Well said! Every bad behavior associated with xserver lfd happened in same server groups too and also in this game. It's already happening in the same server groups with this new tool. I find it funny how the naysayers talk about how the xserver groups were straight to the point, get the run done and move on without conversation...that describes the same server groups that I've already done with this new tool lol. Xserver does nothing to kill community. The only thing resembling community that I've seen in this game is via guilds...and those still exist Xserver or no. As for the people saying that Xserver and its larger pool won't help queue times...I don't believe you when you say you played WoW. When they quit restricting it to Battlegroups, queue times plummeted, even for dps. (EDIT: That last couple of lines is probably overly harsh to those who quit WoW before the Battlegroup restriction was lifted). With all that said, the merges plus the new tool have improved gameplay, so I'm happy for the time being. Will it last? We shall see (and if it does last, I'll admit I was wrong).

About 3-4 hours for me, if I solo, depending upon the level of distraction that guild and RL presents. Some of that time of course is waiting for CD's while my Scoundrel healer stealths the heroics on Bel lol. I've seen it done in less than an hour though if you group (though some of the stupidly low level drop rate quests sometimes put the brakes on that...hello, if it drops the item for one party member, drop it for all for crying out loud!). It's definitely a time sink, but then that's what MMO's are known for. I find alternating nights between Imp and Repub helps some since they have different quests.

LMAO! Yes, I was thinking somewhat similar things with my two groups which went well, but there was no conversation at all in them. I'd make a remark about something...and nothing...continuing with the run. I thought it was x-realm that causes the 'no conversation' runs lol. And though there were no ninja's in my runs yesterday, I've heard from others that weren't so lucky. Yep, great 'community' lol. Ah well, Bioware made their decision and it's working for me for now lol.

Agreed. And I think that goes to what the one quote was saying about the way fp's are designed. The fp quests were originally designed to end when you step out of the fp and do your turn in at the kiosk outside of it. It will take time to redesign that and it appears that is in the works. Yes, it would be nice to get back to questing more quickly, but it's also nice to get the social points from the group turn-in at the kiosk and then a quick speeder ride to turn in the daily (assuming you remembered to grab it before going out questing lol).

My level 18 Sorcerer queued as a dps on Drooga's Pleasure Barge this morning, not long after the servers came back up. I got about 20 minutes worth of questing in before the queue popped and I found myself teleported to Hammer Station. Good group, went fast, got my 5 Balmorra commendations for using the LFG tool (dummy me didn't grab the daily, otherwise I'd have got more). I then had to get on my work laptop for a spell and then later got on my 49 healing Operative, grabbed the daily and then queued as a healer...and 30 minutes later found myself in Red Reaper which I never got to do on any of my toons on the old dead servers. Again, another good group, and quick run. Got 5 daily commendations for using the LFG tool at that level, plus some Voss comms for turning in the daily. Had to take the wife out to dinner after that, but at the present time, I have a positive outlook, though I realize things can change a week or a month from now so the jury's still out. Didn't get to try it for any of my Republic toons on Harbinger.

You might be surprised how many BT/Esseles groups form, see someone is high level and then that high level gets booted. On Harbinger there were constantly people spamming "LF1M Esseles NO HIGH LEVELS FOR SOCIAL!"

Take a deep breath. Now another. And queue up for something in your level range. With 4 people in group, you'll still social up, just not as fast as getting 3 friends and hitting normal Esseles/Black Talon used to. That's hardly a 'broken game.' Maybe not as convenient as before, but....

And now people who got Social X by farming BT will call people like the OP lazy lol. Don't get me wrong, I understand the change and am not bothered by it. I just find the forum 'community' amusing sometimes.

Work will be the main impediment for me. Tomorrow evening though, I don't know of anything that would prevent me from trying (unless a thunderstorm knocks out power, satellite hits me, etc.)

