That's all I needed to hear; two chapters seems like enough time to tie the two stories together. Two questions: 1. Do we have a source on the chapter 2-carbonite plot point? 2. Do we know how long the chapters will be?

As far as I can tell, KOTFE releases in barely ten weeks. It'll contain an entirely new story, with lots of new characters, a new setting, a new, non-playable faction that we're fighting against and a brand new goal for all of us to strive towards. Meanwhile, what's happened in the game right now as of Ziost? Well, the Emperor's back and he made a grim, unpleasant world only slightly more grim and unpleasant. That's about it, really. Unless BioWare has another story-focused patch coming up, I'm not sure how on earth we could tie these two stories together without it coming across as abrupt and unsettling. Does Vitiate become Valkorian? Will Valkorian just show up and kill Vitiate before we can? Were they bunkmates at summer camp who had a falling out once? I feel there's too much we're not being told here. E3 was six weeks ago and we don't know much more than we did then, and I'm somewhat confused. Is BioWare just planning to drop 3.4 a couple of weeks before KOTFE releases? Or will Ziost just be the last patch of Shadow of Revan and Vitiate will show up in KOTFE later?

I'm coming back to SWTOR after about eighteen months now, and now discovered that I'm essentially bankrupt and that tricking out my stronghold is going to require a bit more than a pretty penny. Speaking as someone who's been out of the game for a while, what are a couple of top ways to earn credits in SWTOR? The last time I was around, I bought a few things on the cartel market and tossed them on the GTN for a quick buck, but money's tight ATM and I'd prefer to earn the credits in-game this time around. Right now my main source of income is leveling up my toons to 55, which nets a couple hundred thousand for each one leveled. It's inefficient and repetitive though, so I'm looking elsewhere My main, a merc, is an armor/scav/under, and I have a vanguard who is a cyber/scav/under; both toons have at least 400 in each skill. Last I heard, slicing was the crew skill that turned the tidiest profit; has that changed? I'm comfortable playing the GTN (right now, I was looking into investing in dark projects and particularly the starship decorations; those look like multi-100k profit margins if they're sold right), but it would help if I knew what the most lucrative items to invest in were, since - unlike WoW - there's no addons to assist in that regard. I'm sure this gets asked a lot, but I'd appreciate the help anyway.

Um... care to elaborate on that?

I'm coming back to SWTOR after about eighteen months now, and now discovered that I'm essentially bankrupt and that tricking out my stronghold is going to require a bit more than a pretty penny. Speaking as someone who's been out of the game for a while, what are a couple of top ways to earn credits in SWTOR? The last time I was around, I bought a few things on the cartel market and tossed them on the GTN for a quick buck, but money's tight ATM and I'd prefer to earn the credits in-game this time around. Right now my main source of income is leveling up my toons to 55, which nets a couple hundred thousand for each one leveled. It's inefficient and repetitive though, so I'm looking elsewhere My main, a merc, is an armor/scav/under, and I have a vanguard who is a cyber/scav/under; both toons have at least 400 in each skill. Last I heard, slicing was the crew skill that turned the tidiest profit; has that changed? I'm comfortable playing the GTN (right now, I was looking into investing in dark projects and particularly the starship decorations; those look like multi-100k profit margins if they're sold right), but it would help if I knew what the most lucrative items to invest in were, since - unlike WoW - there's no addons to assist in that regard. I'm sure this gets asked a lot, but I'd appreciate the help anyway.

I'm considering moving off of my original server and onto a new one that's actually in my timezone; the character I'm moving is a Level 55 BH, with all my stuff, credits and equipment from the original server, which I know all goes with him if it's in his bank. What I want to know is whether my legacy stuff gets transferred as well. When I say that, I mean my legacy titles, my legacy level, my species unlocks, my legacy unlocks (the ship bank, quick travel reductions, etc.), my reputation, my achievements... all that stuff. The server I'm transferring to does NOT have an active legacy. So does all that come over with him and I'll make a new legacy when he arrives on the target server? Also, assuming the target server DOES have an active legacy, would that legacy gain all the perks and reputation and achievements that he brings over?

