I hate Mako's default hairstyle. It just looks so ugly. I gave her the "wedge" hairstyle (it's like female hairstyle #3 or #4), and I think she looks really cute with it. I think it's customization #8 or something. One of the first ones you're given.

*waves around her 'old-school gamer' ID card* Been playing since AC in 1999. I solo'd quite often in that game, as well. Same with EQ, DAoC, CoH, DDO, LOTRO, WoW, etc etc. I enjoy soloing. I like roaming around, exploring the countryside, taking screenshots, seeing what I can tackle on my own, etc. Occasionally I'll group with people to accomplish something, or if I'm feeling social for a few hours, but then I drift away to roam the world on my own once more. I see nothing wrong with soloing in an MMO. Even if it's difficult (like in EQ), I'd still do it anyway. I like adventuring at my own pace, being able to just walk away from the keyboard for a bit, alt-tab out to look at something online, etc. I don't "hate" grouping, but my general preferred method of adventuring is solo.

I want a toggle that shows all sith warriors running around in clown makeup and jester hats.

The game DOES drop loot based on who's in the party. I've run flashpoints numerous times by myself with various characters, and the modable loot that drops always fit the class I was playing. The blue loot doesn't always, though.

You COULD spend those 10 minutes playing your character. You could release back to the med-center and run back, fighting mobs on the way or going over what you did wrong that caused you all to wipe. Instead, you sit there and wait, because the game is somehow "forcing" you to? As others have said, the reason it's making the time increase is because you're dying over and over and over in short succession. It's the game's way of saying "Hey, you, go back and repair, rethink this."

Well I suppose that's true, the smuggler quote about hoping the sith got blisters on her sithy feet is kind of a spoiler.

So many awesome moments... Agent Bounty Hunter Lots more from the inquisitor, smuggler, and trooper stories, but this is already getting long...

I find this whole argument kind of funny. Saying it will somehow "destroy the canon", "destroy the lore", etc, when it's been proven (over and over, ad nauseum) by people that there was no restriction (just "we might not like it if you do it" tradition) on various colors. Besides, you're forgetting the most important rule of all. PCs break the rules at will. If it somehow mortally offends you to see a jedi with a red saber, or a sith with a blue/green saber, I suggest you take a step back, and realize that the PCs are just a tiny minority of the jedi/sith in the game. Just because they're the most visible TO YOU doesn't mean they represent more than a tiny fraction of the whole. PCs get to break the rules.

Mako's is definitely my favorite. I really enjoyed delving into her past, and finding out more about her. Kaliyo's is probably second, though hers definitely feels a bit more "random" than Mako's, which falls together as a fairly cohesive story.

Having played the agent and BH up into act-3, and the smuggler, consular, inquisitor and trooper into act-2, I'd have to personally rate them about: Agent - hands down, the best story in the game IMO. It's not very "Star Wars"-y, but if you like James Bond type intrigue, espionage, and betrayal, it's freaking amazing. It really makes you feel like a super-agent. And some of the dialogue is just priceless. The end of act-1 was the first time I've actually been forced to sit and think, hard, about which light/dark decision I'm going to make. Both fit my idea for the character, but...oy. It's a nail-biting scene. BH - Pretty solid story, though I was "meh" a bit at the end of act-1. Act-2 was pretty fun, and there were a couple of "holy crap, I'm a bada**!" moments in the cutscenes. Act-3 has been so-so, though I'm hoping the end ramps up, given what you're doing. The end of act-2/start of act-3 is pretty harsh, and definitely gives you a good feeling of "the universe is out to get you because they're afraid of you" at this point. Smuggler - It's a pretty generic story in act-1. Guy steals your ship, you track him down and get it back, and annoy him in the process throughout the act. The beginning of act-2 is pretty cool, haven't gotten too far into it yet. Best dialogue choices in the game, as well, if you like humorous/snarky replies to people. The smuggler is definitely the "comedy relief" character of the game. "I hope you got blisters all over your pale little sithy feet!" Trooper - Very good story. You feel like a special forces butt-kicker, and you're treated like one. The end of act-1 (probably due to my choices) was a LITTLE bit of a letdown, but if you picked different dialogue options, it would probably be more enjoyable. Consular - As others have said, this is kind of a "soft" jedi story. You're not really running around going "Rarh, fear me!" and destroying stuff, but rather using diplomacy and the power of the force to solve problems, rather than just using a boatload of violence. Some VERY cool cutscene moments that show just how powerful you are in the force. Inquisitor - The story is alright. One of my main gripes with it is that on Korriban, your character has the option to be this snarky, sarcastic person, but then that just VANISHES. You turn into a generic "rarh, sith!" type, with only a couple minor little sarcastic comments here and there. I was disappointed in that. The end of act-1 is pretty cool, with a nice twist (though it's HEAVILY forshadowed, at least in part). I haven't played the jedi knight or sith warrior up past 20th or so, so I can't really speak on them. Overall, the stories are pretty solid. The agent is freaking awesome, and one of my favorite things about it is that (especially as an operative) the blending of your class story into the various worlds makes all the other, non-story quests feel as though they're part of your class story. It made the repetition much easier to handle, and I enjoyed myself immensely playing my agent.

