Level as a tank spec. Seriously. First, you'll have an easy time finding flashpoint groups through groupfinder if you're geared and spec'ed as a tank, and secondly, if you do decide to become a tank at endgame, you'll already have all that experience with playing a tank guardian.

That depends on your gear. If your gear is poor, you need a healer companion. As your gear gets better, you'll find yourself preferring a damage-dealing companion. Treek does pretty decent damage, but it's still less than you'll get out of a properly-geared Kira or Rusk.

To reiterate what JouerTue said, your first goal is to finish the Oricon quests, as that will set you up with a lot of 156-grade gear. Your next goal is to build up lots of commendations to buy better gear. Head to the supplies section of fleet and look for two missions at the mission terminal: one for using groupfinder, and another for doing 3 hard mode flashpoints. Do those missions every week and you'll accumulate comms that you can use to buy better gear. Also, the fact that you are asking this here suggests that you are not in a guild. Find a guild that does weekly operations runs. Not only will you get comms out of the operations runs, but they'll help teach you what to do as a tank in each of those operations.

Comparably equipped, Bowdaar and Riggs are equally competent tanks. The thing about Bowdaar is that he has a knockback ability. Personally, I think it's hilarious when he knocks a mob into another group of mobs and turns a fight into pure chaos, but not everyone finds that so amusing. If this is a problem for you, turn off the appropriate skill (accessible with the tilde key). Treek is probably the most useful because she will heal you between fights, does pretty decent damage, and won't break CC even if you turn all of her skills on. You can easily swap gear between her and Corso.

It sounds like scoundrel would be similar to something you've already tried. Why not give gunslinger a go?

I have both a gunslinger and a scoundrel, so I've tried both romances. Akaavi remains all "Mando Mando Mando" in the relationship as well. On the other hand, Risha is kind of a spoiled mob princess, and that doesn't really change in the relationship either.

Honestly? Try them both and see which playstyle appeals to you most.

Jaxo is supposed to be interesting and appealing so that... Don't complain about Dorne. Male smugglers have to choose between a self-centered bloodthirsty mob princess and a psychotic bloodthirsty mercenary. I'll take boring over that any day.

For end-game group play, biochem is the best deal, hands down. Why? Infinitely reusable stims, infinitely reusable adrenals, and infinitely reusable medkits. During operations, use the adrenal every time the cooldown is free, and you'll be better at damage, healing, or damage mitigation. But don't completely discount the other crew skills. The thing to remember is that with the other crew skills, the primary use of them is to gear up alts while you level them, which makes things go easier. So for any character you plan to do a lot of operations with, learn biochem. For every other alt, think about what would be most useful for the next alt you plan to level up.

The special attack is a 1-hit kill to players in front of it (much like the droid encounter in Toborro's Courtyard), but companions are immune to it. So just pull out your best-geared tank and stay on the droid's sides.

I would say "no". However, I think it is very much worth it to get the regular game, then buy the Digital Upgrade Pack: https://www.swtor.com/user/digitalupgrade Most of it is useless, but getting a free speeder for every future character you create is worth the price of admission all by itself. Best five bucks you'll ever spend on an in-game transaction.

Eh, Noxxic is pretty decent for that type of thing. As for gearing, I usually refer to this: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=616779 ...but I have to admit I've no idea if that info is still current.

The lack of tanks is not caused by clueless DPS. The lack of tanks is caused by the fact that most people don't find it fun. I enjoy tanking, but if I could, I would probably do nothing but ranged DPS and healing. I mostly play my tank because that's what people need. If a guildie wants to queue for a flashpoint, the queue pops faster if I'm on my tank as opposed to my healer or DPS character, and I'm very impatient. Full guild flashpoints, operations, etc., are usually short on tanks so I need to bring my tank character to those rather than one of my other characters. No worries, I like helping. Weird thing is, I revel in extra chaos when I'm with guildies. Heck, it's not unusual to see healers start a fight with a face-pull or even a direct attack (and that includes boss fights, mind you). We routinely do stupid things during flashpoints (and sometimes even operations) just for the fun of it; chaos makes me happy. What's weird about that is that when I'm in a PUG, I can be one of those control freaks, mostly because I've run into those "hey, I think I'll pull a different group" players, and so I've become paranoid and overly meticulous in flashpoint PUGs. I do LOS pull unnecessarily, sometimes to round things up for AoE, but mostly because I'm terrified someone will start pulling other things after the fight starts, and that PUG healer may or may not be geared enough to cope with things like that. Then again, maybe it's just because I'm a fastidious SOB.

Not really. Nearly all MMORPGs do something to restrict the rate at which endgame gear can be accumulated. The idea is that if it takes you a while to get all of your gear, you're going to be more willing to help other people get their gear. The problem with the method of caps is that it is counterproductive. Once you've hit the cap, you have no incentive to do any more group content for the rest of the week.

No, he wasn't. The emperor already had his way with Revan before the events of the game. That was why he fell.

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Yes, and I was explaining that I like what I got better than the more expensive shuttered monitors.

Yeah, well, gaming forums are full of anecdotal fallacies, but then anecdotal evidence is probably all we have unless Bioware publishes the statistics or someone makes a census utility like they have in WoW.

I've been out of the game for a long time. Why is my question strange? I don't quite remember which Imperial classes correspond to which Republic classes.

How about on the Republic side?

I just got back into the game after a hiatus, so I'm curious about how things stand. What classes are most in demand for group PvE content? What classes are easiest in solo PvE? What classes excel at PvP? Eventually, I hope to level up a character in each class, so yeah, I'll eventually find out for myself, but call me impatient if you will. I'd like to hear the opinions of others.

I doubt it will be fixed anytime soon. It doesn't actually make gameplay any worse for any players, it is merely annoying. There are probably a lot more important bugs for them to work on. But it is still annoying.

Yeah, I know. This is a really minor bug that does not affect gameplay. The developers should probably be concentrating on more important stuff, but for some reason this bug annoys me. It seems so many companions have the same holstering bug where they wander around with their weapons out. Has there been any word from devs about this bug? Are there any other minor bugs (that don't affect gameplay at all) that bother you?

It's an opinion, but an opinion I share. Whatever its flaws (mostly being too conservative with design and hewing too close to the WoW model), this game does feel like KotOR 3 to me, and that's mostly why I keep playing it. I barely touch any of the group content, but I've been enjoying the heck out of the solo content.

Because I have a long commute, I am now a casual player rather than hard core like I used to be. I'm still leveling up my first character. So far, I love the story for Jedi Knight, and I plan on experiencing all the other major classes in each faction. It'll be a long time before I manage that feat, but once I do, you can bet I'll be interested in more story. Lots more story. It's the best part of this game. The problem is that with the subscription drop, Bioware laid off a lot of the post-release development team for SWtOR. I worry that with fewer developers they won't be able to pump out new content at quite the rate I was hoping for, and that includes post-release story elements.