Someone else may be able to direct you to a SWTOR wiki, there's not one I use, but a good place for information is the "New Player Fleet Pass" thread stickied at the top here. Just dip in whenever you have time and have a look through some of the threads. There is some good information distilled in there, which saves having to trawl these forums for the occasional tidbit of good advice

If you look closely you'll see those are pre-baked shadows, meaning because there is a single directional light source the shadows don't move. They do have *some* dynamic lighting effects for spot effects, but the major shadows from buildings and other static structures are all pre-baked shadow maps. This gives a much higher resolution than true dynamic shadowing, which is what SWTOR is using. So SWTOR is using a more advanced shadowing technique, but suffers because the quality is lower. For an analogy, remember when 3D first became viable on home PCs ... the characters in games looked rubbish compared to the old 2D characters had been used to even though the tech was more 'advanced'. It's actually much more than that ... it is AI controlling physics. It uses an AI that is modelling physical and mental things to create realistic non-canned motion. But anyway, it is cool tech. Just think of the processing involved though if every single moving entity in SWTOR was having to run CPU time dedicated to keeping it balanced and on its feet ... this is a non-trivial use of CPU time when the alternative is simply to not worry about it and go for 'old tech' which works and is scalable. Sure you get cool side effects from this, like being able to nudge characters and watch them wobble and try and stay on their feet - but is that enough to justify huge amounts of CPU time in an MMO?

But I've had times where a WZ starts, then cancels because of lack of players on my team, requeues, starts, cancels again. You can waste time just bouncing around into WZ's that are never going to start because of team imbalances. Personally I'd rather be allowed to play with that imbalance and at least get some valour/kills/xp/money from the match - even though it will almost certainly be a loss. With cancelled WZs you gain nothing from the repeated start/stop. Ranked and rated matches are a different thing though, and so there'd need to be some way to measure your personal performance irrespective of team imbalances if matches don't cancel because of team size differences.

No, you can't rearrange companion abilities ... so the ones that show when minimised are not under your control. One thing you may not be aware of though is that you can choose which quickbar the companion bar appears over (it doesn't have to be the centre bottom bar) so you could make it appear over the left bar (for example). This option is in the preferences.

There are a number of threads about computer hardware and specs ... check the new player fleet pass as I think that has some threads on this topic and recommendations/opinions from other players. Currently I don't think any graphics card can handle high settings with *no* lag in PvP, but I could be wrong. As you have a budget in mind then you can easily find out the best card for that money, and from that card work out whether you need a power supply upgrade or not.

No, unless you are in certain Oceanic countries and created your character before a certain date. No date has been given for when this will be available.

Not saying you're lying, just that you must have missed some quest chains without knowing it. Your starting planet doesn't have a bonus series so that doesn't really come in to play but it does have some 2+ heroics that can be completed with just you and your companion. What I was saying about the starting planet is that usually, if you've done every quest (not including heroics) you will be level 10 or 11. This isn't achieved just by sitting grinding enemies either, literally just doing the quests and any of the 'bonus missions' that are incidental to the quest itself (like "kill X enemies"). Because it is the first planet rested xp doesn't usually come in to play either. So on one character I did leave the starting planet at level 9 but that was because I purposefully ignored some quests, having done that planet before, but every other character (yes, every one) they were level 11 when they left. I can't see that you'd be earning less XP than me, and in fact you'd be earning more if you're taking on orange rated enemies, so there is obviously a disconnect from what you're reporting and what others have witnessed. The only options I can see are (a) your characters earn less XP than anyone elses or (b) you aren't actually doing every quest. Option (a) seems exceptionally unlikely which only leaves (b), but doesn't mean you are lying. As plenty of people have pointed out on this thread and many others like it, the only way to fall behind the level curve throughout the game is to skip missions, otherwise you will end up way above the curve. Space Missions, PvP, Flashpoints are not mandatory and you will still be above the curve even if you skip them.

