That's a terrible solution. Premades are not all equal, hell, they aren't even all the same size! Splitting premades and soloers in to different queues would be a massive fail. All it does is split the problem in two. The warzones would still be unbalanced. The gear levels would still be different. The skill levels would still be different. Nothing would change except you'd realise you were wrong, but you'd ignore that and focus on something else. The solution is global ranking and matchmaking system. Just how ranked works now, but apply it to absolutely everyone. Then balance teams according to individual player's ranking. A proper ranking and matchmaking system will take care of gear imbalance, skill imbalance and premade balance as long as it applies to everyone. Every other solution suggested in this thread is half-arsed in comparison.

Often enjoyed the videos but never been a fan of shadow hybrid builds. Whilst I understand the strengths and weaknesses, they usually rely on you being part of a (good) premade to get the full potential out of each spec, and unfortunately that is something I rarely have. For example, the kinetic-balance hybrids are a lot of fun: good survivability, good damage, good utility. however, it is an extremely weak tank so relies on there being a healer around or being against good players. For myself, I often solo and I play on a pve server, so going the full 31/1/9 route is superior in my circumstances due to the amount of bad players that will let me heal through TKT My favourite build still remains full infiltration. Its what I had in mind during beta, its what I leveled up as and I still love it! Its good to see some others still get enjoyment out of the spec, just wish my guild had another pvp tank so I could go inf more often!

I complain because my expectations of what the game is supposed to be (based on hype from developers) do not meet the reality of what we have in game. I offer suggestions for improvements because I love Star Wars and I see the potential for a great game based on what we have now. I try to offer balanced, well thought out opinions for improvements along with reality checks etc but invariably it is my opinion for what I think could work for TOR. I have stayed subbed since 13th December 2011 because, as a developer myself, I realise that it takes a long time to implement change within a massive piece of software and it also costs a lot of money. I am effectively funding development of new functionality and thus I am trying to influence the direction of that development. I will quit when I feel that my voice and my opinions are being completely ignored with regards to game improvements. This first expansion is that breaking point. A level cap raise is the chance they need to *reset* the bar and move the game in a better, more sustainable direction. If I feel that my support and (mostly) constructive criticism of the last year has been ignored/wasted, then I'm quitting. 1 year is a long time to understand your mistakes and fix them. This expansion is their chance to demonstrate that to the community.

Waiting for more information personally. So far, it looks like a pile of crap and thus I'll be quitting. However, it's 3 months away so I'll give it time for more information to come out. I'm specifically looking for the following: Open World PvP More Warzones New Classes New "Systems" New Design Philosophies Whilst the existing content in the game is good, the "systems" and philosophies surrounding them are terrible and make me wanna quit. Tiered loot, massive grinds for some things but trivial grinds for others, no world pvp, limited warzones, too simplistic combat, bland classes.....I guess this game is too "dumb" for me. In LOTRO, every expansion gave something truely unique and so far this TOR expansion isnt. Mines of Moria gave us: 10 New Levels Massive new leveling area 2 new classes New mechanics for itemisation (percentages moved to ratings) Siege of Mirkwood gave us: 5 New levels Smallish leveling area Skirmishes Rise of Isenguard gave us: 10 new levels Massive leveling area New combat stats/mechanics (finesse) Riders of Rohan gave us: 10 new levels Absolutely huge leveling area Mounted Combat This is on top of the usual storylines, questing, world areas, instances, raids etc. Every single expansion had something new to learn, be it revamped combat mechanics (finesse, radience, ratings etc) or new systems (skirmishes, mounted combat). This made it fun and exciting and breathed new life in to the game with every expansion. Thats what I'm waiting for with this first TOR expansion: something to inspire my imagination and breath new life in to the game. More-of-the-same ain't gonna cut it.

I'm personally waiting for more details. My preferred content is endgame. I hate leveling, I really do. so, I spend my days raiding and pvping. However, the design philosophy for endgame in TOR is terrible. The content is good, dont get me wrong, i think the actual design of the warzones and raids is fun. Its everything else surrounding the endgame. The loot is aweful. No world pvp. Tiered gear causing segregation. Too simple combat. No support classes. Stupid grinds. This expansion is EAwares last chance to retain me as a customer. They've had a year of my money. They've had my patience. They've got my friends. Time to deliver.

