Seriously, it may be an odd concept to somebody new to MMOs.. Taunt is generally used by high armor/high defense characters, to make monsters attack them - to defend and protect the 'squishier' members of the team. If you're being told not to taunt, make sure you're reading your abilities and not using any that describe themselves a forcing enemies to attack you, or as having 'high threat' - and if you have your companion out, make sure they're outta such abilities or toggles themselves . It's just much much easier for the healer to concentrate on healing one character than to try to spread out the healing to several people taking damage at different rates. Best if some mobs are disabled (force lift, slice droid, etc) and the rest are attacking one designated group-member.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Every game has people making choices - that's like, the essence of what a game is. Even Angry Birds is about choices. And yet.. Angry Birds doesn't let you make a choice about throwing alligators using catapults; that's not what the game is about. Companions - and their stories, is a good part of what SWTOR is about. Complaining about that is like complaining about the avian biases of certain iOS games.. .

They're an integral part of the game - they talk to you, provide you with quests, help you with combat, and perform your crafting. The AI is pretty good on them - and you pretty much only have to pay as much attention to controlling them as you wish to, really. Shucks, though. If you don't like companions, the best you can do is just dismiss them - they won't pop up again to help you in combat without you resummoning them. It'll make the game harder, and certainly very much so past a certain level.

Quick question - you running Peerblock, or PeerGuardian? Try disabling it briefly, see if that makes a diff.

.. as the title says. The legacy name thing begs for being able to be used in this way. We could help out our friends alts easier, chat more conveniently, and perhaps even talk cross-faction.

Why does everybody think improving a completely unused, unuseable in-game system means wow-esque cross-server community-wrecking idiocy? There's a middle ground, people. Please, for the love of heck. What I want out of an LFG system is more like DDO's. Flag yourself tank, healer, dps. Flag yourself for certain quests, too, if you like. Have an interface panel to the side that STAYS OPEN AS YOU QUEST Be able to browse the entire listing of everybody in the server using it. Perhaps even have it notify you if others come on looking for the same flash points and quests as you've flagged - asking you to whisper or invite them, even.

To be fair.. the first few planets - Cor, Nar Shadaa, Taris.. yes. Yes, they're city planets. It's a perhaps unfortunate choice that there's no truly open worlds till you hit Tatooinne, but trust me - big open planets exist. Taris is humongous, but you don't get a sense of scale till you hit Tatooine and realize you've been questing for two hours and seen a quarter of the map.

Do you have a question?

Shucks..

Few people know it, but if you type 'lfg' by itself in the who tab window filter, you can see the entire list of people who are flagged for the system across the server. Prime time, I've watched that number of people using the LFG flag range from 9 to 18 people. On the whole server. Why is the system so underutilized? 1. It's on a planet-by-planet basis, or at least people think it is, and how it pops up in game by default is regional. Out of more than a dozen planets, and the fleet, how you bowse the system by default will only allow you to see a fraction of browsers. While you might have heroic quests on other planets you'd love to clean up, or contemplate flashpoints while questing, you're never going to see people looking for those types of things. 2. The interface is awkard. The little check mark might well be being completely missed by many people. 3. The interface requires you to be looking at it, constantly, to have a chance to spot that ellusive LFG-flagged person who wants to do what you want to do. In other words, you can't DO anything while browsing. Now, I'm really not suggesting a random matching, cross-server, community-wrecking WoW-esque LFG system.. but the system as it is is completely inadequate, and could use improvements. It's as poorly thought out as wow's own pre-dungeon finder systems. How should we solve it, while keeping LFG server-only, while allowing it to work at least a little in the background, while encouraging use of the system over the ubiquitous /1 spam? Now, I'm opening this up for discussion, but I'd like to make a little proposal myself - and I sincerely hope Bioware listens. If they don't take my idea, the LFG interface at least has to change in ways to make it more accessible and convenient and complete. This no better sign that the LFG system doesn't work than that people don't use it. My suggestions? It needs to have a top-of-the-screen menu icon, or even an interface tab - below the quest tracker, or as part of the chat panel. It needs to list everybody using the system. It can't be segregated by area; we're all enormously spread out in game, and never see each other. Ideally, you ought to be able to specify if you're a tank, healer, or dps, and provide a comment that everybody'll be able to see - and not just the first twelve characters of it, grr. Ideally, you should even have an option to flag yourself automatically for heroic or flashpoint quests in your log, and have the system pop up with a notification when somebody else is also flagged for those items - invite to group, or whisper them. You ought to be able to browse the listings while not flagged yourself. .. seriously, if the game just gave me an easy way to keep a window open with a listing of people flagged for LFG across the entire server, I'd be happy.

