One of the issues that SWTOR is going to have that other MMOs dont suffer from is production costs. SWTOR needs a higher paying base (whether with sub or real cash purchases) than most MMOs to be profitable, since it costs them much more to turn out updates and expansions. While I do feel that the whole class story worked in making you care more about your character than any other MMO ever did, the costs and resources involved in doing all those cutscenes and dialog options took too much away from other areas. A smaller cash flow will severely limit what it can do with this model in the future. I dont know if a f2p model can support SWTOR as it currently is. If not I suspect they will have to redo future content and you will see far less cutscenes in the game.

It isnt a knockback issue. I have my back to the wall so Im not getting knocked back, but every few seconds the Marauder does some move that removes me from cover. I pop myself right back into it but Im still losing dps and may have blown a Trickshot if the timing is bad. What I found is the Dirty Fighting tree is great for that fight. You can dot him up and many of your best shots dont need you to be in cover to use them. Overall though Sharpshooter (Sniper) is the best spec in EV, but when dual specs get introduced I will be making DF my second spec and using it constantly on that fight.

Right now both of those have their own BoP Rikata gear, which gives them a leg up over the other professions. The big thing is to make the schematics dropping out of operations be able to make BoE items so that they can be sold. Other than that Im not sure what can be buffed for them. Making any schematic dropping in an operation make only bop items is silly, particularly when they items they make are the same level as the raid you are in. I have seen 2 Cybertech earpiese schematics drop and both are for Tioese level items. You an get Rakata level items just doing dailies (granted they do cost 120 commendations), so why items that are worse than that cant be sold i do not understand.

There have been a number of complaints about how nothing other than Biochem is useless in endgame. I am listing a number of suggestions to improve the endgame viability of all the crafting professions. Operation Schematics 1) The the schematics dropping out of raids need to make BoE items not BoP. The purpose of these schematics should be to allow raiders a way to make some cash and help nonraiders/guildmates/alts a way to gear up for raids. ARMSTECH 1) Give them BoP weapons that are at the Rakata level. 2) Raise the stats on barrels to make them equal to but preferably slightly better than the barrels you can get from daily commendations. 3) Include BoE weapon schematic drops in operations. CYBERTECH 1) Raise the stats on mods and armorings to make them equal to but preferably slightly better than the barrels you can get from daily commendations. 2) Make Rakata earpieces that are BoP as an item bonus, like the armor sets have their own Rakata pieces ARTIFICE 1) Raise the stats on enhancements to make them equal to but preferably slightly better than the barrels you can get from daily commendations. 2) Improve the BoP relics to make them more worthwhile. 3) Add some crystal schematic drops in operations. The following is being setup on the basis of Bioware announcing that at some point all epics will become fully modable but restricted to armor types (ie being able to pull all the mods from a epic chestpiece and putting them on an orange chestpiece (but not onto a head/legs/...), currently armorings cannot be removed from armor pieces and barrels/hilts cant be removed from weapons) ARTIFICE & CYBERTECH 1) Tie set bonuses to Armorings for the purpose of transferring mods from an epic to an orange piece. 2) Have operation bosses drop tokens that only Cybertech and Artifice pickup. One type of token for normal mode and one type for hard mode. 3) Add a vendor that sells schematics to make different stat combination for Mods and Enhancements only. Make these schematics have various stat combinations (ie Enhancements: Crit/Surge, Accuracy/Power, Surge/Alacrity,... Mods: End/Aim/Surge, End/Cunning/Alacrity, End/Will/Accuracy,...) 4) Players can use the tokens to buy these schematics and sell the Mods/Enhancements they can make with them. Aside from improving the endgame viability of Cybertech/Artifice this will improve things for that stats in this game. For example while Accuracy is not completely useless past 100% its value to dps drops considerably and is of much less value than say Crit or Alacrity. This will allow the player base to mix up stats to what they need at the moment and not be restricted to what stats are on the epic piece that dropped. This way it makes the two professions act a little more like Enchanting and Jewelcrafting does in WoW.

Actually Sabotage is more of a boost to Shock Charge, making it more inline with Recoil Control or Burst Volley. Saboteur gets Shock Charge and Incendiary Grenade; Dirty Fighting gets Shrap Bomb, Wounding Shots, and Hemorrhaging Blast. All of which can be fired out of cover. Giving SS one pretty good shot out of cover shot still makes the other two specs more desirable in a high mobility situation it just gives SS a little more punch when on the run since now you are basically left with Quick Shot and Vital Shot. As far as how good to make the shot I would make it a little more powerful than Charged burst but give it a 3-6 sec cooldown so you cant spam it.

Gunslingers have a number of issues relating to the cover mechanic, particularly in pvp, but also in raids. I have some ideas that may help. 1) Remove all defensive abilities (ie Pulse Detonator) from being cover dependent. Generally if we are using them it is because we have already been ripped out of cover and are fighting for our lives, and having to try and get back into cover in order to get someone off of us is a big handicap. 2) This has been mentioned before, but I am including it here. Remove cover from the global cooldown and make any shot that requires cover to use (ie Charged Burst) drop us into cover when we activate it, and then fire the shot. I would still keep the cover button so that if we are setting up an ambush or getting into position for a boss fight we can do so without firing a shot, but when we are fighting we shouldn't need another cooldown before we can fire a shot. 3) Give Gunslingers a cc that affects humanoids/beasts. ATM Gunslingers and Sentinels are the only pure dps ACs out there and neither one can CC humanoids in pve or pvp. The other dps ACs can also heal which gives them even more utility and survivability. The only other ACs that don't have a long term CC also have a tanking tree and tanking form that they can enter with the push of a button to increase their survivability. I would give Sentinels some kind of force hold ability, and give Gunslingers a shot. I was thinking of Neural Shot and could have in its description that it paralyzes a person for 1 min and that damage breaks the effect. This would give us added utility in pve and survivability in pvp. Maybe put it in place of Cheap Shot, since that and Head Shot are virtually identical in what they do and what conditions it takes to trigger them. 4) This is strictly for Sharpshooters. Remove Diversion from the skill tree and give SS a good damage ability that can be used outside of cover. Diversions usefulness seems much to limited to warrant it being placed in the skill tree, especially when compared to what abilities the other trees get (Shock Charge & Shrap Bomb). Also in both pvp and pve there are numerous fights where we are forced to move a fairly regular basis and a SS dps plummets once we leave cover. Having a good shot that we can use outside of cover would help considerably with this. Diversion could become an ability that all Gunslingers could learn rather than it being tied to a certain skill tree.

If this has been asked before I apologize but I wasnt able to find it. When in an operation, whoever is raid leader seems to get periodically spammed (both in chat and on your screen) with a message about your companions vanishing because the team size is full. Does anyone know how to get this message to stop? The few things I have tried in the options menu dont seem to have any effect at all.

When using Master Looter is there some kind of /roll command that can be used to determine a winner? We were planning on using a 1 Need, unlimited Greed system for now, but nobody seems to be able to find any kind of command that displays a random 100 or 1000 roll in the game.

Actually I preordered on July 22 and I am still not in. If you check the thread concerning the preorders you will notice that the vast majority of complaints are coming from people who signed up around 7/21-7/24.

July 22 and still not in yet.