Not to be rude but you'll figure it out, not all of your skills are always useful you've got a ton of options it sounds like they're just overwhelming you a bit. Figure out your critical skills give them easy binds, figure out your secondary and tertiary skills, bind them as well. The rest are pretty situational, click them if necessary otherwise don't worry about them. You seriously won't use all of your skills with any sort of frequency given cooldowns/refresh times etc. I've got a set of standard binds, a set of CTRL binds and a set of ALT binds, that should be enough for your basic needs. Macros 4tl.

Yeah this is part of my hope for eventual quality additions to the PvP system. What exists now as a framework honestly isn't terrible so long as a great deal more is contributed.

I didn't even realize there was an iApp (or whatever they're called) for the authorizer thing. I'd definitely love to see one for Android.

It always warms my heart when people talk about Shadowbane, at times I wonder if everyone who played it just quit MMOs. A FFA PvP server I would totally join, its honestly a different type of experience, I even went back to Age of Conan again for a while when the Blood and Glory server came out. The above is the essence of what the "world PvP crowd" has against battlegrounds and instances. Ultimately they are all hollow and pointless, just another flavor of grind. Granted it is very fun to grind players rather than random npcs, but at the end of the day you're just running in your hamster wheel for the PvP equivalent of your PvE raid gear. Lets not forget that the game was old, and however much I may have loved it not actually that good. It was a great game in theory, and crazy fun, but in practice it was really terribly flawed. Sadly I doubt we're going to see this kind of game again, its definitely too niche for most, but it is good to read that I'm not the only one who'd love to see this again. Its for sure stings a little reading people talk about how non-arena/battleground isn't "real PvP" I can't help but wonder if they'd have even enjoyed the PvP I remember and loved.

Agreed. The move away from open world PvP is what pushed me to finally give up on PvP servers. Essentially the only reason for PvP servers these days is to gank since all meaningful PvP (as defined via developer assigned rewards) is in battlegrounds (sorry warzones) and the like. Warzones, Arena and whatever other type of instanced PvP did more ultimately to harm PvP than to help it imo. I usually do my best not to make asinine responses along the lines of "go back to WoW" but seriously if that's your only PvP experience and you enjoyed it then why leave? World PvP has been successful in other MMOs, it was successful in WoW until they moved all PvPing to instances. There are plenty of examples of enjoyable PvP focused games that didn't center around Arena/Battleground/Esports style of play. At first I thought OP might have been trolling, roleplayers are the ones who pushed the current state of PvP... seriously? Esports style PvP may be fun for some, but its not everyone's cup of tea, what are you basing the vocal minority claim on? People love throwing around that term to represent any group that doesn't agree with them, do you have some data to show that most people want arenas? I don't disagree with all the OP has to say, I think brackets for instance (10-29, 30-49, 50) would be a good thing for instance, but I also sort of expect/hope PvP to progress quite a bit in the next few months. Of course I've sadly expected the same before in tons of other games that started out with watered down crappy PvP. Notably one of those is now OPs apparently MMO PvP holy grail, the system was garbage at start and none of this current sutff existed. Rather than go with what WoW has currently been degraded to, its my hope that BW comes up with their own trajectory for PvP and makes it a solid part of the game. If nothing else they have some solid staff on hand to do so.

The best suggestion I can offer is to join a guild, there is a lack of healers in SWTOR only because people are more concerned with DPS and epeen. There are more than enough healing options for classes, people just choose not to play them for all the standard reasons. If you see the lack of healers as a problem and would like to be part of the solution, roll a healer. They really aren't terribly hard though you have to pay a bit more attention than DPS and your friends will appreciate you for it. Really this is a player problem, not a BW problem.

The trouble isn't that people don't understand you or are incapable of grasping what you want, it is that they disagree. So often with complaints in MMOs complaints at the end of the day boil down to "I want my playstyle catered to regardless of how it impacts others". Removing companions from the game would be dropping an aspect of play that many (though not all enjoy) making you more uber solo would also make the game even easier (and perhaps less enjoyable) for those who chose to use companions. Companions are not necessary, you can run without them and even benefit from doing so as you can have them run missions or crafts while you're doing whatever else. In other words, you are already being rewarded for not using them what more can be expected?

