OP is right. Everyone who has played since release (in their respective countries) has done Bioware a huge service in the way of Beta testing since the official Beta Bioware did was crap. Whether you got a toon to 50 or not, early players deserve a nod for their patience in putting up with bugs and multiple server shutdowns in the same week.

Guess we know where Bioware got the inspiration for that. And why I think that set is *** ugly.

no, you are not the only one. that is why many people have unsub'd. They hate 1.2 also.

Sure some will argue that gear doesn't matter as much as they player (and they are right). But I think most can agree that gear helps. With the removal of the Centurion and Champion sets (did I just miss the notice about that? I could just about swear that I never saw anything about that. If I had, I would have worked my *** off to get a Champion set before the patch), there aren't any gradual steps between people that have Battlemaster gear and those that don't. Level 50 people can expect to 90% of the time get steamrolled by people with Battlemaster gear. People with BM gear will have had extensive experience with PVP (since it previously took a level 60 valor rank to get the gear) and often play with other guildies in pre-mades. With the rewards for losing way down, the amount of effort required for BM gear will seem like a waste of time. I'd expect to see even less people playing PVP unless Bioware changes the reward system or cost anytime soon. I'm guessing Bioware just wanted to remove those sets because they were easy to get and so people used them gear up for ops and HM flashpoints. I really haven't seen any arguments for their removal. I don't think the centurion or champion sets were OP. Cue the trolls. Yeah I'm QQing, yeah I'm a noob, yeah I'm a whiner, yeah whatever. God forbid anyone ever criticize Bioware or SWTOR for anything. If you don't like my opinion, <waves hand> move along, nothing to see here.

I don't have all the numbers in front of me right now, but there has been a huge increase in the cost of weapons and armor that could be bought with warzone commendations. For players shooting for Battlemaster gear I guess that makes sense (1500 commendations for the Battlemaster weapon? really? Am I supposed to live for PVP now?). But some of the costs seem pretty extreme for level 14/24/34 weapons and level 20 armor. 900 warzone commendations for a level 14 weapon? With most under 20s lose because they don't have enough abilities and are not familiar enough with how PVP works. Of course there are alts and people who are with their guildies, I'm talking about the PUG people. With the rewards for loss about 0, this means that most new players will see from 15 to 40 commendations per match (more for winners of course). Let's assume (yes a bad thing but it makes the math easier) the person can get 8 medals per match even though they lose (really good luck with that though). 900/40 = 22.5 (rounding up to 23) matches needed to get a level 14 weapon (or indeed any of the PVP 14/24/34/38/42/46 weapons). I don't mind seeing level 40 and up people grind for their stuff. I mean they have to do something right? But does anyone else see this as pretty stupid for a low level item? Only one? There are entire sets of level 20 stuff that are pretty decent. It would probably take living in PVP from level 10 to 50 to afford to pay for the level 20 set. Would it be a terrible thing to lower the cost of the lower level stuff? Or does Bioware want PVP to be a sideshow that no one does?

The new stuff is ugly as hell. God I wish they would bring back the Champion and Centurion gear at least some of that stuff looked nice.

betting pool. With Patch 1.2 being released, I think we should start a pool with how soon before emergency maintenance being the condition. We can have bets from 1 hour up to 48 hours (or even longer if it strikes your fancy). It's a virtual certainty that Bioware missed something and will need to patch before the next scheduled weekly maintenance. My bet is that 26 hours from patch release (at 12:01 am CDT April 12) Bioware will need to shut the servers down for emergency maintenance. So that would be about 2am April 13. Any takers? What's your bet?

That would very accurately sum up how Bioware has done up to this point. Look at the nerfbats they have been swinging at the classes. The last minute cancellation of Ranked Warzones (they didn't know until JUST NOW they couldn't do it? pffft), multiple patches/server maintenance within the same week when they already have a day for weekly check ups. Of course the trolls will pop up now blindly and mindlessly defending Bioware because heaven forbid anything they like has anything remotely wrong with it. There are things that are good about the game, but to pretend that everything is fine and anyone who points out something wrong is a troll/hater/noob/QQer is just HICS (Head In Cement Syndrome). I wonder some days how many people who do that are blind fanatics or paid by Bioware/EA to shout down negative opinions.

Any other Imperial Agents (both Snipers and Operatives) out there wondering why the level 46 pvp weapons we can buy for warzone commendations have no expertise? All 3 of the Cunning based weapons have 0 expertise while others weapons have 25 (ok one weapon has 18 Expertise and 1 lightsaber also has 0). I'm just wondering why Imp Agents don't get Expertise for their level 46 PVP weapons. Cue: troll knights (not white knights these people are just trolls) saying that 25 expertise doesn't matter, that people who ask questions about this are QQing, that if you don't like the game you should quit, that anyone who says anything even remotely negative about the game is a noob, etc.

you missed nothing. Biochem is still the only useful skill to have at 50.

