If the game is laggy, either: 1) Your internet connection is terrible or 2) Your laptop cannot run the game very well #2 you can (usually) fix by turning the graphics settings way down. For #1, try using a wired connection instead of wifi if possible.

Rejiggered the combat section into basics/solo/group, added a few more things throughout, minor cleanup. (Advice on group content coming soon!)

I thought it started a little slow, but it really started to pick up steam near the end of Chapter 1, and was pretty awesome after that. There's a lot of universe-saving.

He means "4 days" = 4 * 24 = 96 hours of playtime, which seems about right to 50 if you move things along. You could easily take twice that long if you're new and/or like to explore every nook and cranny of every world. Typing "/played" in chat displays the cumulative amount of time you've played that character. IMO SWTOR levels pretty fast, and doesn't feel nearly as grindy as vanilla WoW or something like EQ. I want to say that I took something like 175 hours (over about eight months) to go 1-60 in WoW when it first came out.

You can try contacting Support, but I'm not sure if they can exchange items like that. Worth a shot, anyway.

I'm pretty sure they have said there is more gear coming in 1.2, though they have not specifically said they will fix the hood down thing. It seems to me like it would not be that hard to have the engine be able to toggle hood up/hood down/no hood, since it can obviously do hood/no hood already. (Even just being able to force 'no hood AND no helmet' would be a step in the right direction.) And it would be pretty trivial to just take some of the existing orange heavy robes, change the models to add the folded-down hood, and make it a new item. But frankly I'd rather have them fixing bugs than stuff that is purely visual, or at least making that a much higher priority.

Try the guide in my sig for lots of advice, but this is probably some combination of: Inadequate or inappropriate gear on you and/or your companion Not spending your talent points well Not having good synergy between you and your companion (either you tank and they dps/heal, or they tank and you dps) Not knowing how to use all your abilities (interrupting enemy casts in particular is HUGE)

I understand the whole 'you can't do EVERYTHING on one character without being ridiculously outleveled' thing. I tend to be a bit of a completionist at times too, and I realized pretty quickly that it would not work well in this game. What BW did is put in enough content that you can play through the 'whole' game at least 2 or 3 times and do different things, or play through once and skip quests that don't seem interesting (or all the Heroic areas if you don't want to group up with other people). They definitely expect people to play through on multiple characters to see different storylines. If you want to do everything, what I'd recommend is basically doing EVERYTHING on one planet, then blow through the next one by just doing your class missions and nothing else. You'll be at about the right level to start the planet after that. Then you can roll an alt and do the worlds you skipped the first time. An XP gain toggle would be really nice. If they are concerned about PvP, you could make it not apply to XP gained from PvP so you can't stay in the 1-49 bracket forever.

Everybody here pretty much covered it already. Just wanted to point you to my handy guide (link in sig) that explains this and many, many other topics related to abilities and combat. :-)

You need to put abilities into 'quickslots' on those bars to use them. You can also 'bind' keystrokes (or modified keystrokes) to any of the quickslots in the Preferences menu. They bind 1-0, '-', and '=' to the first 12 slots by default, but you can change this around as you like. The guide linked in my sig has more information on abilities and quickslots (among many other things) if you're still confused. :-)

A "Game Master" -- a Bioware employee whose job it is to fix things like this. I think SWTOR calls them "Customer Representatives" officially -- GM is a term from other games. There should be an option in-game to request help; submit a 'ticket' through that system and someone from Bioware will contact you. You can also try posting in the Customer Service forum.

You can level either way. If you level as a tank, use a DPS companion, gear yourself for defense, and stay in Soresu form. Your companion will do all the damage while you hold the enemies. If you level as DPS, try to use a tank companion (T7's your only choice at this point), gear for damage, and stay in Shii-Cho or the DPS stance. Try to keep from drawing aggro. As for gear... take quest rewards when they're upgrades, and commendations when they're not. Buy orange gear and blue mods with commendations when you can. A lot of the side quests have gear for your companions.

Doc helps a LOT in long fights. With him healing I can fight Champions a couple levels above me solo. With other companions... not so much. But with decent gear (on you AND your companion) you should be able to kill equal-level elites pretty easily. The Harrowers are super-annoying because when they get low on health, they go temporarily invulnerable (when they float up in the air and charge up) and then enrage (extra damage from then until they die). I think they may do some kind of PBAOE while they're charging too. If you don't realize this it's almost impossible to kill them. You need to RUN AWAY when they float up in the air, and try to stun/KB them once the invulnerability wears off and burn them down. For more general elites, you need to use interrupts and stuns as much as possible to stop their special attacks. (Use kick if it's up, otherwise use one of stasis/push/pommel strike... almost nothing should get through.) Toss in a defensive CD like Saber Ward if necessary. If you're a tank, wear defensive gear and be in Soresu form, and set up your companion to DPS. If you're a DPS, use a companion to tank and make sure they're set up for that with gear/abilities. Check out the guide in my sig if you need more details.