Apart from the technical limitations, the major fail was the lack of purpose for the players Ilum as a zone isn't too bad: there are plenty of cliffs, corridors, bridges, open spaces for everyone to have fun. Its fairly bland, being entirely white, but as a physical contruction its OK. however, there was nothing to do except collect boxes in the middle or roam! Whilst I had a lot of fun 1v1 fights, the majority of the time you simply couldn't find anyone else roaming so everyone would just end up at one of the bases zerging. This, ofc, reduced the fights to ranged AoE fests as well as being a slideshow. Ilum just didn't give us the tools to make anything meaningful. There wasn't really anywhere to take or defend, no reason to do anything there except zerg the enemy for valor. Even then, valor rewards were screwed up for most of the time. Whilst WAR may have had many problems, objectives and keeps focused the battle lines and gave us something half-meaningful to fight over. Ilum lacks objectives and thus devolved in to zerging.

I'm a relatively hardcore MMO player, and I first got in to beta testing TOR in November 2010. Granted, it was only for 1 weekend (one of the tython squadrons). However, my analysis is the opposite. TOR seems to have been aimed exactly at the silent casual majority, rather than the hardcore minority. Whilst this is a good thing in more mainstream media, it falls over massively with MMOs. Now, I've only ever studied a bit of psychology but it seems that the vocal, hardcore minority actually have an important role to play within MMOs and actually enhance the game. The reason is simple: MMOs rely on social interaction, but 99% of people are sheep. MMOs need leaders to "herd the sheep" so that social interaction happens and content can be run. The vocal minority, the hardcore players, tend to be your guild leaders, your officers, your raid leaders. without them, social interaction lessens or stops altogether. Without social interaction, you are basically just playing a crappy single player game and being charged monthly for it. So, whilst I agree that you shouldn't pander to the hardcore, vocal minority, TOR seem to have gone the opposite direction and actually alienated the hardcore minority. This has resulted in less leaders, which means less guilds, less raiding, less pvp premades etc. This means the casuals cant find a "home" within the game, can't run the content because they are not leaders themselves, so eventually they quit.

As always, communication is the key. Establish at the start if the group wants to skip or not. If they want to skip but you dont then you can drop group then and there and save everyone some time. Personally, I'm in dread guard / campaign so have no use for anything at all except the daily, so when I run flashpoints my goal is to complete them in the shortest possible time so that I can move on and do something more enjoyable. I've run every flashpoint loads of times and they are just tedious to me now. However, if someone said right at the start that they needed / wanted to do all trash pulls / bosses, then at least I can make a choice then and there and avoid later confrontation.

I personally found it to be terrible. I approached the story line with two possible viewpoints: 1) Being a shadow, I wanted to do the council's dirty work, so basically being evil but ultimately serving good. 2) Consular's are supposed to be focused on knowledge / politics, so i was hoping for deeper meaings and political intrigue. As the story line is shared by 2 AC's I didn't hold high hopes for 1) but I did hope I'd at least get 2). I didn't. The story line had good continuity but it didn't really address the core tenents of what it means to be a consular (deep connection with the force and knowledge) and didn't take in to account how evil I'd been. This resulted in me feeling disappointed in general with the story line. What I did like, however, was how your companions fit in. I thought they introduced each and every companion extremely well, gave them all suitably different personalities and good storylines for them. Compared to trooper and smuggler it was miles better!