Well, any realm you're going to pick will have other people on it to play with. What pve, pvp, and rp mean is .. well, okay, this: PvE (Player vs. Eviroment) - this is the most basic of the types of servers. You fight enemy monsters; enemy players you don't have to fight unless you wish to - that means, you're unattackable by them by default. PvP (Player vs. Player) - you still fight monsters, but anywhere out in the world that you can encounter enemy players, you're potentially going to have to fight them as well. Or attack them yourself! RP is roleplay. It just means a server that's more focused on roleplay than either other type of server - name rules tend to be more strictly enforced, for instance no 'BobbyKoticks' running around . Server selection's kinda rough. There's a huge variety of them. I'd really recommend one that is busier than a light-population server, but you want to avoid one that's constantly full during prime time. Also pick one that's in the right time-zone for you; people'll be around most when you are tending to get off work, the evenings, the weekends, etc, matching your time zone. Heck, try talking to people on several realms till you find a guild you might like to join up with - guilds can be great. Guilds share items and help each other out levelling and doing group quests.

Target them, and right click on their character portrait on the lower right side of your screen. Trade will be an option in the menu there. In case you're thinking of 'in general' trading, there's also the GTN - galactic trade network, where you can list items for sale, and browse items for sale by other players. Terminals available on the fleet, on Coruscant, Dromund Kaas, and Nar Shadaa.

Disabled temporarily for forum maintenance/upgrade, apparently.

Well, first off - I can't access the game right now, since i'm on from work, but if you hit escape -> preferences -> keybinding tabs, you can scroll through the commands under 'general', I believe, and find out what the commands are just by looking at the list. Now, why not mess with keybinds? It's fantastically convenient. You can change how you move, make keys near your left hand responsible for certain action bar slots (spells), and generally play much more responsively. For instance, wasd are my movement keys, but I generally make r, v f, g, h, j, q, e, `, x, and z my hot keys in addition to the 1-0, etc. On each character, h'll be a crowd control, ` will be some utility move.. etc, etc. Works wonders.

Search is temporarily disabled for some kinda forum maintenance/upgrade. As for experience loss .. I really can't tell you, but it's a fairly standard mechanic for MMOs. It really ought to be very testable in person .

^ | | Ya, this. TOR can run on some pretty low-end computers, but you're definitely at the lower end. Make sure that your graphics settings, especially shadows, are lowered.

I like that this game feels like a single-player game, with optional grouping components. I dislike that previous MMO I played because it felt like rushing through doom on god mode at lower levels, only to force tedious volumes of repetative grindy group content on you once you hit max level. I love the voice-over and dialogue choices. I haven't cared this much about questing in literally years - probably never, actually. I now find myself hating quest text boxes that fail to engage, have horrible writing, and, when grouped, must be clicked through with maximum speed in order to keep up with the sprint everybody around you is going at. I like that there is semi-difficult content out in the world. I like that I can die if I pull the wrong mob, or see world bosses scattered about, or little tiny mini-instances meant for full groups. I hate that other MMO I've played for removing all elites, for streamlining content to the point where there is no spice left to the experience, where the whole point of the game is not to play the game, but to get to max level. Shall I say it? I like space combat. I actually like pvp in this game, because I don't feel like I stand absolutely no chance whatsoever against the twinked-out pvp gods to the point where I might as well stand still and let myself be two-shot. I love tanking in PvP. Are there issues? Sure, of course. Little quality of life things that don't detract majorly from the experience for me, yet.

Spamming lfg is not building community. Those groups you get out of spamming LFG - the people you remember and have fun playing with, that you subsequently add to your friends list and ask them to go on runs later - THAT's community. It's this 'friending' process - I know, it's technical language, but hear me out - that can't be duplicated in a random cross-server lfg system.

Monitors can only display 72 dpi. You got a digital cable - dvi, hdmi, either one, it's all the same quality to the eye. Only thing is that you can pipe tv, or from a game console, with hdmi, and sound'll come through that one cable as well. VGA.. eh, well, they're pretty quality these days. Mostly you won't notice the difference between that and DVI.

Free speech refers to the government being unable to restrain your speech (within reasonable limits) in the public sphere. This is a private house, with private house rules. In other words, you can't hide under that eldest of american excuses for bad attitude and rudeness here.

Yea, I'm with the crowd here. Don't bother with bonus objectives if they don't flow naturally from your gameplay. If you need a few levels, space missions are a fantastic way to get some xp quickly.