That's because the sith ARE inherently self-destructive. Their entire way of life conditions them to always look for weaknesses in each other, and strike them down the moment they spot one, in order to move themselves up. It's a crazy way to live.

This isn't true, though. And there are a number of quests that disprove that idea. The quest on Coruscant where you go and steal the documents from the senator, who is going to give a speech on why the republic should ally/surrender to the empire. His attache confronts you and berates you for "spitting on the very ideals of the republic" by trying to prevent the senator from being able to give his speech. The light-side choice is to agree that, despite how much you disagree with him, he DOES have the right to have his say. The dark-side choice is to flout authority, and assume you know better. A quest on (republic) Taris has you run across some soldiers who have been there for years, and are trying to go AWOL and leave the planet. The light-side choice is to show compassion for them, and help them escape the situation they're in -- even though it's breaking military law, and helping them commit a crime. The dark-side choice is to tell them to "suck it up and get back to work". There are numerous quests on the empire side where the dark-side choice is to give into your sadistic/cruel side and kill/injure someone just for the hell of it, even though you don't need to. The light-side choice is to show compassion for them, and let them leave. Ultimately, IMO, the light/dark choices tend to come down to compassion/empathy vs selfishness/greed. Sometimes those choices don't look at the long-term (for instance, a light-side choice letting a pirate go free rather than shoot him in the back, who's likely going to hurt more people in the long-run), and are instead focused more on the immediate reaction. But yeah, it's definitely not good/evil. It's never that cut-and-dried.

I dunno, that one makes me want to tell him "Get a haircut, jeez." I guess I'm just not a fan of the "scruffy hair hanging down to cover one eye" hipster look. At least not on guys. On other girls it can be cute.

I want a little jawa riding a tauntaun. Or just a little jawa guy. Blizz can have a little brother!

Personally, I think that's the ideal way to do it. Give people some titles, and flashy modable gear to show they've been putting in lots of time pvping. In order to get it, you have to put forth the effort. But it's not somehow magically head and shoulders better than what everyone else has. It's just DIFFERENT. It's a status symbol. But I guess for some people, they're not happy unless their status symbols come with an "I win" button attached. Yeah, initially in my head it was "projection is a funny thing", but when I went to type it, I typed out syndrome. Odd how my brain works at 1am.

Funny, I've never asked for better gear. You seem to be the one demanding that you be given shiny new toys. Projection is a funny syndrome. I fondly recall pvp back in the days of AC and DAoC, where it was skill that let you win, not gear. But I guess gamers that have grown up on modern games, where the companies cater to the "we want phat lewt for pvp, so we can crush people without it! GIMME!" screamers have never really grasped the concept of beating someone through skill, and not through gear alone.

Every time I see one of these threads, all I hear in my head is "Wahh, I want better gear than everyone else, so I can pwn them!" The entire concept of "pvp gear" that gets more and more poweful for the more time you put into pvp is ridiculous. If you win in pvp, it should be because you out-fought your opponent, and are simply better than they are. Not because you're stomping around in "leet epic purplez" that boost your stats to a point that you can just mash the keyboard and win. But I guess that's what the "hardcores" want now, right? I mean, since they disparage the "casuals who want everything handed to them", I guess the converse of that is the "whiny hardcores who don't want to have a fair fight, but rather want to win through gear and not skill." How very hardcore.

Yep. If not for the sith, the empire probably would be a decent place to live, though fairly xenophobic and racist -- but even some of that would probably get hammered out in time. It's the sith that are, in effect, "dragging down" the empire into the morass of stupidity and evil that it's in right now. Without the sith, things would be far, far better. Hell, they probably wouldn't even be at war with the republic at that point.

This has not been the case at all in my experience. There have been numerous occasions where I've been stunned, broken it, stunned again, rode it out, then stunned again, and my resolve bar wasn't even 2/3rds full yet. This is especially prevalent in huttball, where the moment you get the ball every conceivable form of cc is generally thrown at you. The fact that resolve doesn't work on snare, as well, is a massive oversight on Bioware's part. Resolve, from what I've seen, doesn't really do much at all. The amount of damage coming in at you when you're the target of even two people is more than enough to destroy you before any amount of resolve can save you. I've had situations where I've popped my absorption bubble, triggered my heal-over-time, and still been completely crushed in the space of two stuns, at 47th level as a bounty hunter. Quite honestly, I have yet to see resolve work. At all. Especially not "for a good length of time". Perhaps it's easier for sorcerers who can just put their bubbles on themselves whenever they feel like it to soak damage, and have copious ranged cc abilities. For those of us who can't and don't, the resolve system feels FAR more limiting/broken.

