To speed-jump the gap, just SI/JC AFAIK. And most of us can do it reliably (75%+ success rate). That's only part of it. It's terribly easy to cheese most teams with the right group comp & a slight bit of co-ordination in a partial premade. Most of the time we have 2-3 people across (planting bombs) on door #2 when 7-8 of the defenders are still stuck, alive (yes, we intentionally keep the enemy alive) on "our" side. About 25% of the time we get a free run/plant on door #3. That is what's difficult to counter. Not impossible, but it takes an inordinate amount of forethought to counter what amounts to a gimmick. Now hey, I'll abuse it as long as it's there (just like I abused solo lol-dotting 3-4 people near a door/node in VS/Alderaan before dot interrupts were removed). But I'm the first to admit it's something that needs to be re-evaluated because it's way too each to cheese the average player with. (edit: correction)

The only thing BioWare neglected to do was put a big sign over the gap saying "try jumping here!". Now... It's not terribly fair class-wise (since only SI/JC can do it, and JK/SW/Vanguards/Powertechs are the only ones in a position to take advantage of others trying to do it). It's difficult for most randoms to counter. It should probably be re-examined/modified/removed at some point. But it is not an exploit. (edit: correction)

I haven't had it happen to me (and I've done thousands of Warzones). Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't happening to others. You may want to send an in-game bug report when it happens. Maybe mention whether you could see the transparent door "countdown", whether doing CTRL-U twice alleviates the issue (assuming there's enough time to miss the 1st exit, CTRL-U, and try to make the 2nd before being booted), whether you're eating any lag spikes around the same time, etc. If the forcefield *never* drops, it could be worth trying the repair option in the launcher in case something really weird got corrupted. Anyway, good luck.

If you're referring to Alderaan (the speeders not spawning), it happens to a select few, though it happens frequently to those individuals. If Voidstar/Huttball, I've never been stuck (neither have any of the friends I play with). That said, I turn on auto-run any time I'm in the spawn so that the moment the forcefield is down, I'm out within a fraction of a second.

1) You'll only see that chart with all players from both teams at the end of the game. 2) The medals give you bonus valor/commendations/etc up until you've reached 4 of them (bonuses currently cap out there). They don't have any particular in-game meaning/benefits, beyond looking marginally exciting when you have more than anyone else. Currently they don't reward anything objective-based, though they will in the upcoming patch. 3) Each MVP vote someone receives awards them with a little extra valor and another commendation. Nothing major - it's something of a pat-on-the-back. 4) No. Tab in it's current form on live is brutal (can be used, but not reliably so). Manually clicking/selecting the person you want to target is the most reliable, albeit annoying. 5) Whomever has the most valor (either # or percentage, don't remember which) becomes leader. Open your character sheet to see how full your valor bar is (ignore the valor level - it's not taken into account). If your valor bar is pretty full, you'll probably be leader. Once you gain a valor level and the bar is back to being pretty empty, you'll probably not be leader. You can't give lead to somebody else, though being leader doesn't really matter. If you have unobservant players on your team, as the leader you can mark enemy healers to help point them out to others. Don't feel obligated to come up with a "plan" just because you're leader - either somebody will suggest a strat or they wont, and either people will listen or they won't. Leader is pretty meaningless. 6) No macros currently.

We usually do this in the HM variant, but as you mentioned, co-ordination would be tough without voice. Tank's gotta pull him just far enough back that you can heal the tank but not have LoS of Hasper. --- TBH I think the AoE in that fight is a little overtuned. Anyone with an ounce of latency has a really rough time. They may want to consider changing it to give a stacking damage debuff so that someone can eat the 1st & 2nd tick with minimal damage taken but will die if they also eat the 3rd. Or something similar.

Based on the thread title, I expected a funny knock-knock joke. Instead I find out that my class is being nerfed! What a mean trick!

There are 2 more (and an additional 1 coming when Patch 1.2 comes out). Chances are that you're on an Empire-dominated server and there aren't enough Republic queuing up for the other 2 games to trigger. Thus, you're probably seeing Empire-vs-Empire huttball. In the upcoming patch, this should be alleviated somewhat as Huttball will no longer be the only warzone that supports same-faction games. Until then, just keep queueing - eventually you should get lucky and see an Alderaan or Voidstar.

If you finish your class quests (which will open up the Ilum chain), doing 1 run of Ilum will bring you to level 50 (or very close). The exp is ridiculous, though bring your friend, as the chain is tough to solo in parts even at 49. Estimated time with 2 people.... probably under a couple hours. The chain won't open if you haven't finished your class quests though. So I wouldn't bother heading there until you have. That said, the Ilum storyline is kinda short, and you'll be doing it at 50 anyway (assuming you plan to do dailies). So if you're enjoying the world stories, you may as well do Corellia first.

