Frankly, this game is set so far in the past that the Alliance could exist for a thousand years and still be dead and gone nearly two millennia before the modern Republic is founded and the Sith believed to have been destroyed. To put this in perspective, if A New Hope occurred in the present day, then the Old Republic, Sith Empire and Eternal Alliance existed concurrently with Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, Minoan Crete and the Indus Valley civilizations and the great Greek philosophers and the heyday of the Greek city states won’t begin for another thousand years. The notion that SWTOR has to line up with anything from the modern period even if the last update it gets is in 2028 is ridiculous. Every single galactic power could fall and rise three times over and it wouldn’t make a blip on the rest of the Star Wars timeline, Legends or Canon. Sometime in the next two millennia the Sith Empire needs to be vanquished and somewhere in that time the Republic needs to fall on hard enough times for the Jedi Lords to be a thing for the Ruusan Reformation to be a thing about 2700 years after SWTOR. That’s pretty much it. So no, the Alliance isn’t changing the course of anything... presuming it lasts until your character’s grandkids run it into the ground it would have been dust for 3500 years before Phantom Menace happened.

Along with that, how about bringing back all the side-quests and the Progressive Dailies (I believe that was called, essentially you got to choose from a list and each one advanced a counter until you got a bigger daily at the end) on Makeb? I bet a ton of players have never even played those and with the dearth of content likely between 5.10 and 6.0, bringing back something people haven't been able to play through in years would actually feel fresh (or actually be fresh) for people and its already developed content, just inaccessible at the moment.

The main thing I noticed was during wave attack on everyone after they gathered up at the technolith in the Iokath chapter of ET was that Vette seemed to constantly lose line of sight to me and thus, my health kept crashing. After getting my butt handed to me twice (the second even avoiding charging in so Vette would be positioned to heal me... didn’t help; she only had LoS if you were literally on the Technolith platform wit her) my Vanguard tank ultimately had to just stand on the platform spamming hammer shot at stuff until it all died because as soon as I left the platform, I stopped getting healed entirely. I’ve noticed similar oddities throughout this run through FE/ET... little glitches like the Gravestone interior always being the one with the NPCs from when Koth’s crew was doing repairs at Asylum... even when it hadn’t reach Asylum yet or certain mobs not having line of signt to some mobs even when standing on top of them (but my PBAoE working just fine). In other words, I’m not sure if the problem is actually the re-tuning... or if the re-tuning broke some stuff that actually made them more difficult in unexpected ways.

The Mother Machine in the SI vanilla story vs. Scorpio in ET I think is a case of different authors with different standards. The Sith Inquisitor (and Warrior and Agent) vanilla story generally applied a “best interests of the Empire” or “best of bad options” as light choices where both choices would be darkside by Jedi, Trooper and probably Smuggler standards. A prime example would be the mission with the escaped slaves where the lightside option is to kill them all with a poison that is painless while the dark option is to use the poison the Sith Lord wants which will cause immense pain before finally killing them. At that point in the class stories (since planet = point in time in vanilla even if you come back and do it when your class story is over) you are either an apprentice, a lower tier intelligence agent or some no-name bounty hunter. You simply do not have the level of influence you’d need to be able to actually save the slaves at that point. The most merciful thing you can do for them is take the mission to ensure they die painlessly instead of having some psychopath inflict the painful death option on them. Thus, for that mission, kill them painlessly is the light-side option even though it would be absolutely a dark option for any of the Pubside characters. The Impside setting is so messed up that ‘least bad’ is the most good that is possible. Once we get to the “one story for all” point (i.e. Shadow of Revan on) though not only were the writers different, but the light/dark choices defaulted to more generic good/evil ones because they had to cover the range from Pubside light to Impside dark. That said, in the case of the Mother Machine one thing to remember is that she didn’t just want to be free to create new life forms. She also intended to genocide the entire Rakata species, even though the vast majority of those still alive had nothing to do with imprisoning her. Heck, those on Rakata Prime were probably close to a thousand generations removed from anyone who actually made the decision to imprison her, but the Mother Machine wanted to wipe them out anyway. That could definitely be seen as a reason that releasing her is dark. Scorpio by contrast wants to merge with Iokath and promises to never bother anyone else in the galaxy again. You choosing to trust Scorpio to keep her word might seem nieve in the moment, but is the lightside thing to do (and Scorpio does keep her word if you take that option).

