There are some pretty nice relics that require Light or Dark V to use. There are probably better ones available through raids, but they aren't bad.

It's not quite that straightforward. Heat signatures reduce armor value by 4% each, not damage resistance. If the target is moderately armored then their DR will drop by about the same amount as their armor, but for heavily armored targets that are well into diminishing returns with regard to DR from armor then you'll actually reduce their DR by less since at high armor levels another 4% armor is nowhere near +4% DR. That's why training dummies (or at least the operations ones) tend to make Tracer Missile look weaker... they have a lot more armor than most targets so the DR reduction is lower than hitting a normal enemy. On the bright side they are an armor debuff rather than just armor penetration (like HVGC gives) so everyone hitting that target does more damage. That's why I feel like Gunnery Commandos and Arsenal Mercs are still viable for everything but 1 v 1 PvP... they boost an entire group's damage. Only by a few percent per person, but in 8- or 16-man op that adds up fast.

That would certainly fit the BH, though since Troopers don't have jetpacks they might need an alternate animation that takes the same time for them.

Ops target dummies have very high armor, as confirmed by a dev post. It's high enough that even with five stacks of Heat Signature you aren't dropping their actual mitigation by enough to fully overcome the random variance in your damage. You definitely need a large sample size to make any real conclusions about whether the debuff is working based on damage logs. How is your damage comparing to the Snipers in your raid? Sorcs (and Sages) are pretty much the only other class that can match a Merc or Commando in resource management. However, Sorcs don't have armor debuffs so while they may well outdamage a Merc if you look only at personal damage dealt, the Merc is actually responsible for something like 5-6% of the entire group's damage (assuming a boss with high armor) since they are debuffing the target's armor. So if you have several people hitting the boss you are actually contributing more damage than the Sorc, it's just that part of that damage gets counted on other characters' stats since it comes from making them hit harder.

I think Bioware is confusing what we think of as a casual MMO player with true casual gamers who would normally not play an MMO at all. I'm sure some of those thought "hey, cool... Star Wars!" and tried the game only to decide they didn't like the whole MMO thing but the more casual MMO players are the ones who are most likely to stay, simply because they haven't powered through all the story yet and are less concerned with buggy raids or PvP.

Well, you'll theoretically put more wear on it than if you didn't overclock but you should be fine. It may give you trouble sooner than it would otherwise, but that has more to do with the fact that it has a lot less tolerance for errors at the increased clock rate so if it ever starts bugging on you just reset it to factory standard and see if that helps (I once had to scale back a factory OCed GPU a bit once it got older to keep it from glitching). I wouldn't think you'll increase the odds of it completely failing by any significant amount... in other words, it's the same crap shoot you get with any GPU. (Seriously, I've had two die on me in the last 10 years or so, neither one overclocked beyond the initial factory settings. )

UI settings, yes. Keybinds, no. It is annoying, but at least in this game I'll probably only play a couple of dozen total alts instead of the 50+ I had in City of Heroes...

Never gonna happen. It's more profitable selling to both sides than just one... We definitely need mass combat with objectives that can be captured and held. Something like the frontiers in Dark Age of Camelot would be great, or even just a big PvP area with a couple of bases that you can claim to give your side a buff. Anything to encourage large scale (as in 50 v 50 or even 200 v 200) combat... assuming they figure out how to do it without melting the servers.

Overclocking shouldn't damage your card as long as you don't change the voltage and don't push it to the point where your temps start rising. What it can do is make your system less stable... many GPUs are actually voltage limited rather than heat limited on overclocking, because they start crashing or getting graphics artifacts and glitches long before the heat would become an issue. You can overvolt a GPU but that's risky and with temps already in the 90+ range I wouldn't try it... just slowly push the clock speed until either you see your temps start to rise or you start seeing odd things on your screen, then back it down a bit and you should be fine.

Depends on the game. In an MMO with no real "twitch" factor, sure. In a more tactical FPS like Battlefield 3, probably. In the latest Unreal style twitchfest? Not a chance.

