So this has some potential, depending on what the exact interpretation of that patch note means. Do Assassins still get the double-bladed version, or do both Inquisitor-based advanced classes just get the single-bladed version now? Is the single-blade version (regardless of the answer to the first question) going to be mainhand only, or can it be dual-wielded? The Kallig saber design is one I've been wanting to use on my sentinel for ages, but the design is so restricted that being able to dual-wield it on a light-side sentinel is completely impossible. If the new BoL version of this saber can be mainhand or offhand AND if Assassins just get the single-blade version now, it'd give me an incentive to get back to work on both my Assassin and my Sorcerer just for their two copies of that saber. On the other hand, if it's mainhand only, or if you only get the single-blade version from running a Sorcerer, I may not bother, as my time is so restricted that it'd take me longer than it'd be worth to get a second Sorc to that point.

Ummm...not sure if anyone else has pointed this out yet, but unless they've changed things with highlighted HM drops since Musco commented on them in December, that's a bold-faced lie. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8684134#edit8684134 For those who don't wanna click the link, Musco specifically said at the time, "When running a Nightmare Operation, there is a chance that a 224 item can drop, but it is not a guaranteed drop like the highlighted Hard Mode is." I know they've been making changes to how 224s drop in NiM raids since then, but I don't recall them saying anything about reducing the drop rate of 224s in highlighted HMs. So...yeah, based on what I've heard, you were lied to, buddy. I'll leave it to you to decide if you're surprised or not.

That's another possibility. My interpretation was always that red/green was reserved for solo or planetary stuff, while orange/purple was for non-planetary or larger group stuff. I'll admit that there's a good chance that my interpretation isn't right. For the most part, I just wanted to share something random I found while exploring to try and counter all the negativity here; what this particular find means, if anything, is still up for speculation, of course.

The Eternal Championship sounds like a solo thing, and solo instance gates are red or green depending on if you can enter them, not orange or purple (FP/ops gates are orange if you can't enter, purple if you can, so the orange gate implies an FP/op that we can't enter). That still doesn't rule out the possibility that I'm wrong here, of course (heroic instances are technically group phases, and they fall into the red/green category); guess we'll find out one way or another in a couple weeks.

Ok, directions then: 1. travel to Zakuul. Head east, up the elevator, then south and back down another elevator to reach Undercity Plaza. 2. head west from there into the Platform 6 Cantina. "Nocturno" and "Drake Raven" (the Batman and Robin NPCs) are in the room at the north end of the cantina, along with several other NPCs who might be additional references (can't really tell, the lighting's not great in that room). 3. at the very north end of the same room is an elevator. Take it down to "Level 2," and you'll find yourself in a hallway leading to a circular room sealed off by what looks like an orange flashpoint/operation barrier. The room itself seems rather small, so this could simply be the entrance for a future "single-boss" op like Golden Fury, or it could be something similar to the FP/ops hangar bays found on fleet that lead to larger content by way of a shuttle or something.

So fun fact: If you look around a little bit, you can find SWTOR versions of Batman and Robin in the Zakuul cantina. While that's not exactly NEW news, the same room also has an active elevator in it; if you take it down a level, you'll find yourself in a room blocked off by the standard orange flashpoint/operations barrier. Hope still exists, folks.

I ran my sentinel through DF/DP for the first time back in October/November-ish when I came back to the game, so I can confirm that this cutscene SHOULD still exist. However, I was also right at the Dread Fortress's doorstep when I left (back when those ops first came out), so that might have somehow "saved" the cutscene for me to view when I did finally complete the storyline. Haven't had time to run a fresh character through the Dread War arc to confirm yet. As a side note, I did also have to go back to base camp to get the final cutscene; it didn't just play automatically at the end of the op. Dunno if that helps you or not.

While I won't speak for the shape, the Darksaber's color is black/white, not black yellow. Reference pic linked below: http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/b/b3/DarksaberRender.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111102223010 Supposedly, black/white crystal schems were datamined recently, but aren't in the actual game yet; no idea if they're actually coming any time soon or not.

There's actually already a pretty long thread about this here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=845833 Not trying to be rude to you for making another thread, just showing that a decent number of other people feel the same as you do.