This game is definitely going in the wrong direction in general, though they have done a few things correctly I guess. 1) Endgame PvE Gear Within 1 year, we now have 6 different tiers of endgame gear. 6!! Such a massive gear gap only serves to segregate the community. Any game which deliberately segregates it's community between the have's and have nots is doing it wrong. Segregation means smaller pools of players available to do the content. Segregation means someone ends up feeling inferior. Segregation is wrong within an MMO world. There is no sign of this trend ending. 2) Endgame PvE Content We've gotten two new operations and one new flashpoint. Compared to most MMOs they've actually done really well here, so kudos on that front. Is the content any good? People are going to have different opinions on that. Still, I think they've done well in simply releasing this content. 3) World Content We've received The Black Hole and Section X. Both are tiny new sub-zones of existing planets. The story arcs are almost non-existant. There are no voice overs for the quests. The quests aren't interesting. Basically, they've failed miserably on this front. I've yet to meet anyone who is happy with the new world content, everyone I've met and read has stated the zones are dull and only serve as a grinding place. Compare this to LOTRO's first year where we got the zone of Evendim (massive zone with loads of quests, alternative leveling area basically), Southern Trollshaws (new zone with lots of quests as alternative leveling path for mid-30s) and Eastern Misty Mountains (again, another large zone, lots of exploration, lots of quests + goblin caves, an iconic area from the hobbit). 4) PvP We've gotten two new warzones: Novare Coast and Hypergate. Whilst this seems great, this is compared to the WAR scenarios so in actual fact it's terrible. They released world pvp in a terrible state then broke it completely and haven't fixed it. Class balance is better than most MMOs but still needs work (commandos....). Most PvPers can only grind warzones which, whilst fun, becomes very, very repetitive with little variation. Ranked warzones were poorly implemented, there is no official season 1. The PvP team failed. Even LOTRO, the epitome of a PvE game had better PvP development in its first year! 5) Leveling. We've had zero new content for leveling. Nothing at all. No low level class balancing. No new worlds / zones to offer alternative leveling paths. No new classes to level up and enjoy. This is a big fail considering they want leveling to be great. As it is, leveling is worse than in most MMOs once you get past the voice acting. Quests are lifeless, story lines aren't great, zones are too linear...this is not the right direction. 6) Crafting The prevalence of uber gear at endgame has made the vast majority of crafting pointless. Planetary commendations reduce / remove the need to craft whilst leveling. Nothing has been done to improve the crafting situation at endgame, all we've had is nerfs to biochem and cybertech. This is the wrong direction. A strong, vibrant economy is an important part of a good MMO, and TOR doesn't have it. 7) Roleplaying I'm not a roleplayer but it seems like this game doesn't offer much. Players are funnelled to fleet at endgame which is a terrible zone for roleplaying in. Planets dont have natural hubs to encourage social interaction. There's no music system, dancing is limited, emotes are limited, interaction with your surroundings is limited... Roleplaying is good for an MMO community as it keeps people entertained. This game has done nothing to encourage roleplaying at all. 8) Fluff Where is it? There is no cosmetic system. No collecting system. No hobbies. No mini-games. Fluff serves the useful role of distracting people when they get bored in game. It plays an important psychological role in the minds of gamers as they constantly feel like they have something to do. So far, there has been no new fluff added to the game. This is not the right direction. 9) Space An on rails shooter typically relies on "twitch" reactions. In this game, it depends more on gear. Thats fundamentally the wrong direction. You can be the best pilot there is but if you lack the gear, you'll fail. So, poor design from the start. However, at least we've gotten new missions to do, so they have at least released a lot of content. However, the content again requires gear, which this time can be purchased in the cartel shop. This is the wrong direction. You are rewarding people with gear which trivialises the content. This is the wrong direction for an on-rails shooter. 10) Free To Play OK, so there are so many problems with the game that it's subscription numbers tanked hard, requiring server consolidations and a fundamental shift in how to monetise the game. However, the cartel market as we have it now sucks. Instead of offering things that free players genuinely want or need, you're offering junk. The core purpose of a F2P market is to encourage users to purchase things that make their game experience better. Whilst the market has some of this (unlocks) it doesn't have much. This gives the end user the feeling that what they are buying is temporary. Something temporary is worth less than something permanent. This is where LOTRO's F2P store wins hands down. Just about everything you purchase is permanent. You can actually reach a point where, if you spend enough money, you have absolutely everything a subscriber has. You purchase zones, trait slots, classes, expansions, instances, pvp classes....it encourages you to keep buying stuff and lets you feel like you are truely getting value for money! That has not happened in the TOR CM. 11) Events We've had two events. Both had an excellent delivery and unique ideas, but minimal content or enjoyment beyond the first day of completing the quests. I guess this is par for the course with in game events in MMOs. Most events are linked to seasons and just contain fluff so TOR is doing well. However, TOR has had less events with less stuff to do in them, even if the content that is provided is more engaging. So, I guess I'd say its going the right direction, but too slowly. I'm sure I could go on but hopefully I've made my point. I'd like to strongly state that I think the development team is great! The actual coders that sit down and create this content are doing a great job in an unfriendly environment: we're getting new, high quality content in a reasonably timely manner. Its the designers who I have an issue with. The designers, the top level management team, who are taking / have taken this game in the wrong direction. EAware has the development talent to do great things, its the designers who need replacing. TL;DR: Development is great, design is seriously poor and short sighted, the game is moving in the wrong direction