Wow! I never expected this thread to get so popular - thanks for all the tips, folks, and keep them coming. I've updated my original post here with some of the juicier little tidbits you've all put together, but with lack of space I haven't been able to get them all in. Good job so far! Questing Escaping from a conversation before it's done allows you to redo pesky moral choices. Galactic Republic and Sith Empire characters can communicate, but only in local (/say). There's an 'Exit Area' button above your minimap when you're in a flashpoint - you don't have to run all the way back to the exit, or quick-travel. There are commendation vendors for each planet (aside of Quesh) in your fleet supplies area; they sell the same gear as on the planets. Closing a quest reward window causes a little "Pending Rewards" pop-up on the upper right of the screen. UI Turn on 'area loot', and 'auto-loot' in your preferences menu to make looting much easier. Hitting Ctrl+U twice in a row can solve mose UI issues. You can click on stairwells/entranceways on the map to browse through them. When you enter the chat you can use up and down arrows to scroll trough and reuse what you already have written. Alt+f to set a focus target then Ctrl+f to target focus target's target. Your focus target will seemingly clear after any conversation, but if you hit your focus swap button twice real quick with nothing targetted, it should reassign your focus to your previous focus target. Going into 'Preferences' and then 'Controls' you can change the max camera distance. You can split stacks by shift-left-clicking and dragging a stack to a new, empty bag spot. You can also buy many copies of an item from a vendor the same way. Ctrl+shift+F = Show your frame rate, in small numbering on the lower left side of your screen. There's a button at the top-level of the mailbox window to loot all items and credits from mail. Companions Each companion has a codex entry that discusses their personality and stats. You can use the N key to get your companion window open on your ship. If you want a different companion you can use the arrows next to their name to scroll through them. This way you can outfit your companions without summoning them. When your companion wants to talk 'somewhere private', you can talk to them in a cantina (and likely any designated Rest Area). You only need to go to your ship when it says 'on your ship'. You can revive a companion more quickly by simply dismissing and resummoning him. You can heal one quickly by mounting your vehicle and dismounting. In the preferences, you can enable the tooltip comparison for equipment/gear for your active companion so you can compare an item to your active companion's gear in addition to yours. You can expand a companion's ability bar (default key `) - to see what abilities they're using. Disable any area-effect abilities like grenades by right-clicking their green check boxes away if you don't want them to break crowd-control abilities you're using. Space Combat Press space to do a barrel roll. To fire proton torpedos, hold your targetting reticule on a target for several seconds till it gets a special icon. You can fly around using BOTH keyboard and mouse. Helps navigating while shooting. Make sure to check the spaceship upgrades vendors on the fleet. In particular, don't forget to buy the power converter unit for 30 fleet commendations as early as possible! It lets you switch between greater shield regeneration and much more powerful blasters. In space combat, hold the right mouse button down to "paint" multiple targets, release and fire multiple missiles at multiple targets simultaneously. While firing lasers, your shields do not recharge. Take a break using missiles for a while to help your shields recharge faster. Crafting You can craft by using materials in your cargo, i.e. no need to have it take up space in inventory. You can queue up to 5 crafted items per companion. Reverse-engineering a crafted item gives you a chance of learning an improved version of the schematic. Cancelling a crafting mission will get your mats back, or your money. It's actually an awesome way to 'withdraw' items from the bank, because the crafting materials can come from your bank, but are returned to your inventory. Transportation You can use the Emergency Fleet Pass to instantly teleport to the Republic/Imperial Fleet from anywhere. It's in your skill box in general tab. If you have a security key, there's a security key vendor on the Fleet that will sell you fleet passes with one hour cooldowns for 1000 credits. Higher levels of speeders can take more hits before you get dismounted by attacks. The /stuck command seems to work by teleporting you back a few steps, so it's actually useful for more than just being stuck (especially when Datacron collecting). Using a shielding ability such as Static Barrier helps absorb 'hits' from monsters while you're on your speeder. Miscellaneous The GTN terminals on the fleets are faction specific, but the one on Nar Shadaa can be browsed by any character. Searching the /who window by 'LFG' will let you show everyone in the game using the system. There are 3 datacrons on the starter worlds, and five on each beyond that. Datacrons are hidden objects which give stat boosts. If you have a piece of orange-quality gear you like the look of, you can continually upgrade it's mods to keep being able to wear it into high levels. You can even strip mods from other items, and put them in your favorite orange gear. Ctrl+rightclick on an orange-quality item to bring up the modification interface. Dueling can be useful! You can leap or be pulled by friends to locations, say, for getting unstuck or finding datacrons. Female characters have a bit of a bonus, because there's four dress pieces of modifiable gear available on Coruscant - light armor - that male characters can't wear. Awesome especially as it's a long time before you can find another hat! Cheers. I'll keep updatin'!

I loooove DDO's lfg system. It ain't cross server, you still need to talk to people, and it just facilitates the process. That said - until Bioware gets their head out of their behinds on this one, a good work around is just to type 'lfg' into the /who filter box. Forget by planet. You can see a list of everybody who's using the system to flag themselves. It's a bit of a pity; there's usually only round a DOZEN or so. On an entire server.

This was a subject of conversation tween me and my friend just earlier today. It'd be bloody genious, if it also included a multi-alt bank space manager.

Oh, the areas could stand to look a little more crowded, I won't deny it. Even given the risk of camp-spawning. However.. I also have to imagine not that many people are in your level range yet, at all.