Eighth: Trooper. Act I is the highlight (which doesn't even hold up that well), and it's all downhill from there. There's no great twist or raising of the stakes, the pacing is absolutely agonizing, the morality doesn't work in well with the class (any soldier who disobeyed orders like the darksider does would be court martialed on the spot), the big villain is unconscionably forgettable and weakly-written (I can't even remember his name less than four months after playing the story) and it's all in all just boring as all get out. Not touching this one again with a ten foot pole. Seventh: Smuggler. The only true moments of this I really enjoyed are in the first two planets, when the fight is personal, easy to follow and the villain is an enjoyable and cocky jerk. Acts 2 and 3 are even more boring than the Trooper's, helped only a little bit by the Smuggler's amusing dialogue options, and the twist at the end, while effective, can't do much to get me re-invested in a story I'd already tuned out of. The villain is the weakest part again as well; he's not threatening or intimidating, you speak to him less than half a dozen times total, and he doesn't feel as interesting or personable as Skavak did. Add on top of that a disappointing ending (easily the most of ANY class; they couldn't even be bothered to give a good musical playout) and the Smuggler is a whole, smelly pile of wasted potential. Sixth: Jedi Consular. I kind of agree with people who say that this is boring, but certainly not as much as the first two (maybe that's because I played mine as a spunky, screw-the-rules type rather than a boring full-lightsider). It certainly isn't that exciting until the third act, where the stakes jump higher, but the ending twist is more effective than the Smuggler's because the betrayer is more established and more out-of-left field. But it's still somewhat anticlimactic though and all ends with depressing inevitability; I wouldn't play it more than once. Fifth: Jedi Knight. This was pretty much exactly what I'd expected it to be (you're the big hero, save the galaxy, blah blah blah). But the thing is, the scale of it is so grand that I didn't mind not being surprised much. The first act has a good ending with Kira's fight, the general pacing and escalation of it is done quite well, and I like the twist at the end of the second act that provided a reason for me to keep going through. It's certainly too goody-two-shoes for me, however, which doesn't put it any higher than here. Playing the class as a darkside just makes you come off as cruel rather than an "ends justify the means" type (which would fit in better than ANY other class here), and playing the class as lightside makes you an insufferable boy scout, with very little middle ground. It's the morality that does the Jedi Knight in ultimately, but it's not bad, per se. This is probably more subjective than the others. Fourth: Sith Inquisitor. This is where things start to get good. The first act sort of sucks after Dromund Kaas, but it picks up at the finale (though I do wish it was more in-depth and ambiguous) and then again at the third act, where it becomes personal. I like the atmosphere and the feeling of digging through ancient Sith knowledge that the Inquisitor brings (you do sort of feel like you're growing more powerful), and while the big baddie certainly isn't all that compelling, he is certainly hateable and the end result of the story is very satisfying indeed. I have to say, that this is the one class where playing darkside is genuinely hilarious; you get to act like a complete psychopath without a shred of remorse, and seeing my 5'4, half-naked little girl electrocute hulking bodyguards to death while laughing her head off was worth every penny. Plus, the line "If you think this is crazy, you should see my other personality" gets me every time. I'd definitely play this again. Third: Imperial Agent. Ooh, I do like the Agent. It's not quite as thrilling as I would have hoped, but the general writing and unfolding of it all is done fantastically. Every twist is effective (a couple are even real head-turners), and I simply adore the second act (probably more so than any other single act in any other class), where the stakes shoot way up and you have no idea who to trust; it's brilliantly atmospheric and a great way to keep the player guessing. The morality system works really well with the Agent as well, where you can choose to follow in the footsteps of the Sith or protect the Empire as it is, and I found myself going through some hard dilemmas. The ending is a wee bit slow and doesn't completely live up to hype, but overall, the Agent is easily the best plot-driven of all the classes and I think it's great. Second: Sith Warrior. The Warrior works so well because it doesn't just do what it wants to do (that is, make you a bad@ss Sith Lord just like the Knight wants to make you into a superhero of the galaxy), it does it so well. The first act is great with a fantastic payoff, and while the second is somewhat dull, the third rounds it all off with a predictable, yet still good twist and a villain we can instantly despise and want to slice into deli meat. The ending is as perfectly climactic as they come, and I'd play through it all again just to watch that last cutscene, which makes the Warrior story a little like a delicious dinner at a restaurant: it's proportioned flawlessly and leaves you completely satisfied. First: Bounty Hunter. This isn't my favourite because of a great overall plot structure or effective twists; it's all-in-all not fantastic and the reversals are not all that great. I enjoyed the Hunter most because it's just fun. The companions are utterly fantastic (well, not Skadge, that piece of rancor dung that he is) and you get to spend a lot of time with them, all major villains are effectively hateable, I like the feeling of being a Mandalorian and not just a hired gun, and I have to give special mention to the lightside choices. In almost every other class, the lightside choices make you feel like a wuss, even if they're the right thing to do. In the Hunter: you ALWAYS feel like a bad@ss when you save a group of people or order the bombs to hit military targets. Because, hey, you're not an Imp! You're a freelancer, a liberated spirit, a gun-for-hire with not a care in the world! The lightside ending in particular demonstrates this perfectly, with that one favourite line of mine before you switch off your holocommunicator: "You may not know how to handle a blaster, but you're prepared to die for what you believe in. That's good enough for me." And that just sums it all up: the Hunter is a morally-guided bad@ss, smiling and shooting his way through life, and that's what makes it just a huge tub of fun for me.

