This Thread + Baghdad Bob meme generator = More fun than TOR. And to whomever wonders why people care about what the future holds it is because MMOs are a investment in time, people like to know it won't be a waste in a few months. Only have so much time ya know. TOR maybe fun now...but what about a week or three from now? It also generates hype and keeps people excited and makes new people feel like they are missing out and need to go play. Look at STO, like every five minutes they are putting some bit of info out.

Three top people have left since launch and there has been two rounds of layoffs. That does not indicate a healthy studio or game service. Not to mention their public release/development schedule looks pretty bare. There is literally nothing on the calender for TOR at this point...NOTHING. Not even a list of features they "hope" to include in patch 1.4, let alone a round about date. All we know is the stuff from the E3 video and that stuff doesn't even have a year pinned down as the release date. Stephen Reid <- Fired in layoffs in May Georg Zoeller <- Fired..maybe...I think yes. Rich Vogel <- "left" Bioware

Because it costs roughly 75k to pull the mods on top level gear. What if you like to change your "look up" and use custom gear or social gear then its extremely expensive and makes it so players don't use anything other than what the mods came in at end game. Essentially BW created a system, high cost on mod removal, which makes one of their other ones, the appearance customization, unusable. That and the fact that set bonuses on anything except the highest level gear doesn't transfer.

1) It has been suggested to me that I lvl pyro, so I have specced that thus far. Does anyone have a list of how to build the pyro tree? I really like tanking from other MMO so I'm considering trying the shielding line and doing allot of FP instead (I was an instance junkie in WoW), can a powertec be a good tank for FP? Pyro isn't bad, I suggest try them all out. PT has three great trees in it. PT is a great tank, All the tanks in the game are honestly pretty balanced. The PT really shines in AOE though at least as far as agro goes. The tank tree has a lot of good synergy between talents and abilities so its fun to level with and improve what you had already. Advanced Prototype is a spec you may want to wait a bit on, some of its key talents are a bit later in the tree. 2) What rotation is best for me to use for aoe or single target? This really depends on your heat levels and CC in place as well as what abilities you have at your disposal and procs. You will figure this out as you go and unlock new abilities. The PT is a pretty simple beast. But Death From Above is the awesome. 3) What crew skills should I focus on? I'm not familiar enough with the crafting system to know if I should bother doing any of the crafting skills. Right now I have slicing and someone told me to get scavenging. I like Armormech and Biochem. Armormech because you can make decent gear for you and Mako as your leveling and unlike other MMOs the stuff is actually pretty good. If you plan to run a lot of FPs though you will get a lot of gear that way so maybe Biochem is the way for you. You will have an endless supply of health packs and stims (think of them as potions). At end game you can make reusable stuff, REUSABLE FLASKS! Unless they nerfed it again. I dunno, my OP still has his reusable Stims and health pack. 4) How is PVP for levelling? I love to pvp in other games, but it seems kind of frustrating when you get thrown in with much higher lvl people in this game. PVP is decent...but if it is all you do it won't be much fun. You will spend a few minutes between matches just rolling in circles on the fleet and it really starts to get old. You get rewarded with Comms, XP and credits. Comms can get you some decent gear to fill the gaps you have. I also think PVP is a great way to learn your class. Don't worry too much about higher level players. An oddity in this game is some classes are strong at level 10, some take a bit to get rolling. You will be on equal footing for stats you just may be lacking in some abilities and talents for a bit. So expect to get rolled by some 40+ players and don't be shocked when at level 20 your doing the same back at them. 10-49 PVP is honestly the best in the game. I suggest do a mix of everything, FPs, crafting, PVP and quests. Leveling in this game is really fun. Take the time to do the cutscenes, specially if you are a star wars fan. It adds a lot to the game and the levels will roll by. Variety is the spice of life. You will get daily PVP and FP quests on the fleet so make sure to pick those up, good source of XP. You will honestly find yourself outleveling content and be like Man I really want to PVP but if I do it will these quests will be grey and I want to do them for the story but won't get XP. In short every leveling activity is a good source of XP, doing just a single one though will burn you out. Mix it up and enjoy the ride. It will be over before you know it.

I have a friend that leveled a BH at launch in about 3 weeks, still has this bug. Think it had something to do with a DS choice bug they half way fixed. I didn't have the issue on my BH but I did mostly LS choices.

So like being an non-human Agent? By the end of that story arc I was doing everything I could to spite the Empire in quests.