No. The 10-49 bracket is hilarious. It's the place you'll find people going the wrong way with the Huttball, the place where you can often walk right up to a door/node and start capping even with a number of enemy players around, etc. There's a lot of random, which is kinda fun. The 50's bracket by contrast is pretty boring and predictable. As to the level/ability discrepancy, as others mentioned sprint is coming at level 1, it's possible to do quite well given your limited arsenal anyway, and at it's worst it's not a lot different from the 50's games when you have that-guy-who-just-hit-50-and-is-still-wearing-some-level-36-gear on your team.

Usually when people say that something "sucks for gaming" they give an example of a game. You gave an example of a 3d rendering program. It would make just as much sense for someone to counter by saying that windows "sucks for gaming" and support it by saying the Mac version of iTunes is better than the Windows version of iTunes. You also didn't mention the specs. The Mac in the other room here is at least 300x better at gaming than the PC I have in the basement. The PC in the basement is an old 486 though. So the context kinda matters. Every current Mac (and most made within the last 2-3 years) meet the requirements for TOR hardware-wise, just as nearly every current PC (and many made within the last 2-3 years) do. Other current games from Blizzard, Valve, etc are running just fine on Macs so it's reasonable to assume that if BioWare made a native Mac version it would run just fine too.

It's good in that there isn't a single class that's completely imba to the point of being completely broken (something I've seen all-too-often in other MMO's, including expansions). That said, balance does need work. I play a couple of the stronger classes. I know at least 1 of the classes I don't play needs some love.

A bit OT, but.... Actually, staying at full health means a *large* number of pugs won't jump on you. They'll try to focus the tank at 70% instead. There's a common pug mentality that you simply attack whomever has the shortest health-bar. I've also used this knowledge to give the tank guarding me upwards of 240k protection (just for fun mind you - simply to see how high we can get it). I'll noble-sacrifice to about 50%, stand in front, and let the other team wail on me. Sometimes even that doesn't work and I have to /say "focus me, i'm a healer!". Of course other times I... miscalculate... and can't keep myself up, getting blown up by 5 rezzers instead. Never quite pulled 300k protection for the tank, but usually it's because at some point we have to stop being silly and just ensure we win the match.

There's still a little bit of "the rich get richer" syndrome, but it's not nearly as bad as it was before. Champion gear is fairly easy to get, the BM rank is easier to hit via WZ now (win or lose so long as you pulled 4 medals you get 2k-3k valor now), and BM gear doesn't have a huge advantage over the champ gear anyway. On some servers, one faction just dominates the other one the majority of the time, and it often has to do either with comps, premades, or the players. It really sounds like you're simply on one of those servers. I've been seeing fewer and fewer games where a gear discrepancy is determining the outcome. Then again, maybe your server is different from mine.

It's over-budgeted. Unless you find yourself fighting against an inordinate number of tanks, it's often not too-terrible an idea to swap a few of the enhancements from your Champion pieces into your BM stuff. You still want accuracy - just not that much.

Yeah, this part I agree with. It really badgers you, and if you don't want to pick a name at this time.... too darn bad! My legacy name is "Bananas". I don't show it.

I think it's kinda cool and unique. I mean, I'm not crazy gung-ho about it (I'm excited to be a 1-man buffing machine mind you), but I'm sure RP'ers won't be gung-ho when I get a new WarZone. It all evens out.

D) Whisper those 5 people and ask if they'd be interested in running something. They might be in the same boat as you. E) Get some friends to play with you. Start sending your invites out so they can try the game! Really though, the path of least-resistance is probably rerolling on a higher-population server (or one more in-sync with your time zone / prime-time hours). Of course, if everyone does this it leads to the issue where lower-pop servers get progressively lower in population until they're ghost-towns so you're effectively becoming "part of the problem" but you gotta do what you gotta do.

As others mentioned, you CAN use them in flashpoints (both Regular and Hard Mode). Hard modes are usually pretty tough with companions though (particularly with 2 companions). They aren't great tanks, and it often requires a lot of micro on boss fights. As to operations, I do wish they'd allow them in at least Regular Ops (so small groups who want to play through the story aspect can attempt to do so), though they'd probably have to disable the "heroic moment" part with all the legacy changes coming. That said, some boss mechanics would make micro-ing them a bit of a nightmare though regardless (edit: to elaborate, they'd eat Swipes, you wouldn't have enough time to pull them out of some AoE's, pathing would inevitably fail on SoA, etc).