This is a classic example of a job half-done. I believe it was just after a year ago with Galactic Starfighter that the ship landing cutscenes for several planets (and both fleets) were redone, now showing the ships coming in slower with far more attention to detail and a better musical cue. The thing is, and this has gone unchanged for over a year now, this was never completed. The only planets, to my count, that have this new and updated cutscene are Coruscant, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine and Dromund Kaas, along with both Republic and Empire fleets. All the new planets (From Oricon onwards) have them, but the rest remain with the vanilla landing cutscene. I'm not sure why this wasn't finished, but it breaks immersion and increasingly grates. On top of that, and this problem has been with us from day one, we still have the issue of the takeoff cutscenes from the Act 1 planets. Most of the time, your ship will just disappear appropo of nothing with the sound still going. Dromund Kaas, Balmorra, Tatooine, Alderaan are the chief culprits here, with only Nar Shaddaa and Coruscant being unaffected. Another thing that is small and yet increasingly gets on the nerves. Perhaps I'm ignorant, but these don't seem like astronomical-scale fixes.

It's been almost a year now and the problem with companion dyes (in that they do not show in cutscenes and all armor reverts to its original colour) is still unfixed. On top of this, in many cutscenes, the "show helmet" option stops working and displays your companion's headgear regardless whether you clicked it on or not. I've noticed that the companion dye problem functions whenever your companion is not active (ie, not by your side, like on ship conversations or ones with the entire crew), and the helmet problem operates along similar lines. This is starting to seriously frustrate me. When you drop 150K credits on a single dye just so your favourite crew member won't look like a packet of bloody skittles, I expect it to work properly. This is extremely immersion-breaking and I'd like to see it fixed soon.

I agree; these EXP bonuses are what always bring me back to the game. Although that's kind of both a blessing and a curse, since I'm mostly interested in SWTOR for the story content, and after I've played through all of them (I'm on my last class now) and recorded all the footage because I'm slightly mad, I'm not sure what I'll have left to do. I suppose I could grow to enjoy PvP, since all the bouncing around the battlefield due to the unbalanced knockbacks makes warzones an enjoyable cluster****. But the story campaigns are where the bulk of SWTOR's potential is, and I'm not sure why the team hasn't expanded upon them. They're all perfect in what they set out to do (even if some are more enjoyable in general) and give the game a great sense of unique flavour of being its own RPG among the many boring MMO's out there. If you combined more story-focused missions with this 12 EXP bonus, you could play to SWTOR's strengths with ease. I suppose that's what they're already doing, but I can't help wanting a followup to my Hunter's story. There HAS to be more!

