I don't care that they're not "required", it's just retarded to force people to do boring activities to max up their character's stats. That's like saying you must do all of the space combat missions 10 times or you won't get an additional item that stacks with everything else ... and it's the ONLY way to get that item. Bad design if you ask me, this isn't a job it's a game, datacrons should be achievements for those vain enough to want that, but not a stat boost that affects you in PVE and PVP, regardless of how "minor" the effect.

I like leveling up many characters, and I hate collecting datacrons, but I'd rather not be disadvantaged by not having those perma-stat boosts. Is it possible to get the stats some other way, which doesn't require doing the same damn datacron quest on each character.

I use cunning and cunning items seem to almost never drop. Is the droprate biased for certain classes or attribute types?

"Get friends and play with them", I do that for PVE. For pvp I enjoy logging in at random times without worrying about forming a team beforehand. Telling me to "find friends" is a silly solution. If I did find friends, we would all have to login at the same time to play. And as I said, I like logging in at random times when my friends may not be online. The problem is mainly when the other side (Republic) keep putting out premade teams. Even if it's just 4, that makes a MASSIVE difference. They won't end up on my team since I'm not a part of their faction (duh) ;P

I keep logging in and getting nothing but premades, it's just silly. I don't even bother to do WZ much anymore because of it. If this doesn't get fixed soon, I'll end up dropping pvp all-together. Separate the random pugs from the premades please. Not next year, NOW. It's killing pvp for pugs. If you had cross-server queues, this wouldn't be that much of an issue, but with same-server queues you keep getting the same teams over and over, which are far too often premades on my server. I think most pugs have stopped bothering joining WZ or joined a premade. Personally I don't have time to form premades, I login at random times and play for a couple of hours, and my guild aren't much into pvp. BLEH!

I killed him without much prob the first fight. But the second fight he's friggen bugged. How can the game be so buggy!!!! Always "cannot see target" even though he's standing right in front of me. Seriously this is a class quest and it's bugged beyond belief, are QA that incompetent with this game??? EDIT: Finally beat him though, the cannot see target bug appears to vanish randomly which allowed me to kill him. I was level 30 so definitely doable at that level, even though he was level 32.

I found the class quests very enjoyable on a MMORG standard. They are not that good for a single-player Bioware game though. However I don't think it's easy or even possible to make a MMORG storyline as interesting as a good single-player storyline, since the setting is so different. In the single-player game the designers don't have to worry about the fact there are thousands of other players doing the exact same things as you. It's much easier to set up an epic storyline for a single-player game. Also the designers HAVE to "drag out" the content because they want you to spend so many hours leveling up your character, since the point is keeping you playing for years. This also makes the content seem a bit more like "grinding" than in a single-player game. You really can't have much of an effect on the world in a MMORG, due to the fact you're sharing this world with thousands of other players who also "saved the universe" on their quest. And you can never really have an ending, since the designers obviously want the players to have a reason to keep playing. So basically, if you expect a storyline of the same quality as an epic single player game (Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate etc) you will be disappointed regardless of which MMORG you play.

In certain situations Ops/Scoundrels may be superior, I haven't played a high-level sage healer (mine is at around 30). However any dummy can play a pug WZ and spam those big heals and instant shields as sage/sorce, whereas the energy management of the Op/Scoundrel is more complicated. At the high-end (meaning highly skilled players), they may or may not be balanced. But at the low end Sage does seem a lot easier. PVE especially. Pvp perhaps not as much.

They will probably see a sharp drop-off of players in the coming months, but they have the ability to bounce back with good patches. The groundwork for a great game is here, it just needs some tweaks and improvements (end-game mainly). However how well this game will do in the long run will depend a lot on how fast they improve the end-game. If they take too long, it may be too late and some other game will come out and overtake them. But if they are fast enough, they could cement their position for many years to come like WoW did.

Sage healers are kind of OP ... or rather, the other healers just aren't as good. Operative/Scoundrel healers just seem a bit lackluster in comparison. Mainly I think because playing a Sage/Sorcerer healer is just so much easier, keeping hots up and watching your mana is much harder as an Operative/Scoundrel.