They didn’t upgrade the proton torpedoes because they were already one-hit kills for anything they can target. Honestly, if you’re not going for the “take out the bridge” bonus missions (which can sometimes be done with about 20-ish missiles if they’re on screen long enough) they’re often more trouble than they’re worth as they tend to foul up missile locks if a proton torpedo torpedo target is on screen (basically any capital ship target like shield generators and engines) until you empty the proton torpedo magazine (thankfully just four shots).

Charge what the market will bear. Apparently it’s fine that the soon to be obsolete 246 items keep sliding upwards in price (to the point that by the time I’d ground out the 2M for the enhancement I wanted, the page of those was gone and 2.5M was now the cheapest... grind a little more, come back and now it’s 3M)... but god forbid cosmetic items ever have a price drop. The market will bear what the market will bear. If whoever is supplying the cheaper items is content with their profit magins, more power to them and the consumer. Adapt or die. It is the capitalist way.

I can live with Yavin-sized. Yavin had enough space for four story missions, eight daily missions, two world bosses, two alliance alerts (including a couple of side areas specifically for them), some hidden achievements, the Revan solo weekly and an Operation. Another planet I could see it being equivalent to is Pre-Destruction Ziost. Three main mission areas with a couple of story missions (with bonus missions) and at least one independent side-quest in each one.

Since it’s a companion mission and not a main one you don’t always have to even decide. I think the default presumes Khem eventually gets control back. That said, when I do run that mission I always choose Khem on the grounds I wouldn’t even be in this mess if Zash hadn’t been plotting to snatch my body and consign my spirit to the void. You may have run into problems back on Korriban without Zash to intercede with your trainer, but in the end you have to remember she was only interceding because she preferred your body to the other guy’s and if you weren’t part of a class for such a prestigious Sith, but just for general training for eventual assignment to someone you might not have been viewed so hostilely by Harken (or even had a different instructor entirely). In short, Zash was the architect of every ill you suffered in the vanilla story and her efforts to help you in chapter 2-3 were mostly about her own survival as Thanaton was gunning for everyone even remotely connected to you. I had no problems picking “my monster” over my self-serving betrayer.

Sith Inquisitor. I generally don’t enjoy playing bad guys. Closest I’d gotten to that point was the Bounty Hunter (and even then had only really made it through chapter one), but a RL friend wanted me to join him on guild raids and his main in the guild was Imp-side and if I was going to play in group content I wanted to get a mirror of my favorite Pub-side advanced class at the time; Sage. I was pleasantly surprised by the Inquisitor’s story arc starting as a slave and having light side choices that were basically being as good as possible in a crapsack world. I still ran into a brick wall the first time through with the Silencer bit; no choice at all in deploying a superweapon... but I’d reached the level cap by then so could still run content with my friend and I eventually used my free 60 that came with Fallen Empire to re-roll that character so I could tell myself this character finished their class story without needing to use the Silencer (and ultimately became the first PC of mine to get through Fallen Empire’s release). I later ran an Assassin through everything and decided the Silencer wasn’t as bad as it felt the first time seeing as it was a military weapon being used to target an opposing military force (still not my favorite moment, but one I can live with). On a related note... in the past year or so I’ve had a preference shift from ranged classes (Commando, Gunslinger, Sage) to melee ones (Scoundrel, Shadow, Guardian and Vanguard). I’ve come to appreciate the mobility of those classes and particularly the Scoundrel feeling more like a movie hero who punches out his opponents instead of leaving them all dead.

My main thought on sparing Arcann is, yes, he deserves death. But at the same time his death is just a single moment that does nothing more to make up for what he's done. All his victims would be just as dead as they were before. His victims didn't deserve to die. Life isn't about what we deserve; its about what we do. Letting him spend the rest of his life atoning for his actions under your supervision; even if he only saves one more life that would have died if you'd executed him; is a galaxy better off than it would have been otherwise. If he turns out to be a danger down the road, sure, kill him because he's a threat to others then. Killing him when he's not a threat and might do some good before he dies is just making the galaxy darker than it needed to be because you prioritize punishing past deeds over what can be done to help others now and in the future. Yes, that's not how things work in the real world, but we don't have something like the Force, cleansing rituals and space wizards who can discern Force's intent in the real world either. In the case of murder I see it like this. A life was taken. A life is owed in return. A LIFE, not a DEATH. My preferred penalty would be for the murderer to spend a lifetime making restitution to the victim or their family (a dead murderer doesn't feed their victim's kids... but making them work to supply them with the food, clothing and shelter their victim would have provided were they alive will.

