I'm in the same boat with having 1.2 being the patch that decides if I stay with this game. I think I've logged in 3 times in the last 2 months, just because my guild mates and I are pretty much bored with it, and are instead playing things like League Of Legends. 1.2 will bring a bit of life back into the guild, but if it doesn't stick, and knowing that every single gamer I know is getting Diablo 3, I dare say we'll just be yet another ghost guild on what already feels like a very dead server for us (even at peak times, finding a random DPS for flashpoints seems nigh impossible on our server). I don't agree with all the OP points, but I can agree on some. Thankfully I enjoyed my leveling experience enough that I'm in no way bitter about it - I got my storyline for each class (albeit not all to 50. Leveling becomes incredibly tedious when you know the area given how little the class quests actually make up of the overall experience, and for whatever reason this game gives massive headaches to both myself and most of my leveling partners), I got a new game to play with my friends and pass some time, and I made some new friends. It's just come at a time when people expect a lot from games, especially those with so much hype in an already established (and dominated) industry, released months to a year (depending upon where your focus lies) to some other highly anticipated games. As such, for some of us, the pressure is really on - time is limited, and so it's important to use it in the way that works best for you. For some that will be here, for others not - it would be nice if the decision didn't look so simple to make, that's all. Anyway, here's hoping my server will be all abuzz after the patch, and fun and merry-making to be had by all!

I'm gonna cliché it up and say trooper all the way. Keep in mind however that if the tank you'll be playing alongside in your guild is also a trooper, then it might be best to look elsewhere, so as to be able to offer some variation in both strengths/weaknesses and gearing. In that scenario, I'd personally lean towards a Jedi Consular with the current state of the game. If this isn't for raid purposes and there will be no other tank, trooper trooper trooper.

Bump on your behalf. Whilst it covers aspects that people who have worked profession skills on GTN equivalents in other games will be familiar with, for people new to the prospect it covers it all for you. Only thing that felt like it was missing was talk on which suffix/prefix combinations might sell best, or how skill criticals/efficiency work (and the impact of augments upon value). That's just being nit-picky though. Keep up the good work!

It was telling you about there being a PvP area on Ilum. Forget about it until you're 50, it's just a big tease!

Besides your legacy name, it thus far does nothing at all, other than accrue XP and give you a second line of XP spam for everything you do.

I actually found the smuggler story incredibly boring, playing it directly after the Jedi Consular. I believe this pretty much puts me as a direct opposite to most people, but the smuggler story just felt so drawn out and uninspired. Great, I get to sleep with someone on every planet, that was pretty much the highlight for it. There was no sense of having a real impact on anything, not even myself, as the story progressed. The entirety of chapter 3 especially was a big disappointment for me, as though I was STILL doing my prologue or something. Doesn't help that I didn't find the lines all that great (not to say the Consular lines are much better, they tend to be very clichéd, but the nature of the story at least made up for that), so I've no idea where everyone else found the need to fall off their chairs with laughter. All this emphasises however is how much it comes down to the person. I've only played Jedi Knight and Trooper to around the 20 mark, whereas the Consular and Smuggler are both 50, and I'd currently rate them as Consular > Trooper > Jedi Knight >= Smuggler. I'm lead to believe that Jedi Knight particularly picks up around the 30+ mark though, and trooper I've heard people say both gets better and worse depending upon what you like, so that could change.

Unfortunately I'm with the OP and several others in this. I'm finding the JK voice quite immersion breaking as I'm just sat there crying over how stupid and whiny he sounds. Just doesn't do it for me at all, whereas most voices I'm happy with.

Sometimes if I just want to take someone out quickly, I'll use it as part of my burst combo; Back blast (or your stealth opener), blaster whip, dirty kick, whatever that punch on incapacitated targets is called, blaster whip, quick shot spam if nothing crit and left them alive. Otherwise, not much use no. I view it primarily as a low level filler really. This is from a Sawbones perspective however, no Sucker Punch.

This guy, 100%. I run up at an angle towards the guy furthest from the back, thermal grenade him into the pack, blaster whip for upper hand, spray and pray spam until grenade is back. Do it right and you can clear packs in seconds, especially if they're melee. I feel stupidly OP when I do it too, and find myself often looking around to check that my onlookers are still responding, rather than having just opened a seething customer service ticket to whine.

