PvP armor sets are NOT easily affordable any longer. Heck, I'm not sure I see how a pure PvPer can afford everything anymore. Any serious PvPer will be gearing themselves to the teeth at all levels. Or at least as close as possible, which requires a good bit of resources that they won't have anymore. Warzone commendations come at a pretty slow pace now (people were complaining prices were high before, and now with the rate we get commendations they're REALLY high), and money trickles in. It's not enough to maintain a passable level of gear. And gear does matter if you understand the bolster system at all. Abilities will always set you back a pretty penny. We all know this. Especially at level 50. Pretty sure you need all tiers of abilities in order to get the level 50 ones. Speeders. Yes, Illum is essentially dead. But I still do see World PvP happening, so people still do it. Heck, my guildies drag me along with them so they don't get ganked, so it's still happening on both sides on my server. And those people are these serious PvPers that will want the speeders. Not to mention just getting around the fleet becomes much better with a speeder. Stims/Medpacks are no longer easily affordable. At 20 a pop, you're pretty much limited to one per warzone or else they'll never actually have any commendations to use. Use 3-4 and you're likely to suffer a loss on average. Unless you're Biochem, but that comes with its own costs. Crew skills. Really expensive. Any serious PvPer will pick a crew skill that they will use, and level it as much as they can. Especially now that the best PvP gear is obtained only through crafting (the augmented stuff), Biochem is no longer the "must have" crew skill unless you know someone will spend all their time doing the crit crafting gear grind for you. Item modding is expensive. Any serious PvPer will be modding their gear to min/max or w/e. Especially at level 50 where modding is like 30k or so each, it can get really expensive. I'm not a big PvP guy. Heck, I barely do enough of it to complete my weekly quests, let alone my daily quests. But several people in my guild are big time PvP guys, and some have character who only ever PvP. They had trouble affording their abilities at 50, and are now saying they don't see how they can afford to do so at all without getting handouts from their mains. Also, I don't see how repairing gear constitutes a significant cost prior to endgame gear. It's maybe 1k max when I repair on my lvl 50 alt sage that just finished Voss. That's a piddling amount, compared to the amount of credits I get. Unless you're dying left and right all the time (in which case there's something wrong about how you play), repair costs prior to endgame gear is almost nothing. Endgame gear is another story of course, but that's irrelevant to the discussion. And as to those strange luxury comments... that same argument can be applied to PvE. I don't NEED my speeder. I don't NEED my gear. I don't NEED my crew skills. Heck, I don' t even NEED my abilities. But it sure makes fighting my way across the galaxy a lot easier, doesn't it? And at the very least, I sure as heck want my PvP buddies to have their stuff when I do ever manage to convince them to step away from that little PvP terminal...

I think it's highest valor rank, but that also it's slightly bugged and doesn't always work 100%. We know the UI is bugged half the time with certain characters not showing up in the operation frame, so I'm assuming that the same or similar bug causes the highest valor character not to get the lead. Of course, everything in this thread is just guessing, so I'm hoping we can get some dev comment for confirmation.

The most general advice I've seen is to actually take your first 5 points in the middle tree for the extra force (Mental Longevity) and cheaper spells (Inner Strength). You're going to get it eventually no matter what build, and taking it earlier makes your early levels less annoying. Once you get Rejuvenate and Conveyance at 27, you can do a more Force efficient Rejuvenate => Benevolence combo. Once you get high enough to get Resplendence, your Healing Trance will let you Noble Sacrifice for free when you crit on it. Combined with Rejuvenate and Conveyance, which increases Healing Trance crit chance, you're almost guaranteed a Noble Sacrifice whenever you do it. I'd almost even recommend respeccing out of the 5 points in the middle tree to get it earlier at 37, as it solves most of your Force problems. Heck, Healing Trance by itself is pretty efficient by itself. Once you spec enough into it, Force Armor also becomes your most efficient "heal." It's spammable, limited only by its 20s lockout, and can block a good amount of damage. For trash mobs on normal content, generally Force Armor + Rejuvenate will be enough to cover most damage, with a few Healing Trances here and there. There's a pretty good beginners guide in the Sage forums. There's also a really good guide for Sages posted on Taugrims website by theotherguy09, who plays one of the best Sages I've seen. It's primarily PvP focused, but a lot of it can carry over to PvE as well. http://taugrim.com/2012/02/17/sagesorcerer-healing-guide-for-pvp/ Most of all, at 16, your Sage is lacking a lot of its better tools. It gets better later on.