You're welcome to explain why they were able to do it with Twi'leks. By just removing the hood. Yes, how DARE I want a complete and better game experience for a game that I payed and am paying for! How ungrateful! How unreasonable! HOW ENTITLED, THIS I SAY!

This seems so simple to me. We can make entire helmets disappear into hammerspace, but we can't make our characters reach up and toss a piece of fabric back. Silly comparison, yes, but the point remains. I bought the Eradicator's Warsuit for my Sith Warrior for a reason: because he looks awesome in it. But that effect is kinda lost when his long hair magically disappears because he wears an outfit that has a hood on it. At least, if we can't lower the hood, can we get an option to see the hair of our characters underneath it? And, hell, it can't be that much work; you already figured out how to make it work with Twi'leks, who can't wear hoods. This is elemental. And while it may be low-priority, Bioware, you guys love making great RPGs more than - arguably - any other studio in the industry. Surely it can't be that much of a stretch for players to want the ability to see their head in cutscenes without ditching that otherwise-awesome piece of Cartel Market armor.

Thank you for your insufferable condescension, but I leveled 8 characters to 50 and 55. I got into this game on launch day. I've merely quit for a few months due to school and other commitments. I'm a veteran of SWTOR if there ever was one. So cut the patronization.

I'm burning through classes as I level as many as I can to 55, in an effort to use Fraps to record all the best moments of the class stories. And I get that, since I've been forcing myself to rely on mostly green mods in orange shells, that I'm going to be a bit weaker than when I had to take my time and I could afford to replace most of my mods every planet with blue commendation mods. I get that. But I leveled characters back when commendations were planet-specific. I remember using all green mods to level up my first Bounty Hunter. And I don't remember getting my arse kicked this much. I'm leveling my Jedi Guardian right now, using Kira (who is also decked out in green mods), and we're both on Corellia at 47. I'm getting kicked across the floor. I'm popping Unity, Saber Ward, Enure, Awe... all with extreme regularity. Sometime on simple silver fights. There are more than a few elites in the last couple of levels where I had to use Heroic Moment on them; back when I was levelling normally, I could often count on one hand the number of times from 1-50 I was in serious enough danger to use Heroic Moment. Now I'm popping it several times a planet. Thing is, I thought it might be due to my weak mods, so I spent all the 30-odd commendations I'd acquired since level 1 in order to purchase mostly all-blue, level 45 mods. And I'm still getting pounded into the dirt. Did something change in the last six months? Am I just leveling incorrectly? I've leveled a Guardian to 50 before and it was never this hard. Sure, leveling a Guardian or a Marauder makes a Sniper or Sorceror look like a cake walk, but still, I don't remember getting stomped this hard.

I wish I could give you the knowledge that I have. After a while playing RPGs, you pick up on a few ways to improve character names; there's no real formula for doing it, it's more of a feeling. My last character, a female Trooper, I spent a good ten minutes pondering her name. Just typing letters into the name generator, deleting them, starting again, etc. Here's a couple tips: 1) Make sure it rolls off the tongue nicely. Male names can get away with being harder, whereas a 'traditional' female name sounds better if it flows. 2) Focus on vowels. A, I, E, U, O. 3) Use the smoother sounding consonants. L, H, S, M, C, etc. If you're going to use some of the sharper ones like R, K or T, mix them among a couple of vowels to balance it out. 4) Swap around letters. Sometimes you can use BehindTheName.com to figure out meanings, and then jumble the letters around. See what sticks, and see what's memorable. Here are a couple of the female names I have on my account; I'll contrast them with males. Kadia - Vanguard Sirena - Sith Sorceror Raieva - Jedi Consular Illiara - Operative Males: Turax - Sniper Rekthor - Mercenary Forien - Gunslinger Aregon - Sith Juggernaut Jalian - Jedi Guardian Caidek - Commando You'll pick up on more as you try out names.