I assume you mean ragdoll physics rather than effects. Where and how would you like to see this? I can see it working for death animations, for example, where it could be implemented in a client-side way only while the server keeps modelling a much simpler version of the physics model that isn't jointed. If you want to implement it so that you can swing enemies around like the video you linked in your first post then that is a much bigger job. See TF2 for an example of the first kind of implementation: when an enemy dies it falls to the ground under a ragdoll physics model, but that is it. Ragdolls are not switched on for anything else. Why and where? Would you want the world to rebuild itself after a group of players have been through or will it progressively become more and more rubble the longer a server is online? Entropy would rule and players that joined the game after it had been running for a year would just find major locations were made of rubble rather than buildings. In specific instances I could see it could be worked in (and so rebuilt itself with each instance) so it doesn't have an adverse effect on the world as a whole. How would you target the landscape to do this too? Currently there isn't a way to just hit a wall, so would you be limiting it to craters around your target or AoE attacks? Doing what exactly? A.I is just another one of those catch-all terms like 'physics engine' that describes nothing. What features are you expecting from this 'advanced' AI? I'm pretty sure you've got that already. Just look at the cloaks on your character as you run, jump, use elevators etc. This is a cloth simulation, it isn't canned animation. You can tell this because sometimes it goes crazy (particularly on fast moving elevators) and will flap right up in the air like Marilyn Monroe on a air-vent. Where else would you like to see cloth simulation? Could be done, but the fact it hasn't doesn't show lazyness imho. It shows a design decision. As I said before, I don't particularly like a day/night cycle and would rather have a crafted experience whereby a particular instance/flashpoint/planet may have a night-time lighting to add to the mood of it rather than it just being a function of whatever time it happens to be when I play. You are still using this phrase as if it is a weapon and ignored my request to define what you actually mean by it. As I said, not walking through walls and not falling through floors and ramps IS server-side collision detection ... what do YOU mean by it? Here's some examples to help you out: player-to-player, player-to-npc, player-to-environment, npc-to-environment, object-to-environment, object-to-object, object-to-player, object-to-npc. Which of these (or all of them) are you specifically wanting in the game? Take into account that if you want various object-to-X physics then you're talking about adding more than just collision detection to make this meaningful. For example, there is no point in object-to-environment CD if there is no way to apply force and torque to an object, so then you get in to the realms of adding a Newtonian physics engine modelling forces, friction, drag and torque etc. So if this is what you want then you'd help yourself by being specific and not just saying 'server-side collision detection' which is pretty meaningless (and already exists in SWTOR) In case you're interested (but I'm not sure you are) the shadows are like they are because they're dynamic rather than baked in. Linked with the fact that world lighting doesn't move around (because of the fixed time of day) they could have gone with baked in shadows which could then have been of a much higher 'resolution' BUT then you wouldn't be able to affect the shadows with the various abilities that cast light (or light saber). Dynamic shadows are always fairly low res because they are quite costly. Have a guess at the texture size required for a complete shadow map of somewhere like Taris, even at the '8-bit' resolution they're at now. With respect, you are wrong. It is my job. Where did graphic engines come into it? Hero engine isn't just a graphics engine, if that is what you are implying. And as you are obviously a very skilled programmer could you explain how you'd implement, say, Euphoria into your engine *without* changing anything in the graphics engine? Would you not be changing the scene graph? Or the entity handling system? What about the server side physics engine - surely that would need to change to allow a wider variety of interactions? Which then means your packet format will undoubtedly change and then your packet coalescence code would need changing. Yes skilled programmers can do these things, but to an existing engine that has millions of man hours of development already put into it and a million or so players already using it? I think the changes are so deep and far-reaching you'd be looking at least a year or two of extra development just to to do the surgery required to completely detach your existing physics/entity system and put in more advanced versions. While this is going on then other development on the engine would have to come to a standstill - it is pointless making such major changes to a codebase that is essentially being rewritten as you'll have to do the work again under the new regime anyway. You started by asking if hero engine and euphora are 'compatible' ... which implies a lego-block understanding of how game engine programming actually works. Sure, they're compatible at a source code level in the same way that St Pauls Cathedral is compatible with a 2 bed semi-detached house: they're made of bricks and you can take the bricks apart and put them back together in a different way. Can you "just" fix the cathedral onto the house? Not in any way that makes sense you can't no, without an extensive redesign of both entities.

Keep them both. Wear the one you like the look of. Move mods around so you have the best mods in the one you are wearing. Dingdingdingding. We have a winner

I thought a number of people had provided you with pretty good reasons, and also helped with your ignorance of what an engine is and isn't. Putting double quotes around the word "expert" doesn't take away from the fact you've had real-life programmers explain to you why certain things don't just bolt together like lego blocks. I am not going to deny that PvP in this game suffers from serious performance problems, but comparing it to Crysis 2 is pretty insane. Show me a scene in Crysis 2 where a large random number (let's say up to 100) of animating, moving characters are having their position dictated in a client>server>client fashion. And those models are made up of a customisable face, one of a thousand different helmets, chest piece, legs, boots, bracers, gloves and weapon. Crysis 2 will be working with a much smaller number of textures (which means they can be higher res) and for single player will be a very controlled experience whereby the designer knows exactly which textures are needed on a minute by minute basis and so can optimise their texture libraries to take advantage of that. The fact your character can walk up ramps and stairs is due to collision detection. The fact they don't walk through walls is due to collision detection. So you need to redefine your terms. What do YOU mean by collision detection? Well, you're wrong. I'm not blind or a fanboy but I seem to have more awareness of things than you so maybe that's why I seem to be disagreeing with you? I didn't start by disagreeing, I started by asking what element of that video in your first post you wanted because all it showed was some rag-doll physics. Apparently though what you want is the moon-on-a-stick