Something's definitely borked somewhere. I was able to log in this morning before work to put a couple things on the GTN. Once I got back, nothing. Launcher opens fine (usually, though it told me once that the service was down, didn't do that the next time), patch portion completes as normal, but when I click Play, the patcher closes and the game doesn't open. I've tried this 3 times now (4 if you count that failed launch separately, once running the launcher as administrator) with the same results. I'd ask for a workaround, but I'm likely too tech-illiterate to be able to follow whatever it is anyway, so I guess I'm just out for the night. Hopefully Bioware will be reasonable about this and give us some form of compensation (nothing too outlandish, maybe just extend people's subs by a couple days due to all this bugged-up crazy), but I'm not really holding my breath for even that much.

The image doesn't depict either one of them specifically for me, just says "Havoc Squad." So it could be either or both. Either way, this is disappointing for me just because of the overall spread we've seen so far (and know of through ch.11 when Havoc Squad is set to make its comeback now, not including those "bugged" alerts since we don't officially know who those include and when they're supposed to go live): -Knight: one companion back through story, none through alerts (including rumors of those in ch.11). 1/5 -Consular: one companion back through alerts, none through story (no ideas of when to expect any others in the future). 1/5 -Trooper: two companions already returned through alerts (if you're playing Rep-side, one if you're Imp-side), one at least SEEN through story, 1-2 (possibly even 3, if Vik gets dragged in as well) to be returned through story next month. Anywhere from 3/5-5/5, depending on your interpretation and how events unfold (subtract one if you're playing Imp-side and can't get 4X). -Smuggler: nothing through story and only one forthcoming in the Eternal Championship. 1/5 -Warrior: one companion returned Imp-side through alerts, none Rep-side or through story. 1/5 at best. -Inquisitor: two returned through alerts, none through story. 2/5 -Hunter: one just returned through a new alert, none through story. 1/5 -Agent: two returned through story, one through an alert. 3/5 All in all, Bioware has been really skewed in whose companions they've been returning when; Agents and Troopers have been getting the most back to date, with Troopers set to have at least seen, possibly recruited back, 4 or even all 5 of their original crew...at the same time Smugglers get back their FIRST original teammate. Revisiting Agent for a moment, they have two companions back through story now, more than any other class (Knight only has one, most have none, Trooper has SEEN one but hasn't gotten him back yet)...though again, Trooper might blow that out of the water next month depending on how much of Havoc Squad makes its return (or how loosely you interpret "reintroduced in the story," in which case Vik would still be included). Hardly fair, and I don't just say this because I main a Sentinel; lots of other class companion pools are being neglected too.

The reason Agents and Troopers have blaster pistols in cutscenes (for those that might not know) is for ease of programming in those cutscenes. Both Trooper and Agent have the potential to change weapon proficiencies completely when they choose their advanced classes (going from rifles to either assault cannons or sniper rifles), so the programmers gave them pistols during cutscenes so they'd have something "in common" in their arsenal no matter what path they took. Plus, for non-class cutscenes (flashpoints, world story missions, side quests, anything that isn't class-specific), this also allows them to share choreography with Smugglers/Bounty Hunters who already use pistols. None of this means I'm disagreeing with the idea of this thread, of course; I'd love to be able to throw a saber staff onto something besides a Shadow/Assassin so I can play a saber staff wielder that ISN'T reliant on stealthing around. Problem is, this isn't the small change it seems like on the surface. Even if they didn't actually recode, say, a Jedi Sentinel to be able to actually wield a saber staff and just make it a new feature of the outfit system (throw a staff into an outfit tab, but your character is really still wielding two single sabers), they'd still have to make entirely new animations for nearly every attack in the game--Force Charge with saber staves, Zealous Strike with a single saber, Assassinate with dual sabers, etc. Same with blasters--they'd have to make pistol-based animations for all the rifle/cannon/sniper rifle attacks out there, rifle based ones for all the others, etc. It's more work than you're thinking it is, and I doubt Bioware will ever actually do it. Now, again, that's not to say that they SHOULDN'T. As I said, I'd love it if they did, so consider me another /signed on this. I'm just not particularly optimistic about the chances of it ever happening.

