I spend a solid amount of time flying both a scout and a gunship (and a bomber, but unrelated), so might as well give my two cents... 1. If your opponents are in a coordinated pre-made and using some kinda voice chat and all have at least decently upgraded ships, and your team is a full on PuG with a bunch of newbies, winning is going to be nearly impossible. It's just a sad fact of GSF, and thankfully in my experience you'll have far, far more games where this isn't the case (though the games where the premade spanks you super hard do stand out). Hell, even if your PuG is mostly solid pilots in upgraded ships, that pre-made with voice chat is going to be a hard nut to crack. Possible though, I've seen it happen. 2. Yeah, gunships really are a pain as a new player in GSF. A coordinated group? Yikes. Plenty of good advice here, though, but sometimes you just gotta accept that you can't be Rambo and singlehandedly take down a trio of coordinated gunships with repair drones. Because, as with the above, beating a coordinated pre-made is never an easy task (but it also doesn't reflect the majority of my GSF experiences). One or two gunships in a PuG can still be daunting when you're first starting off, but they arent' so rough once you learn how to deal with them. Use evasion, try and sneak up on them, learn to use hard cover to get into range before charging. Very few gunships pilots are good enough to stand toe to toe with another ship in a dogfight and will run at the first sign of trouble. If they do flee, be careful about giving chase: pretty common gunship tactic to immediately take shelter in the midst of their allies, meaning you'll get swarmed and die. Still, harassing them and keeping them from shooting the rail gun is huge. Once you've got a little practice, gunships aren't all that terrifying on their own. With my gunship I know I'm far less effective when I'm busy getting stuck in dogfights with scouts and strikes and having to blast them with lasers and missiles instead of my rail gun (still satisfying when I get kills doing this, though!). Play a little more and you'll learn that high evasion scouts are infinitely more painful to deal with than any gunship. They're definitely the bane of gunships... and, like, everything else.

I probably fall between "casual" and "hardcore"... And I'm also someone who has claimed to have made 10 million credits in a week. Because it's true: I've done that. I don't always do that, but I can and have and could easily again. Run some dailies/weeklies, farm some mats to sell (I can gather 6-8 stacks that will sell for ~80-100k each in an hour and a half), and remember to have my companions farming a separate group of materials in missions (to diversify my wares). Then I can play the GTN some (nothing like learning to buy and re-sell underpriced items), and yeah... 10 million in a week with maybe three hours (give or take, given the day). Obviously I don't do this every day, but any time I feel I need some money fast? It's not hard to do. Put on some music, figure out a path to optimize my farming output, boom: rolling in credits.

I'm HUGE on the Paradox Grand Strategy games. Namely... Crusader Kings II Europa Universalis IV Victoria II All fun strategy games. There is something truly satisfying about turning Slavic paganism into a power rivaling Christianity and Islam or taking one of the Boer Republics and pushing the British out of southern Africa. Otherwise... X-Com Tropico Skyrim Fallout: New Vegas Mass Effect series Basically, I love strategy games and I love (western) RPGs. ME3 multiplayer is STILL really fun from time to time, to boot. Right now, though, it's mostly been TOR in my little free time. Think I might've booted up CKII a couple times recently, but that's been it.

Pro-tip: you can get their health back to 100% just by mounting/unmounting.

Getting the 2.5k req bomber (Razorwire/Rampart) is what finally got me to a point where I felt confident and comfortable in GSF. No, it's not flashy, nor maneuverable or fast, but it's sluggishness means you can get some practice on reaction time, it's size means that smaller ships will feel MUCH easier to get around obstacles with, and it's durability means you'll actually get to spend some time in a fight before you die. Doing the weekly quest should be enough to get you at least close to having enough req to buy one, too. Only things to worry about: 1. Coordinated players in fully upgraded strikes/scouts will still ruin your day. But that's just part of GSF: pre-mades in fully upgraded ships are going to have a significant advantage over anyone who isn't. 2. Gunships are very dangerous for bombers, as you're a big, slow moving target. To beat them with a bomber, you need to learn how to sneak up on them using obstacles for cover until you're in firing range. Then? Either they'll run, or they'll foolishy try to blast you with their rail gun, making for an easy kill and only moderate damage to you. But I love my Rampart, still one of my favorite ships to fly. Great satellite defender, and in team deathmatch you can just move with the team laying mines to whack enemies who are too busy dogfighting your allies to avoid them. There's very little more satisfying than seeing one of your interdiction mines smack an annoying scout pilot and then you and your allies just obliterate him. Throw on a co-pilot with hydrospanner, put your first req points into upgrading your shields and armor, and you'll be a beastly target that can absorb silly amounts of punishment. Avoid repeated gunship fire and wandering away from the team into a bunch of enemies, then going entire games without dying becomes not too uncommon. Not to mention you can actually do some damage with those mines. Interdiction definitely, then the other should be either Seeker or Seismic. Seeker mines can be dodged, but you can spam them more than other mines and they have a really wide activation range, and tend to give lesser pilots serious issues dealing with.