And making babies! My biggest gripe is when the DPS pick the biggest meanest looking Champ or elite and go to town on it first instead of killing the weaks, normals and strongs first. On content you don't outgear/level this is a key tactic. Those little turds put out more damage then they can take and save the heals a lot of healing and even let them DPS some. And if you still out gear the content and can manage the damage the lesser mobs are putting out it creates a strain on the tank and heals because the DPS is lazy. As a tank I have to chase the things around like a mad man trying to tap them all while some how holding agro on the big nasty the DPS is going balls to the wall on. If I don't run around and tap those mobs they will pile on the healer who has enough to do with the damage big nasty is putting out. And once again that means I am having to burn my resources fast getting agro on so many things and am taking extra damage which is using more healer resources which can lead to extended down time after the fight as we vent heat, recharge eng or force. Also I am having to work harder because the DPS is being scrub. If your DPS and don't kill the weakest mobs in a pack first your a scrub/lazy, same thing in my mind. I don't care how good your gear is I will let you know you are being lazy in a FP with pugs who do this and then try to kick em after fair warnings. Kick won't pass, I will leave and find something else to do for a bit. Its a group and I refuse to carry lazy people and let them burden me. As a tank I have certain tasks and responsibilities in the group and I will do them, I expect the rest of the team to do so as well.

Operative Clown Roll you say? Unique idea for a "sprint type" ability with a cool agent feel.

Its not the travel, its the figgen load screens! Traveling is at least playing the game, you can chat or sort your bags while on a speeder...send crew on missions, read the codex. With the load screen all you do is watch that stupid blue widget and try and sort out the mystery that is its movement.

I actually thought the way the music keys in during hard fights or scripted events was very Star Wars-y. I guess to each their own but that is one of the few things I think this game got right. One of the more arguable and individual taste portions of this MMO for sure.

I think your right about The April thing too lazy to look it up, mainly because...that was April. When people were still in that window where the folks that quit but bought 3 month and 6 month subs at launch were still being counted. Hardly an accurate number of the game today. I still think they are teetering at 500k right at this moment. If I was having to report those numbers the next time around, I would try and capture them right after 1.3/Server Migration, I know there was a spike during that time. As for concurrent remember that the servers are in different time zones all with different peaks. You also can't assume that they are all running in the 2.5k to 3.5k range. Some like the RP servers may be a bit lower. Once again I am sticking with around 25k users. Doesn't really matter, if you hate the game and want it to fail for whatever reason you will pick the lowest, if you want to fanboy you will pick the highest. The only folks that can tell you for certain will be BW and truth is they will, understandably, twist them in their favor. Never trust statistics from someone who has a vested interest in them. So with that said, if you got a server with plenty of people around and your never short on bodies to do stuff with...all is good.

It comes down to your roll in groups. I wouldn't suggest tanking in recruit gear, although its entirely possible just not ideal due to the loss of much needed defensive stats in place of PVP stats. You will stress the healer needlesly. Your guild may also be forgetting at launch we all were doing hard modes in a lot less than recruit and daily gear. We just had to play smarter. Last week I healed a tank through Koan and he had a bunch of greens...not just implants, like belt and stuff. It wasn't easy and I only have Col on my healer but we got it down with only a single wipe. Also AFAIK the recruit gear will be on par or even with what you can build from dailies anyways. So I suggest jumping in as DPS. What is really more important than gear is playing smarter. Lots of people say it but it is very true. If you attack the right targets, are getting out of the stupid and not breaking CC no one is going to complain. I never look at the DPS's gear I get in LFG, unless they have a cool looking piece I don't recognize. So go ahead, strap that recruit on and Q up as DPS. Make sure you know the fights before hand or ask when you get to the boss. There are lots of players that don't mind explaining the fights. But will be rightfully irritated if you screw up because you didn't know the mechanics and didn't speak up. Do your part in that relationship by asking. You will run into players that may kick you because they are being tools and just want high end DPS to blow through their daily super fast. Thats something you got to deal with, just like real life there are jerks every where. Also look for the Story Mode EV runs that PUG up, never seen a gear check for one of those and its easy loot and comms. Once again, know the fights though. And don't neglect the dailies just because they are dull as hell. The credits are at least useful when you realize how lame TOR endgame is and you want to roll another alt with Perks. EDIT Stay the hell away from Lost Island!