Yeah, I noticed this in some of the earlier flashpoints, but figured since it was flashpoints and not solo content I could deal with it. It was difficult having to run in from way far back in order to start combat in stealth, but I managed to work around it. It was needless hassle, but I put up with it. But after I started seeing it on Ilum, I got fed up. Whoever decided this was a good idea clearly hasn't seriously played a stealth class. It makes no sense to be able to detect stealth outside of normal aggro radius. It's an enormous hassle to have to walk unstealth to the edge of their normal aggro range, stealth, and then rush in to Tranq and Shoot First before their stealth detection gets me. Especially if it happens to be another group way across the room that stealth detects me. I actually wiped yesterday doing one of the Crystal Ball quests because another group stealth detected my Risha while I was preparing to kill an elite. This sucks, it makes game play for stealthers incredibly frustrating, and it needs to go. At the very least, it's overpowered. Imagine if Troopers/Bounty Hunters could stealth scan at a 30m radius as a passive buff... because that's basically what these mobs are doing.

I've had it happen to me on two characters. It seems to occur just as you change areas, so I'm guessing it has to do with that. Reported it both times it happened. I've spent about 6 hours on the stupid balloon on all my characters, and half of it has been due to the balloon despawning and resetting back to the first sandcrawler.

It sounds like you need to go click the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner of bioanalysis and select the appropriate level range of missions. If you look at the required materials for biochem, you'll see that it tells you what rank of materials it needs. Under bioanalysis, you can select the rank of materials you go for. You don't need to always be going for the highest rank of materials. Hopefully that helps.

IMO operatives/scoundrels did need a nerf. Their opener out of stealth was too high damage combined with a knockdown plus a dot. Combined with the in/out of combat mechanic that allowed a good player to restealth in the middle of a bunch of enemies, operatives/scoundrels were putting out incredible amounts of damage that was relatively unstoppable reliably in PvP. I do think the intended nerf as it is now is WAY too much, but they did need a nerf. That said, I'm probably going to respec my Scoundrel to Sawbones (heal) when the patch hits, because my gut tells me it won't be good. Though I might do that anyways when I get my Scoundrel to 50 since my guild needs more healers. For reference, my main is a 50 Guardian. My alts are a 40 Scoundrel, 25 Sage, and a 25 Vanguard.

For that boss, I found that saving my Force Leap until after his punt worked best. First time I fought him I actually lost aggro on my tank and he killed Kira, making it a 1v1 fight that I had to run from. Second time in I saved Force Leap and it became a really easy fight. Alternatively, you can drag him to a wall and position yourself so that his punt will throw you into the wall. Also, make sure to Force Kick any casts he has. Interrupting damaging spells is a very good habit to get into, and it'll be very needed for some later bosses. Skills like Force Stasis can also be used as an interrupt. Unfortunately Jedi Knight's don't get any good gap closer except Force Leap. Technically we can also get Zealous Leap, but that's only 10 meters. It's unfortunate, but Sentinels really don't get enough gap closers IMO. As for a LFG system, that's debatable. It definitely encourages more chatting with the LFG spamming, and it does create a different sort of atmosphere overall. On the other hand, the convenience of a queue system cannot be denied. I've seen both, and I'm personally a fan of the constant spamming for various reasons. It does need some work though, and the one I thought functioned best for the game was actually in DDO.

I love that the upcoming patch will finally fix my Kira so my 50 Guardian can finally do her companion quests! Granted, I think my Doc is also bugged atm, but as long as I can have my Kira I'm happy!

