Honestly I was excited for this game. I play what is perhaps the best MMO on the market right now, eq2. (notice I said best, not how many subs it has) and even that has it's share of problems. EVERY MMO has problems to start. WoW used to have incredibly long queues to get into servers on a consistent basis, and crashed and was patched every other day it seemed during it's first few months of existence. However back then, the market was a lot more lenient of such things, and obv it all worked out in the end for WoW. In the end, I think the star wars team got what they wanted. I will explain this very carefully, because I'm sure there will be some that will vehemently disagree with me. When you make a game and gear it strictly for easy, casual, play, you will get a lot of easy, casual, players. Players who will move on to whatever game comes along next. It is so incredibly easy to lvl in TOR that you needed to have more of an end game prepared. There was a post earlier saying we should let it develop... well pretty much every other successful MMO (and I'm talking mostly WoW here) did NOT have an easy time lvl'ing as currently. There was time for an end game to develop and be put into place because a VAST majority of people were still lvl'ing even 5 or 6 months into the game. How many didn't have a lvl 50 character 2 months into game here? Very few I would imagine, and then only because they started an alt or some other circumstances. It's all well and good to make everyone feel special by letting them have the joy of lvl'ing without any real effort, but it doesn't engender a feeling of accomplishment, thus creating attachment to your character. Also, the lack of UI functionality months into the game killed it for others. As well as the fact you had easy raids, a byzantine gear system at top end, and no community support in the form of guilds. As a single player game, I found TOR to be amazing. As an MMO? Not so much.

Ok, wanted to post with one thing I noticed missing from this guide and game in general. And that is how focus target works. I'm an interweb noob, so I don't have photobucket and that stuff or I would make screen shots. I will attempt, however, to explain how it works in text. First off. Go to preferences, at the bottom of the preferences window you will see a tab labeled key bindings. Once in key bindings, go to Targeting. Once in targeting, you will see the fourth option down is set focus target/swap focus target. This key combination (whatever you choose it to be) will allow you to choose who your focus target shall be. Once you have this established, try it out. You can use your companion even. If you have done this correctly, you will see a new window pop up above the right side of your lower quickslots, between your quickslots and minimap. This is now your focus target. But wait, there is more. Now go back to preferences, keybindings, targeting.... and now scroll down. Second from the bottom will be focus target modifier. THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART. Whichever key combination you choose to be focus target modifier will allow you to cast spells on your focus target without switching targets. This is especially important for any healer. If you're doing it right, your cursor will turn purple when you're holding down your focus target modifier key. So, for example. I have my set/swap focus target as alt+F.... and I have my "G" key as my focus target modifier. Once my focus target is set, all I have to do is hold down my G key, and any spells I then cast that are beneficial will be directed toward my focus target, without my having to press group member window, mouse, or do anything else. Just thought I would share in case any were not aware of how it worked, and thought it maybe could be added to the sticky already present.

Question. If you take gather strength, and then take effluence right above it, does gather strength cease generating a 5% bonus to force sweep since it no longer takes focus?

I'm the same way. Except I took the thing in middle tree to get 2 stacks of sunder for every sunder strike along the way. It helps out tons.

I'd be dead, but I'd leave a good looking corpse. Don't let your emo rage get the better of you, there's still time to turn away from the dark side.

Shouldn't be able to be turned off for evil force users. You can call me RP fanboi all you want, flame away, but it's the truth. If you want to be an emo sith and rage all the time.....well your mom always told you if you kept it up your face would get stuck like that ! That is all

Too bad they added the option to turn it off. That is really the only hope they have to make the population balanced between sith and republic, especially on PvP servers, is to make sith butt ugly.

Am I missing it somewhere? Because I'm not seeing anything that will let me search the forums on a particular topic. Also, since there wasn't a search function I'm asking this question that has probably been answered before. Namely, is there a mentoring system in TOR?