On my first character, I completed every space mission with the latest ship upgrades from the Vendor (so no yummy cybertech stuff) and NONE of the Fleet Commendation upgrades (bought them all together at 50), on my first try. My intention isn't to brag, just point out that in contrary to the above poster, it can be done without the special items or any special preparations. Get used to barrel rolling a lot, and prioritising targets. Right click and hold until you've selected four targets before releasing your missiles on the big ship, each missile still takes out a turret, and then focus normal fire on another row of turrets, etc, to minimise its effectiveness. I don't have the memory retention to remember when something big is about to happen, so there are no special preparations required - just don't sit there taking enemy fire as you travel around, ALWAYS be moving. If you have enough commendations, then yes, buying order of preference is; Power redirector, the one that makes the enemy unable to target you for 10 seconds, EMP blast, and until they make it more user friendly don't bother with the torpedoes. As with the above poster, Instantly press 1 starting the mission to redirect to blasters (makes you shield regen very slow, but it doesn't regen whilst firing anyway), and any time you have a breather swap to 2 (reduces blaster damage, but drastically increases shield regen as well as makes it regen slightly whilst firing. Thus, if need be, swap to 2 when no important objectives are around and you need a quick shield regen, and just dodge the blasters for a few seconds), then back to 1 when you need to fire again. Missiles are your friend, as they don't count as firing for purposes of shield regen, so you can sit on 2 and fire off 2 missiles per enemy ship to take them out as you regen. On my second character, I've not bothered with anything but the power redirector, so I can't offer much there - but if you have a specific point wherein you KNOW you're struggling to stay alive, just hit it. EMP blast is a fairly small range, so I don't use it too much. Can be good though for when a bunch of ships or turrets are right next to you, once you learn the build up time for it. Always be moving. If you can learn each mission without the special fleet commendation items, you will be far better than if you had them since you're essentially handicapping yourself, raising the difficulty and skill cap. Good luck! PS. ALWAYS BE MOVING.

I love that the only thing people are focusing on is the levelling speed, really. Let's look at the other aspects; 1) Voice over/questing system. Yeah, it was amazing in beta, still funky at release, but around the 30+ mark? Repetitive. My responses are almost always the same (and don't always make actual contextual sense, unless you're a trooper and just "sir, yes, sir" everything), I'm hearing a lot of familiar lines from the NPCs and their responses are just as inconsistent as mine sometimes are within the conversational flow. Doesn't help that the texted summations can be VERY misleading. I've had many occassions in which I've escaped out of a conversation near the end as it didn't feel like it flowed as per the intentions behind my selections; so not only have I gone through every conversation properly, a lot have been repeated. 2) I'll address this sooner rather than later, since it's brought up a lot. Alts. Besides the class quest and the slightly different wording (and the odd highly repeated class-specific response) it's the same thing I just did. To use an comparison with an argument here; you think the amount of current 50s is a small percentile of the current population? Take a look at what percent of your quest lines the class story actually comprises. 3-4 steps on the entire planet and the odd spaceship? Fun as that brief moment is, it's small. Ergo, why should I cater my time to something so minute? 3) PvP. I've been enjoying it, but the delay for an experienced PvPer is massive. Not to mention the lag that seems to kick in for so many in war zones. The same problems seem to kick in in 16-player operations from what I've seen too, which implies either a server or engine problem with synchronising groups of people in such environments. Neither of which are good implications for an MMO. 4) PvE. This has been addressed a lot from the bug side, and I don't enjoy flogging dead horses so I'm gonna bring up a different angle. Tedium. More and more as I levelled my melee tank, I became aware of anti-melee mechanics. In fact, I recall one particular flashpoint, not even a hard mode, in which at least half of all pulls featured me being stunned from the start or knocked back from each ranged mob in turn. Genuinely to such an extent that my group either had to wait 5-10 seconds before joining in, or just go ahead and let the DPS tank everything after I've taken the opening brunt. As an odd mechanical quirk it's acceptable, but when it seems as though most packs do it, it's just a tedium, especially when your friends play melee dps. It actually reminded us a lot of early Rift, in which you essentially just didn't take melee to heroics because it was more hindrance than help. Maybe some of this is more localise to the Jedi Shadow due to its short range abilities and lack of threat modifiers, but it seems as though a lot of the bosses have threat dumps followed by temporary taunt immunity, the tank gets given the ranges threat modifier once knocked back to range and thus loses aggro (again, could be a shadow problem, though I believe Guardians have it a bit too) or that threat mechanics are simply somewhat unstable as they stand (I've tanked in every major MMO since EQ, it's not a case of using the wrong skills. I partake in the theorycrafting and experiential learning). Combined with the bugs, it's just not appealing to play right now. 5) Leaving the game until everyone else is 50 and let them do the whining about the problems exposing even more people to nuance that bitter their experience and result in me returning to an empty game. Before you call exageration, I've seen this a lot. First wave of 50s who aren't 'forced' to stay due to their guild will, as someone earlier claimed statistics support, look to another game. This isn't because they're too difficult to please however, it's because they want to have fun and not pay to beta. You realise that internal game testers are paid, right? If you asked any of them to pay for what they do (banging their heads for hours against problems to give detailed enough feedback to the secs to fix it and make it as smooth as possible), whilst also being subjected to flaming from a community who would apparently rather defend the game bitterly and drive away anyone with concerns (exactly what happened on Rift. Works well, right?), you'd have roughly 0 testers. Similarly to the OP, I am thoroughly enjoying the bulk of the game in spite of this. I have my sub firmly active and am very excited to see where this goes. I value my time however, and when a lot of my friends are talking to me about I'll be joining them on D3 and GW2, a connundrum I believe a lot of gamers will be facing, I'd like to have a difficult decision on my hands and not a sigh of relief at leaving behind yet another MMO filled with wasted potential. Let us try and make the game better for when YOU get there. Apologies for any errors or huge paragraphs. I can only comprehend so much of what I'm doing on my iPhone.