Log into the queue before you sit down to play, when you sit down to play, you're not in a queue. The game would be in significantly better shape if they had simply suggested the lesser populated servers - even before they added new servers there were PLENTY of standard pops people could have played on.

31/1/9 is the strongest 1v1 spec in the game. I've got every class geared and at 50 but gunslinger, nothing even touches it except sentinels with full cooldowns, I still win barring theirs being up and mine already being used ina previous fight. Also arguably the strongest 1v2, and easily the strongest defending for nodes, and unlike most specs if you need additional survivability and have the gear, it actually functions with tank gear. Though I recommend keeping 70%~ surge for burst with force potency/relic/adrenal. The only reason I'd ever spec anything else as a shadow is instant force lift - because as I'm guessing you've noticed the assassin/shadow force lift doesn't break on damage, it does massively reduce damage taken by the lifted target though. Between combat vanish and mind maze, plus instant force lift you can keep someone out of the fight for 16 seconds, and with FiB instead of slow time you can safely use your aoe attack when fighting near a mazed target since you can "aim" it. I love the fact that KC can deal good burst, decent sustained and still guard/taunt. The other tanks have to sacrifice a lot more to be able to guard. Xin; I can confirm force lift lasts 8 seconds in PvP from a shadow regardless of damage dealt. It also only gives 800 resolve, any other 8 second what amounts to a stun is 1600 worth of resolve and two separate stuns obviously. The only downside is it reduces the damage taken on the target significantly. Which is why I use it on healers and my group focuses someone else.

Logical fallacy, they did not have to expand servers. Queue times for the first month indicate a healthy server for the foreseeable future of the game barring game-wide desertion. Subscriber numbers drop after the free month and the first paid month, these are observable facts about MMO launches - furthermore, playtime per subscriber also drops. Protip: The number of accounts active per server is anywhere from 3-5 times the total number of players the server can handle at any given time in an MMO, this is a staple of the industry. Furthermore, after the first month playtime per subscriber drops quite a bit, 50% is a conservative estimate. You want queue times and full servers for the first two months - that's how you know your server will be healthy in the long term, now if the developers were competent and immediately merged servers after the second or third month, we'd all be fine. But they didn't. And they won't be any time soon. They shot themselves in the foot then they poured lemon juice and salt all over the wound. Before cutting off the leg in order to save the foot.

Nonsense. No class in this game requires a skilled player.

CCing healers and killing squishy DPS is often the best way to win if you have enough combined damage to kill someone in the 8 seconds of a mez (stun/mez the healer, he cc breaks then 8 second mez him and kill a DPS, rinse repeat.) Because a healer will often survive longer against coordinated burst, especially if guarded which would break the mez if you tried to mez the tank and kill the healer. If there are multiple healers, it depends on the objective. Defending a point in ald for example against 2 dps and 1 tank 2 dps - CC the DPS and conserve your cooldowns/resources to burst the unguarded healer or a DPS that chased out of LoS down the side. The idea being if you CC the DPS, you last longer. Now if you're attacking - things change considerably. Namely if that many people are at a point, you're better off having the team hit the other point and using 1-2 people to stall that group. Kill orders are never as simple as people want them to be. I could list hundreds of examples of different kill orders and the reasons for them. It's why things like "Mark the healers" is something I don't do, and call people stupid for doing it. Tunnel visioning healers is not the magical key to victory.

Nobody on either side of the debate has said anything along those lines. I truly feel sorry for anyone that knows you, it must be a burden.

How is this a solution to expertise. It's exactly the same thing - PvP gear is better than PvE gear for PvP. You could tweak the percentages of expertise and still arrive at exactly the same effective player strength with a lot less work than revising the entire system. This isn't even a band aid solution. It'd be like me bleeding profusely, and instead of bandaging the wound just painting the rest of the bleeding appendage red so I can't tell it's bleeding. Though the analogy suggests there's a problem with expertise, there isn't, just like there wouldn't be a problem with your system other than the fact that it's a complete waste of time and unneeded as it does exactly the same thing but in a different manner.