Because if there was a huge treasure chest at the end of a long long corridor which you were expected to fight your way down, then low level characters could just run, res, run, res, run, res etc until they reached the end and claim a treasure they had no right to get. The more you die the longer your respawn time, meaning that after the 3rd or 4th death you should start to doubt what you are doing and go and find something else to do. If I die so many times that I get to the 9 minute counter then I know that I am doing something seriously wrong: either I am forgetting some of my abilities and not playing to the max, or I am trying to take on someone who is too high for me right now. In those cases just res back at the med centre (which resets your counter) and go and do something else until you feel you can tackle whatever it was that was repeatedly killing you.

Just because you've been given a mission doesn't mean it is (a) easy or (b) even achievable right at that moment. For example, I got given the Nar Shadaar bonus series and it was orange for me whereas the next step in my class quest was to go to Tatooine which was green ... so I returned to the Nar Shadaar ones quite a few levels later. Open your quest log (L) and look at the mission titles. They are coloured (in the same way that enemy names/levels are in your HUD) according to how difficult they are to achieve at your current level. Grey (trivial) < green (easy) < yellow (ok, might be tricky) < orange (you better play well) < red (seriously difficult). The quests will also have [HEROIC] in the title if it is a quest that isn't suitable for 1 person, with the colour rating being relative to having the right number of players. So a green [HEROIC 4] will be difficult on your own, but easy in a group of 4. If they're already attacking you then there isn't much to gain from running-and-gunning, especially as you are playing an inquisitor and should be getting up in their face and frying them. There are only a few things you need to know to begin with, and a number of the areas you've had problems with (modding weapons, how to tell how hard a fight with an enemy will be, how to purchase/upgrade your abilities) were actually given to you in game as popup information tutorials, that then got added to your codex. You know the ones, they appear on the right and start of with things like 'moving' and 'talking to mission givers' Number 1 though, visit your class trainer and make double sure that you have purchased all the abilities you should have. Make sure you check BOTH tabs, because he has skills for both your class and your advanced class. Number 2 would be to read the tool-tip descriptions of your abilities and use them to their best effect when fighting.

I'd be happy with more hood-down gear just like the very first commendation gear you buy on Tython ... Temple Watchman's Vest ... the sort of outfit worn by Master Jaric Kaedan is also good. I *don't* like the heavily armoured, american football shoulder pads, knight-in-shining armour looks - so I guess that just shows we've all got different ideas of what is cool or not

Keybinds affect quickbar slots, not abilities. So you bound a key to a slot, not a stance. It just so happens that when you've expanded your companion bar it sits in slots. 1.2 is introducing the concept that your companion bar is its own entity and doesn't overwrite one of your 4 bars, so this could help because you wouldn't need to shrink/expand it all the time.

But the maths probably don't work like that, and have increasing xp requirements the higher you go ... just like levelling. For example, adding together two lvl 25 characters doesn't give you a lvl50 ... it probably only takes you in to the mid-high 30's.

AFAIK no one but the devs will know this for sure, but what you've got there would make sense except that defence and shield are two different things. Defence is a chance to avoid incoming attacks, whereas shield is the chance to reduce damage of an attack that has hit. The post about primary/secondary stats can help with the understanding of these things ...

That's a great idea - why didn't I think of that! I'm going to try wearing lightsabers in every body slot, then when people attack me they'll get things chopped off. Attack is the best form of defence! Attack to the head? Light-sabre defence! Leg sweep? Light-sabre defence! Snuggling up to Kira? Ooops, sorry girlfriend, I'm sure that will heal with cream.