From the game; Kira Carsen. By far the most developed companion Force-user of the bunch owing to her introduction on Tython, being fairly involved in your Coruscant missions then becoming a companion by the time you head into Justicar territory, having an ongoing subplot throughout the first act, playing a role in your breakout after the Emperor’s brainwashing, being the companion they gave the actual “away missions” (the ones you got to participate in) to and being romancible to boot (not to mention general snarky comments throughout the rest of the vanilla story). Lana is the only one who comes close to that amount of focus, but is designed to be a mostly blank slate who goes along with whatever you decide and doesn’t have much meaningful backstory. The PCs are entirely blank slates you get to project backstories onto, but if I had to pick one I’d say a female full-on 100% light side Sith Inquisitor who hooks up with Theron and chooses the Republic is probably the most interesting in that at least they have a reasonable backstory as a former slave and heir of Kallig and a character arc of growing beyond the Sith mindset into a bonafide heroic figure.

I would like to get new, post KotXX, regions added to the existing worlds. Set them up like Section-X on Belsavis and The Black Hole on Corellia, but content lock them like Zakuul and Darvanis. Let us see what those classic worlds look like after the 8-ish in game years since we last visited them. You could also set them up like Iokath were characters who’ve flipped factions could visit “Restored Coruscant” and run the missions there while still not being able to visit the Pub-only Coruscant that existed for the vanilla story. Then do one to two planets per expansion as the battlefronts of the new war shift from world to world. Say 6.0 is Coruscant/Dromund Kaas as you work to establish yourself in your chosen faction. Then say Balmorra as you travel to where the war is turning hot again (timeline-wise Balmorra kicked the Imps out in the Chapter Two timespan so in this case it would be a new Imperial invasion with the Republic on the defense). Remove the Colocoids and battle damage from the planet and put in some repeatable dailies and a flashpoint (make it the capstone for the planet with a story-mode version) for both factions in addition to the main quest lines for each. Then for the next expansion do the same with say, Tatooine (maybe the discovery of more Rakata tech being what draws the Imps and Pubs into a war there). Actually, in thinking about it, make most of these conflicts be about a struggle over resources and play up the resource crunch both factions are experiencing and you’d have a reasonable motivation for the war effort and also the Conquest system (by winning the world for your faction you are securing the resources needed for your faction to survive). If pursuing it in that manner it would make sense for each faction to have a more secure base on these revisited worlds than they may have had the first time around (either that or use a capital ship map for the home base of each faction with QT/“taxi” travel to various “landing sites” on the planetary map proper. The gist of this would be to create a story that would allow for as much reuse of existing assets as possible in a manner that let them focus on only needing to revamp a limited area in each expansion and do so in a manner that allows the faction swapping to matter but not break immersion in the vanilla story areas. It also creates an ongoing narrative in the battle for resources that gives the war a spine based not on personalities, but circumstance (i.e. kill the Emperor/Chancellor and the war still must go on since the need for those critical resources is still there) and why worlds might be revisited again and again (i.e. just because Republic captures the Tibanna gas mines doesn’t remove the Imps’ need for Tibanna gas and that the gas mines are the best place to get it... one side winning one day is not a reason for the other side to just give up the planet, instead it’s a reason to redouble efforts and win that ground back the following day).

The funniest part about the walkers is that as early as chapter three of Fallen Empire while still recovering from carbonite poisoning you and Lana completely trash a Zakuul walker without even much effort. In Jorgan’s chapter you trash two at once with just non-Force sensitives (Theron, Jorgan and Havoc Squad) to assist you. The walkers just aren’t made out to be so over-the-top powerful that the only way to challenge one is with another walker anywhere other than in the walker chapters.