Tor doesn't have 1.3 million subs...it doesn't have one million anything. Last numbers reported by EA had them 700k to 800k iirc and that was yet a few months back counting people still in their initial 3-6 month subscription time. Right now it has a decent population for the servers since they did the "transfer" or "migration" whatever people are calling it right now. And that is what is important right, YOU are able to get on a server with a sufficient population to enjoy the group based content an MMO offers. Why people say ToR is dying is because of how fast the population dropped off. It plummeted, I think the flaming wreckage on the ME3 menu screen is homage to TOR. My SWAG, TOR has ~300 to 500k subs, around 25k concurrent users peak. I imagine it will hold steady there for sometime. At GW2 launch there will be a big dip as people run off and then it will slowly climb as some people return. From there I guess it really depends on where the game goes as far as new features and content. Little doubt it launched too soon and they are playing catch up nicely, but too late? And how will the effort that was spent trying to play catch up affect future efforts that are now behind? Thats my 2 credits at least, YMMV.

1. How do you think your Operative spec is perceived by other classes? PVE and PVP healing OPs are in a good place. DPS is a joke although most content is over geared enough that no one really cares. Would rather have a passable DPS Op that knows how to CC, not break CC and kill the right bad guy than a bad player. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? Healing OP is good. A lot of the issues I had with the spec got fixed, they have a viable AOE heal and Diag Scan is no longer a massive pain to use. O and fixed the talent tree bugs. DPS Operative is just complete junk. Not fun to play, not fluid. Clunky. Doesn't feel like there is really any difference between the trees. Check out the PT DPS trees, they are wonderful and special in their own little ways. Would like to see TAs used as a combo point system that you have a spamable attack to build up for your "finishers". The finishers could then be used to give a flavor to each tree.

I have no idea what the OP is talking about...but many people have said what you said Lovia...and they were wrong before. There have been a number of MAJOR differences between Imp and Rep mirrors. Some were animation things, Mortar Volley, Ex Probe and some were bugs such as the Flashbang OPs had going for them. Who says the classes are mirriored and balanced? Bioware? That is only their intent, that doesn't make it reality, no matter how many times someone types it on these forums. People have been spouting that same stupid line over and over again, before and after Bioware changes one factions class to match the other one. There are still numerous bugs between the classes and animations. Here is a fun one...try and sort out the difference between a sniper and gunslinger when it comes to weapon gearing. Mirror classes right? Then why is an OH token drop for a GS just s good as a MH drop and not that way for a sniper? TL:DR The classes do not match up and in some cases one faction has an advantage over the other. Don't discredit people and mouth off like a Biodrone until you know.

You all realize its jerkish to beat someone up because they don't read over every single line in the patch notes right or spend everyday in this toilet called a forum? Sucks for OP he can't get his purple crystal, sucks for me and sucks for everyone else in the game. So stop being jerks to people. We all got screwed by this change, even if you were aware of it before time. What about the new players? Those crystals were cool...and the white ones...*** was that about. I was unsubbed then...and completely missed that. Sure games want to put in "exclusive" items and then take them out to make them rare. But that never helps a game out, new players see the cool stuff and are like "Oooo I want that" Then they find out it is removed and are like "O well" and then maybe lose interest. This keeps the people happy who already have the exclusive crap but those players don't keep a game alive, they die off. New players/customers keep the game going and the more cool crap to keep people playing and working for it is what is needed. At some point or another every player will be affected by shoddy design decisions like this...so stop being jerks you all don't want to be on the receiving end some day. And bring back the purple crystals.

Load times are a huge turn off for me. Sometimes if I have a quest that involves lots of planet hoping or running about I just turn the game off cause I don't feel like dealing with load screens. Remember when WOW came out and everyone was going nuts because of the lack of load screens. I guess I had forgotten how awesome that was and took it for granted. Thanks for the reminder TOR...thanks.

Since other people covered PVP stuff I will cover PVE leveling from my experience. I don't know jack about end game stuff for sniper/GS but I have a 40 GS and late 30 sniper now so I can tell how that went for me. Toss out lethality for leveling, it is energy hungry, slow damage and not great for multi-target killing like you mainly do while leveling. Great sustained Boss DPS end game, but 90% of what you kill leveling is not boss type mobs. I would say stick with Engineer till about the 30s. It gets you 10 more energy and a 3 second frag grenade early on. Both great to have when murdering groups of bad guys. The Frag will have a knockback and knock down on normal/weak mobs which is handy for keeping that one melee in the pack of melee so everyone is getting grenade love. You later get Interrogation probe at 25 which isn't all that great on its own, longish CD for solo work and most mobs will be dead before it can really do enough damage to justify the energy but can be talented for a 30% movement debuff for its entire long duration. Super useful when you need to kite some story elites and what nots. Some other nice talents to have while leveling mixed in but pretty flat after Imperial Methodology. IMO Engineer has some great survivability abilities for tough bad guys you will run across now and again but I prefer to just out level the content by a good 5 levels. You also can abuse the Stroke of Genius bug, if its a bug. There is no ICD on how often it will proc so pretty much every time you leave cover you can fire overload shot for free for 6 seconds or whatever. Overload shot isn't all that grand but its a tad more than rifle shot and hell its free when your low on energy. At around 30 Marksman becomes awesome purely because you get follow through. After you get two points into its follow up talent it because a 6 second low energy use talent. You get great killing power off the bat with some very solid defense when you in cover and very nice energy regen to keep you going. I prefer this build once I can get follow up for leveling opposed to Engineer but its really your play style since you end up losing the quick frags and extra energy for a few. I say try all the specs out, get a feel for them, leveling is about learning your class too.