Here's the problem with this paragraph, though... There isn't "the chance to live a life exactly how you want" in the empire. You have zero ability to just exist and live however you'd like. Not even if you're sith. You must act in a certain manner, or you'll get snuffed out. It's a culture that breeds paranoia and a lack of true connection with one another. Relax for a moment as one of the people at the top? Get knocked off by the rest of the people who want your position/office/cd collection. What the empire has is a small number of people with absolute power (the sith), another small group that has some vestige of power (imperial military officers, imperial intelligence), and the other 99% who are essentially fodder (ordinary citizens) or slaves. Essentially it sucks to be non-sith within the empire. The sith can -- and have demonstrated that they WILL -- execute you, for any reason if they feel like it. Don't kowtow fast enough? Force choked/litghtning'd to death. Bump into a sith as he charges through a narrow hallway? They scream at you and kill you right there for "daring to touch them". Etc, etc. I'd argue that a lot of the officers AREN'T happy about the leadership. Mostly because they're not really given leeway to do their jobs without the sith poking their fat noses into things, and trying to micromanage, thinking that they know better. The agent's storyline has a number of instances of this. And you see a lot of grumbling about the sith from the military when the sith aren't around to kill them for daring to speak up. So it's not quite that it "sucks to be at the bottom" (which it does), it's more like "it sucks to not be at the very top". And even at the top it kind of sucks. Upward mobility for non-force users is almost non-existent. The only way you MIGHT move up is if you try and go into the military or intelligence, and even then you're still under the risk of being randomly killed for no reason by some whiny sith in a moment of pique. It's a rather sick society.

No, they weren't breaking the law at all. They were perfectly within their "rights" to kill as many civilians as they wanted to. The only reason they got punished for it is because you trick them into attacking other sith, which IS against the law. They could have slaughtered thousands of civilians, and the authorities wouldn't have batted an eye. The sith aren't the MAJORITY, but they're the ones in CHARGE. Period. Any sith has the "right" to kill someone, for any reason, with no consequences. You look at them wrong? They can kill you. You interrupt their musings with a sneeze? They can kill you. You cross the street in front of them? They can kill you. Whether or not they're "honest" about their brutality isn't the point. It's the fact that their entire government is designed to rule through barbarism and oppression of the people below them. If anyone gets out of line, they're slaughtered. They throw people into prison for decades just for LOOKING at something, that's out in public. Not every senator behaves that way. Many of them likely don't even know those attrocities are being committed. Whereas the sith relish them. You have quests where they're gleefully talking about butchering an entire group of people, trying to make it as slow and painful as possible, and are upset when they die "quickly". Because that's somehow "not as fun." Both sides are guilty of some messed up stuff, yes. But you cannot in ANY way, shape or form compare the republic to the sith. The sith's entire society is built around terrorizing their people, and killing them for whatever reason they can think of, if they ever get bored. You're judging the entire republic by the actions of a SMALL number of senators. The sith's entire culture is built around fear and terrorism. They admit that. I'll take a few corrupt senators over a society where if you're not force-sensitive, you're essentially cattle, and can be butchered as such whenever some force-sensitive primma donna gets a wild hair up his butt and thinks it'd be funny to see how loudly you can scream before he finally kills you.

No, the empire just has sith randomly killing off civilians for giggles, because they feel it's "their right" to. Given the choice, I'd rather live in the republic. At least there as a normal citizen I don't have to worry about being randomly executed by some glowstick-wielding idiot because he's bored. As others have said, special forces are ALWAYS in that shadowy area where if crap hits the fan, you're expendable. Sure, you're highly trained, highly skilled, and exceptionally equipped. You're expected to SURVIVE if they're forced to leave you there for a while. Not go crying in a corner and saying "Wahhh, mommy, the republic didn't come pick me up and take me home! I wanna defect!" Snivveling little priss. I have ZERO sympathy for the former members of Havoc Squad who tried to defect. The moment it got tough, they went crying to the other side. And what did they find out? It was even WORSE over there.

Allow me to offer a counterargument: Husband refuses to have sex. Wife: Whew, good. Now I can go do all that other stuff I had planned to do. I'll make my token offer again in a couple weeks. Hopefully he says no again! Wife refuses to have sex. Husband: Oh c'mon. C'monnnnnnnnn. Let's do it! We haven't done it in at least four hours! I'm 'orny! C'monnnnnnnnnnn babe! *starts 'poking' under the covers* C'monnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. You know you wanna. You know you do. C'mon. C'monnnnnnn!

*wanders around setting up little Blizz plushies here and there* I just started a new female BH last night, and once again had to just sigh and kick a rock across the room when I couldn't outright flirt with Juda, despite her acting kind of flirty towards me. My little noobie powertech-to-be needs a girlfriend!

Manly flowers! Like, plants that smoke and get into fights!