The problem is deeper than that, and from a design standpoint seen as completely necessary. You know there are lockout timers on raids, correct? There's a reason for that. Just like there's a reason PvP gear is made worse for PvE. If it took a hundred hours of raiding a few hours a week or a hundred hours of PvPing to get the same set - you'd have people in full campaign gear right now. And if it took more time to do one than the other, while being equal, it'd be unfair. By making the sets different it's not unfair that it takes significantly more time to acquire PvP gear than PvE gear, though if PvE were actually difficult PvE might technically require more effort (It doesn't, not in this game.) to balance out the time + effort = reward ratio. Though if they went a step further and made high rating = access to the same gear for cheaper, that would allow them to keep the time+effort=reward consistent between both... But that would require rated warzones which require cross server warzones which require netcode and infastructure which requires figuring out how to make different legacies play nice with one another while having the same name etc etc.

I really hope for your friend's and families' sake you're trolling and not actually this dense.

Either you're dumb, or trolling. Perhaps both. The PvP stat prevents PvE gear from dominating PvP and PvP gear from interfering with progression speeds in PvE. That's all it is. Do I need to call the WAAAAAHmbulance for you?

Two roll system: Accuracy Vs Defense Then, Crit -> Shield -> Regular Hit. Crit chance pushes shield and regular hits off the table, with 100% crit chance your target will never shield. And more specifically, the extra DPS from crits cannot be mitigated. So if you think with 50% shield chance and 50% absorb you're reducing weapon damage by 25% you're wrong. It's actually less than 20% taking into account average crit chance/multipliers.

Without expertise you'd be getting your *** handed to you all the same, except instead of just by dedicated PvPers you'd be getting your *** handed to you by PvErs too, and there wouldn't be a recruit set on the cheap for you to buy to at least be remotely useful because there's no way they could fairly budget the recruit set without it influencing PvE if there was no expertise.

Saber Ward + Cloak of Pain = 65-70% DR and 60%~ avoidance. Totally not a tank.

It's 100. Also you can search by class/level to check actual totals.

Probably because you'd have to be trying to solo the operation or asleep at your keyboard to not manage to kill a single operation or flashpoint boss. Just saying.

Even just a few of mine can stop an entire team of eight imps.

So, because slightly over a tenth of the servers are playable, that house maybe an eighth of the population, everything is okay? Because I read that as the opposite of okay. I'm hoping I'm misreading your stance, rather than you actually believe maybe an eighth of the population having a playable experience is okay...

They have a combustion engine and four wheels, are you saying they're... somehow... not the same thing?

If pointing out the obvious is condescending or insulting - might I suggest not being things which you consider it insulting to be called? It would sharply reduce the number of times you're called those things! I know it is a novel concept, but it's solid advice. Unfortunately "Your point" that I was replying to had nothing to do with SWTOR going free to play or not which I never said it would, hinted that it would, suggested I wanted to be, or anything of that nature - remember that line about someone's head being where it shouldn't be? Yours appears firmly lodged in such a place. You've quite a massive assumption about me and instead of understanding what I'm saying, you just keep spewing forth more talking points and whining about how I'm being mean to you, when in reality I've been perfectly reasonable. My point, has to do with this statement. To which you replied: So you agree the F2P business model is a charade and only for suckers - and then you go on to suggest that the 'average' player spends more than 15 a month, taking it completely out context. Let me fill you in on a little secret - the 'average' WoW player spends more than 15 a month too, is WoW only for suckers now? I'm confused. Oh, right, you weren't making a logically sound argument, you were using hyperbole instead. I never said anything about SWTOR going free to play. Only you did. I merely pointed out that there's nothing wrong with the business model and you being Captain ASSumption leapt into action and firmly lodged your head where it ought not to be.