I'd be interested to see what the Passive buffs actually end up being, but other than the XP/CXP boosts it seems like most of the perks are either QoL (i.e. summon guild bank, group rez out of combat after a wipe) or match the class buffs and won't stack with them so aren't any real benefit to anyone who's already finished chapter two for a Knight/Warrior, Counselor/Inquisitor, Trooper/Hunter and Smuggler/Agent. Those seem like pretty easy things to ignore. Hitting your stronghold (which you can do from pretty much anywhere that doesn't block quick-travel) and using the heroic missions list as a planetary teleporter seems like it covers 95+% of the QoL buffs (Quesh is literally the only world you can't reach using some combo of quick travel terminal, heroic missions or strongholds) and just being a veteran player covers 95% of the rest. Again, it depends on how big and what type the passive stat buffs end up being, but mostly this feels more like a recruiting tool for new players. Veteran players will probably never even notice a difference in performance between the guilds that they don't already experience (i.e. Guild XP bonus, etc.). After the server merges I've got two sets of leveling armor on each US server so even the Guild XP bonus is pretty tiny when compared to the +75% (and planet capped stat bumps from having 160 rated armoring in all slots from level 1) I get from the armor and the story dropped +25% XP boosts. ETA: Also from the Dulfy info, I see a distinct benefit in the Guild Ship price dropping from 50 mil down to just 8 mil. I've got a RL friends and family guild on each side, but we've really only had the funds to purchase one guild ship up to now. An 8 mil price tag though is downright doable for our Imp-side guild.

Instead of new advanced classes, I’d settle for some new specs within the advanced classes. Maybe something that makes it a bit of a hybrid with the other advanced class. Say a spec for scoundrels/operatives and vanguards/powertechs that focuses a bit more on range (say some 15m instead of 10m blaster attacks) while the gunslinger/sniper and commando/merc get a more mobility focused spec that allows some of their attacks to used without cover/rooting. Similarly, the Shadow/assassin might get a more force-focused spec (i.e. 10m force attacks... a dps version of their tank spec would be close) while the sage/sorcerer gets a spec that gives them more to do with their lightsabers than use them as stat sticks. Not 100% sure what to do with Guardians/Juggs and Sentinels/Marauders as they already half share specs already, but maybe something a bit more “sage-like” for both with some more telekinetic/lightning moves added to the rotation? One advantage to new spec options would be that it’s something you could roll out in much smaller stages; one pair of advanced class specs at a time. By contrast a new advanced class would require rolling out three whole specs (six with mirroring) and new shared advanced class powers all at once... roughly four times the work per roll-out (meaning four times longer between roll outs). New specs would also be something players could take advantage of without having to roll up a new character, making them just as useful for the players who main just a couple of characters and those who play lots of alts. So that would be my suggestion; give each advanced class a new spec to choose from and roll them out one new spec at a time so it creates the sense of new content on a more regular basis.

A story that forces you back into your original faction even if it would be an absolute contradiction of every choice you’ve previously made. Ex. You’re a bounty hunter who sides with the Republic Chancellor and kills the Sith Lord, then chooses to let the Imperials burn when ejecting escape pods on the Eternal Fleet ship in FE15, chooses Republic on Iokath, won’t do the Chiss’ dirty work on Copero, reaches out to the Republic after Nethema and will work as a saboteur during the Ossus missions. At a certain point you just have to say “Hmmm, this character isn’t interested in helping the Imperials with anything.” Dropping said character back into the Sith Empire story where they’re expected to help the Empire after all the above choices would be absolutely immersion breaking.

