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.

Quick run down: Convert warzone commendations to mercenary commendations at a cost of 30 to 10. You can do this conversion at the vendor in the pvp warzone staging area or the vendor on the fleet standing by the PVP daily quest giver / turn in (combat training area). Buy champion bags at a cost of 200 mercenary 200 warzone commendations (800 total warzone commendations). Pick up the daily/weekly quests for champion bag rewards. Experience Ilum for the first time... YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE IT.

Just hang in there and get the dailies and open as many champion bags as you can. It really doesn't take that long to get geared up. Even if you lose every warzone you play, you can still get champion bags. Be thankful you have lower queue times and aren't playing same faction huttball the majority of the time.

I was wondering how imperials would take the new Ilum changes. I play republic and today their were about 20 republic players and 80 imperials standing outside the republic base. I got my weekly within an hour just from the main base turret and flanking from the turrets further out that you can control. There weren't many of us dying. The slower spawning armaments is a terrible idea. If they are going to do this, they should add more armaments all over the map so there isn't one main focal point that everyone tries to camp. This way, when the world is empty you can still get your daily in a reasonable amount of time.

YES I have complaints, but I find myself playing it a lot...so I must like it.

I got a commendation from the first battlemaster bag that I opened. Since then I've opened 5 with no commendations.

One line bug fixes do exist...example: a break statement that was supposed to be a continue statement in a foreach/for loop nest. As for the main topic, I used to get pissed about this bug, but after a while I stopped caring. Number one, I enjoy doing Warzones because they are fun. If the win doesn't count towards my daily, oh well I still had fun. Number two, even if you were to miss 1/2 of your dailys, from valor 50-60 you will still end up getting every champion piece 3-4 times. I thought I read in the last patch note that they addressed this issue? It hasn't happened to me in 2 days.

I think what the OP is suggesting is a queuing mechanism similar to the PVP warzone system. Press the "queue for hard mode flash point" button. It matches you with a group of 4. Instead of spamming general chat, you could be doing other things while you are waiting for the queue to pop. I think this would be a nifty feature and I would definitely use it. Hopefully they will stick some sort of feature like this into the game in the future.

I play in both brackets and they have their pros and cons. On my server, the level 50 republic queues are fairly instant. Longest I've had to wait is maybe 2 minutes. I've experienced longer waits on my alts that are below 50. 50 bracket pros: Games are more challenging and feels more competitive. Run into a lot of the same players. More intense fights. Higher armor rating and health prolongs fights. 50 bracket cons: More battlemasters on opposing side. Maybe 30% win ration for repub on my server. You have to hope you get the right balance on your team when joining a random WarZone. It can be very frustrating at times. Can feel like a tedious grind to get valor once you are past valor 50. A lot of people quit early on when they suspect the team will lose. As for the 1-49 bracket, it's refreshing to not worry about valor or being out-geared by your opponents.

Voidstar: There was one round (defender) where after we died, our team spawned behind the doors that hadn't been opened yet and no one was close to planting a bomb. We had to wait for the opposing team to plant the bomb and blow the doors to catch up to us.

Guess I've been lucky as well... Valor 51 3 x ear pieces 2 x relics 2 x boots 1 x pants 1 x light saber 1 x off hand 4 x implants 1 x gloves 1 x helmet The first champion bag I opened was less than a week ago.