Here's some ideas ... Bob Doe Thinkforme Noimagination

The answers to nearly all your questions can be found in the New Players Fleet Pass ... the sticky post at the top of this forum! That particular information (colour coding of enemies/missions) is available in the PvE Basics post - and others I'm sure - linked from the original thread. There is a wealth of really useful information linked from there, and it is definitely worth having a read through every now and then.

Gems, and colour crystals, are crafting materials. One you get from treasure hunting and the other from archaeology. Both are used by the artifice crafting skill to create, amongst other things, the crystals you put into weapons (including light sabers). Easy way to tell weapon crystals apart from other crystals is that weapon crystals have stats (such as +4 endurance) ... other crystals don't.

There's a sticky at the top of this forum called 'new player fleet pass' ... within that is a post about what each stat is for/does. There are also lots of other posts in there that contain very useful info.

No date has been announced, so you're not going to get one however much you reaaaaaally need to know As other poster said, if you reaaaaaaaally need to be on a different server then just roll a new character. If it isn't urgent then waiting for official announcement is all you can do.

How are you initiating attacks ... by pressing a keyboard key for right-clicking an enemy? Are you 100% sure that the attack you are trying to use is your 'free' attack (which class are you)?

Yes But the amount shown will be the amount you get ... so if it shows as 100xp, and you're rested, then the same enemy would show as 50xp if you weren't rested. No mental maths required, just read the numbers.

From the manual "While in a rested state, XP gained from killing creatures is greatly increased"

Love it! As for your OP ... meh ... whatever.

Just assuming that a 'patch crew' is indeed required, because the process of running a patch script can't be run by just any numpty and they absolutely positively have to have some special IT-Ninjas on hand in case things go wrong then: (a) Their pre-patch procedure sucks. Before rolling a patch live you will have performed fake updates on servers that were for all and intents and purposes identical to the live servers. During this process the patch script can be modified to catch all strangeness, and will adapt over time to include new things that catch you out. In fact you can even run the pre-patch across snapshots of ALL live servers to throw up even more oddities that may arise. (b) The patch crew don't need to be on 24-hour/day, just 8 hours/week when patching takes place. As an IT support person on system-critical support they would not be unfamiliar with rotating shift patterns and so could deal with rotating shifts. No need for 3 times the amount of staff, just hire proper IT support who are used to that kind of thing (go visit a datacentre near you, or look at their 'hiring now' adverts to see this in action) But actually, neither of those should be needed, because an update should be a script that just gets executed at any time they like ... Although this is massively off-topic (and has been talked about to death already in previous forums it usually degenerates into "Yah Boo, Europeans complaining because their servers are down in primetime" and "Yah Boo, Americans jumping in with no understanding because they're not affected") I believe the problem is just due to inexperience with manning a global online infrastructure ...

Oh my god - you actually believe that don't you? Are you an 'adult' who partook of too many KoolAids in the 60's? Anyway, you may be interested in this amazing hat I can sell you - guaranteed to keep your thoughts private from the government who are in cahoots with the lizard aliens that actually run all the mega coorps. Seriously though, seriously? You really believe that. Wow Any particular hardware maker they're in bed with, or is it a blanket "every piece of hardware from every company anywhere in the world" kind of deal? Do they get money from this? Does it appear on their publicly available books? (Silly question I guess, because this knid of conspiracy demands that all transactions from hardware makers would be hidden under some innocuous entry in the books rather than "back-handers from hardware company") And when the game company has purposefully crippled their own game, on your hardware because they've decided you should spend more on computer hardware, can they just write off you as a player spending any more money on the game, because obviously not everyone will rush out and buy new hardware ... some will just return the game or plod on with the 'fake' crippled performance. Oh and just thought of one, is it every game maker doing this too? I guess it would have to be otherwise you'd get the situation of someone playing a game from Activision, say, and remarking how well it ran on his hardware and then playing a game from EA, say, and noticing that it was seriously underperforming. This would then impact EA adversely in the computer games industry, more so than the kick-backs from the hardware makers I'd guess. So every game maker, everywhere, is cahoots with every hardware maker, everywhere, and receives payments for purposefully making their own games run slow on hardware that they think they can get an upsell on new parts for. Just wanted to clear that up

Off topic: You think there is just one set of guys running the servers, and if the servers happen to fail 'off shift' then people get phone calls and have to drive to a server location to crank start them back up again? They will have round the clock tech guys already, but if their patching procedure requires actual programmers and game developers to be on hand then their pre-patch procedures are obviously pretty basic and need work

Because they use techniques instead of charges.

Hee, no problem. That's what a 'new player help' forum is supposed to be about right? It doesn't always stay that way, and sometimes you can't help but wonder at some of the questions asked ("just google it!") but on the whole I think most people posting here understand that everyone is new and/or confused at some point.