Which goes to show how much playstyle comes down to taste. For example, I'd rank Scoundrel far and away above Vanguard (second choice) or Commando (third choice) while Gunslinger comes in dead last of the four. I've already explained why I prefer Scoundrel and Vanguard over Commando and Gunslinger, but I figure why I rank Vanguard behind Scoundrel is in order. The big killer for me on the Vanguard is that I'm not a fan of DoT specs and the tactics spec has an extremely annoying laugh (very out of place for the rather straight-laced trooper) that triggers about every six seconds when your high-impact bolt refresh procs and is absolutely immersion breaking for me. That leaves me with the Tank spec that has neither a bunch of DoTs (which rarely live up to their potential in story mode) nor a constant very annoying laugh (I'd be one thing if it were a priority-based spec because the audio cue would then be useful... but its a rotation-based spec where all it does is add unneeded noise)... and it has a damage debuff. You can mostly mitigate the damage nerf from the tank spec by going with a skank build (use DPS gear and sub accuracy for alacrity since if you can get your global cooldown to 1.4 seconds its basically a 7% damage buff) which makes it passable, but you still feel the lack of oomph during boss fights. Scoundrel has none of these issues as its Scrapper spec is DPS burst and lacks the annoying laugh. I generally grab the utility that grants me an extra Upper Hand when you use Tendon Blast. Its sub-optimal for raiding, but for story reasons I'd rather tendon blast and use that extra UH to punch out a foe while running through the story than blast them for maximally efficient DPS (story mode just doesn't require that level of precision). * * * * * As to story, I think EVERY class story gets weaker after the first chapter. The first chapter is entirely about YOUR character, the second starts weaving you into the larger galactic conflict and the third is what you do in that conflict once it turns hot. In other words, it gets less and less personal regardless of the class. Jedi Knight suffers least from this since its story is basically KOTOR 3 as you build up to fight the Emperor (or his Voice as it turns out... back in 1.0 that was far less clear) while every other Republic class ends up dealing with someone further down the food chain. I'd give the edge in chapter one to the Smuggler... it's a very personal story dealing with the underworld that is so pervasive in the films. It also does a very good job integrating your core love interest companions into the first chapter, even if one of them isn't unlocked as a true companion until the very end of chapter one. It also has the advantage in that its companions are far more memorable. Its primary weakness in chapters 2-3 are that the nature of the MMO required you to become more tied into the Republic as an actual allegiance so you stop being a true freelancer who seems to be plotting their own course and turn more into the Star Wars equivalent of Blackwater (i.e. a freelance military contractor). If you accept that the only way the endgame/later expansion content could work was for all the Pub classes to actually end up working for the Republic by the end of their stories, its not TOO bad, but as the class with the least overt ties to the Republic to start with, there's a bit of a square peg/round hole feel to the later chapters (they TRY... I'll give them that, but its basically the same problem the Bounty Hunter has on the Imp side). Its assisted by having fairly interesting additional companions and a generally lighter tone than the Trooper story. The trooper by contrast has nothing quite so iconic to tie it to Star Wars, it could have just as easily been a war story set in just about any sci-fi universe. The core love interests are introduced extremely early, but are pretty much stock characters. The advantage it has is that its later chapters flow better since act two is basically filling out your squad with mission specialists for a new Op and the third is your squad going to war with a series of objectives to overcome. Unfortunately it also comes with the downside of the second most annoying companion in the game (Skadge being number one) whom you are required to use as a companion not once, but TWICE. I feel it also gets undercut by the repeated use of politics to undermine your achievements which leaves you with more Pyrrhic victories than the Smuggler gets. Overall, I give the edge to the Smuggler simply because they come off as more of a lovable underdog whose victories get to be victories, even if they are smaller in scope than those of any of the other Republic classes in the vanilla story.

Given that the Smuggler story is essentially a heist/caper/treasure hunt, I find the ability to get through huge chunks of it via sneaking around and mostly knocking out your opponents makes a huge difference in immersion, particularly if you’re playing mostly lightside. Unlike the Jedi going up against Sith or the Trooper where it’s a war story, it’s hard to justify a massive body count as lightside when your end goal is mainly just to get filthy rich. The issue with the Trooper story is that it a rather cynical one the focuses on black-ops and highlights the morally compromised nature of the Republic. The main antagonists of the first act have a legitimate beef with Republic leadership and your boss is ordering you to basically commit war crimes and lie to Senate oversight rather than let SpecForces look bad with ‘for the greater good’ as the justification. It’s basically the flip-side of the Imperial Agent story really. The Trooper gets much more interesting in my opinion once you get to the expansions; Hutt Cartel, Revan, KotXX; where the merged storyline lets them be more of a straightforward hero if you choose to play them that way. The Jorgan chapter of KoFE is particularly strong in both conveying the original theme of the Trooper’s vanilla story and the fact that you’re now a legitimate counterpoint to that cynicism (also just the irony of Jorgan’s Havoc Squad defecting is fantastic given Act One of the Trooper story).

