There is a built in gear-up for your companion and it's hinted at if you pay attention. I reccomend Googling the quest.

Also, don't take the gear rewards from quests...take the commendations and use them to buy far superior gear and modifcations. There are guides available via Google to explain this process if you need help.

I don't think Qyzen is going to cut it in green at-level gear if you're fighting at-level enemies. I'm 40, full Inf, and use Qyzen. I keep him in a full suit of moddable gear, and his mod levels tend to run just behind mine, but both nearly at level, just from planetary commendations and quest rewards. Never take the green armor rewards, always take comms instead. Anyway, we have no problem with a single elite, can do a pair of elites if you're careful to turn off his AOEs, use your mez, and toggle agro with your taunts so he doesn't take the full brunt of the attack. We can usually add in a strong to the mix, but have to use the short term mez (can remember name, 6 or 8 second) as well as a good number cooldown abilities. My only complaint is that we really can't do even solo champion strength mobs unless very lucky or overleveled. I've contemplated gearing up Theran and/or switching to the tank spec, but it just seems so much more boring that way.

Always drives me nutty when poeople insist that you MUST do the bonus series so that you can be 5 levels over content. If you want to do them for the stories or whatever, that's fine, but they absolutley aren't needed to maintain an appropriate pace and be on level for your quests.

Agree, this shouldn't be a worry. I don't think you could load the game with the onboard card active.

I got a Sith Archon's Chestguard as a random drop while leveling something else and am looking forward to using it. Looks awesome on Sith.

You would almost never want to hybrid a skill build like reccomended above until you hit higher levels. The bettter talents tend to be higher in the skill trees and getting to them quicker makes for easier leveling. The stealth/middle tree makes for some pretty easy leveling for an Assassin, although the tanking tree is really good too. I'd guess your problem is mostly gearing. Are you taking the green gear quest rewards? Don't do that. You want to take planetary commendations and use them to buy orange, moddable gear. Once you have an orange piece for each slot, you can just upgrade the modifications (again via commendations) as you go. It is pretty easy to keep you and a single companion in a full set of modded gear and keep it outfitted WAY above green at-level armor. Also, for a super cheap set of orange gear (comes empty so you have to buy your own modifications) go to the social vendor in the Cantina in Drummond Kaas.

Thank you. And to be fair, it wasn't horrible in all regards, just in what I seek in a game. If the sand box and role playing are what you were there for, it had somethign to offer. I was interested in that aspect as well, but the dismal functionallity of combat was too much of a turn off.

Don't quite get why your panties bunched up over this. It's something that exists in just about any moderately successful game. Just don't buy from them, problem solved.

Yes exactly. Like I inferred, it was a chat room you could use your arrow keys to walkr around in and pick furntiure. Like a The Sims: Star Wars expansion. The actual 'game' aspect was either miserable or didn't exist. The ONLY thing it was good for was functioning as a platform for role playing and it's been pretty thoroughly proven that that wasn't what most people were looking for.

I was there, it was horrible in all regards. The nostalgia for it constantly stuns me.

In short, it was barely a game at all. The combat was always horrible, and as previously stated, it amounted to a poorly rendered chat room.

Let me google that for you.

Come down off Mount Pious you self-righteous kill-joy.

Yup, shaders and shadows tend to be the biggest, but this game has such poor and varying performance between machines that there's now way to really predict your sweet spot. Set it to high, and start moving things around.

Agreed. You can build a very capable, respectable machine for around 500 bucks.

I like to go to ol' Google Translator and put goofy things into a differnet language to make them sounds neat. My Legacy is Goatherder, translated to German. It comes out to Ziegenhirte.

You could get a new CPU to plug in to your board, but the board itself is outdated. Modern processors don't fit into that board, so you'd be upgrading to a still outdated CPU. You could get some improvement out of that, as well as by updating the video card, but neither of these options is a good bang for your buck. A bit more RAM would be nice, but I wouldn't be surprised if you're already at the max for your mobo. SSD is solid state drive. Much faster than traditional platter hard drives, but much more expensive. Given the other issues, this again would be mostly a waste of money. Replacing Vista is a legit idea, but of course costs money. Does anyone know if Vista offers the XP compatability mode option for program launches? If it does, flipping that switch might help. All that said, one of the machines I play on is one I built about 10 years ago and has components quite similar to yours. I actually am down to only 3 gigs of RAM since one of mine died. I'd sugest dropping from medium graphics to low. Sure its a bit less pretty, but the game is completely functional excpeting PVP. I cannot legimiately PVP on the old machine no matter what I do to it.

You should fit, but you're getting pretty up against the wall. Not much room for page files and the like.

This would be fun and interesting. Everyone yelling DERR THIS IS MMO YOU GROUP CAUZE MMO MEANS MULTIPLE AND ONLINE SEE ITS IN THE LETTERS is making a useless arguement.

Look at it this way. Everyone (or at elast most) who bought this game knew that it had a monthly subscribtion ahead of time. Does it make sense that this pre-known fact is the reason for an exodus of unsubscribers?

I'd imagine that the majority of $15 is too much monthly reponses were actually intended as "I'm not paying $15 a month for an only partly funcitonal game". I'm sure there are pure SW fans who joined this game with no prior MMORPG experience, but I think most of us have been around the block on a few games. We're quite accustomed to paying 10 to 15 a month.

Also remember that you don't have to be anywhere near "behind" them. I'm not sure what the exact degree is, but seems like 'slightly off center' usually works.

Ok OP, I'm getting mad for you. You've asked a simple question (sorry, but I don't know the answer) and been bombarded with unwanted advice and arguements on why you should just stay subbed. Can anyone just answer this poor man's question without suggesting he doesn't know what's best for him?

lol, I love your responses after every rambling screed you send up on these boards so hard. In fact you can't even wait to respond, your initial posts are loaded with "i know you simpletons won't read or comprehend me up front, so just go ahead and be HATERZ".