They are a good way to gear, but as others have said, not absolutely necessary. My guild on my old server before both died, did first couple of bosses in EV story mode OPs with mostly people who were brand new 50's (though Gharj was tough for that group). Each time we got Gharj, it was late and we disbanded for the night and never could get the group back together..which is too bad since the next two boss fights are far easier than the first two lol. Anyway, it's possible to do the story mode ops without first grinding out flashpoints, but you may start seeing more griefing from the community if you don't have x hit points when you join their groups. Doing dailies and getting those purple mods to put in your Orange gear is an alternative method of gearing. That's what I had to do when our old server died. Now with the mergers (yes mergers, let's be honest here), the new server has enough pop to make the hard mode flashpoints doable. The group finder should help too. With a good group, the flashpoints go fast. With a not so good group, the trash pulls can make the runs go forever. Make sure you grab your daily and weekly quest for the fp's since those give additional rewards to help gearing. After the transfer, I did two EV runs, a KP run and a couple of Hard Modes in a little over a week and had the full 5 set Tionese for my healer Scoundrel and a Columni belt as well as a Columni level main hand and off hand (previous to the merger I was in Orange gear with daily level purple mods). The Columni and Tionese commendations rack up fast if you do your Daily/Weekly fp's and throw in an Ops or two.

I don't have the link handy, so take this for it's worth to you, but there was an interview with a dev where they explained that their tuning of classes is based upon what the AVERAGE player is doing with that class, not what the uber-skilled players are capable of doing with the class. I believe that comment was in response to the Sentinel/Mara buffs. As a general rule, I like that philosophy, however one potential issue is when the uber-skilled post their specs/rotations on a website and then the AVERAGE players start getting better as well. <shrug> my $0.02

I too recall having Alderaan feeling like a significant jump in difficulty, but I still was able to solo the non-heroic stuff. As others have said, use your CC's, watch the patrol patterns of the mobile baddies, kill them when you can catch them alone. The one irritating thing for Sages at that level is you're probably still using Qyzen as your comp and he has an aoe that breaks CC's. You can turn that ability off or you can keep him in passive while doing your CC then ordering him to attack when the other mobs get far enough from the CC'd mob. Trial and error helps lol. And if you think Alderaan is a big jump, wait until Quesh. You'll be cruising along up until you fight a lvl 38 champion droid that goes down fairly easily...and then you'll come up against a lvl 36 champion that is FAR more difficult. My Scoundrel had alot of trouble with the 36 though my other toons were ok (it was still tougher than the 38). I wouldn't say the quests need nerfs so much as some consistent scaling. There are definitely stretches where the mobs take little to no effort and then suddenly you come across something that kicks you in the head if you don't do things right lol.

He loves reading stuff into posts that aren't there. It's also funny how he dismisses arguments as 'opinion' when that's all he has to back up his claims lol. With that said, I have to agree that the queues aren't quite as bad as some make them out to be and the game has been more enjoyable. It's way too early to call this a success or failure though. Give it a month or two.

LOL, yep. I'm very much 'looking forward' to the day when a raid starts 30 minutes (or more) late because the main tank just got home due to traffic and has to wait in a queue. With that said, I have yet to have a queue take more than 10 minutes at present...then again, I've been on vacation and am usually already in game before peak hits. Back to work tomorrow and then we'll see what I think lol.

Again, if someone levels an imp toon to 50 on one server and a Republic toon to 50 on a different server, how does that make them lazier than someone who did the same 'feat' on one server? Is there some extra effort required to level two opposite factions on the same server that isn't there when you split your factions among 2 or more servers? I'm not following this 'logic' that the people raising concerns are 'lazy'... Not everyone raising concerns about the requirement are lazy (In fact, I'm ok with the requirement actually...I just see where some people are coming from). And trying to equate that with people asking for things with no effort...that's a bit over the top.

That too lol. Let's be honest with each other and call it what it really was

It has certainly improved things for some, but not for all (I'm one of the lucky ones it did work out for though). It's too soon to call it a complete success. Let's see how things are a month from now. If it's still a choice between a bloated server with login queues and laggy Fleet or a dead server with no one to group with, then I may not stick around. After 4 rerolls, I'm not doing it again. But overall, I'm happy with the server transfers and it has been good to dust off the high level toons that I had invested a good deal of time in. Despite my strong opinions in the Xserver debate, I like this game and I do want it to succeed.

