Well technically I never unsubbed...my game card expired. I lost interest in the game originally when my server died. I rerolled on the Fatman and got to 50 again and got full BattleMaster gear, but I lost interest when Dialbo 3 came out. After a few months of doing nothing but farming in Diablo 3, I heard about 1.3 and server transfers. I transferred my characters the other day to the Prophecy of the Five and am glad I did. I've missed doing PVP in SWTOR and the community. I just wish all these features were present when the game was released. I'm sure the developers wanted it, but they had to make the Christmas deadline. Just wanted to say thanks to the devs still working on this game (I know a lot here in Austin were laid off unfortunately). I hope to see more people resubbing and new players join in on the action. In short, the patch is great and it feels good again to play my main (even though I had to rename) on a populated server!

The War Hero grind is fairly large. On my server there is one group of repubs and one group of imps that win a lot. These 2 groups will be fully WH geared before ranked come out and will dominate. Everyone else will be trying to play catch up. I think the system right now for War Hero gear will create another gap before ranked makes it out. BM gear is easy to get now which is kind of cool because I can gear my alts super fast.

I believe you also get a medal in Voidstar for defusing a bomb. Also you are awarded medals for winning quickly. I've gotten 6 medals in huttball just from winning 6-0 quickly.

I've been waiting to see a video of Ilum with 50 people on the screen spamming AOEs and a FPS higher than 20. I'd like to compare specs and see where I went wrong...

My biggest complaint are the hair options. 75% of the options are butch. There is not a single long hair option. Hopefully they will add more styles in the future.

For me the game begins at level 50. I do not find leveling interesting at all. I'd rather gear grind dailies than grind killing the same crap and following points on my map. Most of the planets on my server are ghost towns so it's really a solo game up until 50. The only thing keeping my interest in this game is the competition at level 50. I run into the same skilled players in WarZones and I always have fun. Sub level 50 pvp is not too bad, it's just not as interesting or competitive as the level 50 bracket.

The OP is right about Veela losing players. I play on Veela on the republic side. It's very difficult to get a group going for anything now. I leveled an alt to 50 and every planet was pretty much a ghost town. I recognize the same players in every WarZone now. The player base is nowhere near it was after the first 4 weeks. I am hoping that more players will join the server, but at the moment it isn't looking good.

I'm really looking forward to seeing a video of large scale battle on Ilum with over 30 FPS. I'd also want to see the computer specs. I'm running quad core, 16GB RAM, 2GB video memory and my computer takes a giant diarrhea dump on Ilum when Inquistors start AOE spamming. All of my coworkers with similar gaming rig setups have the same issue. This game engine reminds me a lot of the engine from the original Supreme Commander RTS. All the top computers of the time struggled greatly under high load (4 v 4). Eventually they admitted the game engine needed a lot of optimization. When they released the sequel (Supreme Commander 2) they reworked a lot of of the engine and got performance up. I just hope we don't have to wait for an expansion or sequel to see performance improvements.

I was crafting reusables lvl 380 stims and adrenals and using those in warzones. Once I learned about the alloys, I ran EV/KP a few times in normal so I could craft some of the rakata adrenals and stims. The stims/adrenals are a must for pvp. As much as I enjoy PVP, doing the normal/HM EV/KP runs are a good break from the valor grind. Also, in some cases the benefit you get from a Rakata piece out weighs the +50 expertise you get from the equivalent battlemaster piece in a PVP scenario. I'd recommend getting both Rakata and Battlemaster gear and playing around with setups to get maximum damage or survivability depending on what you want to do. As for alloys dropping outside of operations, I'm fine either way. It would be fine for it to drop outside of operations so the people who detest PVE so much can still craft stuff....but by not getting the Rakata gear, I think they are hurting themselves in PVP.

This bug happened to my group today in normal. I was tanking and I got sucked into a mind trap. No one picked up aggro and then he reset. Also, when fighting Gharj, he jumped and when he landed both tank's clients completely crashed. We downed him without issue on the second try.

Not to mention developers usually don't get to work on what they want to or what they see fit. Business stakeholders cram stuff onto their plate that they think is the most bang for the buck.

Cool you clear out the opposing faction on Ilum when you out number them 3 to 1. Good job.

Something about the probability of BattleMaster bags being too low....

When I rolled my main character during early release, I ran into a lot of other faction players. Since I've been leveling my alt to 50, I've maybe seen one or two and I'm about to hit level 40.

I'll stick around until Diablo 3 comes out. Once D3 comes out, I will have to figure out if this game is still worth paying for, but at the moment it is keeping me entertained.