I saw an idea a LONG time ago that, if they ever implemented it, would be pretty close to having an actual hood toggle: Essentially, all the hoods in the game come in either "plain" or one of a handful of patterned designs (the stripes on the Reaver design vs the central black mark on the Remnant Underworld Knight design, for example). Bioware could simply release "hood-down" headpieces for each of these designs that "replace" the hood on these chestpieces. If, for example, you had the Remnant Underworld Knight chestpiece and bought the "hood-down" headpiece that matched it, the hood on the chestpiece would vanish, and the headpiece would make it look as if you'd toggled the hood down; you could then use "hide head slot" to hide your hood-down headpiece and put your hood back up. (As as extension of this, they could also make "hood-up" headpieces for each design as well, so that people who used, for example, the Ambitious Warrior chestpiece--which doesn't actually HAVE a hood-up variant--could still put their hood up if they wanted to in certain situations) Granted, this STILL isn't an actual hood toggle (which, I'll agree, would be much preferable to something we'd have to pay cartel coins for), and it's definitely not a perfect solution (since it'd take up your head slot, using one of the hood-down/up headpieces would prohibit you from using any sort of mask or faceplate as well)...but I'm pretty sure, at this point, they're never going to make a TRUE hood toggle, so we're likely gonna have to make due with whatever we can (I've got a pseudo hood toggle jury-rigged on my Assassin using two separate outfit slots that I switch between whenever I want to raise or lower my hood, while others use the circlets).

My thoughts on the 4X/Pierce quest: Do I see why the devs made these companions recruitable this way? Yes, absolutely. Not only does it make sense for those two characters, for new players who decided to leap straight into the 4.0 content, this is their introduction to PvP. Problem is, for the rest of us, we've had PLENTY of time to get to know the PvP side of the game. I don't enjoy it, and the people who DO enjoy it don't enjoy me being there because I'm so bad at it; it's a lose/lose for everyone involved. Do I object to having to do PvP to get these companions? Not entirely, though I do believe that the requirements are a little...much. Personally, I'd think that 10 matches, with wins still counting as 2, would be enough for new players to get at least a decent feel for what PvP in general is like. That being said, I did my 4X run on the one character I've cared to run through the Alliance grind to date back on New Year's Eve (my wife was working, so I wasn't in much of a mood to go out and celebrate elsewhere), so I'll agree that it doesn't take long...but it's still not something I'd consider enjoyable. Is it truly "optional," as at least a couple people have argued? Yes and no. Nobody is truly "forcing" me to go and do the PvP to get 4X/Pierce NOW...but what happens if the Alliance specialist (well...Theron/Lana, in this case, if memory serves) that gives out the alert for 4X/Pierce now gives out an alert in a later update for a companion I actually DO want to recruit? Under those circumstances, recruitment of 4X/Pierce DOES become a mandatory prerequisite for recruiting the companion I actually want (since you don't get more than one alert from a particular specialist at a time), and since we don't know who will become recruitable when, or which specialists will give out which alerts for which companions, a lot of us tend to treat each companion recruitment as if it IS mandatory for that specific reason.

Ren's version, sure, but crossguard sabers in general have existed before his specific version (not in anything we've seen to date, but Rebels will be changing that soon, and the visual dictionary has already confirmed that crossguard sabers were a thing before Kylo made one out of necessity). Complaining that giving the player base access to normal, stable-bladed crossguard sabers because the design has only been seen once would be like petition for the removal of every Shadow/Assassin in the game since we've only seen one saber staff in the movies. Besides, if we're gonna cite the Falcon as an example, maybe you don't wanna take a peak at every Smuggler's hangar...

My two credits' worth: Kylo Ren's saber? Yes please. It's already been stated to be based on a design that dates back to around this era (earlier, technically), so it'd hardly be immersion-breaking to have (and I'd love to have one for my Marauder). Ezra's saber? I'd...prefer not, and I don't really see the point. That saber was a one-of-a-kind design from 3500-plus years in the future of this game (or of an alternate timeline, depending on your interpretation), so it really shouldn't be brought in as something our characters can use now. Plus, the Jedi/Sith move sets don't have any way to make use of the blaster mode of Ezra's saber, so I don't see what the point would be anyway (and if you just want that extra guard in front, one of the Conqueror sabers would be a nice fill-in that already exists). Although if they DO add Ezra's saber, kudos to you; I won't be buying one myself, but I won't spit on those that do.

