Thanks, guys. Sucks that there's so little new content coming, as I really enjoy this game. Guess I'll just stick to the story and occasinal flashpoint for now, then we'll see what happens later.

I know this might sound like a stupid question. But I was here at launch, and although I've been gone for years, I recently returned and found a lot of new changes. Even a new race now. I guess what I wonder about is if there are any new content incoming, other than the new expansion? Any word on other playable races? New planets? New dungeons? Anything at all, really. Even a PvE mode for the spaceships? Not a huge fan of PvP at all, but I do like flying around in space. Guess the point is I'm mostly curious how the state of the game is today, and if it'll stay interesting for a long time. Not saying it's dying or anything, but the fact is we're talking about a five year old game. That's a really long time for many games. Will this game be around in five years more? EDIT: For that matter, what will the expansion even give us? Haven't seen the trailer yet (don't really care for CGI trailers), and can't find any information about it.

So I tried to solo Black Talon. Everything went fine, and I ended up with a nice speeder as reward.

Thanks for the help, guys. Much appreciated. I haven't had the time to check the flashpoints today, but I'll try later tonight or tomorrow and see if your tricks help.

All of them, basically. Take something as basic as Black Talon. When we defeat the boss and get to leave using the terminal on the ship, what am I supposed to do? I get back to the space station, but the "complete a flashpoint" and "complete black talon" missions are still listed as unfinished.

Back in the day, things were fine. We went through a flashpoint, we killed the boss, we returned to the terminal and got our reward. But now, though? It's been a really long time since I played, and I've done two flashpoints the last few days. The first time we finished the boss, I was told to click the Exit Area button. I did, and ended up on Dromund Kaas. So not where I was supposed to go, so they kicked me. (Or tried to, but I had the courtesy of leaving.) Second time, I found myself on the spaceport, I found myself at the terminal, all alone and unable to do anything with it. I was going to ask the group what to do, but they disbanded the group before I could ask. So now I'm confused. I still have the "compelete a flashpoint" mission, but since I technically didn't finish the flashpoint either time, the mission is still there. So what do I do to finish it? What am I missing? Just felt I should ask here, and reduce the chance of looking like an idiot in the game a tinyh bit.

I haven't played this game in years (only returned a few days ago), but as a MMO-veteran, I have a few tips. 1. Grouping in general: Learn how to play your preferred class the best you can, and stick to it. This is by far the most important thing I can think of. It's not vital on lower levels, but the sooner you learn it, the better. If you are knew to SW:TOR, I STRONGLY suggest you take your time and level up a class all the way up from level 1. Even if you don't care about the story and all that, leveling it up from scratch will teach you a lot of vital things about the class you might not know otherwise. If you rather start at max level, you won't know the first thing about the class you are playing. This can be very overwhelming, to say the least. Plus, it means you end up running Flashpoint you don't know with a class you don't know, and possibly even game mechanics you don't know. Obviously this won't help the group much. That said, I am not trying to sound arrogant or mean. I am saying this to help you, as a friend. For instance, there's the classic healer-mistake from Lord of the Rings Online. The healer there has an ability that will increase its damage with quite a lot, but in return, the healing is reduced in half. This is great for solo, but NOT something you want in a group. When you are the healer in a group, healing is everything. Sure you won't do much damage, but then again, why would you want to? You got team mates for that. So again, learn the class you want to play as best you can. The earlier you learn it, the better. 2. What seperates a good player from a bad? Simple. Everyone makes mistakes. Even people who has played this game from day one makes mistakes from time to time. I don't care if you have done a raid 100 times so far. You can still make mistakes. The important thing isn't simply "don't do mistakes", but more "learn from your mistakes". Example: Two big robots were charging at us last night, so we (the tank) stunned one, then we attacked the other. But someone in the group accidentally hit the other one, breaking the stun. (not me. Nope. Totally not me. Always someone else...) This meant the whole group died. Not my fault. But the second time, I made darn sure to focus the attack on the one we were supposed to attack, and left the other one alone. It eventually got rid of the stun, so I stunned it again. This way, we destroyed both enemies easily enough. First round? Wiped out. Second? Not a problem. 3. Be nice to people. Also very important. If you want people to be nice to you, be nice to them first. We are all in this together, working towards a common goal. Fighting among each other isn't helping anyone, especially not ourselves. So if you see someone in the group screwing up by mistake, don't get mad. Be helpful and point out the mistake instead (in a friendly way), and be patient. That annoying person could easily end up saving your butt in a few minutes.

