bonus from our employer, RI gets rewarded for exceeding their goals.

Now the most important question, should we care? Yes, because on May 27, 2011 Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), entered into a letter agreement with RI and one of its founders Ralph V. Whitworth to appoint Mr. Whitworth to EA's Board of Directors, Executive Compensation and Leadership Committee, if requested by RI between September 15, 2011 and May 1, 2012. If history is any indicator, Mr. Whitworth will be on the board.

When visiting Relational Investors website (www.rillc.com), you can find their investment philosophy as follows, [i]"Relational seeks to unlock underperforming companies' intrinsic value for their shareholders by improving management and strategic direction.

Relational believes that the best corporate governance structure fosters collaboration and allows shareholders to seek change through superior analysis and the methodical development of consensus for change. Relational believes that good stewardship requires intervention to address:
capital allocation
capital structure
corporate governance
board composition executive compensation
corporate communications
business strategy
[/i]

But this does not tell the whole story, we need to go back and take a look at a previous company RI invested in, HomeDepot ("HD). RI and Mr. Whitworth consider themselves "activist investors". No we are not talking about the environment; we are talking about areas like executive compensation. We have all heard the stories of the CEO who heads a company which is losing money and gets fired but for some reason he has a contract which gets him a bonus of $200 million if he get[i]s terminated. In short, Mr. Whitworth thinks this is bullshit. In a Barrons Magazine article dated February 19, 2007 Jonathan Laing stated Mr. Whitworth was making news by stunning "Wall Street by ousting its chairman and CEO, Robert Nardelli, just a month or so after Whitworth's investment firm, Relational Investors LLC, informed the company by letter that it had purchased $1 billion of stock in the home-improvement retailer and wanted changes in the way Nardelli was running it.[/i] It was later claimed in the article the CEO was forced out because his compensation package was "gold plated and he refused to make changes to it. But more importantly for us is the next paragraph which states, the CEO's [i] "successor, Frank Blake, has been in touch with Whitworth in recent weeks, even meeting with him in late January at a hotel in Los Angeles. Among other things, the company agreed to give Relational a seat on the Home Depot board, filled by Whitworth's partner, David Batchelder, 57, to head off a threatened proxy fight. Last week, Home Depot appeared to cave in to a key Whitworth demand: that it consider splitting off or selling its wholesale-supply unit, which Nardelli had established to sell construction goods to commercial builders and government buyers.[/i]

If you go back to the 8-k filed by EA on 5/31/2011 which discusses RI and Mr. Whitworth, among other things, you will see as part of the agreement with RI which allows Mr. Whitworth the right to take a seat at the board and for this right RI withdrew its nomination of three candidates for election as directors of EA at the 2011 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, agreed to vote for the board's recommendation or abstain from voting on executive compensation and agreed to other items such as they agreed not to start or encourage stockholder proposals, try to get more people on the board, or seek to control the board, or own more than 9.9% of the stock for a time being.

What can we infer from this? First, RI or through its affiliates owns up to 9.9% of EA. Secondly, EA like Home Depot wanted to avoid an ugly proxy fight, and agreed to add Mr. Whitworth to the board and not only the board of Directors , Executive Compensation and Leadership Committee . One interesting note, if you look at the Filings of EA since this announcement you will see a large group of EA executives have exercised options or purchased additional shares of EA. What does this mean, it could mean they are happy with the addition of Mr. Whitworth or it could mean they saw this resolution as a good thing or it could be completely unrelated, but either way I would rather have executives buying more shares of their company than selling shares.

How will this affect TOR, who knows? But we have to remember, RI invests in companies they feel are undervalued, they make money when their investors make money and in some way RI sees or saw EA as an undervalued company with the ability to get a better return for its shareholders. </center>

During the beginning assault,while fighting the duel turrets (1:09 - 1:10), that is a hell of a jump attack by the Marauder to land on top of the turret.