I'm not offended when I see my overweight aunt in a string bikini, but that doesn't mean I wanna see it every time I go to the beach. Same situation here: I don't get offended by every INDIVIDUAL incident from every toxic person I meet in-game, but the general toxic atmosphere of the community itself gets aggravating when every group I run with seems to have at least one guy that feels the need to be rude whenever things don't go exactly right (even if he could just as easily stay silent and rant to guildies later instead), or if people don't spacebar through everything and the guy has to wait an extra minute or two for his daily clear (boo-frickin'-hoo). I can shrug off the words themselves, but it gets tiresome when my only choices pertaining to a game I love (despite its many flaws) are "stop playing" or "prepare to put up with the toxics again every time you log in." Great options, huh? Also, fun fact: that toxic player base that a lot of people here are telling the OP to just accept as a part of daily life now instead of working to change? They're pretty much the core reason why the solo-mode FPs exist (devs made those so people who wanted to watch cutscenes in group content could do so without fear of being bullied by players who just spacebar through everything, if memory serves), and the solo-mode FPs (specifically the GSI droid that comes packaged with them) have been cited by other people on the forums as a contributing factor in declining player skill in endgame content. Invoking transitive property from my old math classes for a moment, that means that the toxic player base is, in a roundabout way, partly responsible for some of the "bads" they themselves love to gripe about. Not to say those same "bads" would have been pro otherwise, but if the toxics hadn't pushed them out of group content and into the coddling arms of the GSI droid (or given the devs a reason to create said droid in the first place), they might've learned more earlier and had more of a chance to improve. Interesting how things work out sometimes.

Just for amusement, I went back and found all the threads I could in the Ops/FPs/Heroics subforum that people have made on this subject since 4.0 came out: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=845833 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=860480 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=862035 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=860569 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=857168 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=856320 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=839665 7 threads of varying lengths, not including the ones I didn't grab that talk about how the new auto-completion feature has borked other things like the Voss weekly by proxy (pretty sure that'd bump the count up by at least 2 or 3). I'd say there's a decent number of people who'd support the devs putting in the effort to make this an either/or thing instead of all or nothing. Not saying the field turn-ins are all bad; I've been doing Heroics for Alliance building same as everyone else, and the auto-completion is a godsend for that...but again, it shouldn't be forced on people who still want to see the ending scenes (or who haven't gotten to see them them all yet for whatever reason). Making the field turn-in an optional thing for those that want it while not forcing it on those that still want the cutscenes is the only way to satisfy both crowds, and I'd say there's enough people on both sides to warrant it.

My wife returned to the game recently and decided to restart a low-level smuggler she had (she never got much further than clearing Ord Mantell, so she decided to just start over and learn the class from scratch), but she forgot that I'd been ranting about this for a while now, and she ran into another issue that I don't remember if anyone's brought up related to this: light/dark points. She eventually got to the point of doing Gizmel Gam's heroic mission and reached the droid that told her that the "supplies" Gam wanted her to get were really a shipment of spice, which she could either retrieve (dark side points) or destroy right then and there (light side points); having done the quest in the past, she knew that she could retrieve the spice and destroy it in front of Gam for lying to her, allowing her to earn light side points to balance out the dark points she got for retrieving the spice in the first place...except, as stated, she forgot that I'd already mentioned to her that the ending cutscenes to these missions had been removed, so the mission auto-completed after she retrieved the spice, and she found herself with extra dark points and no way to balance them out yet (and worse, no way to get her "revenge" on Gam for lying to her). Not a major issue, obviously, since light/dark points are easy to come by and don't really mean much overall, but still something of an annoyance.