This so much. I don't talk about it much, especially outside of close friends and family, but I've struggled with depression for most of my life. And it's not like I have much reason to be "down", as I've got a pretty good life. Wonderful, beautiful girl who is the love of my life, I'm a published writer, and I'm at the beginning of a young, promising career in paleontology and geology (mostly paleontology... far crappier money, but oh so amazing), and I'm still young and physically fit and healthy to boot. Doesn't change the fact that, since I was 12, I've been dealing with bouts of severe depression (which, "wonderfully", also leads more often than not to severe anxiety! Yay human brain!). And by "severe", I mean there have been days (weeks, months, about a year at a time once or twice), where all I was capable of was laying on the bed/couch and contemplating all the ways I've failed in life and the myriad ways I could end it. Occasionally I would crawl out from under the sheets for a sandwich. I've spent more time than I'm proud of just trying to "man up" and power my way through it, and have found out that that's just a terrible, terrible (gargantuanly atrocious) bad idea. That is a one way ticket to shutting down and becoming a miserable bastard, and none of those are particularly fun (known fact: miserable is the worst kind of bastard). It's because depression is a medical condition, and your brain isn't physically healthy. After all, you wouldn't treat a lung disease by just going "screw it, I'm gonna just try breathing better!" until your lungs get the message and stop hacking up bloody phlegm. That's a big part of it, recognizing that you have a condition that is both medical and psychological in nature. Go to a doctor and get on medication if you need to (nothing to be ashamed of, you're treating an illness) and maybe seek counseling to help you understand what you're enduring and how to separate what's "real" from what's "just that silly, silly illness in my brain that makes me think doing my best Ian Curtis impression is a solid idea". Other advice: 1. Exercise. I know, I know, it's incredibly difficult to find the energy to exercise when you don't have the energy to tell Netflix that, yes, you're still watching more Star Trek: The Next Generation re-runs. But being outdoors and getting in good physical shape have all been medically proven to help get your mind healthy as well. 2. Touching into a sense of spiritually, at least personally, has been a huge boon for me. I'm not saying you need to start going to church and getting a guilt trip every Sunday (in fact, that sounds like an TERRIBLE idea. So terrible it needed all caps. TERRIBLE), but if you find genuine comfort from some kind of religion or spirituality, just go with it. Sure, Odin probably doesn't exist given there's zero logical or scientific reason for it, but spending some nights walking around in the forest and pouring some beer on the ground in his name is legitimately part of the reason that, unlike Mr. Williams (tragically, very funny, talented man... especially when he wasn't trying), I haven't lost my battle yet. So yeah, that's my long, rambling story... but stuff like this always touches me on a personal note. Depression sucks, and it will absolutely derail your life. The sooner you get help for it, the sooner you can avoid that derailment or, if you're like me, at the very least get it back on those rails. Trains are cool, and I need to get caught up on Hell on Wheels. Westerns are also cool. Shut up you idiot.

Watched it this weekend. Absolutely a fantastic film, one of the best Sci Fi movies made in the last decade.

So because it doesn't go far enough we should just not let it go any distance?

