Yahoo Finance has confirmed that the deal includes LucasArts (George's game company), along with Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic. Whatever comes next, Disney will have as much say as Lucasfilm used to.

The Vanguard that I'm leveling right now has Cybertech, Scavenging, and Slicing. He and his crew have a lot of moddable armor already, because I still play dress up with my dolls, and every Armoring piece that I craft is seven fewer commendations that I have to grind. I'm not likely to use the M1-4X droid companion, because my Vanguard is already a tank, but the Cybertech skill would be an excellent set of droid parts if I wanted to use him. None of the crew skills represent a true path to self-sufficiency, though; they were designed with the intent that players would trade with one another. A healthy game economy is one where goods and Monopoly money are flowing back and forth. If I had to single out one skill that you would get particularly little out of, I would say Synthweaving, since neither the Trooper nor any of his companion are Force users. Even Aritifice has some use; it will make Enhancement parts for your moddable gear and color crystals for your guns, shields, and generators.

Conversation cutscenes for playable Wookies would be amazing.

DPS always have 100% control over the amount of threat they generate. Always. They can always stop pushing buttons for a second. Two seconds, even, in the case of heroic and exceptionally disciplined individual DPSers. They have much more control over their own threat than healers do.

For Force-using tanks, it's almost worth turning around just for the behind-the-back lightsaber parry. It never gets old.

At low levels, Endurance and your class-specific primary stat will do. That's Aim for Bounty Hunters and Troopers, Strength for Sith Warriors and Jedi Knights, and Willpower for Jedi Consulars and Sith Inquisitor. When secondary stats like Defense (chance to dodge/parry), Shield Rating (chance to block), and Absorption Rating (amount of damage blocked) become available at higher levels, the exact balance you want between those stats will depend on which tanking class you are. There are folks in the class specific forums who can give you more detailed answers than I can.

If you tanked in WoW, you won't have to start learning how to tank from scratch in SWTOR. I think you'll find that the option, in Preferences, to make your character automatically turn to face the target is a godsend, as is the ability to level as a tank with a DPS companion, so you can practice pulling, taunting, and timing your defensive cooldowns while doing solo content. I was a WoW player for six years; it was SWTOR, though, that taught me to love tanking.

For gameplay, I've become extremely fond of deceptively simple movement fights, like Boarding Party's engineering room encounter and the final boss fight of Hammer Station. A lot of the challenge and the fun comes from teaching those fights to new players, and success or failure hinge on the party's ability to work together. It's metagame, but I feel like those fights have given me a real education on the interpersonal aspects of MMO gameplay. They've brought me out of my shell.

It's a case of gameplay trumping any other considerations. In this case, having as few people as possible argue over who gets melee weapons when they drop off of bosses. I like the way ranged tanking works now, personally. I don't mind being close to the boss for most of the fight, and the ability to hold threat once I have it with Hammer Shots and Ion Cylinder gives me the freedom to move that melee tanks wish they had in fights that require a lot of movement to avoid damage.

My No-Prize answer: The traditional hierarchical structure between Squad Leader and Commanding General is dispensed with due to the classified nature of each squad's operations, minimizing the number of people who "need to know." The promotions you receive are pay raises. Alternate answer: a lot of spots were left open in the chain of command by the many defectors who followed Tavus' lead. Your promotions reflect you growing into the role that Tavus occupied before his departure. Maybe it's a little of both.

In addition to Happysister's excellent advice, I would suggest choosing a target that is separate from the rest, when the environment layout allows it. If the rest of the mobs are standing close together and one is kind of on the outside, that's your cc target. It's a small thing, but it will help enable your party to use AOE damage without the risk of accidentally catching your cc target in the damage and setting him free.

If you're looking for full kilt-like leg armor for a Bounty Hunter, the Warbringer's Greaves from the Hammer Station Flashpoint or the Warrior's Pulsing Greaves that Synthweavers can craft might be of interest. In the case of the Hammer Station kilt, you would need to replace the +Strength doodads with +Aim Armoring and Mod pieces. For Troopers, screenshots of the Outcast Prototype (from Taris Heroics) and Outcast (from Armormech) can be found at the links. Hammer Station also has a chest which uses the same model for Troopers.