SW:TOR is single-threaed This means the bottleneck is often with your core speed, rather than total theoretical possible speed of your CPU. An example: 1) Hex Core Intel CPU with core speed of 3.2ghz 2) Quad Core CPU with core speed of 4.1ghz The hex core, for general usage, is better as total processing power is higher. However, SW:TOR only runs off a single core which means the hex-core cpu can only make use of a maximum 3.2ghz, whereas the quad core can use 4.1ghz for TOR. Thus, in this scenario, the quad core is better than the hex core. This is why we are experiencing inconcistency between hardware. For every other component in your system, bigger = better (though, avoid crossfire if you wanna play full screen!) but with the processor it is core speed that is the most important value. Specifically for TOR, it'd be better to get the best quality end-of-generation CPU rather than average new-generation CPU (i.e. go for an uber quad core rather than a new hex core)

It depends what game you have come from. I came from LOTRO, which i found simplistic, but this entire game is mind-numbingly simple in comparison. rotations, specs, setup, combat mechanics, everything in TOR is 100x easier than in LOTRO! So, from my point of view, absolutely everything in TOR is very, very easy. However, I have heard that WoW is even easier than TOR, so if you came from WoW and found WoW challenging, then i guess the shadow might be tough to play! As to how the shadow compares against other TOR classes, it depends on the spec. 1) Infiltration. This is the easiest spec to play whilst leveling, but the hardest to reach high performance. You only actually use a small number of skills to damage enemies: Clairvoyant Strike Shadow Strike Spinning Strike Saber Strike Project Force Breach So, in that respect, its extremely easy! I mean, how hard is it to use 6 skills? Sure, you have a few other things to deal with (stealth, cc, buffs etc) but the majority of the time you're just gonna be blasting through mobs using these skills. However, reaching high sustained DPS is hard as infiltration. You're proc management and force management needs to be perfect to even reach the same league as other classes. You're utility is actually terrible: no group buffs, no in-combat cc, no heals and you're off-tanking is crap (light armour). It takes real skill to pull off good sustained DPS at endgame. 2) Balance Spec This spec is all about DoTs. It is now the squishiest spec for shadows and pretty terrible for leveling due to the DoT nature. However, at 50 this is our highest DPS spec. Its all about managing DoTs, so be prepare to spec a lot of time watching DoTs ticking off and watching your own procs. Rotation is thus a bit more complicated. Still rubbish utility for raids. 3) Kinetic Combat (tank) Spec Again, tanking in this game is child's play compared to LOTRO. It is seriously easy no matter what tank class you are. However, shadows are the alpha tanks in 99% of scenarios: we have highest avoidance, highest self-healing, usually highest health, highest DPS, highest threat, highest AoE....only thing we lack is armour! So, which leveling this may be an issue due to low avoidance but at 50, you're avoidance will be so high that you are gonna be better than everyone else. Rotation for tanking is also very easy. When playing with progression DPSers it can sometimes be a bit challenging to hold aggro so you'll need more precision on rotation, but until then it's very easy (just remember that most tanks can't hold AoE aggro well, so just focus on tanking the most important mobs in an AoE situaiton).