Just finished running all the Star Fortresses over the past week (all 6, solo and heroic modes, all soloed...though never without the alliance buffs and caches, 'cuz I'm not THAT good), and there's a few things I think the devs should consider looking into. I'll say this now before people jump the gun: this is NOT a nerf request at all. Challenge level is fine where it is, even on heroic mode (with one exception that I'll get to later, and it's debatably in the other direction). I'll likely never see "The One and Only" under my name, but that's due to my skill level, not tuning, so meh. Anyway, some things I noticed: -RNG placement: this relates to the devotional texts, paladins, and (in heroic mode) the specialist supply caches. Quite frankly, I think any system designed off of RNG is a bad idea, and the Star Fortresses are a good example of why. To break it down further: --in every Star Fortress I did, I scoured every inch of the place for the devotional texts and only found 4 of them; in Alderaan's case, I did 4 total runs (one in heroic, 3 in solo mode) and never once saw the thing. By contrast, in the 4 Star Fortresses where I DID manage to find the text, the game threw at least 2, sometimes 3 or more copies of the thing at me on each run I did, to the point that I was almost tripping over them. I don't know if this is just the RNG being mean, or if it's rigged in such a way that a single character actually CAN'T get all 6 (as in, the RNG won't generate all 6 for one character but will generate the "missing" ones for other characters in your legacy) so that a player is forced to run multiple characters through the Star Fortresses if they want them all; if it's the latter, I'll likely never see those last two because a) I'm not a huge achievement hunter in the first place (I just wanted to see if I could find all 6 texts), and b) I don't like the idea of being forced to grind these places on multiple characters just for an achievement and title that I don't care about (I'm more miffed about the RNG thing than anything else here). --same deal with the paladins. There's supposed to be 2 per Star Fortress; the fact that which 2 you get is randomized makes getting the related achievements annoying enough for those that care, but on my run through the solo mode version of Hoth, I only found one despite once again scouring every corner of every map (heroic mode might've given me the same issue; it was late, I don't specifically remember). Once again, RNG placement seemingly not doing its job properly. --the biggest potential issue with this (for someone at my skill level, at least) was the specialist supply caches in heroic mode. Once again on Hoth, I went through the entire map, checked every corner of every room, and only found 2 of the 4 caches. Thankfully, the 2 caches the game decided to give me were the med probe and the turret (the two I consider to be vital), but if either of those had been left out instead, I probably wouldn't have cleared. Not only that, but it can potentially mess up someone's attempt to get "Fully Armed and Operational" if they still want/need that achievement/title and the caches don't show up properly. -this next one was more of an annoyance than anything else. When I got to the sun reactors on Tatooine and Hoth's heroic modes, the game bugged out a bit and wasn't giving me some of the "loot" properly. Sun shields (or whatever they're called) didn't drop at all until I reached the second control room, and when I cleared the room, they vanished from my inventory, so I never got to use them. Likewise, the capacitors I looted in the second control room also vanished from my inventory when I cleared the room, so I had to start fresh when I got to the third control room. In both cases, when the relevant item vanished from my inventory, the related action icon on my temporary hotbar also disappeared. In the other 4 Star Fortresses, sun shields dropped from trash mobs beginning with the first set, and both they and the capacitors stayed in my inventory (and on my temporary hotbar) until I cleared the Star Fortress, so I don't know why these 2 didn't other than just a bug I happened to get. Again, this wasn't a major issue on either front, but probably something they should look into fixing at some point. The only thing I'll say about the challenge level on heroic mode is that the paladins seem...oddly tuned by comparison to each other. I've had some varieties (the single-saber ones, I think) that tear me a new one pretty fast, especially if I don't get my turret deployed fat enough (nothing interruptible that I noticed in their skill set, just a lot of raw damage output), but the dual-saber ones and the saber-staff ones do oddly little damage even on heroic mode. Again, I'm not asking for a nerf or anything; just observing what I consider to be an odd difference. If anything, for heroic mode, I'd say the dual-wielders and staff wielders need to be tuned UP to match the single wielders, but...whatever, I guess.

