Sounds like posting on the guild thread might be an idea. Some people just ask about guilds in General chat and find one. On a reasonably well populated server, you're likely to be invited to join a few, eventually. You could also walk up to someone in a guild and just ask them. And a lot of guilds advertise on the web. That may be a good place to start so that you can get an idea of what the guild is all about. I think you're bound to be invited into a guild before you've been playing for two months or so on a fairly well populated server.

You can't raise or lower hoods right now. I suspect that may change on some robes in the future. All robes are either hood up all the time or hood down all the time. Go back and re-run Esseles (if you are on the Republic side) a couple of times. One of the boss drops is a pretty good robe with the hood up. Esseles is the mission where you get on the flight to Coruscant. The drop is random, so you may have to go through the whole mission a couple of times to get it. Alternately, you can buy robes with the hood up on the GTN, or make them - once you get the schematic - if you have synthweaving. Still, I recommend going back and getting the Esseles robe.

I got the impression that the Legacy tree actually "does" something based on the relationships between the characters, rather than just allows you to tell yourself what their relationship is. It's kind of pointless to graph out their relationships if it doesn't affect ANYTHING in the game. I'm a role player, even if I'm soloing. So, I'm not going to play 7 characters above 20th level saying they are siblings the whole time and then suddenly go back and redefine their relationships because it gives me some in game advantage to have a parent or child. Plus there's no in game aging or character avatar modification, which makes it akward. "That's my grandpa, but he looks younger than me." If it were part of the Star Wars mythos that aging no longer exists, that would be one thing, but it's not. You see people growing old in the Star Wars universe all the time.

Wow! I hadn't realized it until you said it. Legacy really IS mostly worthless. The cost in credits assume that you level up one alt at a time. Only a 50th level character can afford the Legacy unlocks. So, if you raise all your alts, like I do, you won't be able to afford really ANY of the Legacy unlocks until ALL of your alts (in my case seven of them) reach 50th level. At that point, most of the Legacy unlocks are pointless.

My first impression of 1.2? It blows. Granted, I probably need to play with it for a week or so before I really form an opinion. There may be a lot lurking in the background that I haven't seen yet. But, just at a glance, the only thing significant that has changed is the ability to unlock new options with your Legacy tree. Since I formed all my characters before 1.2, they are ALL siblings except one ally. I'm getting the impression that I will be missing out on a WHOLE lot because there isn't much complexity in my Legacy tree and therefore I'll need to start all my characters over from scratch on another server to really get the full benifits of the Legacy tree. Next, I'm 4th level Legacy. I realize that's not all that much. But I've been playing before the game was released. At 4th level, it seems all that I've unlocked is the ability to dance with my companion. REALLY?!!?!! REALY?!?!? I can't tell crafting has changed. I need to spend several days crafting - or possibly even weeks trying to sell on the GTN - to be able to truely say whether crafting has improved. But just looking things over, I'm not seeing any real difference. I can now craft a light saber (for others, not myself) and that's REALLY cool, but if it's only ONE item I'm not sure I care. If you can get a cooler looking orange light saber off some vendor then it's not even worth crafting them. (I haven't actually crafted it yet. Just added it to my schematics.) Anyway you look at it it's one lonely weapon addition. On the surface, Synthweaving doesn't have appeared to have improved at all, but I need to craft for a couple days to know for certain. The ability to visually modify outfits is a joke. You basically have two colors that you can switch between: the default colors and "matching colors". But I don't see any way to CHOOSE what I want the outfit to look like. Matching the colors really doesn't change much. I mean, I already put together orange outfits that basically worked together in the first place. It's a small improvement at best. My first impression is "What was all the fuss about? THIS is what I've been waiting for every day for the past 2 months?!?!? I'm decidedly NOT IMPRESSED." To sum it up, a lot of people were saying 1.2 wasn't likely to bring back players who have left. I have to say I think they were right.

Oh. And a lot of orange gear is class specific. As a guardian, you can probably wear a lot of orange gear for other classes. They designed class restrictions on gear kind of stupid. Sages and characters who can only wear light armor, can only wear orange gear that is light armor. I believe "usually" a Guardian or character that can wear heavy armor, can take an orange piece of gear that is light or medium armor and wear it. It will have mods that are COMPLETLY wrong for the Guardian class, but if you strip them out and replace them with class specific mods, I believe the light armor (orange) will worke EVERY BIT as well as the heavy armor (orange). So Heavy Armor wearers get to wear Light and Medium and have it act like heavy armor, but light armor wearers are stuck wearing only their own gear even though replacing the mods would turn heavy armor into light. It doesn't really make any sense really, but it's advantagous for heavy armor wearers who like orange gear.

