Interestingly, the Rebel Alliance ships are pretty close to the Republic Era ship designs: There's at least one hammerhead in there, and the bigger ships resemble the big capital ship you see in SWTOR occassionally. To a certain degree, I'm sure that's just Bioware trying to establish familiarity. You don't pay that much for a licence and then make it unrecognisable.

I think they're just trolling us right now. I'm sure they're just holding all that awesome gear we've seen previously back for the final "gotcha!" moment. That said, I think without the helmet it's actually quite bearable.

Don't get fooled by the star map. It makes the galaxy look pretty small. In reality, the actual placement of the systems should make no difference what so ever. You cold probably hide an entire empire right in the middle of the core worlds, and no one would notice. The milky way has about 300,000,000,000 stars in it, most of which with their own solar system. And still more than 99% of it is empty space. You don't just happen to "drive" by a solar system on your way to work. Either you know exactly where it is and are specifically going there, or you won't see more of it than a little sparkle in the sky. This also holds true for the Star Wars universe. Even if they can travel faster than light, they still have to know exactly where they're going, or they'll end up in empty space. The old Sith Empire and the Republic coexisted for thousands of years, spanning hundreds of worlds without them knowing of each other. The only way the Empire found the Republic is because they got the coordinates from some (statistically incredibly) unlucky traders. Otherwise, the Republic would have remained invisible to them.

It's really not as simple as that, much to Bioware's credit. Many choices in the game are actually quite difficult. Take the Esseles for example. Do you risk getting hundreds of people killed to save a single person, or do you sacrifice that person to ensure the survival of everyone else? The problem is that a morality system only really makes sense if you are free to define your morality. But in certain ways, the game punishes you for doing so. It should encourage you instead. As it stands, you might as well just pick light or dark side at character creation and then stick with it, because you're apparently not supposed to ever change your view later on. It also doesn't really make sense lore wise to reward pure light or dark side characters in terms of power, since Bioware itself is the one pushing the mastery of both as the more proficient way of using the force (Revan, anyone?). [TL;DR] Keep the system and the choices as they are, they're mostly fine, but don't couple the LS/DS system in any way with character performance.

If you're so desperate about owning kids you should consider adoption.

There are pretty decent concepts for JK gear, and a lot of it is actually in the game. I like to think that NPCs do wear regular armor meshes, and a lot of them look very nice (see the JK NPCs on the space station). But for some reason, they're holding out on us. Probably to test our resolve. To see how easily we would fall to the dark side, seeing all their fancy armor designs (except of the atrociously ugly lvl 50 set). I'm sure they have to add the good looking sets eventually. Everything else would just be mean.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, classes like the Sith Warrior can't jump to you if you're behind cover.

Am I the only one who enjoys it if things get a little bit messy? Who ever said we needed to tank every single mob..? DPS can take non Elite mobs without a problem. Makes it more interesting for the healers, because they actually have to heal more than one person, makes it more interesting for the DPS, because they actually have to watch the screen and makes it more interesting for the tanks, because they actually have to work for their job. The mindless AOE spamming in WoW got pretty old pretty fast.

You can buy orange boots from the light/dark side vendors with lvl 27 or so. The republic dark side vendor also has a pair of heavy armor orange gloves, which is kind of odd, since the light side vendor apparently doesn't. Last time I checked, all orange gear was equal.

You don't really get to be a Sith. You should aim for a character that still supports what he's doing somewhat (saving the Galaxy and what not), even by dubious means, otherwise it will probably feel a bit awkward. Gameplay wise I really had a blast in Hammer Station and Athiss. I think tanking isn't really supposed to be quite as clean as it was in WoW, were you build up aggro for two seconds on the whole instance until everyone just starts spamming their rotations. Things do get messy sometimes, people get hurt, but that's what makes it interesting to me. Forces DPS to think on their feet instead of letting the tank do all the hard work.

Currently playing my dark side Jedi Knight as somewhat of a renegade. As in, does believe in and work for the Republic, but doesn't mind getting his hands dirty to get the job done. He's not much of a bully or a mercenary though, much to the delight of Kira. Essentially a bit like Shepard or Revan. I also enjoy teasing Satele Shan, that old stuck up bîtch Only thing that really annoys me is my master, he's incredibly bland and boring. Luckily, you don't seem to interact with him much after Level 10 and mostly do your own thing. I think the story works rather well. Problem with the Sith Warrior storyline was for me that you come across as somewhat of an arrogant, entitled prîck. Also, the Empire is obviously pretty fascist, which makes it rather hard to actually cheer for it. Probably somewhat more bearable when you go light side as a Sith, but for the most part, as cool as it is at times, I'd just rather see it burn.

Careful, your ignorance is showing. It's like saying everyone could become a master at chess given enough time. They don't. Even if you invest just as much time, you'd still be limited by your intelligence. Same goes for games like Starcraft, actually much more so. A smarter player will always beat you, given the same amount of time. Being inherently good at strategic games like Starcraft is just as much of a talent as being able to paint or being good at playing music. They are all a form of intelligence, with the first one arguably being much more applicable to real life than the latter two. And I am an illustrator and do suck at Starcraft, so no bias here.

You can turn the effect off, though. The switch is currently a lil bugged, but I'm sure they'll fix that pretty soon.

I guess the reason they kick sages from groups is because they need a healer, and probably mistook the sage for one. I don't think they would kick a sage for not being a healer if they already had one. Except if they really hate sages. They do seem kind of smug, you know. You're obviously free to spec whatever you want. But don't complain if you don't get a spot in a group.

I think I got mine from an orange (as in moddable) lightsaber quest reward on Coruscant. Might have been part of the Jedi Knight storyline. Would even tell you the name of the saber, but alas, queue.