I could be wrong, but from what I understood, only certain guilds who followed a procedure BW laid out would have their characters manually transferred (by BioWare). If that doesn't apply to you, I don't believe your char can/will be transferred (though you can probably create a new one on the PTR). Eventually they'll probably come up with an automated transfer system for future stuff on the PTR that anyone can make use of, but how far off that is... only BW knows. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

The Legacy System is essentially a family tree. That "Gunner" has blood-ties to your Jedi/Sith character. Now they can't go spamming lightning or anything, but every once in a while... when all odds are against them, in what you might call a "heroic moment", a tiny bit of this force sensitivity emerges. From the movies, all indications were that Princess Leia had the ability to use the force ("there is another...."). Now she ran around with a blaster and we didn't get to see her do anything really awesome beyond being in a slave-girl bikini. But near the end of RotJ she could "feel" that Luke was alright - presumably through the force. I don't think anyone would have freaked out if she did something a little more stellar, because let's face it - we all knew by that point that she had the potential to save the galaxy with force awesomeness if Luke bit the dust. If it doesn't fit with your own RP in the game, just don't use it (nobody's forcing you to, and I'm sure there are those who will RP chars that are totally unrelated and won't opt to use it either). If you see others using it on some nearby mobs, you'll have to either accept that they've got a little force-sensitivity in their family, or suspend your disbelief. Note that these also only work with a companion out, and will share a cooldown with your "heroic moment" ability. So that "Gunner" isn't going to be force-choking you in Warzones and you're not going to be in a raid where everyone else is force-choking a boss to death. In reality, it's going to be very solo-oriented, and if you don't like the notion of it, it should be quite easy to ignore.

For endgame (currently).... Biochem is pretty awesome since you can make reusable medpacks/stims/adrenals. It's amazing for PvP, and nice for raids. The non-reusable ones that everyone else has to use take quite a few mats and are rather time consuming to make so they tend to be costly - stims aren't so bad because they actually last awhile, but it's too easy to suck down adrenals and they cost about the same to make. You can make some pretty awesome purple implants for sent/sorc (crit versions are very competitive with the rakata from dailies), though because it can take upwards of 500-1000 RE's to get the one you want it's usually better just to buy them from the GTN if/when you can find them. Synth is nice for the Rakata belt/bracers you can make - particularly if you crit-craft them so they have an augment slot. It does require you to do heroic flashpoints or do some raids (and win the biometric alloy) to craft them though. Some of the other synth crafted gear is pretty decent starter stuff at 50, though you'll generally be replacing it not long after stepping into PvP or heroics. You'd mentioned companions... while you can make stuff for them too, the only thing you'll be using them for are your dailies. In patch 1.2.... Everything's changing. We don't know the extent of it yet. If you haven't dropped Cybertech yet, I'd wait for 1.2 to hit (or at least hit the PTR). If you've already dropped it, I'd probably go Biochem for PvP or Synth for PvE, but that's largely personal preference.

Jump. To elaborate: When the purple comes, hit the spacebar. It's super-duper-buggy otherwise. On one of our first attempts, our healer moved virtually non-stop and was still getting hit by it (once while using force-speed when it showed up too!). If you jump when you see it, it won't hurt. The GS might be a bit slow when it comes to moving out of the purple, but they do have enough time to simply jump. --- As to the gunslinger issue, it's not one of the more ideal fights for them to be sure, though anything that forces them to move quickly tends to put them at something of a disadvantage. That said, we always had a gunslinger in the party when we did it except when we've 3-manned it (and recently 2-manned it) with companions (in a mix of pvp & Columi gear mind you).

Heroic dailies: Yes Normal-mode flashpoints: Very likely. Hard-mode flashpoints: Probably not until fully geared. Depends also on your composition. Your composition plays a huge role. If you're both DPS without off-heal abilities, it's a lot harder. If you're tank/healer, things are considerably more easy.

I saw a couple bots while levelling through WZ (though they were simple afk bots that moved to a position each time after death). Created detailed tickets, they seemed to be gone the next day (never saw them again anyway). As long as they're removed/banned quickly (which seems to have been my experience), I'm happy. I can deal with weak players, can't deal with bots. Heck, I'd pay extra $ for an assurance of bot-free games. That was a huge reason for leaving Blizzard's game - they just stopped caring and moved to that whole "we ban in waves" thing that simply meant every 6 months you might get a few days with bot-free games while the other 340-350 days of the year you were exposed to painful bot-filled games. Come back to World of Botcraft for only $15/month! No thanks.