I use one of these: http://reviews.cnet.com/pc/saitek-cyborg-command-unit/4505-9591_7-31818303.html and bind the movement (WASD) to the thumbstick. With the shift key on the pad you have 36 things accessible with one hand (this one's lefty only), plus the two buttons by the thumbstick. It's totally programmable and can emulate keyboard presses and mouse movements/clicks. It looks like Saitek doesn't sell this anymore, but Logitech and Nostromo make similar products.

This is the best advice. They way they've set up SWTOR, it's also pretty easy to play through the starter quests for all four classes pretty quickly and get a feel for how they work. Note that the two sides are mirrored in abilities; the storylines are totally different, but a Trooper plays just like a Bounty Hunter (for example). I think the *easiest* solo setup IMO is a ranged healer/dps using your companion to tank. That would be a Scoundrel/Operative, Sage/Sorcerer, or Commando/Mercenary. Send the companion in first, then just stand back and shoot things and throw heals. You also get a very strong in-combat CC ability if you specialize in healing. The *strongest* solo setup (again, very IMO) for PvE is a player tank with a companion healer. But you have to know what you're doing in terms of tanking and mitigating incoming damage, and you're somewhat more more gear-dependent.

If you want a more thorough explanation of all this crazy MMO-ness and how stats and gear work in SWTOR, try the guide linked in my sig.

I would *guess* they might fix this in 1.2 with the other UI improvements in the pipeline. But I haven't seen this specifically mentioned. It is annoying, and can disrupt things like accepting a mission reward too. Best place to post suggestions/complaints about things is the Customer Support forum, though they will probably see things here too.

Thanks for all the constructive feedback. Keep it coming! I'll try to incorporate as much of it as I can. I've been out of town over the weekend, but I should be doing some updates soon. I definitely want to rework the combat section. I thought about splitting it on solo/group play, but in SWTOR you are almost always in a "group" with your companion. I may take another look at that, though. I'll also see if I can find any more pleasing colors for the section headers. It has to be something bright to stand out on the dark forum bg, though.

Yes, 10-15s downtime after a fight that maybe takes 20-30 seconds is pretty significant IMO. It's never a LONG period of downtime to recover, but it adds up when you have to do it once every minute or two. With Doc, I have pretty much zero downtime -- but pulls with just weak/normal enemies do take a bit longer. One solution is to use Kira for easy pulls and only bring out Doc when you face Elites (or if you try to solo a heroic area), but then you have to keep them both reasonably geared. With a DPS companion you can usually do 2 or 3 fights in a row, especially if you work in defensive cooldowns... but starting a 'trash' fight at half health with no CDs means little or no margin for error if something goes wrong.

I'm pretty sure that, as of now, there are no offensive 'dispel' (buff removal) abilities.

There's also an option to show a tooltip for your companion, which I find hugely helpful. As pointed out above, it's slightly cheaper to buy loose mods than orange items with mods in them. There should be a 'modification' commendation vendor that sells them on each world, and they're duplicated on the fleet as well. I also discuss this in my PvE guide (shameless plug, link in sig).

There's currently a severe lack of non-hooded Jedi robes, especially the 'heavy' ones for Guardians. You can wear other classes' orange armor (and swap out the mods), if you don't mind looking more like a trooper or smuggler. My PvE guide (link in sig, shameless plug) also discusses gear and stats extensively.

IMO the easiest to play is a healer, using a companion tank. DPS with a companion tank is also easy, but you have to be on your game to down elites before they kill your companion. Player tank with a companion healer is probably the 'strongest', but you have to know how to tank in multi-mob pulls, and have to be good at interrupting/stunning tough enemies to avoid taking lots of damage from special attacks. My PvE guide (link in sig) discusses lots of this stuff.

AFAIK you cannot bind JUST the modifier keys themselves (shift/alt/ctrl).

'Orange' gear is ENTIRELY dependent on the mods placed in it. The 'armoring' (for armor) or 'barrel/hilt' (for weapons) determines its overall item level and the armor/damage rating. Generally, an orange item will be similar to a non-moddable item of the same quality and level as the mods installed. (So if you have all green mods it's like a green item, all blue mods is like a blue item, etc.)