You get credits for PvPing and can have your companion run missions or craft while you are in Warzones etc. Craft or buy some solid gear for your companion and they will be fine. I don't really know what else can be expected.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head here, its not an issue of the game's newness (though its always worst at the beginning) its just an issue of MMO forums being one of the most negative places in existence if you truly want to enjoy any MMO probably the best thing you can do is never ever visit the forums. This is what keeps me trolling around.

Personally I think they're one of the most interesting things about the game and really appreciate the idea. Overall I feel companions are another of those things that makes SWTOR one of the few MMOs that seems to deserve the RPG part of the title. Choices you make matter in your story and in your relationships with your crew, that's a pretty big change for me. As far as the soloing of MMOs, I think that A) thats been happening for a good while and B) there is a highly respectable amount of group only content in SWTOR.

While I understand your sentiment, there is an option for you. Have your companions not with you and just send them on constant missions, this is a good way for you to keep credits around and the game really is terribly easy. Companions are a great assist but definitely not necessary.

The only issue I really agree with the OP on is the UI, frankly its horrible.

Many things will change, many things will get better, the game is a blast people are enjoying it. One thing will not change, the forums. MMO forums are pretty much always like this, whether its PvP balance complaining, gear complaining, graphics complaining, cost complaining or whatever else, that's appears to be what forums are for unfortunately.

Umm this release has been one of the sharpest I've experienced in a MMO. Should things be smoother? Yes, but they always should be smoother, people are always miserable at MMO releases yet everyone is still always focused on getting in day 1. If you really aren't ok with the problems pretty much every game has on release IMO wait 3 months after a game releases to start. Servers will be stable and less congested, starting areas will be functional and there might even be an update to address any issues noticed after the game went live.

Honestly... if you don't want to play a healer don't play a healer. I don't know when the whole respeccing for instances thing first started but I've (personally) never been a fan. Respecs should be for fixing your character, if we were meant to change back and forth they would have gone the route of allowing dual spec instead.

Maybe its me but this is a strange thing to complain about imo. If it were the other way around people would be complaining about lack of content. If you finish up with the quests for a planet either do the rest because you enjoy them, or move to the next zone. I definitely prefer too much content to too little.

I think possibly some people are just having trouble getting used to how SWTOR works in comparison with some MMOs. It is easy given the game's surface to assume its just like whatever game you came from and that you should use the same tactics, there are some differences. Your gear matters a bunch, if you are not running group stuff get commendation gear or some craft gear with good mods. You do not have to raid/group/etc to have competitive gear in this game atm but you shouldn't be running around in green and grey equipment. Make sure you have trained all of your abilities, that seems rude but it really isn't meant to be, some friends of mine missed the advanced class tab at their trainer, obviously the game changed radically for them when it was pointed out. Finally figure out a good rotation of skill that works for you, its important to know how your skills work and when to use them. Frankly most of the time when soloing I feel grossly OP, one to three shotting groups etc if my companion is around to distract them.

I really don't think its nearly as bad as people make it out to be. If any brackets I'd go 10-29, 30-49, 50. I understand that anecdotally people have seen groups of mid 20s wtfpwning groups of mid teens, anecdotally I've seen just the opposite. The spread of levels is an issue and I assume at very least that as people start getting access to legit PvP gear at 40+ it will be more of an issue, but so far in my limited experience it just doesn't seem end of the world from 10-25 or so. It seems startlingly terrible at first, but after you catch on regarding how your character works in warzone PvP and how much that is different from how it works anywhere else, then its really not that bad.

An unexpectedly pleasant and possibly even useful post on a day full of sky is falling tomfoolery. If only there were a +1 or like button

I must admit, this made me laugh.