STAR WARS™: THE OLD REPUBLIC™ RULES OF CONDUCT

Last Update: May 17th, 2011

The Rules of Conduct are guidelines to the user on expected conduct and behavior upon the Star Wars: The Old Republic website. These guidelines can change at the sole discretion of the Community Team as necessary to best benefit the Star Wars: The Old Republic Forums community and cultivate an atmosphere appropriate to a gaming forum. Despite our best efforts to detail the different sections with specific examples, there will always be areas that will be ultimately handled on a per incident basis by the Community Team. Even when not specified, the Community Team has the sole right and final judgment of how to interpret and apply these rules and guidelines to any specific circumstance and situation, including proper punishment or exception. All capitalized terms used in these Rules of Conduct are defined in the Star Wars: The Old Republic Terms of Service at http://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/termsofservice.

It violates BioWare's Terms of Service if you (or others using your Account) engage in any of the following behavior:

• Post, transmit, promote, or distribute Content that is illegal or promote or encourage any illegal activity including hacking, cracking or distribution of counterfeit software.
• Upload or attempt to distribute files that contain viruses, corrupted data, or malicious software.
• Harass, threaten, embarrass, or do anything to another Member or guest that is unwanted. This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about Members or guests, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, attacking a Member or guest based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc.
• Transmit or facilitate distribution of Content that is harmful, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, vulgar, sexually explicit, defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, or objectionable in a reasonable person's view. Hate speech is not tolerated.
• “Trolling,” which we define as posts or threads that knowingly lead to overly strong, negative, and emotional responses for mere shock value, is not allowed on the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums. Accounts created with the sole intent to “troll” will be immediately and permanently suspended. Constant personal attacks are also considered trolling.
• Register an alternate account for the purpose of disobeying the rules to avoid punishment of your main account. Alternate accounts created for this purpose will receive permanent bans.
• Register an alternate account to post when your main account is banned. These alternate accounts will be permanently suspended and may necessitate other moderation actions.
• Impersonate another person (including celebrities), indicate falsely that you are a BioWare employee or a representative of BioWare Online, or attempt to mislead users by indicating that you represent BioWare or any of BioWare's partners or affiliates.
• Post messages for any purpose other than personal communication, including without limitation advertising or promotional messaging, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or other commercial activities.
• Post or communicate any player’s real-world personal information within the Service or through any Site or any Service bulletin board.
• Attempt to get a password, other account information, or other private information from a Member or any other user on BioWare Online. Remember: BioWare Online employees will NEVER ask for your password. Do not give your password, reminder words, or billing information out to anyone.
• Buy, sell, or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction) an Account or game characters, items, credits or copyrighted material, or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by BioWare or our licensors without first obtaining our express written permission.
• Use or distribute “auto” software programs, “macro” software programs or other “cheat utility” software program or applications.
• Improperly use in-game support or complaint buttons or make false reports to BioWare Online staff members.
• Modify any part of the Service or any Service website (a “Site”) that BioWare does not specifically authorize you to modify.
• Attempt to interfere with, hack into or decipher any transmissions to or from the servers running the Service.
• Exploit any bug in the Service or in any BioWare product to gain unfair advantage in the game and/or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through the public posting) to any other user of the Service.
• Attempt to play your BioWare game on or through any service that is not controlled or authorized by BioWare.
• Participate in any online service that provides online features or game play for your BioWare game that is not authorized by BioWare.
• Do anything that interferes with the ability of other Service users to enjoy playing a BioWare game and using the Service in accordance with its rules, or that materially increases the expense or difficulty of BioWare in maintaining the Service for the enjoyment of all its users.
• You may not give false information or intentionally hide any information when registering for your Star Wars: The Old Republic account.
• You will not upload or transmit in Star Wars: The Old Republic, or on the official Forums or any and all official websites, any copyrighted content that you do not own all rights to, unless you have the express written permission of the author or copyright holder.
• Forum accounts are non-transferable. Registered users are responsible for any actions that take place on their accounts or private messaging systems.
• Do not repost copyright and/or press material in its entirety from other sources. Quotations from things such as news articles are fine, provided it is cited and (if possible) linked to.
• Disrupt the flow of chat with vulgar language, abusiveness, hitting the return key repeatedly or inputting large images so the screen goes by too fast to read, use of excessive shouting [all caps] in an attempt to disturb other users, “spamming” or flooding [posting repetitive text].

Guidelines
The following guidelines will help promote a user-friendly environment:

• Do not post in all capital letters, use excessive punctuation, etc to draw attention to your posts.
• Using the words BioWare or any Developer or Community Team member’s name in a thread topic is frowned on. Please make sure your thread title is relevant to the post subject.
• Posting IBL, IBTL, or variants of “In Before The Lock” constitutes spamming.
• Discussion of political, sexual, or religious topics is prohibited on the forums.
• Posting, linking, quoting, reproducing, or discussing confidential information from the game testing program is prohibited on the forums.
• Do not bump posts to the top without adding constructive content to the thread.
• Do not hijack topics. Posting comments within a thread which severely disrupts the original conversation is prohibited.
• Profanity is not acceptable in communications on the forums or anywhere on the Site.
• Petition posts are frowned on. If you have an issue with the game, please discuss it in a civil and informed fashion.
• Do not post about locked or deleted threads or other moderation actions.
• Posts deemed inappropriate to a particular forum will be moved to a more appropriate forum or even removed completely. Posts that have been removed are not to be re-posted.
• If you have a post to report, use the Notify the Community Team button located on the post in question.

Lastly, please have fun. Although it looks like there are a lot of procedures and rules in place, most of these are common sense, and are meant as a safeguard to keep these forums active and relevant for the community of a game we all love. Abusing these forums affects everyone who enjoys this game, so we ask for your cooperation and your support in achieving and maintaining this goal. Suggestions to make this an even better place for our community are always welcome! You can PM any of the Community Team members with your input and we will gladly review it for implementation.

Thank you for being part of this community!