With regards to Commando vs. Vanguard, I play both, but I generally like the Vanguard a bit better because it is more mobile and doesn't carry around a gun bigger than they are. Commando's best spec (Gunnery) is also dead boring with just repeating the same 5 skills again and again regardless of the target. Its main attacks are also prone to getting interrupted by the multiple instances of knockback that show up at higher levels. I tried to like Gunslinger, but it tends to have the opposite problem of the Gunnery Commando... too many attacks while suffering from even less mobility as most of them require you to be behind cover or using your defensive screen to employ. Also, just thematically they feel like one trick ponies (activate portable force screen that locks you in place and run through more than half a dozen different variations of 'shoot it with my blasters'). The fact that all three of their specs are Damage with no other tricks to fall back on doesn't help in that regard. They and Commandos also run into problems with some of the KotXX fights that use the Reflect mechanic (i.e. any attack you make from more than 10m away gets reflected back and deals damage to you instead). Vanguard by contrast has just one channel that can be used while moving and enough abilities to keep life interesting without going overboard. Most of your attacks are at the 10m range so they never have problems with reflect mechanics hosing them over. My favorite of the bunch though is easily Scoundrel. Who has a reasonable number of 30 m attacks if you wanna blow up trash mobs at range and a nice, but not overwhelming, number of main attack skills. They're also entirely mobile skills so your various movement tricks aren't competing with your need to be crouched behind cover to use your best skills. They also have stealth which opens up whole new options for getting through content (on one run through I pulled a Metal Gear and tried to see how few opponents I had to actually defeat to finish the vanilla story by avoiding every unnecessary fight) and an "Oh Crap!" escape option if a fight is going really sour. You also have healing skills to help you bounce back or even try a different spec role entirely if you tire of just doing different variations of DPS. Finally, you just feel more like the character who would be going through the vanilla story. You don't have a fancy energy barrier to hide behind... you have a shotgun and the ability to sneak around (which feels more in line with what a smuggler would be really good at, moving people and things around without getting noticed vs. shooting your way through everything). You pistol whip opponents and kick them in the balls for good measure. You feel like a character who is a bit down on his luck and getting by on improvisation and dirty tricks. Basically, the Scoundrel feels more like a Hal Solo, Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly) or Danny Ocean who only fights when they can't avoid it. The Gunslinger feels more like John Wick trying to make his way through a story that is basically a heist/caper film. Worth noting in this regard is that I tend to play more light-sided characters... Gunslinger might feel more appropriate if I was making more decisions like I'm a rising crime lord. But I don't so Scoundrel just feels much more appropriate to the story where you tend to let your sentiment and sense of fair play side-track you from getting whatever the big score you're currently after is.

Both Smuggler and Trooper have strong first chapters. Smuggler has more lighter elements while Trooper is more serious in tone. The only times in KotXX where you’d be facing odds worse than you’d face just running around Corellia in the vanilla story are the times you’re going up against Valky’s kids and those are also the points where Valky would be trying to help you win anyway. Both the Trooper and Smuggler are regarded in story as exceptionally strong-willed so being able to handle most force related threats that aren’t basically Force Gods. In terms of subclasses; if you’re looking at most plausibily facing lightsaber equipped Force users I’d say Scoundrel is your best bet. First, you do have a point in the vanilla story where you prove you’re too strong-willed to use Force persuasion on. Second, the shotgun and thermal detonaters you carry around aren’t things a lightsaber is going to be able to parry like they can a blaster. I generally go scrapper and get myself some teched-out armored gauntlets for my outfit that I can say are cortosis powered gauntlets for blocking lightsabers/punching out droids. Throw in the blood boiler along with the bushwacker probes, a stealth generator and kolto packs/probes and you feel like someone who has enough dirty tricks up their sleeves to counter the general hammer that most bad guys seem to use the Force as. Another point in scrapper scoundrel’s favor is that because you can stealth past a lot of trash fights (I’ve managed to get through entire planets’ class stories while dropping less than a dozen mobs) and often drop your foes with a punch (or dirty kick... which is way more satisfying than it probably should be) instead of a blaster bolt it’s really easy to pretend you’re just knocking most of those guys out like a more traditional action hero instead of a guy with a body count in the thousands by the time they finish their vanilla story. That alone makes it something of a refreshing change from a lot of the other classes (even its mirror the operative Imperial Agent who’s stabbing people with poisoned blades).