Thanks, guys. I tried to claim the stuff from the Cartel, and yep, there they were. Only downside is I had an awesome minigun there, so now I kinda had to make a Trooper who can actually use it.

I just finished a Dark vs Light achivement and got five of those boxes, and those of those had mounts in them. I think. But... where are they? I can't find them anywhere? Same with the gear I got from the boxes, as well as a companion gift. My inventory was empty when I opened the boxes, and it's still empty? I did notice one mount said locked in collection, but what's the point in getting it in a box if I don't actually get it? What am I missing here?

Actually, I think you misunderstand something. MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online, that we can agree on. But what does the 'multiplayer' in MMO mean? I think this is where most people got it wrong. It means multiple things, based on the game in question. To give you two examples: First, there's SW: Knights of the Old Republic. It was pretty decent RPG for just one player. It didn't even have a co-op mode, or anything like that. People wanted more, so they got more with Knights of the Old Republic 2. And yet people still wanted more, so instead of giving us a third game in the series (which, to be honest, would have been boring anyway), BioWare decided to pretty much blow up the scope of the games and make an online-game based on the Old Republic universe. That is what we are playing today. It's basically Knights of the Old Republic 3, but much bigger in every way. We have eight classes instead of three, and each class has it's own story. (and as a quick sidenote, you need to manually allow people to join you in some of those story areas with you. So while you can play co-op through the whole thing, it's not recommended. Heck, if two players of the same class does the story area together, they have to do it twice to make it count for both.) Anyway, the point is The Old Republic is basicaly KotOR 3, just on a much, much bigger scale. This means the stories are bigger, there's much better crafting, there's a bigger budget and so on - and we got some player on player-action on top of it. The PoP stuff isn't the heart of the game. It's tacked on. We could just as well have had a game where we could all run around together and have fun together, but not be able to quest together. There's no reason why we should be allowed to, after all. And as a side note, there's PvP, just to give players something to do. But if they had removed it, it wouldn't have changed the game at all. Second, there's Battlefield, and all those games. These are also MMOs in a way, as in they are online-games for a massive amount of players. True, maybe 64 doesn't sound too massive compared to SW:TOR, but again, different games with different purposes. And for that matter, how many people are in a PVP match at once anyway? The biggest OPS I've been in for world bosses have been around 20 people. Not 64 or more like in Battlefield. (btw educated BF-number. I couldn't care less about those games.) The point is Battlefield and all those are made for one reason only: Shoot other players. That's it. They don't need a story. They don't need progression. And they certainly don't need us to run around delivering mail or pies like in Lord of the Rings Online. Different games for different people. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need far more stuff to do at endgame in games like Old Republic. Not everyone wants to raid or PvP, and many who does want, can't. I'm the kind of girl who thinks Esseles and Black Talon takes too long, so I can't even imagine what a raid would be like. And PvP? I did try that some years ago, when I was young and naive. It didn't go well, to put it mildly. One thing is getting killed by people who almost literally live for PvP, but it's even worse to always be told how much I suck when I die. The last time I tried PvP was in Heroes of Newerth, and let's just say that don't exactly bring back good memories. You're either the best in the world before you even install the game, or you're not welcome. Sadly, this has been the general welcome I've had in any PvP ever, be it Quake 3 Arena or HoN. Finally, let's talk pets. I love them. And I did enjoy Guild Wars 2 alot One reason for this was the ranger. This girl could tame pretty much every single wild creature in the whole world and use as a companion. I really loved that, and wish we could get pets like that in this game. All they have to do is make a 'special' creature of each type that can be tamed (to make it challenging and interesting) and shrink it to petsize. They don't need any AI other than following us either, so how hard can it be?

It's quite normal body paint, yes... Clothes don't follow the breasts around like that, but tries to smoothen out as best it can. That's because it's very soft, so if you bend it, it won't stick to that position when you let go. Heavy armor don't move much at all, so that should definitely not curve like it does in the game.