I'm sorry but you're wrong, otherwise you'd have seen it done. The reason you can't name a single MMO that has graphics comparable to the highest-end single player game you could imagine is not because every developer is lazy: it is because there are real and next-to-impossible problems involved. You do actually touch on some of those, but then seem to think because it is all client-side rendering there shouldn't be a problem. What you may not be aware of is how textures are actually loaded into a graphics card and the texture/memory budget associated with that. Single player games are very carefully crafted and optimised so that draw calls are minimised (otherwise you get a bottleneck) and one way to achieve this is to reuse textures and blast them all in one call to the graphics card. With a single player game this can be controlled in a deterministic way - the programmer will know *exactly* which textures will be involved at any one point. As such they can pack them in a way that means textures being used at the same phase of the game are sent to the card as one call. With an MMO you never know which textures are going to be called on at the same time, because every player could be wearing any of hundreds of different items. If each of these were high-res, and sent to the graphics card in individual draw calls you'd notice slow-downs just from graphics 'lag'. Oh hang on, that's what we get already Even beautiful single player games have to work within these limits which is why, even if there are a lot of enemies on screen, you'll notice there is a huge amount of texture sharing between them. Show me a screen shot from a game with a hundred enemies, made up of individual customised parts (helmet, body, boots, gloves, bracers), and every one of them using different textures and I'll change my opinion (and also realise that there is a genius programmer out there who has solved the holy grail of graphics programming).

Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about going on a diet but rather changing your diet in a long-lasting and permanent way. A lot of 'modern' disorders can have quite clear links with the ****** food most people eat now ... artificial colours, flavours, preservatives and generally foods that come in a packet. All in the name of convenience people stuff their faces with crap. Instead buy fresh vegetables, meat, rice/pasta/potatoes and you can cook a million and one dishes yourself for half the price AND you know the only thing added to them is what you yourself put there. Anyway, off my soapbox now

Check out the sticky at the top of this forum called "New Players Fleet Pass" which contains links to very informative posts on all sorts of topics. Definitely worth working your way through that as and when you have questions, or have a spare half hour and want to learn about all the game has to offer. I think you must have missed the Hollywood convention memo then, the one that says that all evil but intelligent bad guys have English accents Next time you watch a Hollywood movie keep an eye (and ear) out for English accents and what kind of characters they are associated with! And in terms of Star Wars itself, think of some of the bad guys throughout the series: Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin), Christopher Lee (Darth Tyranus), Clive Revill (voice of Emperor), Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) ... and more besides.

You can exchange warzone commendations for mercenary commendations, which will then free up more room to earn WZ commendations again.

Well you're aware of the rules so just need to slow down and take notice. It is about knowing your weakness (ADHD) and what it can lead to (inattentiveness), but consciously dealing with it by working harder than 'normal' people on your weak areas. It's the same with OCD, shyness, stutter, depression and all manner of psych areas. Change of diet can help, and drugs can take the edge off, but long-term it just means you need to work harder than others to do something they take for granted. Good luck!

At the top of this forum is a sticky called "New Players Fleet Pass", within that is a very informative post called "An Easy Guide to Primary Stats and Others". You should read it.

... and that's what 'greed' means. You yourself in that sentence said 'I don't need it'. NEED = can use it right now and better than what I have already GREED = not something I can use, or worse than what I have already, but ofc I can sell it But others won't 'have everything' if they play by the same rules will they? They'll also be greeding on things they can't use and so highest roll will grab it. If it is something that is an upgrade for their gear though would you begrudge them getting it? Do you consider your desire to sell it for some credits as more important than another player getting a genuine upgrade to their gear? If so, then you will have problems in the social game. The pay-off is that when items come up that are an upgrade for *you* then you'll be able to roll 'need' and will get it above others in your party who only 'greed' it. If everyone in the party always "needs" items then looting has just come down to a die roll, and so no-one really benefits from getting their class items.

That just isn't true. Unless the player is very new then everyone knows and understands how loot rolls work, and as a result everyone is happy when they play a flashpoint with a PUG and get a fair crack at gear. Of course the rolls themselves, and the drops, may not be in their favour but at least there isn't someone rolling 'need' on items they couldn't possibly use and simply see as vendor trash. It may be "just" etiquette (at the moment at least) but like most things in civilised society when everyone plays the same game everyone is happy. I've been in a flashpoint twice with people that didn't play by the rules - one was a genuine new player who just didn't understand what need/greed meant, and that was obvious the first time we had a roll and he chose 'need' on an item completely unsuitable for his class. All it took was the simple question of "Just checking, do you know the different between need/greed?" to discover this and help him. No anger, no accusations, just a question. This then led to teaching him more about the game because he also didn't know his primary stats or what class of armour he wore. It is good to get these things sorted with the very first flashpoint. The second time it was just a ninja who tried to make excuses about pressing the wrong button (the first time), and getting confused (the second time). I had asked him the same question to check if he knew the difference between need/greed and he laughed and said of course he did. Third time we all waited to see what he'd press, and sure enough it was need on something not for his class ... so the rest of us also pressed need and passed it on to the one player in the group that it was actually suitable for. We then all left the group (he was leader), formed a new group and ran it without him. So yeah, of course you can press any button you like but understand this is a social game - and social etiquette dictates that the buttons have (relatively) clear meanings. If in doubt ask your group. If you ignore the rules then expect to be ignored by other players once word gets around. Like farting in cars, you might get away with it once or twice but if you do it all the time then don't expect to get rides from people that know you

There are also a little + and - signs near the companion portrait that will expand/shrink your companions abilities onto one of your hotbars. You can change which bar they appear on in the preferences.

Usually the one controlled by the player I am up against in a one-on-one in a warzone ...