Right, because someone who is PvE spec and using random green and blue PvE gear certainly has a fighting chance when jumped in PvP... When I get jumped on a PvP server and I'm not on a PvP-optimized character I generally try to escape if it's feasible... if it isn't I'll fight and take my guaranteed death (unless the other guy is also a PvE character that just decided to start trouble, but it it's normally a fully PvP geared ganker) but why just spoonfeed them a kill if I don't have to? Someone in good PvP gear with even a halfway decent idea of how to play will always faceroll even a highly skilled player that isn't geared for PvP. Of course, that's assuming there's no terrain handy to take advantage of... I still remember the time I came up an elevator and got jumped at the top only to use my PBAoE KB to punt them back down the (now empty and quite deep) elevator shaft. Jumping a Commando near a long dropoff is just not smart... But if that drop hadn't been there no way I'd have had a chance against a melee attacker on that character so you can bet I'd have run if I could.

A lot of the complaints about Mercs / Commandos seem to be PvP related. The main "problem" in my opinion is that Mercs and Commandos have very little burst damage and burst is king in PvP. Their sustained damage is fantastic, quite possibly higher than any other class in the game due to their relative ease in managing resources, but they lack burst. Is this actually a problem? In my opinion it isn't. They may suck in 1v1 PvP but in larger scale fights the fact that they don't run out of energy like a Smuggler or Agent means that they get to actually keep pouring on the damage. They're also very handy in PvE boss fights, again because they can provide steady DPS for long periods without having to use a ton of weak attacks to avoid running out of energy. I really think that all they need is a bit more utility to help with fighting melees... maybe give them a version of a Sorc's Force Speed or something, or a bit more in the way of snares. But just because the ability to provide good steady DPS from range for as long as you need isn't valuable in a 1v1 PvP fight doesn't mean that it isn't valuable plenty of other places...

It's a little clunky but it works... basically if you turn it on then you'll get two comparison windows when you hover over an item, one for you and one for your current companion. The annoying part is when you and your companion both dual wield and you hover over a weapon, since you get four comparison windows then and it gets kind of cluttered. What I really wish they'd do is let you set it to show a comparison to your item unless you have your companion's character sheet open, in which case it would compare it to them instead. That way it would show the window for whoever would actually get the item equipped if you right clicked it. No big deal, I just think it would be a bit cleaner... Also, it would kind of be nice if they actually mentioned somewhere that the companion item option exists. I was playing for a couple of months before I found it...

If you were reasonably thrifty with your credits then you'll probably be able to buy the Recruit gear as soon as you hit 50, so that's the fastest and easiest way to get level 50 gear. That doesn't make the level 50 FPs worthless, it just means that if all you care about are hard modes then the quickest way to get there is probably the Recruit set (I'm not sure it's actually good enough for ops though). There are plenty of other methods too, though... dailies, high level normal mode FPs, crafted purple gear (not technically level 50, but good enough to hold you over until you start getting raid drops). It's just a question of whether you want to spend time (FPs, dailies) or credits (Recruit set, crafted gear from the GTN) and since credits are easy to come by once you are in the 40s most people will have them to spend.

Wrong. The tech is there for manual transfers involving someone actually going and moving files from one server to another. That's what they did in the limited transfers that were available for the new Asian / Australian servers... they had people going in and manually transferring characters. I doubt they have the resources to do that on a large enough scale to handle general transfers in the US / EU servers. They are currently developing tech to automate the process so that they can handle large volumes of transfer requests, and they'll release that when it's ready. If your server is dead then why not do what I did: start an alt in a class you haven't played a lot yet on a populated server and then transfer your characters from the dead server to the one your alt is on (or transfer them and the alt to a third server if free transfers to your new alt's aren't offered) once it's available.

I'd like to see playable Cathar and Wookies, and maybe Rodians. And droids, definitely... or possibly mostly-mechanical cyborgs (think Grievous from Clone Wars) so they could still be Force users.