Just like to say, in defence of Zenith, that he has an AoE stance where he prioritises AoE skills. This brings his AoE damage up to that of Nadia's. So, assuming equal gear, both Nadia and Zenith do roughly the same amount of damage but Zenith has greater survivability. Also, he is less annoying than Nadia! You also get Zenith sooner than Nadia so if you are looking for a good DPS companion then Zenith will be the first good one you get. Additionally, Nadia is only good if you are tank spec. If you are DPS spec, especially inf, then Zenith will be superior due to survivability. Nadia simply takes too much damage compared to Zenith so downtime will be higher. Ofc this is all kinda moot as for anything challenging you are better off using Tharen anyway, and for easy stuff (dailies etc) it really doesn't matter which companion you use, they are all OK because the content is easy.

Expertise is an amplifier By itself, it does nothing. However, it amplifies any other advantage you have from the rest of your stats. Lets say person X does 1000dps and person Y does 1100dps. Person Y has the better gear which is why they get the advantage: they have more main stat, crit, surge etc. Now add expertise in to the mix. If person Y also has more expertise, it multiplies the advantage they have over person X. That is why expertise, in its current implementation, is terrible. Expertise is there ot force a separation between pve and pvp gear. thats it, end of. By making it a stat that can be inflated for an advantage u are twisting the original purpose and increasing any potential gear gaps that already exist. In my opinion, they need to amplify the effects of expertise but completely flatten it. this would/should prevent the use of any pve gear whilst not disadvantaging anyone. There would still be gear grinds and progressive through the other stats, but expertise would no longer be an advantage or disadvantage for anyone: it would just separate the gears.

I'd just like to chime in here and say it is possible to run out of content before you hit 50. I personally did everything you mentioned above, plus every single flashpoint whilst leveling (except cademineu or however it's spelt) and I was valor 35ish when I hit 50. I didn't hit level 50 until towards the end of corellia, just before I finished Act 3. The reason is also very simple: rested XP. People underestimate it's influence but if you play the same character every day whilst leveling, and u play every day, then you don't have much bonus XP whilst you are leveling. That was the case for me and many of my friends: we started playing during early access, played just about every day and were level 50 within a couple of weeks. That meant virtually no rested XP.

Whilst total landmass in TOR may be theoretically quite big, most of it is channeled in to corridors which gives us the linear feeling. However, I'd like to point out one potentially simple improvement: Remove quest indicators. To expand on this, when LOTRO first launched it had no quest indicators. You'd pick up a quest, read the text and then it'd be up to you to figure out where to go. There were no arrows pointing the way. There were no giant marks on the map to say "come here and kill me!". as a result, reading the quest text was mandatory which made the whole thing much more immersive. It took some skill to figure out the clues in the text. But, there was also a lot of exploration done by everyone because you didn't know where to go. You'd check every building, every corner, every rock in the hopes of finding your specific quest. In this way, exploration was encouraged and everyone got to know all of the zones very well. However, once they introduced the quest helper, that all went down the pan. Unfortunately, most people take the path of least resistance, so most people just accepted the quest, didn't read what they had to do, and just followed the arrows to their goals. Whilst helpful, especially to those who struggled to read the text and follow the clues, it also destroyed the feeling of openness. A common complaint in later expansions was "this feels too linear, im just going from hub to hub" where as in actual fact the quest design was mostly the same, it was just the quest helper that changed. The same is true here: people skip the conversations, follow the quest indicators, complete the quests and hand in. There is no need to explore in the first place so the game feels linear right from the start. Then when you do try to explore, you hit exhaustion zones, mountains, invisible barriers etc.

I think the maximum DPS needed to beat a hardmode Ops boss is something like 1350/1400 DPS for the 4 main dps players (except on bosses like fabricator / kephess in tfb which both have massive debuffs). As far as I'm aware, every single DPS talent tree in the game is capable of reaching that level of DPS. However, some trees will have a harder time than others so at that point it's going to come down to gear/player skill. Good example of this is infiltration spec for shadows. Balance spec has higher sustained dps so is the usual go-to build for raiding, but infiltration is more bursty so is more for pvp. However, inf can pull 1600dps+ if played and geared correctly so it is more than capable of clearing all bosses in the game, it would just be easier if you respecced to balance. My advice would be the same as others though: fork out for field respec, be a subscriber and just respec depending on what content you are doing.