I don't want cross server PvP. I'm just getting to recognize names on my server. I'm even starting to know some imps, and know who to watch out for and who I can safely solo Heck, I'm on a PvE server and I'm even starting to know which guilds are bigger on PvP, and know which ones are more apt to run premades. I mean, you'd have to not pay attention to names/guilds or just not run a lot of PvP if you don't start recognizing after a while. I don't want for there to be suddenly a huge pool of players to the point I'm not likely to run into people I recognize. Not only will it suck on the recognition front, but it will encourage people like those afkers that will feel even less pressure not to be annoying due to increased anonymity. Seriously, why would we need it anyways? The servers I play on get warzone pops at the most every 5 minutes. Usually it's closer to 1 minute. If there's a lower population server, merge servers. That's the better solution.

Your example functions on the basis that he wants to PvP... he didn't. He didn't have a buddy with him that wanted to PvP, he wasn't looking for a fight, he was just looking for some PvE action. They decided to jump into the AoE he was using on some mobs. They flagged him when he didn't want to. It's an old form of trolling from way back when that most games disallow. The game shouldn't punish someone for using AoE like that.

I'd be fine with 8 man queues... if they were pitted against only other 8 man groups. It'd be great, especially if there were some sort of observer mode like in GW. Because sometimes watching organized high level pvp can be really entertaining.

If something really came up that made it so you couldn't play the game, then the 10 minute penalty wouldn't affect you. The only people this would affect would be the people that leave because they don't think they'll face roll the enemy, and then re-queue right after. There really needs to be a penalty. At this point, I see people leaving all the time if we don't cap two turrets at the beginning of Alderaan in the first minute, or get scored on first in Huttball.

I had a face palm moment in Voidstar once. I was fighting in some pretty intense combat, when I suddenly realized I wasn't doing anything. I was just standing there, none of my skills firing and whatnot. It wasn't lag, because everything else was happening fine, and it wasn't any sort of weird glitch I knew of. I had been trying to get people off the door, and it blew up and everyone went through, leaving me standing there. I went to type something in chat thinking of asking for help... and realized I must have somehow hit "r" as I had a bunch of letters and numbers in my chat box. I rebound my r button as soon as I got the chance. Also, not so much a face palm moment on my part, but for the imps. I was in the Alderaan warzone, walked right up to the middle turret with the imps rolling my team on the other side, and capped it. It was weird, since I was still halfway when they finished fighting and they all went back to position themselves around the turret to defend or something, somehow completely missing the guardian standing there capping the turret. I stood there for a bit after capping, not sure what to do with 5 imps standing around me. I mean, they weren't trying to recap, so I didn't even need to defend. Eventually, one of them turned around, apparently finally noticed me, and started attacking, prompting the others to attack and quickly killing me. By that time though, my teammates had come back, and we defended the middle turret till the end of the match and won. It's usually the Republic side that has players with no eyes... but the 5 imps that didn't notice me really took the cake. What was really funny was I saw in chat right before I rezzed the guy that finally noticed me /saying "seriously guys, pay attention."

I do think there should be a refund option for items, but I don't think there should be a refund option for skills. Skills are always useful forever for you, whereas items may not be useful (or even usable) for you. Basically, you can't ever make a mistake of buying a skill (let's face it, you'll get all the skills eventually), but you can with an item. I do think the speeder cost is a bit high though. I just hit 50 today (still questing through Correlia) and I actually didn't have enough money to get all my skills after buying the speeder skill. I had more than enough to buy the last 5 skills and the level 3 speeder after I finished the axial park area quests, but for a time I had to go around without all my stuff. Atm I'm sitting at 60k after buying my speeder. Of course, I'm not sure where I'm going to spend my credits on now since my crafting is max, except to maybe equip my companions with decent gear, so I guess maybe the cost isn't that unreasonable.

I don't think your space ship should be a quick travel point, but I do think there needs to be one inside the space port. and that there needs to be less zoning to get from your ship to the actual planet and vice versa. As it is, there's way to much time spent traveling from planet to ship to the point I don't travel if I can avoid it.

So many things wrong with the OP that I don't even know where to begin... Started writing this whole long thing, but it got really long so I scrapped it. Basically, the op needs to go back and take a look at MMO's like EQ and DAOC before he starts making a bunch of assumptions about how certain game mechanics somehow make a MMO single player. The only thing I even remotely agree with is the annoyance of having to click so many times to get to my ship.