I personally like Dark Age of Camelot's housing system... you could buy personal or guild houses and decorate them with items and trophies (remains dropped by various enemies) and outfit them with merchants and teleporters and such. It was really nice, for a fantasy MMO. But in Star Wars I don't really want a house on some planet (though the option to get one would be cool at some point) so much as I want a customizable ship. I travel all over the galaxy, so I'm going to spend a lot more time in my ship than I will on any particular planet. As for guilds, I definitely agree that capitol ships are the way to go. Even if we never get guild vs guild space battles (I can dream, can't I?) it just makes more sense to have a miniature version of the Fleet as your guild hall since everyone is flying around in their own starships.

SI armor mainly consists of dark colored robes with rather goofy looking belts. Any number of cultures have had similar looking robes, and no culture I've ever heard of had belts like that (seriously, they're only one step short of the hats in Immortals ) so I'd have to say they aren't based on a particular culture or historical look. They mainly remind me of generic fantasy priest / druid ceremonial robes with a few tech-looking bits tacked on.

Well, it's the Sith Empire... it's not like becoming a slave is very hard. I believe the official story is that you were basically a nobody until they noticed you were Force sensitive, and like most people in the Empire who don't have money or position you were a slave. But there are plenty of RP reasons you can come up with if you prefer...

Sounds like you're talking about PvP here... in PvP I can't imagine Gunnery Commandos / Arsenal Mercs being that good because nearly all of their good damage requires them to stand still and use interruptible abilities. If they have to chase someone their DPS drops enormously, and if their grav round / tracer missile is interrupted they have to fall back on abilities that don't really hit that hard without building up grav / tracer shots first. They'd be good fire support in larger scale PvP but one on one they're going to be in trouble against someone with good mobile DPS or interrupts (unless it's a melee and they can use terrain and KB to keep them back). On the other hand, they're great in PvE against bosses, because they can do near full DPS indefinitely instead of having to add in a bunch of basic shots to keep from running out of energy. So can Sorcs, but Sorcs don't have an armor debuff and that extra damage from kinetic / energy attacks (aka, most of them) adds up. Keep in mind that if you are using Tracer Missile then you are increasing everyone's DPS, not just your own. So you may well be low on the chart since the Sorcs and Snipers are getting the benefit of your debuffs and doing more damage themselves... but your actual contribution is much higher than the chart shows since you are also directly responsible for several percent of every other DPS character's damage.

That's a little unintuitive... if I have 55% armor penetration then my first instinct would be that I'll reduce a target's DR by 55%, but in this instance the actual DR is only reduced by a bit over 40%. I'm assuming the training dummies have enough armor to push them up into the diminishing returns area of the DR formula and therefore the first chunk of armor they lose has less effect on their DR. It would probably be a good idea to make it clear that armor debuffs like this don't automatically translate into an equal DR reduction, and you should definitely publicize any armor or other defenses on training dummies since that's kind of important for DPS calculations.

Dual specs are coming. Until then I'd suggest picking a focus each week and just living with subpar performance in other things. I'd suggest staying PvE spec if you are raiding, since raids can fail altogether and take a lot more effort than WZs.

There are definitely a lot of British sounding accents. I have no clue about what regions they're from, since I've never actually been to the UK or talked to enough people from that area to learn the regional dialects. (I've talked to people from England, but I generally didn't know where in England they were from so even if I picked up on an accent I had no way to connect it to a specific area...)

To be fair, very few are actually game breaking... at worst the bugs tend to block one quest or FP / OP, not keep you from playing at all. I never even knew about the companion earpiece bug until last week, despite leveling a character to 50 and another into the 40s, so I wouldn't call a bug that I played for 3+ months without noticing "game breaking"... It does explain a few boss fights that seemed harder than they should have been though.

At least in some of the books they explain that the sounds are artificially added in by computers to help the pilots and gunners track targets... one officer mentions a battle where he watched an enemy's ship crash from the observation deck and turned off the sound so he could just watch it silently break up. Why they would waste vast amounts of power making their ships do banked turns, on the other hand...