Because if we don't introduce major credit sinks into the game inflation will make actually do what you fear and start making it inaccessible to new players (and even people returning after a lengthy hiatus)? Nothing stopping your or anyone else from joining a guild that can afford a guild ship or accepting the fact that you can just be a wee bit more frugal, save up whatever cash you do earn, and together affording it. Or hey, maybe your guild has people in it who are actually selfless, understand that the guild ship credit sink is a necessity to keep SWTOR healthy in the long term, and volunteer to pull other's weight as well in regards to getting that guild ship. Honestly, I don't think you seem to grasp that concept. Your entire stance on this is "I think 50 million is too much because I think it's too much so it should be less", and I personally don't feel that holds much water. New player? Join a guild that can afford one already. Casual player in a casual friend guild? Accept that maybe you won't see every single piece of content. You might as well argue that when a player first logs in for the very first time they can, immediately, run a Nightmare Op, have every enemy die and drop a bunch of awesome gear they want, and in the process get Legend rank with all Reputations. It's literally no different beyond you're building up credits instead of rep or xp. In summary, you would sacrifice the long term health of the game because you arbitrarily feel that this content should be immediately accessible even though there's already plenty of content in this game that requires times and effort in order to access. You speak as a voice for "new players", which you're not and, again, will almost universally be unaffected, and for "casuals", who also by the very definition are unlikely to see some content (top level Ops, being the top of the Ranked PvP ladder, ect). Again, I can earn over ten million a week without going crazy on playing time (full time job and full time relationship). Only some of that is farming, the rest is dailies and just from general playing.

1. "Asking a question" to try and imply that the person you're asking fits a specific pigeonhole is, yes, an attack in my mind. 2. Claiming that 50 million credits for a guild ship is too high of a price tag and claiming it will alienate newer players is absolutely silly. Even with a full time job and a healthy relationship I've found time before to make 10 million credits in a single week, all on my own. I'm confident that, on my own, I could probably fund a guild ship within a month. Claiming that a group of people can't do the same in a significantly faster amount of time is crazy. And honestly, I don't see how this hurts new players. The vast majority of them will be able to join guilds with guild ships minutes after starting up their first character. They'll be able to reap the benefits of guild ships without having to pay out a single cred. The only people I could possibly imagine being "locked out" from this would be a group of friends joining SWTOR just now, together, who are insistent on forming their own buddy guild. However, I dare say that people like that (especially so long after SWTOR's launch) will be a tiny, tiny minority of new players. But 50 million is nothing. If a guild of 8+ players can't make that in a couple of weeks, then I propose at least a few of them have no clue how to go about making credits in this game. At the end of the day every guild ship sold is 50 million more credits deflated from the economy. Honestly, new players joining the game and not being able to buy anything off the GTN because of inflation is a much, much bigger risk to turning off newcomers than 50 million credit guildships that most of them will be able to make use of for free if they so choose.

To add on... you can't apply real world economics to an MMO. Very, very little of an MMO economy is even remotely like the real world. For starters, you can't just magic more money into the economy by going and killing ten womp rats or out of the economy be purchasing something from a NPC vendor. There's no debt, there's no loans, prices are often completely arbitrary, and even supply and demand doesn't work like real life. MMO economies function on a level completely different from the real world on a fundamental level. It's like trying to apply the strategy for a soccer game to baseball. Yeah, they're both sports, but they're very, very different sports. Yes, people buying sizable chunks of GSH stuff and guildships will see a sizable chunk of credits get funneled out of the economy. But as people who have already saved up for that stuff have shown, it takes almost no time at all to funnel those credits back into the economy. I think we're look at, at most, two or three days where a few prices drop slightly on the GTN or just a slightly smaller amount of stuff gets sold on it. Hardly doom and gloom.

Meh. Let's be honest: all it will do is make people a little less inclined to purchase off the GTN for a few days. Meanwhile, players will still be running dailies and guilds will still be running Ops. The result will be money going right back into the economy, with some nice big new money sinks hanging around to help stave off inflation (which is the real culprit every MMO should be concerned about).

The Phantom Wookiee does exist, so long as you believe in Him. Believing in the Phantom Wookiee, having faith in your heart, makes Him exist. So long as you truly believe, He is for all intents and purposes real.

Playable Chevins or bust.

It's aliiiiiiiiiive! But seriously, no. WoW was one of the very, very few MMOs to allow it and it was obnoxious. May add ons rot elsewhere.