Oh. One more mistake people often make starting out is not using gear for their class. I believe the Guardian uses Strength gear. So, any gear that you have that's not Strength gear will be next to worthless. They should just call it Guardian gear. lol Almost all the gear in the game is class specific to one extent or another and you HAVE to be using gear for your class. Basically, you'll want to max out your Strength, Endurance, and (to a lesser extent Pressence) scores. Pretty much everything else doesn't matter at all for a Guardian. Also, I use Orange gear myself. So it's good advice, but if you find a good price on other gear that can be worthwhile too. Orange gear allows you to stay with the same piece of gear and just modify it as you level up. But you don't have to have Orange gear. And a lot of pieces are hard to find in orange. (Maybe this 1.2 patch may change some of that.) Green gear that uses your ability (Strength) and matches your level is probably better than nothing. If you can find it for cheap on the Galactic Trade Network it's probably worth it. Blue gear (and we're talking about the color around the edges of the icon) is best. It's worth a little more, but don't spend your life savings on it. Green gear may get you through, especially till the next level. Blue's better if it's not ridiculously priced. Purple gear is the most advantageous, but I craft gear and I haven't found a piece of purple gear that I could make cheaply enough to give to my own characters let alone sell. I can't afford to wear purple gear and I've never noticed a need for it. Blue gear works great (although my highest level character is 30th). Orange tops and bottoms are the easiest to find. Orange boots, belts, gloves, and wrist bands are hard to find. You should be able to find and use an orange helmet before about level 25. If you take the Cybernetics crafting skill you can provide two of the most needed mods for orange gear, armor and ... what's the other one... is it "mods"?... I can't remember. I do all the crafting skills, so ONE of my characters ALWAYS has the mod I need. I think it's "enhancements" that Cybertechs don't make, and of course, hilts and crystals for sabers. And barrels for guns. But it's possible to have all your gear as orange and just keep modding it. Like a previous poster said, you can get most of the mods from the commendation vendors, if you can't find them cheap on the GTN.

I've only gotten to 30th level, but "struggling" is usually a problem of not upgrading your gear or not being high enough level. If you and your companion are having trouble with most encounters of your same level or lower, you probably need to upgrade all your gear. If you're having problems with encounters your same level or higher, you may just need to gain a couple of levels. There are a whole lot of side quests where you can gain experience and levels apart from the story line and main quests. Around 16th level you'll get a ship and can get experience from daily space combat runs. Also PvP arenas give experience, I believe (I've only done PvP a hand full of times). And all those Heroics and Flashpoints and whatnot give you experience points and social points aside from the story quests, not to mention that they provide some of the game's best gear. The other advise, especially about orange gear, is good advice too.

Oh. And if you don't know this already. You get a companion around level 10 and that generally allows you to solo missions that would normally require two players. You may have to level a few levels higher than the mission to complete it that way though.

I'm always open to long term grouping with other people, but I usually find that they want to rush to 50th level and play at an entirely different pace than I do usually. I'm working on a lot of different alts and don't play every day. Now, I've even started playing on a couple different servers. Anyway, my first suggestion is to find a guild. Or maybe even form a guild of people who have a similar play style as yourself. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there willing to group up with people if they can deal with my schedule and what not. Personally, I would even consider a group where everyone just says "we'll create special characters just for our group and we will only play those characters together every Friday night between 6PM and 9PM." (Otherwise it's really hard to keep their levels together so that they can group together on an ongoing basis). Also, I don't know if you know this, but most people announce that they are looking for a group in General chat. Those are almost always 1 shot groups for doing things like Heroics and Flash Points. The group pretty much always goes their seperate ways as soon as they accomplish the mission. People shout out "LFG <Heroics Name>" in General Chat and people generally answer back that they are willing to join. Then you invite them. Some people feel like they are required to lead the group if they start it, but I don't think that's really true. There's usually someone willing to lead and it generally happens pretty naturally. I generally start the group, and then let someone else lead (usually the highest level character but often just someone who starts leading) and if noone leads, I'll step up and do it. Most groups tend to be pretty democratic anyway. LFM is Looking for More and LF1M is Looking for One More person to join us.