This is the way it is in every MMORPG - although in the old days you didn't even get a transport. You wanted to go somewhere? Then get there under your own steam. Instant transport seems a bit, I don't know, impatient? The delay of having to watch a cut-scene or the delay on one starting up? If the former then you can press spacebar to skip through a cut-scene, although imho if you're skipping every story then you are missing the point of SWTOR and would be better off playing a game that doesn't have a story. It is the big thing that SWTOR brings to the genre. ? You want a wheelchair or something? When you've increased levels a bit you can get a speeder, but from point (1) I think you just don't like travelling at all. Yeah, it could be better I agree. Maps are generally organised into zones with increasing difficulties. If you're wandering into Heroic areas, or even just higher level areas and getting smeared then you took a wrong turn and should head to where you've been directed to go. I think you probably need to learn how to play your class better, and make sure that you have definitely purchased all the powers available to you (both inquisitor and advanced class). At level 15 everything should be pretty easy for you to tackle if you're in the correct areas of the map. It not working for you then? You're looking in the right folder on your computer for the images I take it? Pretty much standard MMORPG mechanism I'm afraid. The improvement in SWTOR is that at least you can sell all the junk without having to travel back to a vendor (by using your companion). They're a more varied way of providing you with credits. As someone else said: is it definitely an orange light saber you are you trying to upgrade? If it is, then you should follow the advice also given in this thread and just leave the modification station alone ... it isn't needed anymore. Just ctrl-rightclick on the item to modify it. Because he's a big lumpy lizard man and gloves don't look good on him? Seriously though, the more extreme aliens all act like this. Bowdaar the wookie is another example of a companion that putting different gloves, boots etc make no visual difference. Don't know, but are you sure this is a SWTOR problem? That keybinding is done with x-fire and not SWTOR isn't it. Are others having this problem on x-fire forums? I'm on a 1meg line, and lucky to get consistent sustained 100kps, and can play ok. If I then combine that with trying to play wireless through that connection though I often have problems. Yeah bugs happen. I've had similar ones where an animation continued on through normal gameplay. It resolved itself though when I had a cut-scene later on. Stop dying so much Seriously though, if you choose the option to spawn at med centre then the clock will be reset. If it is getting to 9 or 20 mins though you should take a step back and realise you are doing something very very wrong. Either you're trying to take on an enemy you can't defeat or you're not playing to your fullest. Along with your earlier complaint that your abilities are useless I'm wondering if you have ever visited your class trainer? But then you say you have a double-light saber so you must have done. Some abilities you stand still for, some you don't. Why do you think you need to run around though in the first place? It doesn't make you harder to hit. Step back, breath deeply and chill It is only a game, and maybe of a genre you're not used to from some of your earlier comments. So take time out to have a read of the New Player Fleet Pass and make sure you are doing the basics right. Like wearing the right kind of equipment for your class Like having all your abilities Like using those abilities in the best way Hope that helps.

Yeah doesn't seem to be. I've just had a good helmet drop, can I wear it on my arm because it is better than my bracers and I don't want to remove my existing helmet?

Yes it would, and a relatively simple change too. Don't know why it hasn't been done before now tbh.

But just adding a day/night cycle isn't the same as immersion, and for many people immersion is possible without the mundane. I feel immersed despite not seeing a toilet anywhere in the world, or sewage floating in the waterways of the refugee areas. One argument why day/night cycles are annoying is that as a casual player with a fixed and short play session you will end up seeing a particular planet always under the same lighting conditions and, let's be honest, most night-time light levels are not great for game play. The first time you see a full day/night cycle yeah wooh! Pretty! But the 100th time you log on and it is still frikkin nighttime? Annoying. I much prefer a crafted and designed visual experience, whereby the designer has chosen a lighting level appropriate to the experience. So some areas may have lower ambient light to give a dark and moody feel, whereas others are constantly under a bright and clean tropical light. I know this doesn't do it for everyone though, and some people want to be able to go off somewhere and quest at night - or sit on a cliff and watch the sun go down. But that's not me

But rested XP generally makes no difference at that stage, because you're probably going to do your first planet in one sitting and won't have had any. So even without rested XP, if you're doing *every* mission on that planet you should be higher than level 9 and actually closer to level 11. I've always been level 11 when I've left a starting planet, if I've done every quest. If I haven't done every quest then sure, you can leave much much sooner. So what happened with you? Did you not actually do every mission?

But Bowdaar has been fighting as a gladiator for 108 years with a vibrosword - and doing rather well with it. Then all of a sudden you turn up, give him a rifle and expect him to be able to use it? So no, it isn't up to you. Your companion existed before you turned up and has life experiences you don't even know about. You should work with what you've got!

You didn't do all the quests, but maybe you did all the class quests. There's no way you'd be that far underlevelled if you did every quest on every planet. Even skipping the heroic 2+, 4+, flashpoints, PvP and space missions you can't fall that far behind if you are doing every single quest on a planet, including bonus missions and end-of-planet bonus series.

Yes daily missions can award merc commendations. Open world PvP doesn't award commendations (directly). One extra bit of help though, watch out for patch 1.2. The exchange rate between Warzone and Merc Commendations is changing to 1:1 ... so if you're currently converting wz->merc at 3:1 with the intention of saving them up then you'll lose out when the patch hits. If you're doing that and spending them before the patch then no worries.