As much as I love SWTOR, there are many - I will admit, non-critical - bugs that have remained in the game literally since launch, and remain unfixed to this date. I elected not to put this thread in the bug reports forum, because I figure by now, Bioware is aware of these smaller, QA issues, and I wanted to create a centralized thread where we could put them all out on the table and just remind devs that we do still notice them. Here are several of my own: - During the takeoff cutscene from almost planets (barring Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa), player ships disappear shortly after taking off, regardless of class. - During takeoff from the Fleets, if the player presses ESC, the ship will continue to rise for a few moments even after the player regains control. - Upon being summoned either by resurrection, normal summon or dismounting, all companions draw their weapons, regardless of class. I consider this very annoying for lightsaber users. - After clicking on a destructible item for a quest (a pipe, generator, computer, etc.) players will continue to hold their weapons loosely, with the weapons drawn and active even though the arm animation remains weapon-less. This is fixed by drawing the weapon and then re-sheathing it. - Twi'leks have ragged hair physics, most notably on elevators, that cause their head tentacles to shudder and shake wildly. - Textures in cutscenes will occasionally flicker, flash or otherwise simply disappear. - In companion conversations, armor dyes and the 'unify all' option will not work, causing a companion's armor to become mismatched. Occasionally this will also hold true if one hides a companion's helmet, it will still appear in a cutscene. - Upon removing or replacing a mod inside a piece of armor, if that armor's colour is unified to the chest, it will revert to its original colour. If a mod in a chestpiece is replaced, all equipped armor will revert to its original colour. - When pressing the spacebar in conversations rapidly enough, characters will continue their animations from the original skipped scene for a few moments. The music will continue as well. - Occasionally, characters in conversations' heads will remain stuck looking at one fixed position for the remainder of the conversation, as if they are targeting an invisible target and their head animation freezes on them. Feel free to add your own bugs to the list. While I recognize these are small, I'd like to try and get the attention of developers and ask them to do some QA on the above issues, issuing some small fixes would go a long way to making this game look more polished, and frankly the existence of such blatant bugs, some of which have remained unaddressed for near three years, is baffling.

First thing you need to understand is that the Light side and the Dark side are not the embodiments of good and evil. Their avatars, the Sith and the Jedi, tend to be, but the Force takes no moral alignment. The Jedi operate within the Force and work with it, while the Sith operate over the Force and dominate it. Both can use it for their own ends. Now there are some abilities, like Force Lightning, that can only be used with a certain level of control or emotional investment in the Force, but most are not. Healing is one of them, I believe because healing can be born from either a lack of emotion (Jedi) or significant emotion (Sith). Force Lightning is a purely offensive ability, and so it requires emotion to utilize it. Healing can be used for many purposes, as can things like telekinesis or barriers or mind tricks, and so it can be utilized by both sides of the spectrum.

Yes, yes, yes GOD yes. I've been wanting this from day one. I love recording all the most pivotal, exciting moments in my class stories. My Knight and Warrior striking down their final bosses, my Inquisitor's eyes glowing as Khem Val commands everyone to hail her, my Agent flying off into space, my Trooper's assault on The Gauntlet... I actually re-subscribed and pre-ordered Shadow of Revan, with very little intent to play it, just so I could have access to the x12 EXP bonus, and I could experience all the class stories again. I'm almost done the Jedi Knight story now with a ton of footage. Please, Bioware. Please, for the love of God, give us this feature.

