I would recommend this order for hard modes, from easiest to hardest: Black Talon Boarding Party Foundry** Kaon* Battle for Illum* Fallen Emperor** Directive 7** *Some bosses are harder then the others in the instance, but can be skipped Battle for Illum - The boss that starts with two snipers next to him is very tough, but you can by-pass him by hugging the walls. Kaon - The trash is the hardest part, with the exception of the optional boss, which is one of the hardest HM flashpoint encounters in the game. For trash, CC is your friend. ** Buggy Flashpoints (if you run into these bugs, you can Google for workarounds that may work, or skip the instance) Foundry - this instance can get buggy on the HK fight. Sometimes it won't register your group hitting all 4 buttons, but has worked fine for me on my last two runs. Fallen Emperor - In the Jindo Krey fight, the BH ship won't always move out when it should. Resetting the instance will usually fix it. Directive 7 - some classes (snipers, mercs, troopers and gunslingers) in your group cause the first boss to bug out and spawn multipule copies.

Ah, thanks. I haven't run the instance, so I'm not familiar with the ship bug at all. It's the ones that stop you from finishing the instance that are pissing me off right now.

Thanks for the heads up. That's in False Emperor, right? I didn't get a chance to run anything last night, but was leaning towards running FE next. I will cross it off my list until I mange to actually run a couple that I know aren't bugged.

the Interrogator bug in D7 seems to be class or character dependent. Have you run it with a merc? I would be curious if it was indeed the class or something related to the particular character.

Definitely bugged. Our first pull, he copied our merc and IMMEDIATELY started continually copying our warrior. We had about 5 warriors out before we wiped. Our second pull, he copied our powertech (me) when he was about 80%. Around 60% he copied our warrior and around 40% copied our inquisitor. At 20%, he copied our merc and immediately started churning out multiple copies of another toon. Our third pull, the same thing happened, we went for a while and then as soon as he copied the merc, the next character started spawning immediately and non-stop. Swapping out the merc for another class stopped the behavior. While the boss may be a joke for players who have run it before or have better gear, this was our first time ever seeing him and we're new level 50s, so our gear isn't as good as some.

Thanks, will probably try FE or Kaon next if we can get in on hard mode. If another bugs out on us, we'll probably have more people quitting the game. If that's the case, and I'm not saying it isn't, what's the purpose of the switches? We were assuming they were there to keep him from getting the buff.

Tuesday night, my friends and I decided to run our first hard mode. We ended up in Foundry. HK47 started one-shooting the party after he did his thing in the center. We tried several different ideas and wiped repeatedly before giving in and looking up strats on the web, only to find he was bugged. We tried many of the suggested workarounds on the forums, but people got frustrated and angry and quit for the night. Last night, we found we could run Directive 7 on hard mode by first walking in and out on normal and then being able to switch immediately to hard mode. We were excited by challenging content none of us had run before! We get to the interrogator and after a couple of wipes, we realized he's bugged (he kept spawning copies of a player after he copied our merc). We beat it by swapping our merc out with another guild member, but that's total BS. Another night of hard modes and another night of frustration. So my question is, what Hard Modes actually work? Are we just unlucky going 2/2 with bugs or are all the hard modes really this bad? Edit: Bugged Hard Mode Flash Points These bugs can conceivably stop you from completing the flash point (or at the very least, fighting the bug becomes more challenging then fighting the boss) Foundry: HK-47 (second boss) gets an enrage that doesn't get removed properly when you hit the switches, causing him start one or two shotting players. Directive 7: Interrogator can start constantly spawning multiple copies of a character (sometimes even a character not of your faction). These bugs may or may not happen on every run, but can ruin your day if they pop up. There are many suggested workarounds for some if you search these forums, but results from them are as inconsistent as everything else.

Some guildies and I, all level 40, played through this for the first time last night. It was the first time for all of us. We struggled a little with the cannons, first learning how to operate them and then actually winning the round. It was so much easier when one of the guys came up with the idea of shooting the opposite way. It would have been nice if the turrets worked the same way the ship combat does and saved us some heartache. Other then getting knocked over the railings, the rest of the run went pretty well. We all really enjoyed it and thought it was a nice change of pace. We've done all the instances as a group at appropriate levels so far and this is the only flash point we've really wanted to go out of our way to do again. As a side note, I wouldn't want to PuG this instance, but then again I hate PuGs anyway. Now that I know the trick on the cannons, PuGing might not be so bad.

Guild banks and guild capital ships: http://www.swtor.com/blog/what%E2%80%99s-next-old-republic

Well, I was assigned to my server via my guild, and I got this game to play with friends. However I refuse to sit in long queues, so I'm holding off entering my pre-reg number until the queues are fixed. If they aren't fixed by the time I get back from my Christmas holiday I'll just return the game. That will make one more spot for the rest of you. Good luck!

Well, I got my invite yesterday but due to work and real-life, I won't be able to get in until tomorrow, so I feel your pain... ....unless I suddenly get sick tomorrow. hmm, what could I tell my boss I suddenly came down with? Jabba Wabba? Tontonitis? Sithilis? Help, I need a new disease.

Twitter says one more wave today (after the wave ending on the 3rd).