And it was dumbed down, because, gasp, there were not enough hardcore subs to support the game and everybody else who tried it, left. They had to change the game and go free to play or shutdown the game. Hardcores think they are where the big bucks are but things like Wildstar prove they are actually not very numerous.

I have the bug that now that I ran one on heroic, the dude outside will no longer talk to me. I can only run them on heroic, I can no longer choose the difficulty at all since the npc will not talk to me. Response to the ticket was the same as the OP, we do not support non-story line content. Have done all the resets, log in, log out, been stuck in heroic only mode for almost a week now.

Nope, not a chance. Boring pointless exercise with too many loudmouthed toxic people, not all of them but enough to make it an unpleasant and not fun exercise. Done enough across multiple mmos, and it is pretty much the same in every single one.

I did my first H2 Star fortress and now Marklo will not talk to me to let me choose whether I want H2 or solo mode, it just dumps me into H2 automatically if I enter as well. No way to pick mode, Marklo won't respond with a interactive choice, just says his spam line about you are really taking it to them.

Yeah, this is the best tip in my opinion

Since there are still chapters and the majority of the companions still go through, there very well could be other companions locked behind 4x or Pierce just as Lokin does not appear as quest until you have unlocked others. The expansion is not complete so you really have no idea whether there is or not. You simply want to assume that is the case to buttress you contention that it is completely optional.

same here on my trooper

You make a lot of baseless assumptions, I am very happy with this expansion. I have raided a lot in this game and other games, to the point of being burned out on it. I have pvped quite a bit in other games, figured out that I find pvp pointless, dull and boring, not to mention it has a substantial minority who are just plain obnoxious people I want nothing to do with. I have learned mechanics for raids and done well at raiding, I am sick of raiding. Killing the same boss over and over again hoping to get a drop. It gets really old after a time. Learning the dance of the mechanics is nothing special. It is not a challenge. So do not assume that everybody who is happy with this expansion refuses to raid or pvp. Some of us have done it, and done it a lot, to the point of not finding it fun anymore.

Yeah, it is what I want. I having more fun in the game than I have had in a long time. Great story, the alliances things is working well. Combat is more streamlined, faster, less tedious. For all those who say you can't die questing, guess what, I pretty much never died questing before 4.0. Not dying is just less time consuming and less tedious now.

OP makes some very good points.

It was already really, easy. Soloing things just got less tedious and faster, not easier. I was winning those fights anyway.

I am very happy with having healing companions that can actually match having a player on a heal class run with me in heroic 2s. They are actually better than a lot of player healers because they pay attention to health all the time and put healing above trying to dps. I usually run one of my tank classes with a buddy who is a healer, companions healers are no better than he is at healing. They just were a lot worse than him pre 4.0., now the margin is a lot smaller and I like that. Buffing players rather than the companions would have unbalanced all the content where no companions are allowed, so what they did was the best solution to companions being next to useless pre 4.0. In tank mode, they are still too stupid to move out of ground spots and cannot hold aggro anywhere near as well as player tank, nor pick up adds like a player tank. In dps mode they can now hit hard but they still suck at avoiding ground spots and other mechanics. Overall, I like the companions much more now. And I do not feel like they are playing the game for me. I play mostly tank classes, I still work at holding aggro, positioning the boss, avoiding mechanics etc. My companion does their job, they keep me alive and they are effective at it. As they should be, if they were not, then if I had real control, they would be left behind at the next port. I treat my companions and myself life a special forces team, everybody is supposed to be good at their job. Before 4.0, it felt like they were mostly dead weight on my ship. Except Treek. Best healer. Only ever ran with treek. Now that I can use other companions for good heals, I have not used treek at all.

I am having a lot of fun and liking 4.0 a lot, a few quibbles and some bugs noted but nothing that really effects my enjoyment. Been playing since release and I am liking the more streamlined questing.

I am very much enjoying the changes and the new story content. I actually resubed for to get early access etc and I am very glad I did.