If that's referring to me (since you quoted me in the first place), then no, I'm NOT good at platforming (trust me, I have videos to prove it, not that I've ever posted them anywhere). Yes, I got all the datacrons that required platforming to get, but it took a LONG time, and I sucked at practically every one (and I'm not too proud to admit that I ended up dueling nearby players and using Leap/Charge to bypass one or two jumps on Nar Shaddaa)--heck, the Makeb endurance one took me 2 days to get because I kept failing (mostly my fault, but sometimes just due to glitches), and I only ended up eventually getting it because I failed just right and ended up where I needed to be anyway. Regardless of my personal platforming skills, though, I'd STILL take another platforming datacron over another RNG-based one. At least with the platforming courses, I could practice and (hopefully) improve; RNG, however, isn't something you can control (by its very definition, obviously), and I don't care for the idea that the latest installment of something that DID require skill and practice up to now is now governed by random numbers rather than player skill. But, again, that's all my opinion.

There's a difference between "effort" and "tedium." Most of the datacrons--and I'm honestly surprised I'm actually defending these things for once--take actual effort; you had to know the platforming course (or whatever else was required) to get to them, and you had to execute that course perfectly or be shunted all the way back to the start to try again. I've done all the datacrons currently available (including the Makeb endurance one), and while I didn't enjoy a lot of them (ESPECIALLY the Makeb endurance one), I still put in the effort to get them, and it was always satisfying (or at least a relief) when I got each one. The Rishi datacrons, on the other hand, are far from any kind of real effort because the first step (unless you just buy your way past it, assuming someone else is selling the data packets) is still somewhat highly camped and is totally governed by RNG; I got lucky enough to get all 3 packets in a night or two, but statistically, you'll have players who'll get all 3 in a matter of minutes and others who'll sit out in the fields killing grophets for hours on end over several days, even weeks, with nothing to show for it--or worse, someone could sit around for hours killing normal grophets, have one of the champs pop up, and have their kill stolen by someone who either just arrived or who sat stealthed on the sidelines the entire time. As much as I hated some (ok, MOST) of the other datacron obstacle courses, this is infinitely worse. As I said, it was satisfying to get the datacrons before Rishi, but all I felt from getting those packets was "oh, the RNG liked me today." Whoopee. To be honest (and bear in mind that this is coming from someone who leans more toward the casual side of the player base), I fail to see how this can be considered rewarding at all, or how anyone can view this as "effort." Once you get the packets, none of what you have to do is even remotely difficult, and I honestly wouldn't even call getting the packets themselves difficult--just tedious. The jumping puzzles took skill; this just requires you to sit around and kill the same basic mobs over and over again until the RNG decides "hey, champ time," which will vary from person to person completely independently of any sort of effort or skill that player has. If you disagree, that's your deal, of course, but you won't change my mind; I don't equate RNGs to "challenge" or "effort," I equate them to "tedium" and "stalling tactics." But that's me.

Wait, THAT was scrapped too? Crap, Dread Fortress was where I left off when I left the first time. Now I get to worry about how/when I can even do that op since they upped its level (and changed how you can even queue for ops in the first place), but I also miss out on the wrap-up--presumably for that and all the other ops I'm late to the party for? This has REALLY gone too far if it extends into endgame content too.

As someone who's just coming back to the game after a two-year absence, and who didn't have nearly enough free time to run all the available missions when I played the first time, I have to agree with this. Other MMOs I've played have options that simply let you auto-skip cutscenes that you've already viewed, or to simply bypass certain scenes entirely; the devs should've gone with one of those options instead of simply removing the scenes altogether. Now, because some people were too impatient to even hit spacebar a few times, I (and any new players who came along after this change was implemented) get to miss out on entire sections/wrap-ups to certain stories (side stories or otherwise)? I fail to see how that's fair. Don't get me wrong, I understand that, for some, seeing the same scenes over and over again can get dull...but this was far from the best solution. This was a dropped ball, pure and simple.

Just for clarification's sake (I've been gone a couple years, and I want to make sure the rules are the same before I spend coins on this): if I make an auto-60 character just to transfer gear from, is the GEAR ITSELF mailable, or am I still only able to mail off mod parts by way of legacy-bound gear same as when I was playing the first time? I plan to jump back into the game where I left off (as best I can, anyway) rather than making an auto-60 and going straight into the KotFE content, but I'd love to have the hood-down version of the Verpine/Underworld chestpiece for my main sentinel if it's possible to transfer it (I doubt I'm that lucky, but it never hurts to ask).