Personally, I would go for Zentih assuming equal gear levels. Me and a sage in guild did some testing on this. My Nadia versus his Zenith. Nadia was in full rakata level gear, Zenith was in mostly tionesse / columi. Zenith tore Nadia a new one. this was repeated over the 4 duels we had. We then switched (my Zenith versus his Nadia). My Zenith was also in full Rakata, versus his Nadia in lesser gear and the difference was even more pronounced. The primary reason for this was armour rating. Both their damage was roughly comparable, but Zenith has more armour and could thus take much more of a beating. Both companions have AoE stances which make dailies very quick. So, thats primarily why I now use zenith for most dailies. does good damage, survives longer and is less annoying. Also, if you forget to turn off Nadia's knockback ability then she gets even more annoying! If you want to take this sort of thing further (and have the time and patience!) then gearing up Qyzen in full DPS gear is great. Being heavy armoured, he lasts a long time and he can do good DPS too.

I've noticed myself getting stunned a lot when I've had resilience up recently. the first few times I put it down to lag but it has happened too many times now to just be lag. For example, hit resilience (as tank), hit telekinetic throw for the heal and then get stunned after 2nd or 3rd tick. I'm also getting hit with knockbacks when I have resilience running too. However, sometimes it works fine. My guess is that they've probably changed the attack type of a CC or two so that instead of being force/tech, it's now melee/ranged and thus bypasses resilience. This would account for the inconsistency. On the other hand, could just be some random bug. i'm not fussing too much as it's only caused me a few additional deaths in pvp but would be nice to better understand why it's happening.

Um, in most cases shadows are still better than guardians! We have same amount of defence We have more shield We have same absorb We have less armour We have more self healing We have more threat The only time a shadow loses out to a guardian is when the majority of damage is force/tech kinetic/energy or when there are a large number of incoming attacks (so we lose kinetic ward). There aren't many bosses like that in the game so basically for 99% of the content, shadows are superior to guardians.

Seems weird that they are leaving the EWH mainhand and offhand as their current prices, considering these are the pieces of gear that make the biggest difference. Sort of hinders the whole point of closing the gear gap Here's hoping they lower the price to match current WH prices.

Implement global ranking system that affects everyone. Then, matchmake warzones based on rank. Problem solved. Overgeared players will end up with a higher rating and thus face other people who also have high ratings. Fresh noobs will have low rating and thus fight other low-rating people. Premades will win more, their rating will go up and so they'll face other higher rated people. Bad players will always have a bad rating. Good players will always have a good rating. Proper matchmaking would win out. If matchmaking proves hard (i.e. getting all player with similar rating) then change it so that total rating on both teams is equal. So, for example, both teams would have 4 people with 2000 rating and 4 people with 500 rating each, so whilst skill levels are different, overall team rating is equal. As to your specific suggestions, I reject most/all of them. I feel most strongly about allowing teams to queue for specific warzones. As said above, this encourages stacking of classes but it also segregates the community and will undoubtedly lead towards 1 warzone becoming more popular than all the others. This happened in WAR and it seriously sucked. Dont let it happen here.

I would say go for main hand and off-hand elite war hero first and foremost (total 4000 rwc) Then with ur normal comms just buy whatever WH pieces give you the most upgrades in stats. iirc earpiece, chest and gloves were all good pieces to get for consular. However, before you get disappointed, people in full warhero still get hit for the same numbers as people in BM so dont expect to become godlike or anything, player skill and class still count for far more than gear. So, maximising your damage/healing is the best way to survive really!

DR has now cleared Operator IX and Kephess on Hardmode! Operator IX Killshot Kephess The Undying Killshot Currently working on TFB himself, best attempt is 25% so he should go down in the near future, then on to EC NiM

I urge them NOT to listen to player feedback regarding balance! I urge them to use facts and proper testing. These facts and testing can come from the community, but lets face it, the vast majority of feedback is ridiculously biased and it is usually wrong. The devs need to balance classes based on their maximum potential, not average player skill.