Quite simply the only reason to pick up armstech is to make your own blaster barrels. Since most players level up faster than the rewards available on a given planet (either by quest or commendations), the best way to keep your blaster up to date is by making your own barrel. Of course this means that you have to have a custom (orange) weapon but since swtor gives those out like candy that's no problem. The problem is that the given materials on a planet are pretty much at the same level as that planet. ie if the planet is level 16-20 you will (generally speaking) only be able to craft level 16-20 stuff from the materials available on that planet (IF you can harvest from the nodes, since they are bugged. but i digress). This means that you need to use the Scavenging missions to collect materials that are needed for the barrel you want. If you are willing to settle for green quality barrels then life is great. If you want blue (prototype) quality barrels, then you need to Reverse Engineer (RE). A simple cursory reading of the Crew Skill board will give you an idea of how well RE works right now (it doesn't). God help you if you want to make purple (artifact) quality barrels. You are in for a life of pain and suffering. If you are talking about the actual weapons that armstech makes, then you are correct. The weapons available from armstech are garbage. Maybe the Custom weapons you can make at 50 would be nice but those weapons are worthless because everyone will want to use their endgame content reward weapons. As far as making your own blue or purple weapons, see what I wrote about RE. Given the time, effort, and pain needed to try and make purple weapons, you will have out-leveled the design by the time you can finally make said weapon. This process will simply repeat until you reach level 40 or so when you slow down leveling so much you MIGHT (I would say under 20% of the time) be able to craft a purple weapon before it becomes obsolete. Quite frankly I picked armstech for my IA Sniper because I wanted to have barrels and only that. I am not disappointed because I KNEW that the rest of the skill was worthless. Unless you believe the good faeries about 1.2 and the uber goodness it brings to all the good little crewskills, then armstech will stay useless probably forever.

I started playing a Jedi Consular with Biochem. I never had any problems with gathering points from level 1 to 50 from Coruscant to Illum. However, I have had several gathering points that are either A) present in the game but give no data when the mouse is placed over it and cannot be clicked on to gather from OR B) have been placed inside objects (trees, walls, etc) under objects (hills, rocks, etc) so that they cannot be clicked on. I have found many nodes on several planets for both Scavenging and Archaeology. Am I alone? Is this a common problem? Just wondering what others are experiencing. Again I'm confused about why after a flawless Bioanalysis experience, skills that use Scavenging and Archaeology are getting screwed.

Anyone else disappointed with our lack of choices in who we adventure with in the early game? We get all of 1 choice (no I'm not counting the useless and horrifically bugged ship droid) until we finish Aldreaan (the 6TH planet we visit). This is a joke. While I can't speak for the other Sith Empire classes, I have played most of the Republic characters up to Alderaan and by and large most of the classes have 2 if not 3 choices by the time they finish Tatooine (Consular 2, Knight 2, Smuggler 2, Trooper 3). It looks like according to wiki data that other Imperial classes are the same (Inquisitor 2, Bounty Hunter 2, Warrior 2, Agent 1). Sorry if this has been brought up before, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Bioware should know that people who play Agent are not happy.

After hearing that transfers to Oceania servers were scheduled for 'early March', I have been waiting for some news. There seems to be a complete vacuum of information and since it is late March no matter how you slice it, I guess BioWare has forgotten about the idea entirely. Speaking as a player in that timezone who would like to KEEP the characters that I have made, I would like some news about this. The vague hope that Endgame Flashpoints and Operations don't suck is the only thing keeping me in the game at this point. I'm sick and tired of PVP as the only Endgame I can do. Since I play in the Oceania timezone I haven't found enough people on when I play to try HM FP or Ops. Any news or should I just unsub now instead of holding my breath?

With all the WEEKLY maintenance they couldn't have done it before? This couldn't have been done of the 20th just a few days ago? I also feel that with all the emergency patches that could have been pushed a few days later or earlier. As near as I can tell from the emergency patch notes there has rarely been anything that couldn't have been done during the REGULARLY scheduled maintenance. I live in Japan, I play at the same times as Aussies and others in Oceania. I joined this game knowing that maintenance would be done at the worst times possible for me. I've played enough MMORPG before to know that. So while I'm not happy about the weekly down time, it's something you accept or quit. However there have been an insane amount of unscheduled patches since I started playing in early January. I agree that BioWare owes all players some extra play time. They have irritated their customer base with all the extended, unscheduled downtime. Some free hours would be a nice goodwill gesture that would signify that BioWare does understand their customer's concerns. A little goodwill might help keep customers from leaving. And the my way or the highway attitude from the forums is actually driving people away. They ARE choosing the highway. So all the haters might want to shut the !@# up before they drive down pops even more.

1. not unsub'd yet but will do so in the near future 2. the lack of endgame content and amount of bugs are killing me. I was hoping to transfer to one of the Oceania servers but it looks like Bioware will never actually get around to that. Since I play during "off peak" hours and Bioware likes to schedule maintenance during my primary playing time I lose one day a week. I can't see how that is work paying for. 3. Will I come back? Probably no. Too many new games coming out to try and go back to an old one. Ask FF14 how they are doing trying to get old players back after their disastrous launch. That game will never recover and have a hard time bringing anyone back after the apocalyptic loss of consumer confidence in the product. I see SWTOR suffering from the same.