Age of Conan somehow managed to let me start the game in see-through panties and no bra, but with absurd 'jiggly physics'. Yay for first impressions... On the other end, there's the female hobbits in Lord of the Rings Onilne, the ratongs and variuos other races in EverQuest 2, the asura in Guild Wars 2, the foxes in Vanguard and so on. There's tons of races where the females look rather normal, despite being non-human. So why are humans so hard to get right? Did you even look at the picture I linked to? It's Leia from Episode 6, dressed as a bounty hunter in Jabba's palance. And know what? She isn't wearing 'baggy' or 'loose' armor, and yet it's hard to tell she's a woman. That's what I want in the game. I don't want supermodels. I want real people in real clothes. http://www.jedidefender.com/collect92/boushh%20rotj.jpg

Why do you need to go back to the fleet all the time? I go there once or twice a day, if that.

I couldn't agree more. I know some people disagree, but c'mon, it's not possible to bring up an issue everyone will agree on. That's why I think allowing us to switch off Double XP would be the best. Removing all XP wouldn't really work. Oh, sure, at first it might seem like you get ton control the XP yourself. But are you really? It could be very easy to leave it off while the enemies are your own level, but once they start to get too strong, you'll need to grind quite a bit to get back to their level. Instead, we should keep the XP gain the way it was intended. Besides, they need to activly switch on DXP anyway. Why, then, is it so difficult to let us switch it off if we want to? It could simply be a temporary buff in our skills menu that's switched on by default. Quick tip about crafting: I sell a lot of junk on the GTN from crafting. The easiest way I've found to make money is to sell crafting mats I don't need and that I see sell for a lot on the GTN, and (more important) check if I can make things that will sell for a lot of money. If so, I check if I can buy some of the harder to get mats off the GTN and still make a profit. If I can sell something for around 5.000 credits, I don't mind spending 3.000 credits on the hard to get mats. It's stlll a 2.000 credits profit every time, and it saves me a lot of grinding. Sorry, that was enough derailing from me. On with the show now.

Can't you just walk out the door? Not sure if you can abandon it if you're inside the instance, but you should be able to abandon it once you're outside. And don't worry, the flashpoints are repeatable.

This game has three basic forms for armor: Light, medium and heavy. Naturally, heavy armor has more defense than light, and so on. But the armor you find on the cartel marked are adaptive, so when you first put it on, it becomes the correct armor type for you. If your character wears light armor, the adaptive armor will become light armor. If you wear heavy armor, it will become heavy armor, and so on. Both adaptive armor and orange armor don't really have any stats on their own, but if you hold down Ctrl and right-click the armor, you will see a list of mod-slots (armoring, enchantment etc). You can put various mods here to increase the stats, to make the armor much better for you. This not only has the benefit of letting you change the armor's stats to suit you, but it also means you can keep updating the mods to make the armor better and better. In short, I got a nice pilot's outfit from the Cartel Market at lvl 10, and i'm still using it at lvl 25.

I'm all for letting all armor and weapons be moddable, but adaptive? Not a chance. If we could do that, you're basically saying we should remove the light/medium/heavy armor from the game. I want light armor to stay light armor. I don't want to run around in a heavy armor towel.

Look at this picture of princess Leia, the bounty hunter: http://www.jedidefender.com/collect92/boushh%20rotj.jpg That's what I want in this game. How hard can it be to make something like that? I would think it would be a lot easier than painting armor on the character models.

If you think about it, we get plenty of skills for both advanced classes before we get to pick one. Why do you think bounty hunters get both a flamethrower and missiles at lvl 9 or 10, even if both weapons are specific to the advanced classes? It's because they let us try out both advanced classes before we have to make up our mind. It lets us make an educated choice what we want to play, and not pick one at random. Plus, it took me two hours two level up a new sith inquisitor to sith assassin with a bit of speed leveling. (ignoring side quests, spacebar-skipping conversations, ignoring exploring etc). I ended up on the fleet at lvl 8, but nevermind that. Leveling up the early levels is really fast once you get the hang of it, If you really don't know which class to pick, try both. And if you really just want to change your name and class, you're basically saying you want a new character anyway. So what's the big deal?