At this point I’d almost rather see a whole new slate of government/military leaders for BOTH sides. Say Valky had one last failsafe that goes off because he was no longer around to reset the timer and whatever it is just blows the Senate, Chancellor, Republic Command, Jedi Council, Dark Council, Sith Intelligence and Imperial Military Command hierarchy off the map. Now all the newly elected replacement Senators are headed to Coruscant to elect a new Chancellor and the field generals and admirals of both sides have re-established a chain of command while the lower tier Darths have backstabbed their way into a new Dark Council with the most charismatic/powerful now the Emperor and both sides see the chaos in the other faction as the perfect time to strike if they can just get their house in order fast enough. Basically, a fresh start for both factions in terms of NPCs for 6.0. Make it a two stage expansion (akin to Shadow of Revan’s Rishi and Yavin IV halves) where part one is organizing your faction and part two is launching the new war against the opposing faction. The first world would be a rebuild/new instance of the Capital worlds built like Iokath to handle faction swapping without having to see opposing faction PCs on the original faction capital worlds. The second would be a new cross-faction world where the Republic and Empire renew their war against each other. But that’s just me.

Definitely agree on Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droids. There is no reason why the conclusions of those otherwise solo arcs should be gated behind a group where the only real reason you need the group is to hit a couple of switches simultaneously (the actual final boss fights are eminently soloable with a decent companion). Worse, if I recall one of them even requires the other members of the group to also have the same mission in order to even attempt it. As for the Ops, the ones that close out existing stories (ex. Dread Masters, Gods in the Machines) definitely need something to allow the story to be completed without a group (they can award nothing but CXP for completion for all I care). I’m pretty sure the main story-related flashpoints already have a solo mode (Esseles/Black Talon, Maelstrom Prison/Foundry, Directive 7, Battle of Ilum/False Emperor, all of the Shadow of Revan prequel/story FPs, the traitor arc FPs). The others have stories to them, but are of the self-contained variety so there’s less need to convert them. Honestly, the OTHER thing the game could really stand given the wait for 6.0 would be to restore all the old side missions (like the progrssive dailies on Makeb) that some people haven’t been able to play in years. Heck, I haven’t played some of those in so long they’d feel like brand new content to me.

This is why lightside Sith are infinitely more interesting than the darkside variety. They have nuance and often make the Jedi look like raving religious zealots... Lightside Sith: Why don’t you go be with your old love and be happy? NPC Jedi: Die monster! Lightside Sith: I want to help you cleanse this Temple of the angry spirit. NPC Jedi: Die monster! Lightside Sith: I just saved this planet from exploding. NPC Jedi: Die monster!

First comes the day Then comes the night. After the darkness Shines through the light. The difference, they say, Is only made right By the resolving of gray Through refined Jedi sight. -Journal of the Whills 7:477 (Star Wars - The Force Awakens novelization) “Jedi and Sith wield the Ashla and Bogan. The light and the dark. I'm the one in the middle.” -Bendu (Star Wars Rebels) Luke Skywalker: Breathe. Just breathe. Now reach out. What do you see? Rey: Light. Darkness. A balance. -Star Wars - The Last Jedi Canon Star Wars says you’re wrong. Bendu alone is sufficient proof that an individual can be a balance of light and dark. The others are just gravy. Indeed, as early as the novelization of Revenge of the Sith (2005 - half a decade before Lucas sold it to Disney) the entire message of the canon has been that the prequel-era Jedi had a fundamental misunderstanding of the Force; that they’d lost something critical along the way and could only triumph if they regained that lost understanding. It is further hinted, again as early as Revenge of the Sith novelization, that what they lost was LOVE. It was not the power or mastery of the Jedi that destroyed the Sith. It was the love of a father for his son. In other words, it is passion channeled towards positive ends and the natural cycle of birth, death and rebirth that embodies the true and proper nature of the Force, not the fractured dogmas of the prequel-era Jedi and the Sith.

Talk about self-defeating. If you won’t forgive there’s no need for them to give your desires the slightest consideration. Since an actual server in the area is out and the main objection seems to be ping rate for PVP, I wonder if it would be possible to sort PVP queues by ping rate or throttle a match to the highest ping rate. If everyone in the match has roughly the same ping rate, you’d be playing on an even field. Or how about just region specific PVP queues? Any Asia-Pacific server would have its own queues anyway and accounts are theoretically linked to a billing address. Heck, there’s probably other regions with similar levels of ping that could be grouped to increase the pool. Making suggestions that at least try to work with the situation as it is (i.e. they don’t have the budget to support servers in multiple locations) instead of some unprofitable pie in the sky demands have a much better chance of being something that could be done.