The problem is some servers have a small pool of players queing for wz, especially if you play during off-hours. So you usually get the same opponents, and if they are better than you you'll usually lose. With cross-server queues this wouldn't be an issue, since the pool of players would be much bigger and you'd have a more realistic win/loss ratio. Cross server queues would also encourage more people to pvp, since many people are discouraged when they keep losing due to getting pitted against premades again and again without any chance of winning. For example on my Imperial character's server during night hours the Republic usually have a team going which always stomps us, which means I'd rather do other stuff during those hours than constantly lose in pvp. I tend to only pvp during the day because of that.

We can speculate before something is implemented. It's often helpful, since it's usually more painful when bad things get implemented and THEN we complain, leaving weeks or months of brokenness where said feature is in the game. Of course they may have a brilliant solution which I'm not aware of to this problem, but that doesn't mean we can't speculate.

So we know rated warzones are coming in. However we don't know if cross server queues will come in as well (as far as I'm aware). The question is, won't rated warzones be a joke on most servers if there is no cross-server queue? There will be maybe 2-3 rated teams queuing at the same time on each server (especially the low pop ones) and so it's always the same teams fighting, and if the teams are not equal in skill always the same team winning. It would be incredibly broken that way. So isn't it practically a requirement that if they implement rated warzones, they also implement cross-server queues?

I wouldn't mind a difficult quest or something that would allow you to respec into another advanced class field. Something you could only do once a week perhaps. Forcing you to do the exact same class quest with a new character just so you can play the other advanced class is a bit silly.

I still really regret going Scoundrel on my Smuggler. I'd recommend Gunslinger / Sniper. They are ranged (big advantage currently in PVE) and do tons of damage. They also have good defensive abilities even if they are a bit squishy when not in cover (like Surrender, which lowers aggro), and cover gives them range defensive bonuses. The cover system really isn't that complex, just macro 1 key to "crouch" and ignore the "rolling into cover" mechanic as it's buggy as hell. If I had the chance I'd definitely change my advanced class from Scoundrel to Gunslinger :/.

Oh comon, we really need AT LEAST a DPS / threat meter. That's just standard for any mmorg. Without that, our overview of what kind of damage we are doing is so little. It makes the fights less interesting for me, it's really essential that they implement a DPS meter. I want to see when I improve, and I want to compare myself to other people in the raid. Otherwise it's SO much less interesting. And how are we going to test class balance without a combat log or dps meter?? It really leaves you so much in the dark. If you don't like DPS meters, don't use them!