/Signed I usually don't play MMO's for the story, since many have to exist in this permanent state of timelessness so everyone can play the same content, and this is one of the very, very few MMOs that does that time progression thing well, and class stories are the cornerstone. I feel like I'm making a big deal in the war when I'm assigned my final target on my Bounty Hunter, or told to kill one of the most powerful Sith in the galaxy on my Warrior, or ordered to dismantle the largest conspiracy ever on my Agent. This is why I'm so freaking ecstatic for the x12 EXP boost: now I don't have to do the same quests four more times and just get right to the meat of this game without pausing for anything. This is, IMO, one of the best things Bioware has done for the game: let us play the class stories to reach the max level, and nothing else. Without those, and without continuations of the ones we already have, there's very little to differentiate SWTOR from any other MMO. Story is what Bioware does best. It's their bread and butter. I hope they remember that they can make more personal, better stories without the discomfort of the MMO timelessness blanket over them, and I hope they listen to us here.

Speaking as a man who recorded the entire Mass Effect trilogy with Mirillis Action, I wanted to go through as many class stories as I could before December and record my favourite moments with my characters again, so I don't have to just let them linger in memory. I always wanted a way to make my way through the game with just class stories and skip the planet side missions I've done a half-dozen times, and now I can. Only thing is: how does the boost work in regards to armor? Obviously you're not going to be able to get a full set just by doing the main story missions: the game assumes you're going to do side ones too and puts rewards in there. The story missions wouldn't reward enough planet accomodations either to keep your mods up to snuff. So while you may gain levels appropriately, without good armor, there are several class missions I could name that will kick you in the tailbone over and over until your monitor breaks from the impact of a fist. Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like a pretty big flaw. Has anyone had trouble on this front? Is there any way to accomodate it?

I see. Part of the problem may be that I'm still using my 50 PVP relics, earpiece and implants, so I'll get to grinding WZ commendations to replace them (since that could take a while, are there any decent ways to get PVE implants/earpieces so I can remove the expertise bonus?). I'm already an Armormech, so I can craft MK-9 augment slots and set myself up there. I've got a decent cash horde stored up so stims shouldn't be a big issue... other than that I think I'm golden. The post was extremely concise and helpful. Much appreciated.

I gave it a read over, but I'm still not 100% clear on what "bolstering" is. I came back after a long, 18 month hiatus and only returned a couple weeks ago. Is this some new mechanic added in RotHC? For as much as I can gather, its a mechanic that boosts your expertise to a set level that makes you able to compete, with a few restrictions. So getting 66 mods prevents you from getting as much of a bolster as lower-level mods would. Am I on the right track?

I kinda wanted to actually start fighting the other faction on my server, since right now they kinda have the run of World PVP, and I need a set of gear. The only way to get the gear, it would seem, is to do warzones. Then again, the problem there is that I get slaughtered. I'm wearing 66 entry gear, so I'm not terribly bad off, but I can barely get enemies down to 80% in a one on one fight before I die. I know my rotation, I know how to prioritize and I know how to fight. It's just not very fun being annihilated and inadvertently dragging down the team. Is there another way I can enter PvP at 55, or do I just have to grind warzone commendations until I can buy the first gear set?

Last time I played this game, my 50s had been moved to a PvP server and I wanted to transfer to an RP server, but I never got around to it. Now I'm back after a year and a half and I'd like to move my toons off that server and get to a different one, but there's no visible mechanic for it. Did BW really not implement server/legacy transfers? I'd pay out the nose for that, especially since I'm stick on a PvP server when I have zero desire to do it.

The Jedi Code doesn't mean purge all emotion. It doesn't mean become a static, unchanging, boring character. Like Superman was in Man of Steel. /Ducks It means to not allow your emotions to get the better of you. Read the other lines. "There is no chaos, there is harmony". Yoda talked about this in Episode III, or he at least inferred it. That emotions let loose are a path to darkness, and we see that over and over in converted Sith or Dark Jedi. Obi-Wan was filled with emotion when he struck down Vader on Mustafar (read the novelization by Stover; he's filled with torment since he has to kill the man he calls a brother), but he didn't let it dictate his actions or hinder his moves. That's why he won and that's the Jedi philosophy.