You really want to test it, make a new character on a clean legacy, no alts, only one lvl 1 toon. All the old hands in here complaining seem to be the type who likely have all 8 character stories complete, most or all datacrons done (which are now legacy wide and immediately applied to a new low level toon on the same legacy). It was clear from the dev blog for those who cared to take the time to read and understand it, that comps on on legacies with all the available bonuses would very powerful. Nerf the companions based on the numbers put out by those old hands and the new players will get slaughtered and likely quit before they get very far. The people complaining the forum about the companions are not a representative sample of the numbers, they are only representative of those who have maxed everything possible on their legacy. I know my companions are powerful, I have all 8 class stories done, all companion story lines complete, almost every datacron done. I read the dev blog and I understand why my companions are powerful and that a new player to the game would not experience that same thing starting out a new character that I do starting a new character on my existing legacy.

Has anybody asked if other ally quests are locked behind the Pierce/4x pvp quest, ones that are pure PVE? If so, all the pvpers going on about totally optional no longer have that argument to resort to.

Yes, yes it is. I like this expansion a lot so far. Far more fun than WoW's last expansion. Without the casual non-raiding, non-pvping players that seem to be despised by certain vocal people on the forums, the servers would have shut down long ago. As Wildstar found out, catering to those hard core types was a financial failure, they crashed and burned, empty servers, and they had to go free to play to survive and it remains to be seen if they will in fact survive long term, once the newness of free to play wears off.

The is a lot of hyperbole flying about over the companions but nobody who is screaming about them being OP is mentioning what presence bonus they hove on these low level toons, or what their influence level is at. A brand new player on a new account with no legacy bonuses, no account wide datacrons, low influence and low presence is going to have an entirely different experience than the old hands who are in here screaming that their 30th alt is wiping the floor in low level content, neglecting to mention that it is due to all their accumulated bonuses from legacy etc. It seems nobody bothered to read the detailed explanation of how companions work now and how having all those bonuses built up is going to power up the companions for low level alts etc. It was all there if you bothered to read it and take the time to understand the implications. They even talked about how companions of low level alts before 4.0 were hilariously overpowered due to all the bonuses. That did not change significantly because new players without all those bonuses would get slaughtered. I personally like having powerful companions, the whole story/lore is that these are supposed to be allies and friends who are perfectly capable of standing on their own, some of them are legendary beings in their own right such as Lord Scourge, they should be potent friends standing by your side, nearly your equal, not hiding behind you and being incapable of handling opponents without your help. If you want a hard experience, leave your companion on the ship, wear crap gear and solo the stuff. You have that option. You are still going to be OP at low level because of all the account wide datacrons. I like not having to worry about keeping my companions all geared up and I like being able to use which ever companion I want rather than the one that is most effective. I find I am switching companions a lot more now and enjoying having different ones out and hearing different comments. And I like having companions that in heal mode are as effective as running with my friend who plays a healer. healer companions are now actually as effective as running with a player healer.

Done quite a bit of pvp in the past in other MMOs, more than enough to figure out that I do not enjoy it and have zero interest in it. Any companions locked behind PVP will just be staying locked. That or I queue, zone into warzone and do nothing but walk around and die. Just enough to not get an afk penalty. I really came to hate pvp in other MMOs and I want nothing to do with it, it simply is not fun at all. Just pointless, does not advance story line in a meaningful way, just a side game of no consequence.

collection unlocks

This. So much this. Just over a week into this latest so called content. Utterly bored. Same old content I have been running for far too long.

What makes the most business sense and maximum profit potential for EA when the legacy storage is being offered both as crafted and via the CM is to make the crafted not only substantially inferior to the CM one but to make crafting it require collecting special mats that take a very long time to collect or only come from content or areas where obtaining them can only be accomplished by a very small percentage of the crafters with the skill to learn the schematic. That is just the hard headed bean counting way of doing it and that approach is what drives EA. They can say, "oh you can craft it in game" but in reality the difficulty of doing so will make most people buy it from the CM and make any that are put up on the GTN so expensive as to be prohibitive for the vast majority of players, thus driving them back to the CM. I have seen the same approach many, many times for items available via both the shop and in game means in many f2p games. There is no reason to expect anything different this time, it is part of the basic business model for f2p games.

If you are going to post an old and unrelated picture, expect an obtuse response referencing the content of the picture.

If you want a space game with T Rexes wearing lasers and bazookas, Star Trek Online Season 8 is that way---->. Seriously. They really have T Rexes with lasers and bazookas..

I guess I just stumbled into a working approach first try some time back, first toon I did this on was an assassin tank, I pulled him too me at the start of the fight from max range, refueling droids spawned and just stood there, never refueled him and i just took my time beating him down since he never got any fuel while having Talos healing me.