I mostly run those FP in guild, and we always clean every boss. On the other hand, It's way harder in PUG. I began doing these FP in PUG last week, and most of the time Manaan hard mode bonus doesn't work. Thyton first boss is not that hard, even with the normal way (not running down the stairs). Actually, I saw that one 2 days ago for the first time, it makes the boss trivial. I'm healer with a sorc and thython first boss is hard, true, but it's good training. Back to the point, it's true that the last boss from rakata is a bit annoying some times, but i think I may have wiped 2 or 3 times on that boss clearing it around 10+ times. Often enough, one person will die but that's what the combat rez is for. The annoying thing is that it's completely random, and you can't do anything about it, so I think a change is indeed warranted.

It is when I hear people talk about guild banks with 10k jawa junk. The fact is, mmo player will always take the path of least resistance. So if there is something unbalanced or too easy, people will use it and abuse it until it is nerfed.

Again you should read the first post completely. From Eric : Even so, it still is dubious they didn't know the impact it would have.

Mmh before the crash of the market, resolve hilts were around 100k, resolve implants were around 200k (heal or dps was not so different), and so on. It was about 50k per violet item with of course variation because not everything has the same demand. I'm not the one making the sales because i find the GTN boring. I was crafting for our guild to get enough money for the guild ship. I can tell that resolve accuracy power implants were sold at 240k sunday and 140k monday. So even 186 gear was interesting for crafters. But now I suspect it won't be the case for long. I guess I'll do dailies to grind money now. I'm kinda wondering why did I ever take time to learn the crew skills. Of course the market for 186 gear would have eventually become less interesting as people geared up. But I think we still had a few weeks before that happened. Now I think the supply will fast flood the demand and then, nothing will be worth much. And since it's not patched today you can be sure that a lot of people will hoard extremely high amounts of ressource, and even if they patch it, the damage will be done. Well it will make it easy to gear people getting to 60. I guess that's the good thing in all that.

I must agree with you on that point. I think it was a good idea. It's only a bit annoying for one of my friend that bought an overlord command chair for 7 millions 1,5 week ago. Just a tiny little bit ^^ Especially as he wanted a mount that was hard to get.

Well as I said I tried for the first time yesterday. And I needed the reps items to up my reputation so I didn't sell them. I'll try tonight again to see the real value.

Oh that's a fun one. REALLY? I'm not only talking about crafting mats, but everything else. Tacticals with the super OP GSI droids who can tank heal dps, everything below 60 is also ridiculously easy. I was trying to learn how to heal with a sorcerer to be better prepared for operations. Well the only thing you can do is HM 60. everything else is so easy that you can launch one heal every 10 seconds. You won't learn to play your class this way. I was playing in vanilla and doing operations and let's just say it was kinda different when I came back for SOR. But I'm getting side tracked. Let's talk about mats, more precisely, epic mats. Yesterday I tried the slot machine for the first time and I got 64 jawa junk for 396 chips. So for around 200K. Let's say I need my augments done. For those 64 jawa junk I can get 21 adaptive circuits. So that's it for the epic mats for 10 of the augments I would need to make myself full augment. Wasn't that a bit harder before? Wasn't that good? I don't get as much entertainment for doing things if they are too easy. When I leveled to 60, the morning after I was full 186. And I was like "Meh 186, well that's ok".

I also stopped crafting to sell on the GTN. No use as of now, nobody buy my stuff at my previous price. I mean, everything I crafted was from before these slot machines were in the game. I ran plenty of missions to get these mats, and selling with the prices changed to reflect what epic mats cost now would be a net loss for me. I prefer keeping the items for guildies that are levelling at the moment. I also completely stopped running missions. It really has no interest anymore. I understand it completely, but I find it more interesting to sell green mats now. So I won't craft in the near future, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Well for now I didn't want to spend the time to analyze every violet mat from the GTN. But the midlithe went from 70k to 8k in 24 hours. I wonder what it's gonna be when I come back later today. The main problem is that it is still profitable to sell these midlithe crystal for 7k with the slot machine. That's quite a drop compared to before. They became too easy to get. I'll try to buy 500 chips today and calculate exactly how much jawa junk I make and what it costs me after vendoring the rep items. That's enough sample size to be more or less correct. Would be better with something like 10k chips but well I don't have that money to burn and more importantly I don't have the time to put 10k chips in a slot machine. Also, I don't have the slot machine, I'm using one in a public stronghold. And to those who say it is a good thing that those *rare* mats are now available to those prices. I know CZ-198 gives 36k creds for the dailies. So with 1 day of 1 daily you can get 5 midlithe crystal (5*7k creds). With that you can get 2 enhancements, or a relic or 2 saber hilts. So I guess with a week of farming cz you would have everything you need from artifice. That's one daily, once per day. It takes around 20 minutes max to do it. Isn't there a point where things are too easy? It is really easy to make money with dailies now, so it means that epic mats have almost no value anymore. I know I can make a few hundreds k without really trying, doing dailies and farming a bit around yavin for mats. I don't even blink when I buy a mount for a few hundred k in the GTN (acrid chemlizard for example lately). So well, 7k for rare mats is ridculous.

