This is true, but the music is not played because the game is BROKEN. Restart the game and you can hear the music. Once you actually DO something in the game that changes the sound, however, the music will be killed and will fail to retart playing...this is a bug in the game.

BGM in SWTOR is broken at the moment - there is a lot of different music that just won't play - restarting the game will fix this, but after you have a conversation with an NPC, the music usually drops out. Also happens if combat music interrupts the BGM. Seems like whatever mechanism there is to return to the BGM after other sounds/music use the same sound channels just doesn't work - this is seriously bad software development...

I think the lack of music is a bug, it is SUPPOSED TO BE PLAYING. If you restart the game (not relog) in the same area, the music will play - usually until you have a conversation with an NPC, at which point it will stop. I imagine that there is some other (larger) thread discussing this issue, as it is a major flaw in SWTOR.

This happens to me, too - usually right after I have a conversation with an NPC. Whatever music WAS playing, stops and I have to restart the game to hear the music again. SWTOR has great music, when is actually PLAYS!

This issue should be addressed in the upcoming 1.3 update. It was mentioned in the first (not the pilot) official podcast by the devs. I agree with you and I'm looking forward to having this issue fixed.

^Agree with this guy.

Do space missions - they are an insane amount of XP.

Sneaky, Thanks for the reply and I see your point. I'm going to take your advice for now. However, I just feel a little schizophrenic with my characters in that I cannot have one character explore too many side-quests (forget about pvp, flashpoints or space missions entirely) without making the game way too easy. Thus far I have just sent my companions on missions and worn vanity gear while questing on the planets I have out-levelled. If there were an option to switch off XP (e.g., a checkbox or by paying credits to an NPC), that would be great and I think it would make both the people that think leveling is too slow and too fast happy.

There are two issues in this thread - 1) levelling is too fast, and 2) levelling happens too early. The first issue has to do with how fast people get to level 50 - and you can do that any way you want. The second issue, and one that I am mainly concerned with, is the levelling vis-a-vis story progression. For me, the biggest let down of this game (which I love, by the way), is I am punished with a faceroll and crap gear rewards/useless tokens on the next planet I go to because I decided to complete all (or nearly all) the side missions on the previous planet. Case-in-point, I completely skipped Balmorra (sp?) to go to Nar Shadar (sp?) because the Balmorra token gear was garbage for my level and I was about 2-3 levels away to get a few pieces of Nar Shadar gear if I went there (thus skipping the agent story line on Balmorra) and going directly to Nar Shadar. I did that, got tokens for a helm, and also found out that one of the heroic rewards gave me a helm similar to the one I just blew 17 tokens on - double-burn! "Who designed this?" I thought - "did they even PLAY it?" - I also thought. Anyway, that aside, at level 24, after getting some Nar Shadar token gear and other rewards, I went to Balmorrs to pick up the agent story again (which I had forgotten at that point, but needed to have my memory refreshed by the quest givers at the expense of affection from my companion - due to the conversation choices). Now, everything is grey on Balmorra - the mobs, and the quests. I just choose the money rewards from the quests, and I am making my way through the story. However, now, the side quests mean absolutely nothing to me and the story missions are a faceroll where I just charge in, pull all mobs and pwn them. There is ZERO "agent" combat going on, and I feel like I am farming BT or something. Result is that swtor DOES feel like a grind NOW, and worst of all, I am grinding story content - which is what I loved, but now since there is no challenge, the story has lost a lot of value for me. This sucks... So, in conclusion, I believe that something must be done with the leveling/story content horrible mismatch in this game. Didn't Bioware know that players interesting in the story/lore would ALSO do side-quests?? I don'T PvP, and I only did the space missions once, and I avoided those to prevent levelling too fast (fail). Also, the token gear from comms system is totally broken, as I have to plan 3-5 levels ahead for that gear. I learned that the hard way - by the time I saved enough tokens for Dromond Kass (sp?) gear, I was like 5 levels too high to use it and I had all the gear I needed from ONE BT run. There is something wrong here and I am now under the impression that, while many parts of this game may have been "tested" - I do not feel that it was properly play tested at all! Seriously, I have one toon at level 24 and I already see all these problems. If BW had testers leveling all the way to 50 and didn't notice these problems, then they need to fire those testers or fire whomever did not listen to the testers' advice regarding the leveling/story problems. I am sad that I am skipping ENTIRE PLANETS... The makers of the game stated that they encourage exploration and experiencing game content, however, when a player attempts that, the player is punished with junk gear, worthless tokens for junk gear, faceroll missions where mobs are mostly grey, and a general feeling that a player should be skipping content on purpose in order to have a challenging play experience. I believe that the XP system needs to be fixed and/or allow players to turn off XP at least in the short term until the larger problem is addressed.