I did look your post up, it was completely insubstantial just like this one was, what a surprise! You can go "affront" yourself for all I care if your idea of debate is to simply ignore it. If you cannot figure out that the questions were not aimed at him I'm not sure what to say, I think I'd rather assume you're simply ignoring the argument rather than incapable of figuring that one out. The absurdity of dismissing an entire playerbase because of two failed games is a joke, almost as much of a joke as you. Those games didn't fail because of the playerbase they attempted to engage - they failed because they were bad games. Lemme throw a few examples that mimic your own logical fallacy and lets see if you can figure out why. How about I say nobody should make a fantasy MMO because WAR failed. Or nobody should make a Super Hero MMO because DCUO failed. Or nobody should make a STAR WARS MMO BECAUSE SWG FAILED. Your entire argument is but words in the wind, it is nothing.

This is narrow minded and simplistic. No game can "Fleece" anyone. Wait, no, I take it back - Dark & Light managed to... But that's another story for another time and totally unrelated! A proper microtransaction based game can be played fully for free - any extras are inconsequential and not necessary for the experience. The best example is to date League of Legends. If you play competitively or casually, you can still play and enjoy the game whether you spend nothing or far above $15 a month. If you are incapable of not spending money on microtransactions, that's nobody's fault but your own. If the game requires you to pay to truly experience the game, you've got a case, but at that point the game is more Pay to Win than Free to Play, and that's not what we're talking about.

You're not even reading what I've written at this point, do you just copy/paste a random talking point every time you quote someone? As someone who actually works in this industry and debates the merits of the business model on a regular basis - you don't know what you're talking about, and you haven't understood anything I said and you didn't even understand the link you posted earlier. You want to know the real reason more developers are turning towards it? Sure there are some chasing profits, but the real reason is because a F2P game is significantly cheaper to make and still meet expectations. The barrier to entry into the triple A MMO market is a hundred million dollars give or take. It's a teeny tiny fraction of that to break into the F2P MMO market. Everyone knows you can make money doing both, if F2P was some magical money printing machine you'd think even blizzard would be doing it! But they're not abandoning their flagship subscription model for a lot of reasons, though I get the feeling explaining those reasons to you is a waste of my time. Unless you're some weak-minded idiot that shouldn't be allowed to know the numbers on mommy and daddy's credit cards - a good free to play game cannot hurt you. It can only provide you an excellent experience for free. There is no song and dance, no charade - if you wish to spend money, you can, but if you do not, you can choose not to without any real disadvantages. Just because some games abuse the business model and their players, doesn't mean the that there's anything wrong with the business model itself, nor does it mean you cannot benefit from it. If SWTOR could support itself by selling vanity pets and exp boosts and other silly things that do not negatively impact you in any way to the point where you no longer had to pay a subscription fee - how would that be bad for you? Simple minded vilification of the business model is childish.

No, it's killing it if anything. Trust me, everyone rerolling to a handful of servers and abandoning everyone who doesn't want to reroll will only kill the game faster.

That's the quote you agreed to. Either you were agreeing with your head up somewhere it ought naught be - or you were endorsing his message which is "It's not free because you end up paying more." Which is a load of grade A horse manure. Only poorly made cash grabs labeled as games are pay to win - that's not what we're talking about here. You can fully experience a solid F2P game without paying a cent - that's the benchmark, the key to F2P is two things: Total Subscribers and Retention rate. The more subs, the more people buying things, the longer they sub the more likely they are to buy things and anyone that has bought before is several hundred percent more likely to buy things in the future. But that benchmark that keeps the barrier to entry low and the total subscribers high means you can enjoy and play the game to the fullest without spending a dime. This nonsense about it being a "Charade" that "Suckers for fall for" is just that, nonsense. I've played over a dozen F2P games that I never spent a dime on and enjoyed quite a bit, the most prominent is league of legends, it's no suckers game - if you don't want to spend any money you don't have to and you can still enjoy the game as much as anyone else. Vilifying the entire payment model only makes you look like a troglodyte - but given your posting history that's not really a surprise that you'd stoop that low.

Paid character transfers. Do not want to see this, at least not until the servers are merged and the ghost towns consolidated.