Let's see, For 50k, you get a 100 tokens. I tried the machine yesterday for the first time and I think I got around 60 jawa junk for 400 tokens. So that means 15 jawa junk for 100 tokens, so for 50K. 15 jawa junk is 7 midlithe crystal. So 7 midlith crystal cost around 50k. On my server, before this change, midlithe crystal were between 70k and 90k for 1. So you are partially right, the main problem comes from the stockpiles. But the problem on the machine is quite real too. With my example, you get a value of around 7k for a midlithe crystal if you don't gain any money. That's without counting blues and greens. I'm pretty sure we're gonna have a flood of mats that we won't be able to use. Supply will swamp demand and the economy will be shot. Well good thing is everyone will have 186 gear now, there is no excuse any more.

One thing that I didn't see discussed here (but I didn't read every post, there was just too much) is supply and demand. I think in the past it was much more difficult to supply the epic mats then it is now. So what is going to happen? The demand is still high now, but once everybody is geared it will drop dramatically. When I hear things like 17 stacks of midlithe crystal I'm thinking right away what are people going to do with that? What would you do with 850 enhancements or 425 relics? I mean if a few dozen people do that, there will be too much mats, and mats won't be worth a thing anymore. It's like a cornucopia of mats, it will never stop flowing, and we will never need a grade 11 mat again.

First of I think OP is right when he says there is no content to prepare you for these HM flashpoints. Especially manaan. If you get manaan first, you might get scared of HMs. But doing korriban or Rakata are relatively easy, so maybe this must be the preparation. But, there is not much difficulty in this game. I played my inquisitor as a dps for a while and changed it to heal so I could help out my guild. We tried for the first time the HM mode last week. It was finally challenging and rewarding. To learn how to play your heal class correctly, I don't see any alternative to operation except HM 60. You won't learn to play your heal in tactical or hm 55 or even operation 55 and below. I've tried staying heal in these and it was SOOOOO boring (well didn't do much operation 60 so I can't say much about those) So let's say they nerf the HM 60. If you didn't play heal before, good luck learning your class before going on operation. I imagine it is not that much different for tanks. The group from my guild didn't do any operation. we have are full 186 at least with a few 192. One of us had done the HMs (except for thyton) before and he knew most of the fights and could explain them to us. We used mumble. But we don't have any raid gear. So korriban and Rakata are really easy, it's almost like we are on tactical. Then comes thyton wich was quite a bit more challenging. The first boss made me sweat quite a bit, but we didn't wipe on him. The other bosses are easy except the last. Sometimes you will have a bad combo with the tank stunned by one of the droids and then into the AE which will take probably a bit more than 50% of his life, and then if you are unlucky he will make the group levitate and will just kill the tank without you being able to do anything. Happened twice yesterday, 2 wipes because of that but we just tried again and finally it worked on 3rd try. So that leaves Manaan which is really the hardest. We still did it first time going there. We wiped 4 times on the boss bonus (with the explosives droid) but no wipe on anything else in that fp. I remember cleary that I was physically tired after the 5 tries on the bonus boss, it was so demanding for myself as heal. But really, this was a GOOD THING for me. Finally some challenge. When I played in vanilla, the 50 HM flashpoints were comparable if I remember right. Remember wiping quite a bit more actually. So clearly these FPs are meant to be done by people who can play their classes, and it is a good thing, because you will have to get to that level of play to be efficient in operations. Where will you learn if not in those HM flashpoints? PS : for people who complain about the HM being too difficult in PUG. Well so you want to be able to clean the hardest group content with people who don't know how to play the game. Let's face it, PUG are random, sometimes you will have a good group sometimes you will have a DPS assassin taunting mobs every combat (happened to me, it's realy fun as a healer). So well, I heard wow is really more casual than before, maybe you should try that.

Funny thing, I'm on gmt+1. I come back every day from work at around 5h15 pm (15 mins after the supposed end of the scheduled maintenance). Every day I have queues around 300 people. So I guess it is not a peak hour when the server is full. Nice one bioware.