This one is particularly interesting. I'm under the impression that the astromech droid sells parts that give C2-N2 or 2V-R8 bonuses to your choice of crew skills, putting him on par with the rest of your companions in terms of mission turnaround time and chance to score an exceptional result. I've never bought the astromech for myself because there are other things I'd rather do with a million credits, but there's a ship feature that can't be had any other way.

As you said, you've got options. If you're sporting a growing collection of orange customizable gear, those Heroics can be a great source of extra commendations to keep those items up to date with, but otherwise they're just icing on the cake.

Rotations can easily emerge naturally as you get the hang of how your class plays in its group role, and what moves serve to set up others. For my Juggernaut tank, it's really more of a priority system where I renew the different damage mitigating effects as they fall off.

In the game's chat system, a whisper is a private message that goes directly to the intended player, rather than to the public chat channel. To whisper a message to me that my shoe is untied, you would type: /whisper Otembe Your shoe is untied. Once another player whispers to you, you can reply by substituting "/r" for "/whisper."

It's like an EBay in space, where players put items up for sale and other players can buy them. It's called an Auction House in other games.

The early space missions are pretty good at training you. They really smooth out the learning curve. The first is an escort mission where the shuttle you're escorting is like a Flashpoint tank, receiving all the enemy fire, and you're the damage dealer, burning down the hostile fighters and capital ship turrets in order to minimize the damage the escort takes and to keep him from being overwhelmed. That's followed closely by a mission to attack an enemy space station, with very little return fire from the enemy. The main tasks asked of you are collision avoidance and budgeting to make sure you don't run out of missiles before you run out of targets. They get more challenging after that, including harder high level versions of early missions, but the space missions in general are a good example of a well designed game that teaches the player how to play, in my opinion. Edited to Add: You also don't need to lead your shots in the space missions. Good news, right? You know how in "A New Hope," Obi-Wan's ghost convinces Luke to turn off his targeting computer before firing at the Death Star? Your ship's targeting computer stays on. As long as you're within weapons range and your targeting cursor is on the target when you fire, that's a hit.

My biggest concern would be arriving on a new planet or in a new Flashpoint with gear that's 10 levels old. If you have a means of keeping your gear (and the gear on your favorite companion!) up to date, knock yourself out, but you may want to stop and really milk a planet for quest rewards and commendations every now and then.

A good way to get practice with the tank role in between Flashpoints is to level with the Immortal spec and tank for your more fragile damage dealer companion.

I'm a Razer Naga convert. Any scheme that binds the quickbar buttons to physical keys has the advantage of improved reaction time compared to clicking the quickbar buttons with the mouse cursor; putting the quickbar buttons where your right hand can operate them has the additional advantage of letting your left hand move the character while your right hand executes button combos, whether your class has an ability rotation or a priority system. This is how the designers of console controllers have done it for years. The left hand corresponds with the side of the brain that handles spacial awareness, and the right hand is associated with the side of the brain that handles logic. Plus, there are studies that suggest an advantage in learning when motor memory is brought into the process, whether you have physical buttons to control your class abilities or are learning to spell by learning to type. Also, gaming mice look snazzy.

As a counterpoint, I actually like challenging content throughout the game, even if it has me scratching my head for a day or two. It would be a shame if Bioware started nerfing Flashpoint encounters and significant story chapter climaxes out of a misguided belief that trivialized content is everybody's idea of fun. I believe that the level cap is a little late to start learning one's class, spec, and role. Congrats on beating that encounter, OP! I hope you got a feeling of having mastered your Inquisitor a little more because of it! Now when somebody asks how to do it, you can be the one to teach.

I find that DPS companions are much more useful to leveling tanks than healing companions, personally; with my first couple of tank characters, practicing threat and cooldown management while my companion dealt the killing blows in my alone time permitted me to walk into my first Flashpoints with the comfort that came with familiarity with my class, spec, and role. The choice of a tank main character and a DPS companion (or tank companion with his threat generating moves turned off) made the tank role so comfortable, so quickly, that it's what I would recommend to new players for their first toon. With that said, I'm sure the staff are going to do a Republic companion second, but surely Vette must be the next Imperial choice. Right?

Hope this helps: I found a site that makes recommendations about your tactics in that fight here.

The title of "coolest companion" can only go to my funky reptilian brother from another mother, Qyzen Fess.