To be honest it's a good idea, all I would like to see is a small graphics change when it's applied (we already have different graphics on republics or imperials equipping the same gear) so if a light armour class equips a slave girl outfit it remains cloth, if a medium class equips it the graphics show as reinforced leather and if a heavy class equips it the graphics show as plassteal and chain links. Leaving you with one set but appears appropriately on the character depending on what it is mitigating as.

Yes there are still plenty of people playing, add all of the EU servers, US servers and Asiatic servers together and you have close to 500 servers. If you only have 2000 people on each server that is a million people. How many people on fleet is only a small percentage of people playing the game.

On my smuggler I was around 2 levels below content due to not doing heroics or bonus series and that I stealthed a lot of the time instead of killing all of the mobs. That makes a big difference. Also don't forget to unlock areas of the map that your quests do not take you to, unlocking map sections gives a good chunk of XP. My Shadow is currently 4 levels below content as I am only doing the class quest but so long as you do not reach 5 levels below content you don't get too many resists to your skills. If you find yourself below content having max affection of companions on another character gives a bonus presence that helps a lot. Also use your comms to equip your companion.

Why would you exit an operation during combat? Between bosses yes, in combat no.

Simply put, it doesn't matter how many different options you put in the roll choice people that want the item will roll need because it gives the highest chance of getting it. The only way to stop that is by either grouping only with people you know or running the group yourself with master looter active. I've run pugs as a healers in Operations only to be kicked out of the group (being the only raider not in that guild) before they looted the last boss in KP because of the chance of Rakata drops.

To be honest it would just be a small time saver as you can post any non-bound item and credits to any character in your legacy now regardless of their faction.

They learnt that lesson and now they are not responding as fast to players cry piss and moan about server populations... Maybe the players that complained about the queues at launch that caused Bioware to open all the new servers should buy us all free game time...

It would bother me as well, the voice over is what sets this game apart.

To be honest all they need to do was to make it a gold set (between blue and purple) with a recommended level on it; Set 1: Recommended level 25, can equip at level 1 and receive 4% of all of the stats for each character level you have and max stats at level 25. Set 2: Required level 26, recommended level 50 and receive 4% of all of the stats for each character level you have from 26+ and max stats at level 50, the level 26 stats being just slightly higher than set one. Then the items would be worth buying as you could get to 50 and be boarder line gear wise for Eternity Vault and/or some of the HM flashpoints.

At this moment with low populations X-server seems to be a requirement BUT like Etheric just stated once we have server transfers we will have to wait to see how the landscape on the servers looks, people will move to fuller servers and eventually servers will become completely empty and get closed down leaving us with reasonably full servers. Maybe x-server will not be needed after that, we can only speculate. The issue is that the community and forums are split down the middle between people who do and don't want X-server so no matter what one half of the players will not be pleased. The only way to please both groups is to create an environment where X-server LFG is not needed.

To be honest, it doesn't take much work to get entry level to the Operations, I mean a full suit of orange armour, with purples from the dailies in the Armour and hilt/barrel slots and you can have a mix of level 50 green and blue in all other slots (which you should have by finishing your class story very easily), ear pieces and implants can be blue and you are just fine.

But here is the problem, your post is accurate until you say "should not be allowed to ..." the game gates with gear, agreed, you need certain gear levels to attempt certain content, agreed. But the group demographic is set by the group members, you can't create a rule to block players from queuing for an operation. Once you start down that road then there are a number of rules that come with it: 1) under minimum gear, can't queue for Op (your suggestion). 2) meets minimum gear cannot be refused for group (only fair). 3) over geared cannot queue for content (it minimises it and is the counter point for 1st rule). All or nothing in my opinion.

Unlocking lots of areas on the map also gives XP, as does finding the odd law item or killing specific mobs to update your codex. Companion conversations give XP when you hit the correct points in their affection ratings.

You mean the underpopulated servers, caused by having too many servers, caused by people early game crying about queues? Maybe they've learnt a lesson, don't cave into people's constant whining about the same thing and do what you planned to do as you're going to get the blame anyway.

MMORPG. Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. I've never understood why it was shortened to MMO, shouldn't it at least be MMOG? Or is it no longer even a game? Seriously the grass roots of the genre is RPG from a huge multiplayer perspective, the RPG aspect seems to be lost and we have a generation of players coming through that seem to be metagamers and theory crafters. I'm glad we have a game here (all be it struggling) that is more RPG than technical data analysing.

[shrug] the story made the game very personalised for me and I enjoyed it thoroughly, each to their own. You seem to forget that they got an EXTRA budget for the VO, no VO means no extra budget so what they spent money on is not really the issue at all.

Your numbers are an exaggeration, even though we have lost a lot of players, we are losing the players who don't like this style of game and keeping the ones that do. so long as BW concentrates on keeping the players that are happy with the game (like myself) then they will have a very loyal fan base. I see no issue with losing the players that don't like the game as it will mean BW won't be convinced by them to change the direction of them game. Because people are addicted to WoW, just like I was with EQ. You have achieved a lot, got a good group of friends, have a strong economic foothold and know the environment, it's safe, secure and familiar. Ergo hard to give up. To be honest, I wouldn't play an MMORPG that didn't have VO any more and a very distinct story, gone are my days of reading text and standing in a "camp" to split, kill, loot for weeks at a time to get a level. Certainly there is content that I would love to see added, by I'm happy with what I have so far. Me too but a rushed job will inevitably be a bad one.

I have listened to every dialogue in my class story on all of my characters, I have listened to the dialogue on every side quest the 1st time that I did them, I level now on class story only so as not to have to repeat quests. I have listened to the dialogue and watched the cut scenes on every Operration and Flashpoint at least the 1st time through. Do I use the spacebar? Yes, I use it to get rid of the cut scene of my ship taking off and landing, I use it when running HM and Ops as I've watched them all multiple times and I use it on the daily quests (which I repeat so often it's crazy). Most of my 200 strong guild is the like minded, we are actually recruiting members at around 2 -3 a week and have only lost a few players.

To be honest with you, the game itself is a bare bones version of various others out there if you ignore the VO and Starwars aspect, those to me are the draw to this game that and being around from the beginning (I dislike starting to play a MMORPG when everyone is fully equipped and capped as it feels like trying to catch up and lagging behind all the time). My hope is that they continue with the VO and story aspect throughout the game and keep it an MMORPG instead of an MMO. Cater for a different style of player, goodness knows there are plenty of MMOs on the market that your generic MMO player can find. I remember the disappointment that I felt when I got out of the tutorial of AoC to find that all of the fully voiced NPCs were gone, I stopped playing a couple of months later as the game simply lost it's charm.

Most definitely story and voice over matter, I'd say that the story and VO is the thing that sets SWTOR apart. It puts the RPG back in MMORPG, I personally started to cringe when people started saying MMO as even as far back as 2000 when I started playing MMORPGs I played for the RPG aspect as I came from pencil and paper gaming.

In the same way that end game group content = heroic dailies?

Sounds good to me, kind of like "Republic Commando" style missions.

No more so than any other MMO's levelling content, but this one is fun and less of a grind.

I agree, I think the whole problem is that once you hit the cap it is, story wise, an anti-climax. You can go from 1 to 50 without repeating a single quest, sitting at a camp or grinding and then at 50 you get dailies which are nothing but repetitive grinding.

To be honest why? Every single person in every single MMO solos, even the hardcore raiders solo in between raids for multiple reasons. I don't see the harm in simply adding a "solo" rating to flashpoints along side story mode and hard mode, the loot can be comparable to what you can buy with daily comms and the rare level 50 purple open world drops (basically 1 tier below Tionese).