I currently have 1-8 bound, 1-12 on my naga mouse bound, alt 1-6 bound, = for rest, - for medpack, mouse button 4 for mount, mouse button 5 for auto-run, and buffs/stances lining my right hotbar. I've moved Opportune Strike to my 0 button because I don't use it enough to justify it being easily accessible. I'm not looking forward to getting Dispatch and Guardian Leap because I have no idea where I'm going to bind those. ...this game is going to make me invest in a gaming keyboard, isn't it? >_<

The thing with the Jedi Guardian is that until you start getting utility skills, you're pretty weak in PvP. It's not that you can't do anything, but you just aren't quite as good as the other classes that get a lot more of their tricks earlier on. It's really annoying being so limited at lower levels as a Guardian. And then you get to the higher levels with all your skills available and you find yourself pretty darn dangerous. You can easily keep your opponent's armor sundered (Guardian Strike + Sunder Armor = max armor debuff), stay alive for monstrous amounts of time (Riposte defense boost, Blade Barrier, Saber Ward, Warding Call, Enure), interrupt the crap out of enemies (Force Kick, Force Leap, Force Push, Force Stasis, Hilt Strike, and I assume Awe when I get it) and all around cause havoc in the middle of enemy ranks (remember to aoe taunt!). Not to mention they can guard a target, which is insanely useful on a healer, and also on the ball carrier in Huttball. DPS suffers a bit (Pommel Strike and Opportunistic Strike I don't think work at all in PvP, Master Strike only works against people who can't play well and stand there, which leaves you with just Guardian Strike as your big hit, Blade Storm as a sort of usable big hit, and Riposte as a good damage supplement), but then you can stay alive to continue dealing damage, which makes things even out somewhat. Mobility is pretty decent with Force Leap, and it'll get even better when I get Guardian Leap at level 50. A free Force Freeze whenever I want makes it annoying for enemies to fight around me as well. They rock in PvE too (once you get Doc at least), especially against opponents that deal most of their damage through cast time skills... because they never get to get them off. It's hilarious beating down an elite droid thing without the elite even getting its Ion Cell buff up the entire fight because I keep interrupting them. Can't say much about a Sentinel as I haven't played one past lvl 19 in beta, but I generally win against Sith Marauders in PvP if that's any indication. This is all from a Defense spec perspective, btw. I've not played the DPS trees yet, so I can't speak to them.

Beat him on my first try as a 34 Guardian, Defense spec. It was close though, I literally finished with 1 hp because of Enure ending a split second after he went down. I burned my Saber Ward, Warding Call, and Enure in that fight and it still ended up being pretty close. Call On the Force was still on cd after I accidentally aggroed the entire room after blowing one of the reactors. Granted, I didn't start interrupting his attacks until halfway through when I noticed that I was getting pwned, so I took more damage than I should have. But with Force Kick, Hilt Strike, Force Stasis, and Force Push, I had more than enough tools to keep him from using his skills. It probably would have gone better if I had gone in using those skills to begin with. Still, it was a much harder fight than that cakewalk shadow guy on Alderaan.

I don't think this staggering thing worked out that great. It's essentially a disguised launch date, without it actually being a launch date. I mean, if everyone who buys the game now will get early access, but everyone who buys it the 20th and beyond doesn't... what's the difference? And while it gives the company the flexibility to bend the rules and whatnot, I doubt other companies will look at all the fuss kicked up about it and decide to do the same thing. Don't get me wrong, I could care less atm since I have finals this week up till the 15th, so I won't let myself play even if I got in today (well, I might a bit, like I'm on the forums now when I should be studying for my chem final tomorrow...). Looking at when I registered my preorder, I fully expect to get in tomorrow, but can't really play till the 16th anyways so it doesn't really matter to me. And it's essentially a couple more days added on to the free 30 days you get, so it's not like we're not benefiting one way or another. I just don't think that other companies will look at this and decide to do the same.

Meh, I'm going to treat it like crafting components or w/e in other games. Greed it if your character can't use it immediately. Otherwise, with all the different companions we get, we're going to get needs on every single piece of rare drop.

7/31 here. Thought I had it earlier, but didn't notice until a week and a half later that I had to enter the code. Joy. Oh well, finals week here anyways. I would've been fine getting in on the 16th since that would've prevented me from checking forums/email every half hour like I'm doing now...