Holy Crap! Skid and I agree on something! I bet he and I disagree on what caused that elitism, though But yes, elitist behavior in previous MMO's (as well as what I've seen in this one) has definitely created some shyness out there which somewhat ironically puts people like me (a normally shy person IRL) in the position of taking the leadership reigns. A similar problem I see, especially since the transfers is with the dailies. All these people fighting over quest item nodes/mobs and NONE of them seem willing to group! It's a "who can out ninja who" mess! I'll be standing in the middle of a group and ask "Wanna group for this mob when it respawns?" The Answer? Silence...Rattaki Leaders is the worst!

Well, let's see. I cancelled my sub but still had some paid for time left when the transfers hit so I decided to transfer my toons and give it one last shot. I resubbed two days later. Before the transfers, I had rerolled 4 times and by the time I'd rerolled on Fatman (I didn't want East Coast nor PvP but what other choice was there), I was tired of Coruscant, Dromund Kaas, Taris, Balmorra, etc. and just couldn't bring myself to do them again. The guild on my original server, that looked so promising, but fell apart when the server died, only made it as far as Gharj in EV. In the past week on Harbinger, I've hit it lucky with a nice guild and have done up to SOA in EV (the inexperienced tanks couldn't get the pillars to fall on him, I'm sure that will be fixed soon) and the 4th boss of KP (every one was tired and we called it). So, yes, my gameplay during the past week has been improved. I've dusted off some 50's that I'd invested a fair amount of time in and even got to keep a few of their names lol. With all that said though, will this last? Jury is still out. Is everything perfect? Certainly not. Harbinger now has a queue during peak times. It was somewhat amusing late last night to see Harbinger at Very Heavy and Fatman at Standard (I'm just taking a guess here, but perhaps alot of the rerollers on Fatman went back to their original toons and xfered them to the target servers?). The queue has been no issue for me during the past week since I've been on vacation and was able to login during non-peak time and stay logged in during peak. Tomorrow, however I return to work and will be back to peak times being my only time. If that queue continues, the above praise could very well disappear. I have one RL friend who has already gone back to his rerolls on Fatman due to the queue and lagginess of Fleet on Harbinger. I have already decided that I'm done with rerolls and I'll never pay for a server transfer. The queue could end it for me.

You're reading something into his post that isn't there. Look up the definition of the word "may". It might help...

The transfer tool is indeed well done and Bioware definitely deserves kudos for it. I was never against transfers per se, I actually think it's a service that all MMO's should have. I simpy disagreed with their philosophy on Mega-servers vs xserver LFD. They've made their decision though, and I accept it and will give it an honest try. As for the transfer tool itself, maximum kudos. Very easy to use tool and it happens fast. I understand the impatience of those who are on servers that aren't on the list yet, but I also understand Bioware's decision to do it in phases.

Patience! Your server will get its turn too.

My wife and I each transfered 3 toons each (6 total). They went through perfectly and in less than 5 minutes. At least one significant guild is well on its way to reforming (they even invited some of us who were in 'rival' guilds on the old server). I feel safe in saying the process works well. i definitely have to give them kudos for making a working tool here.

My sub runs out at end of the week and I was able to get some transfers in. I paid for collector's edition, the usual monthly sub since launch, and therefore feel no guilt over making use of the service. With that said, if your sub has run out when your server opens up then I have to agree with the others, pay for another month if you want to xfer.

Yes, 3 toons from Soresu to Harbinger in less than 5 minutes, all items in inventory, personal bank and legacy unlocks made it. Same for 3 toons that my wife moved as well. Had to change names for all three of my moved toons and even the legacy, which I didn't think would be that common (it was a name that goes back to my pencil and paper Star Wars RPG days lol). That was a small bummer, but I'll survive. My wife only had to change one toon name and kept her legacy name (which I would have thought would be more common...she's always been lucky that way lol). Whether it's enough to get me to reconsider letting my time run out at the end of the week or not...the jury's still out...RL friends and wife are still working on me lol.