Here's my personal list of best and worst feature of SWTOR. This is just from a personal perspective. I have 2 level 50 chars (1 on both factions) so I have some experience to work with . Best SWTOR features: 1) Cross-faction trade network (on Nar Shadaa, lower promenade). Lovely way to transfer stuff between your Imperial and Republic character without breaking immersion. It wouldn't make sense that your Sith Inquisitor would be sending stuff via mail to your Jedi Guardian from a storyline perspective, but if they are simply buying/selling stuff from an international market you can justify it without breaking the immersion. 2) Ability to create Republic and Imperial characters on the same server. Love it. Means I can fight my own guild mates in pvp, and experience both sides of the storyline while still having characters that are connected in a way (same server community and ability to transfer goods between them). Forcing us to play on different servers with the characters would be far less enjoyable from my perspective. 3) Class storyline quests. They are fun, well done. The Bounty Hunter quest (if you go lightside) has a very satisfying ending (thumbs up for whoever wrote that). 4) Raids (outside of bugs). Although the raids are often buggy at the moment, they are still fun, and once the bugs are removed even more so. We do need more raids though. 5) Different difficulty levels of raids. A good feature, since it allows us to reuse content at the difficulty rating we are comfortable with. Normals tend to be suited for pugs and guild raiders who aren't geared yet, hard modes and nightmare for the geared guild raiders. 6) Warzones. They're fun, and exactly how they're supposed to be. Yes they do get boring after a while, since there are no ratings or anything, but that's because we don't have a pvp rating system yet (which will be coming in the future). The warzones themselves are well designed IMO, we just need a few more variations (especially same-faction ones like Huttball) and we need rated warzones obviously to keep pvpers interested. 7) Companions. I really enjoy using my companions, much more fun that pets in other mmorgs. 8) Class mechanics. They're fun for the most part, I've enjoyed the classes I've played to 50. The only downside is the imbalance in certain situations (melee vs. ranged in raids) which is more of a raid design issue. 9) Graphics. I really like the graphics overall. Better than any other mmorg I've played. Worst Features / Biggest Fails: 1) Ilum. Really it's very lackluster, needs a lot of work. Needs to be designed so faction imbalance isn't a big issue, because you'll always have a faction imbalance on some servers (currently most servers). Also I'd like to see things like the ability for guilds to conquer territory. It's always more enjoyable doing stuff with your guild than random players in your faction, and it gives you much more satisfaction winning something on behalf of your guild than an NPC faction. And it needs conquerable territory that doesn't change hands every 2 minutes. Otherwise it's just a grind fest, we already have warzones for grinding, why make Open World pvp just another pvp grind? 2) LFG tools lacking. There should be a better LFG tool, or default global lfg channel, so that it's easier finding groups even though people are playing alts. This game really encourages you to play alts, but doesn't back that up with LFG tools which support that. 3) Can't abandon some quests (understandable for class quest, but not side quests). Very annoying when your quest list is cluttered with grey quests you skipped at a lower level, but can't abandon. Yea you can simply do them, but it feels like an uneccessary time sink. Believe it or not, not all of us want to do ALL the quests. 4) Buggy mobs. Just did a world boss, it reset twice in the middle of the fight. This is actually not unusual at all. Have encountered bugs in pretty much every raid I've done. Hopefully this will be fixed in future patches though, just need to put some more QA effort into the raid bosses to flesh them out. 5) Customer service. I have worked in customer service myself in the gaming industry, so I know it tends to be an underpaid, over-worked job and there are a lot of things outside of the Game Masters hands that they have to deal with. But I really am rather disappointed with the customer service so far in this game, for example they close petitions immediately without properly reading them etc. I can understand Game masters making mistakes, since you have to answer a lot of petitions per shift and it's easy to make mistakes under those conditions, but don't just immediately close them then, give the user a chance to respond and point out your error! 6) Crew skill imbalance. Biochem reusables make it far superior to other crew skills. Rather than nerfing biochem, give other crew skills reusables of similar quality. Doesn't have to be balanced 100%, just not so drastically imbalanced so that being anything other than a biochemist in pvp is a fail. 7) No super hard raid that will take the best guilds months to finish. We need one of these to differentiate the "uber" guilds from the average guilds and give them something to strive for. The nightmare version of the current raids isn't enough, from what I've gathered plenty of guilds have already finished it. 8) Too many servers. Since the game is instanced so much, why not have bigger populations on each server? Might solve some of the "dead" server issues, that Republic players especially have to deal with. Overall SWTOR is a moderate success so far with potential to be a big success, in my oppinion. The foundation for a super-MMO is there, it just needs some tweaks and changes to move it from "fairly good" to "awesome".

I have 2 characters on different servers. 1 is a biochem at 50 and the other is a cybertech at 50. My Biochem character has: 1) Reusable Rakata stat boost (that's a massive amount of free stats you have ALL the time since it's reusable). 2) Massive amount of crit for 15 sec every 2 min. (Reusable) 3) Decent health pack (reusable) 4) Implants (better than Ear, since they have 2 slots instead of 1). My cybertech character has: 1) Fairly useless reusable grenades. 5 minute timer. Short stun or a bit of damage (negligible damage due to the 5 minute timer). In pvp it might be OK due to the stun, but it's still really REALLY bad compared to Biochem reusables. 2) Armoring mod. Worse than what you get from dailies. I have yet to see any schematic for a better mod from the Operations I've been in. 3) Mod. Worse than dailies. 4) Ear. Woopdeedoo. 5) Vehicle. Exactly the same speed and everything as other level 50 vehicles, it just looks different. Yay! 6) Droid equipment. Useless, nobody uses the droid. I have yet to be able to sell any purple droid mods. 7) Spaceship mods. This is good for making money, no use otherwise unless you're into spaceship missions. Seriously which designer thought this was balanced? Biochem is so far and beyond better for raiding and PVP that it isn't even funny. Yea cybertech has a lot of stuff, but most of it is either useless or has very limited uses. And you can make a ton of money selling implants and stims as a chemist, so even though cybertech is slightly better for making money it isn't really an issue (I have no problem with credits on my biochem character). And the Biochem doesn't have to spend a penny on stims or medpacks, he has reusables, which saves him a ton of credits in the long run. Not to mention currently stims are going for 23k a pop on my server (blue level 48 stims!!!). LOL. You expect me to shell out 23 k every 2 hours on top of my repair bill when raiding? Seriously? The ingredients needed to make these need to be rebalanced. And forget about the 15 sec crit. No way am I spending a ton of credits on that. When balancing this you must have assumed players would easily afford to buy stims and 15 sec buffs for their activities, so the reusables wouldn't be that much of an issue. However that simply isn't the case. As for pvp, you really think people will shell out thousands of credits every 2 hours for pvp? I login to pvp every once in a while, but rarely do I play for more than 1 hour at a time. This means the biochemists have a constant massive stat boost while I have nothing (well except for a pretty crappy grenade on a whopping 5 minute timer lmao). You REALLY need to rebalance the crafting skills. And I REALLY don't want to have to drop Cybertech on my character since I've invested a lot of time into it but it seems rather pointless to keep it when I could have all the benefits of biochem instead ...