Could you be more specific? For me, stealth wasn't that great until I specced 2-3 points into it and now I can walk past mobs of the same level pretty closely w/o being seen. I admit that it is weaker than rogue stealth, but rogues also don't have guns and have to chase down their targets. My dps is working out great, but I have noticed that the OPs class is not a faceroll class and requires skill, timing, and adaptability to play well. If not played well, you will die a lot. It's not a class that can be played sloppily.

^^ This.

You know, you're right - let's do it when it's convenient for YOU. We are being insensitive if we get what WE want and YOU don't get what YOU want. We are intolerant if we do not allow you to do what you want at the expense of what we want. The day a European company makes an MMO I play and wants to to maintenance on their schedule, I'll be the last guy trashing them. Maybe you can get some government welfare to cover your MMO play time in Europe. It wouldn't surprise me.

I think Kaliyo is immature and stupid. I have to tell the leaders of groups I am trying to infiltrate that they are "idiots" and such to their faces while at the same time asking to be in their cult group in order to avoid losing affection w/ Kaliyo. The leader of the Revanites will not want me in their group if all I am doing is being a total jerk to her face...it makes the character interactions less believable. To that end, I quit caring about Kaliyo and I do what I want in conversations and I am actually happy making my own decisions rather than trying to please some bald avenger with tattoos and jewelry pierced all over her face. I'll just buy her a bunch of gifts if I need her affection for crew skills, but I would blow her out the garbage chute of my Phantom if I could...

There are people who enjoy facerolling content, and there are other people to want to actually have to think a little while they are playing...

I lol'd at this post!

Then don't allow XP to be turned off while doing pvp warzones, etc - OR, if your XP is turned off, you can only cue with other people with XP turned off...OR --> Force other players to get better at PVP and gearing by allowing twinks into bgs to pwn noobs (my personal choice) People spend a lot of time twinking a character - especially since there are bonuses for creating alts in this game, I say let twinkers twink and turn off XP and stay low level forever - it seems to me that only people who don't invest the time to research, collect the gear and l2p are the ones crying like little babies about twinks. I don't mind getting pwned by them because, if I so choose, I can spend my time making my own and getting GOOD. It's very satisfying. From my experience, making a good twink is much easier and less time-consuming than maxing your toon in endgame.

I agree with you - there should definitely be an option to turn XP off! Otherwise, I am leveling so fast, I am skipping FPs and collecting sets of lower level gear is totally pointless. It's not about the feeling that I have "earned" it or anything, it's just that I'm rushing through the game and I am not one of those MMO players that tries to blast to max level while ignoring content to be...uhh...max level. Good for them - they can leave the XP set to "on" Seriously, leveling is too fast in swtor right now and I wish I could at least go grind commendations without leveling while I wait on an FP group - or even be able to run the same FP a few times with groups w/o levelling so high that I can SOLO it...at any rate, please give us the option to turn off XP, even if it's just at certain levels (e.g., lvl 10, 20, 30, 40) so we don't level out of all the great content in this game!

Then you should leave experience set to "on" rather then "off"

Yea, unfortunately, many players just want to race through the content of MMOs. I am in the same situation as you are in that I enjoy the story and conversation cut-scenes, but the other players around just get annoyed with having to deal with it and literally don't want to do a flashpoint more than once because they "already heard" the dialogue... Well, I am sure there are others like us out there in the swtor community and once we find each other, we can enjoy the story-driven instances together (more than once!)

Decide how you like to play and gear/spec accordingly. Melee talents improve melee, healing talent improve heals, etc. The operative is versatile, but don't play against your spec/gear choices. For example, if you beef up your gun, don't be stabbing people with your lvl 5 vibroblade. Also, if you put all your talents into healing talents, you'll lose out on things like cunning boost and some other talents that help dps. Seems like the low-level instances don't require full healing specs anyway and I think that's the idea because BW probably wants players to actually be able to kill stuff (and feel somewhat powerful) as opposed to healing their companion while the companion kills everything (although you can do that if you want). I would say to put more talents into DPS and less (but some) into heals. If you have serious problems in flashpoints with healing, then make talent point changes accordingly. Otherwise maximize damage to allow you to kill stuff faster and feel more powerful

I'm playing on the Oceanic PvP server - good server pop and WZ cues are pretty short. Hard to play on any other server for me b/c of the time difference.

If you really want to know, you should play them both up to about level 20. Many players are different, and you might even surprise yourself with how much you enjoy something that you may have thought boring until you tried it

Hey Guys, Just wanted to say that I quit playing Batman: Arkham City today. I just can't make it past the fight with joker. Maybe Rocksteady will change things in the next release. Until then I'm just going to save my money.

I'm level 14 and I have 3 stuns that I can use out of cover/stealth. Two are grenades and one is that move where you jam your vibroblade or whatever into their chest. Further, the flashbang can aoe stun multiple targets. I'm not entirely convinced that you know what you're talking about.