O wow that is annoying. This was a common bug for a bit after launch with everything from the OP to FP bosses. Shame to see its still going on. These were the kind of bugs that turned me of to TOR in the first place and I had such negative experiences in OPs due to the sloppy game that I am still turned off to them to this day.

Putting on my cynic hat here. My guess is this will be implemented in the BWFS context as usual. Same vein as Orange/Adaptive armor which is largely ignored at end game thanks to other design choices in the game. I hope this ends up being a solo questing type thing that is specific for each class. Example, The bounty hunter is tasked with hunting down an elusive mark that sends you running around a dozen planets trying to find him. Maybe even some random elements in there that make the player think and not just read a guide. It ends with an epic battle vs the mark and his gang where as you take a pistol from his body as a trophy. Thus your super cool weapon. In truth as others have said too I think it will be another copy of WoW. Get quest...farm NM raid bosses for limited drops...rinse/repeat a dozen times. Not counting the tickets you have to put in because no doubt this will be bugged in some way for weeks.

Sadly this is par-the-course for TOR. You will see the same issue get "fixed" multiple times in the patch notes. Agree with what the CS says, sometimes there are lots of little problems that need to be fixed before the main issue is fixed. If they would write up the patch notes to say that the issue is still being worked and only half fixed it there would be less confusion. If they also fixed up bugs at the rate they handed out Nerfs there may be a lot less hate going around.

The mods I use come in the gear...the cost comes when you pull them out of the gear So even if I was like yea screw my set bonus and wanted to play around with my look it would cost me I think around 125k per piece, counting augments and the install of a new slot. I prefer spending that cash on overpriced perks that I think are all bugged for an army of alts. I want to play dress up with my character, I am a grown *** man that wants to play with star wars dolls. And the custom gear in game is a decent idea, can't say it was good. But the execution of it was BWFS. When leveling up every few levels I am changing around my gear looking cool and sometimes not so much. I enjoy it, at end game it is done because I don't want to give up performance for looks. QQ...I will pee blood in joy the day they say they are chucking it all out the window and just putting in a appearance tab like Rift with dyes. I loved that system. Like the moment that happens it maybe another "re-sub" level event. O and yea I would drop a small fortune in the cash shop to further fuel my dress up fetish. Its sick and I don't relish explaining to my wife why I spent all that money on virtual clothes for my virtual doll. Truth is I had never cared about "appearance tabs" or "wardrobe slots" in a game before Rift. I was playing the game when they released it in a patch and payed it no attention. I was honestly like why are all these nerds going nuts on the forums over this stuff? I continued to ignore it in game until I saw someone who looked really awesome....then I grabbed some stuff from my bank, old gear, and started playing around. Four hours later I had bags full of blues, greens, dyes and a ton less credits to my name and was hooked. One of the reasons a lot of us play TOR is because its star wars, not because its a solid polished game, cause maker knows its not. TLDR I would use the **** out of a cash shop.

Buying Orange Armor with out mods is not a pay to win system. There are plenty of F2P MMOs that are very fun and in a much better place than TOR. More people and much less bugs. On topic though, if they put in a cash shop that sold orange gear I wouldn't use it. For the simple fact that it costs too much to move my mods and armoring from my current gear and the fact that I don't have campaign gear so I lose my set bonus too. The current "custom gear" setup is a whole other chapter in "TOR Failures".

From talent points at 30. Also keep this in mind once you get the talent in Engineering. I can confirm this bug as well. Doesn't really do much for our damage but its great for engery management. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=503375

Leveled an OP myself at launch, Medic most the way. Was super fun and you can solo most of the h2s and even a few of the H4s with some luck and the right make up of bad guys for your CCs. Medic was awful at launch but they made some little tweaks and its a blast to play now but I am not a fan of the DPS side of it, feels clunky with the TA system being tied to Shiv and the CDs on other abilities. It is underpowerd in PVE DPS performance but I wouldn't base much on that, who knows what will happen by the time you hit end game if you ever do. I started an Assassin and like the combat style much better. Much smoother flow.