I'd really like to be able to transfer my Republic character to another server, since the one I'm on is pretty dead Republic side (I'd like to transfer from a pvp server to PVE, which SHOULD be possible since leveling up on a PVP server is inherently more difficult than a PVE server). - If this happens then server population MAY become less favorable for Republic on some servers as people move out of the "dead Republic" servers to more balanced servers. However this doesn't have to be the case, since these same players may either quit or go imperial instead if server transfers do not become available soon. If they go imperial, not only does Republic lose a player the Imperials also gain one, which is obviously not good for server pop balance either. - Some players have friends on other servers, and only realized it after they leveled their character very high. Not everyone enjoys leveling up a brand new character, hence the lack of server transfers is very frustrating for those players. - Fee-based server transfers generates a lot of money, just ask Blizzard. Hence it's a good business decision for Bioware. The only CON I see here is that some servers may suffer population balance wise, but as I said it's debatable how much of an effect you will see on that front. And really Bioware should fix server imbalance in other ways, server transfers really is something that a modern MMO with many servers should definitely have.

They should add more presence gear to craftable items, so that crafters can make good "leveling" gear. The presence should give you a bigger boost when soloing compared to equivalent "other stat" gear. Then you have a choice between solo leveling gear and grouping gear. Otherwise nobody would go for presence gear, if the other gear was just as good for soloing and also superior for grouping (without companions).

You're assuming we have force pushers available. Also isn't doing that an exploit?

This datacron is absolutely horrendous. Waiting for 30 min for a baloon? Srsly? Not to mention when I went there today the baloon had just left the spot where you board it, so now I have to spend like 1+ hour doing this. Datacrons should give some fancy clothing or something and not permanent stats. By giving permanent stats you are forcing this down the throat of raiders who want to max their character's stats. That's seriously annoying. And you expect me to do this for every one of my characters? The designers really dropped the ball with this. Please when expansions are released, DON'T implement these types of datacrons with permanent stat boosts. Make them give a vanity reward, so that those who enjoy doing this type of activity have a reason to do it but those who don't can ignore them without being at a disadvantage in the activity they enjoy (in my case raiding).

Most times when I use Quell to interupt a boss, I can't use any other abilities for 3-4 sec. F.ex. when I hit rocket punch nothing happens, and I can still use the ability. Try it again nothing happens. 3rd time nothing happens. Then suddenly it works. No error message or anything. Isn't this a rather massive bug?

WoW had this same problem. This will always be a problem when you have 2 factions, you can't expect all servers to have 50% vs 50% all the time ... so they really have to design the game where this isn't such a big issue. Unfortunately cross server queues are pretty much required, or you'll end up with servers with virtually no republic since few people want to play on a server where there's nobody available for groups. Personally I have a level 50 Republic character on a pvp server, but I gave up and went Imperial since there were so few active players there. It's much better on Imperial side, much easier to find a group. I know I'm not the only one ... Republic side is just going to get thinner and thinner on some servers because players will move to Imperial side simply because it's easier finding groups and getting stuff done. Not only that, the warzone queues are shorter, since more players in the queue = shorter waiting time. As for Ilum, they need to make serious design decisions to prevent a population imbalance from ruining it. There's plenty of ways to do it, but it requires major changes.

The key is noone uses it . There was one person at level 19 lfg on my entire server earlier. It's useless if noone uses it. Also it's not exactly the best tool when people are playing alts, and the interface doesn't support it very well (most of the LFG comment section is clipped out due to the small social window by default, there might be ways around that but if it's broken with default settings it won't exactly encourage the average player to use it).