But that's the problem. We can't cover up as much as we want. If it's not a bra or showing a huge cleavage, it's skin-tight. Even the heaviest armor I can find looks like it's painted on my character. It looks stupid, and I don't even want to think about how it's possible to move around in it. Not to mention how warm it must be in there, even on regular planets. Heavy armor on Tatooine? I'd die of dehydraution in less than five minutes if I tried that for real. The problem is the only clothes in the entire game i've seen that isn't skin-tight are the robes, and honestly, robes are getting boring. Why can't we have normal clothes? What about baggy pants, or a loose shirt? Anything other than painting my clothes on me.

I know there's been plenty of posts asking BW to ban vehicles from the Fleets, so there's no point in making another one. What I am going to do is address you players instead. The Fleets might look big, but people tend to crowd to the more popular areas like the GTN and Cargo boxes. This effectivly reduces the size of the fleets drastically, as there are tons of players in a small area. This is fine most of the time, but please be a bit considerate. If you open your skills meny, you will see a Vehicles-tab with all your vehicles listed. If you drag one of those icons to a hotbar, you can use it as an actual skill to summon it and dismount it. You can even map that button so it's easy to reach (I use mouse button 5, but that's just me.) It means you can summon and dismount your favorite vehicle with a single press of a button. Why, then, is it so incredible difficult to dismount your ginormous vehicle in crowded areas, like directly in front of the GTN? The strange thing isn't that I see people do it all the time, but at least 95% of them are level 55 and sitting on huge vehicles. I get it. You are proud of your effort to reach max level and got a big vehicle. But you aren't impressing anyone. Far from it, you are just annoying everyone by blocking access to the GTC, cargo holds, stores and all that. I can't click any of that when you are in the way. Really. So when you want to use the GTN or whatever and there are a lot of players around, can you please, please dismount first? Thanks.

I love to shop on the GTN, and I buy the occasional adaptive armor, as some of it looks pretty good. The problem is a lot of the adaptive armor for females are just a bra. Some look fancy, some have short sleeves and so on, but most I find are just variations of the slave girl outfit. Which I hate, for that matter. (But considering how often I see a female companion wearing it, I know it's gotta be one of the most popular armors in the entire game after the Eradicator mask.) What I don't get is why you have to sink so low to make it very difficult for female players to not look scantly clad. My jedi fortuately wears a heavy robe, but even she got to wear a bra at some point. Listed as heavy armor. How does that even make any sense? I'm just really tired of it. I know there are a lot of pigs in the game, but I really hope the developers can ignore them and focus on us normal people for a while. Newsflash: Women play games too, in case you didn't know.

My kitty in all her glory. http://oi39.tinypic.com/j8p0lg.jpg

Personally, I think the best thing would be to make a retail expansion that increases the level cap from 55 to 70, and adds specialization to the advanced classes (so you get your Very Advanced Class, in lack of a better name, at lvl 55.) There are already a lot of people who's reached lvl 55, and I don't think many of them would want to reroll a character just to get a new advanced class at lvl 10. But if they increased the level cap, we could get the VAC at lvl 55 as a big bonus to those who's reached max level, and as an extra incentive for the rest of us to reach that high level. Plus, the VAC's won't affect the current game at all, so they won't have that much trouble balacing them. It's much harder to rebalance every single skill you get from lvl 10 than from lvl 55 and up.

Maybe it's just me, but can't the whole issue be solved simply by using a small, random code? For instance: Guild Member: "I want my alt to join. Is that ok?" Guild Leader: "No problem. Whisper me and say "Cat dog horse" so I know it's you." *Guild member relogs as alt* Guild Member: "Hi, it's (first char's name). Cat dog horse." *Guild leader invites guild member to guild* Simple as that. It doesn't matter if the new recruit is an alt, or a friend's character. If I want my friend to join, I'd tell him the code first, so he can repeat it to the guild leader or recruitment officer. If the recruit don't know the code for some reason, don't invite him. If he just forgot the code, have him relog as the char already in the guild and get a new code. This obviously will only work for players already in the guild, so when you recruit strangers, leave the gulid bank off-limit to them. I vote leaving it entirely off-limit, and rather give them a promotion when you know they can be trusted.