Before this legacy patch, I would say Synthweaving is one of the most useless crew skills in the game. I think I'm only up to about 180 in Synthweaving, but I primarialy use it to make orange gear, which I think I can make one or two outfits for the three Synthweaving customer classes. I am currently testing my theory that the best crafting skill is to avoid crafting, now that I've created a new character on a new server. My old characters were all supplied by my characters, but I got the distinct feeling that I would be a WHOLE lot richer if I weren't crafting, and hardly found anything that people would buy. I'm only up to 16th level, but it's turning out to be true so far. I'm finding it harder to keep my new character geared up to the max. My former characters got complete new sets of gear every few levels and were usually arrayed entirely in blue gear. My new character is having to spend planet commendation tokens on mods to his orange gear. That means he can't buy new orange weapons with his commendation tokens like my other characters did. That's probably the biggest disappointment so far. I looked on the GTN for mods at a reasonable price and found a couple, but not enough to really deck my character out. Purple gear was priced way outside of what this character could afford. I noticed at higher levels there weren't even any mods for sale, which suggests to me that people aren't buying them. It looks like you can get an orange set of gear and then just update the mods with planet commendations from every new planet you are on. As far as I can tell, that looks like it will keep you from ever needing to buy any gear from players. At 16th level, my new character isn't equiped quite as well as my old crafting characters, but it isn't really mattering so far. I mean it's been slightly more difficult not having top of the line equipment, but not enough to make me stop playing the game. Finding belts, gloves, and bracers in orange is difficult, but not impossible. You have some options there from space mission commendations and the Republic side has the party outfit, if you can bring yourself to wear it in public. Still, those require even more mods, which are somewhat hard to get using commendation tokens, just because it takes a lot of tokens to get all the mods you need even for 3 orange pieces of gear. I can't imagine trying to do it for 6. Still, I find my new character checking the GTN for those items, since he doesn't have those in orange. Green might be sufficient. Blue would be preferable. As a crafter I can tell you that Purples have generally been so expensive I can't even afford to make them for myself, let alone sell them. If I sold them at cost, they would be so expensive no one would buy them even if they had to have crafted gear. The only people I could see buying them are people who have a 50th level character and are financing a new low level alt. I'm tempted to craft with this new character, because it's hard to stay geared up to the max. But I think that's more of a compulsion than a need. I'm not having any difficulty with fights, I just don't have maxed out gear. And I'm using my starting light saber crystal, even though I'm eliagable for a new one after 15th level, because I can't find one for sale. Still, I figure I'll find an orange saber as a dropped item and steal the crystal out of it eventually. I did that at 11th level, but that one had a low level crystal. But I stole the other mods out of it for my own saber. In short, I don't think Synthweaving makes much of anything that anyone wants. Accessories are probably going to be the most in demand. The couple of oranges you can make are probably going to be the main thing that you sell and the money maker. We'll see if Synthweaving improves anything. Oh. And I took gather skills for this new character. I've gathered mostly Desh and Silica, along with some slicing. I figure I'm probably going to be able to sell the Desh and Silica for a total of about 5,000 credits. At 16th level that's not much, but it will help out a bit. I'm starting to collect alluminum and laminoid. Those should sell for about 250 each. So, a stack of 99 of both should sell for around 50,000 credits. I'll probably have that much between 20th and 25th level. I suspect once I start selling those (since I'm not crafting and might as well sell them) this character will probably quickly become my richest character. Then I may find it even easier to buy what little gear I need off the GTN.

I think you're wrong. I think voice acting in MMOs may become a little more common, along with good story lines, but I think it will be less than half of the new games coming out. Voice acting in SWTOR was their biggest mistake. It's way too expensive with very little payoff. I'm not sure if it's even economically profitable without a big brand name like Star Wars. The primary problem with voice acting is that it makes it near impossible to change the game. Adding a new race or character class becomes a major ordeal. If they had of kept it to text they could have addressed characters by name and they probably could have given companions unique names rather than "<Character's> Companion".

My highest level character is 30th and I've been playing since before the game was officially released. However, I have 9 active alts currently. I have a Sith Juggernaught that I "may" drop, but the other 8 are all keepers. 6 of my alts are between 20th and 23rd level. I started playing Empire for the first time last week and have been focusing on my Sith Assassin at 16th level currently, since then.

I leveled 7 Republic alts above level 20 and never found a use for the Bio stuff. Then I created an evil Sith Assassin. I've been going through medpacs like crazy. He's constantly attacking everything around him and he regularly seems to get in over his head. I've never had this problem with my other alts, but they are not half as aggressive - being basically all light siders. As an example, once my Sith attacked a group and somehow managed to accidently pull a second group at the same time. The medpac made the difference between barely surviving and dieing. And attacking two full groups at once, probably SHOULD have killed him.

You probably want a west coast server. Wait until peak hours, like in the evenings and pick one with the highest population you can find. I'm seeing a lot of light population servers. The games not as much fun if you're on the server by yourself.