This. And that was kind of my impression of the OP's post: that not being as special of a snowflake isn't cool. Either that, or he bought a bunch of packs when they went on sale assuming the items inside would sell on the GTN at their pre-sale price. Honestly, I don't know what the OP wants. For cartel packs on sale to give out less super rare items, I guess? Even though those are probably the one big reason anyone buys cartel packs to begin with? Personally, I couldn't care less. I've never gone after a rare item simply because it's rare. The super rare items I have from cartel packs are either ones I got out of a pack I purchased or something I spent some credits on because it looked cool. Yes, I bought an Orobird: not because it's rare, but because I thought my Inquisitor would look delightfully mad riding a giant tropical bird. And this is something SWTOR has always supported: aesthetics are up to the player and have no bearing on actual gameplay. That's the whole point of orange/customizable gear, you can make your character look however you want without concern. It's not like most MMOs where the "rare" gear is the stuff you need to be a top level raider/PvPer to acquire and thus a status symbol of you "leetness". Here, if you're dressed like Darth Revan and stomping around on a Recon Walker, all it means is that you wanted to spend more credits than other people to make your character look like they do. It's something literally anyone with enough time can eventually do. It's just that I'd rather spend my credits on my upcoming GSH Zoo and letting my alt look even more insane on her giant bird.

It's simple: Aliens

1. It's so insanely cheap to stay vaccinated. Unless you're a player literally starting THIS WEEK, 2k credits per six hours (and any potential deaths) is no trouble at all. By the time you reach the station you can afford the vaccine. And I'm sure on most servers a brand new player could find a guild or friendly players to gift them vaccines. 2. I personally LOVE the idea of events that can have global effects on the game world. Having the status quo/static state of the game world have a wrench, even a tiny one, thrown in it from time to time is always a great way to keep things fresh. 3. If you're avoiding the plague like, well, the plague, you don't even NEED to spend 2k credits every six hours. Buy one or two vaccines and only ever use them in the event you get infected while off the fleet. It's really not a major deal. Avoiding exploding and dying in a green puddle on the floor isn't a huge effort for someone who doesn't plan to actively participate in the game.

To echo others, your logic for not playing essentially half the game is pretty silly. Yes, they lose the Cold War (when it stops being cold). Doesn't mean the events on their side are completely meaningless or that their side of the story is any less interesting.

Except the game explicitly says they're attacking people as an alternative food source due to the decline of the bormu population. Pretty sure that's in the codex, which I have quoted in my opening post for this thread.

Looking at both user and critic reviews for Guardians of the Galaxy, it would appear the general consensus of the movie itself is opposite of your opinion based purely on previews. Not saying your opinion is wrong (that would be silly of me), but GoG appears to already be a smashing critical success and I'd wager when we get the numbers from its opening weekend it'll be a financial success as well. We should hope for the new trilogy to have that in its future, regardless of the tone/style they choose to take.

Why would the racing be based on mount speed? That seems like an odd assumption to make. I for one would LOVE podracing. That old Podracer game was one of the few good things to come out of the first movie, and I'd really enjoy something like that in TOR. Much, much more than Swoop Racing. I get it: swoop racing was part of the original KOTOR. It was also one of the worst parts of the game and was nothing more than a time trial on a static, fixed course. I would have to think a Podracing side-game with customizable vehicles and an actively competitive component would make for significantly better replay value.

Yes, but even with their venom a gila monster still has sharp teeth. Which even then isn't a great comparison, because gila monsters' prey is almost exclusively smaller than them (and outside of living prey, specialize in reptile and bird eggs). Meanwhile, the Bormu is significantly larger than the Zeldrate. On a personal note, gila monsters are amazing animals. As is venom in reptiles in general. Heck, we're starting to discover evidence that a truly sizable chunk of squamates (snakes, lizards, monitor lizards) is, to some degree, venomous. It's just so un-concentrated in the vast majority of them that we never had a reason to take notice (it's simply too little to ever be consequential in most species).

Rift came out back when I was spending some time back in WoW. Absolutely hilarious to watch all the "It's gonna be the real WoW killer this time!" thread. It was like Wildstar and TOR recently, but dialed up to 11. Because no rationale person could really look at Rift and think "wow, this is gonna be even bigger than WoW!" The atmosphere looked like a mash-up of a Michael Bay film with a Ford truck commercial as envisioned by a 13 year old, and then tacked onto WoW's gameplay and UI. Good for it to at least be on the list, but if there's any game that's truly a "WoW clone", it's Rift. A few innovations/gimmicks aside, it's hard not to look at the game and think of it as WoW without everything that made Azeroth an entertaining setting stripped out.

Just throwing it out there, but... did it occur at any point that, despite your abilities and confidence, maybe when another player asks to please slow down the polite thing to do is slow down? Sure, you apparently handled it fine... but if a player isn't comfortable with the pacing you shouldn't abuse your position as the tank to force them to "deal with it".