Like someone else has said in here, you have to keep in mind that the game has been out for 5 months now so I would say the majority of the people you run with have already seen those conversations several times and simply skip through them. You can usually avoid any complaining about it if you state beforehand that you haven't done the said flashpoint before and would like to watch the cutscenes(I know I personally don't care as long as someone in the group gives me a heads up and I'm not trying to burn through the place as fast as I can so I don't have to leave early to join an operation). Most people are under the assumption at this point that if you don't say anything you'll be space barring so it is just a nice courtesy to give them the heads up so that they can watch the cutscene too instead of staring at "waiting for other players" and avoid most of the complaints about it.

It's about movement and speed of getting abilities off. If you use your mouse to click your abilities then you are not using it to turn, which no matter how you look at it is significantly faster/smoother for movement than keyboard turning. When it comes to abilities going off as well, you have more to focus on than someone that is using key bindings meaning you will be paying less attention to fight mechanics and what is going on around you and more to what you are doing with your skills. When you click you have to move your mouse to your ability which takes time and often requires staring at your toolbar. This complicates things even further when you have to move/attack at the same time or click targets that you cannot tab target to. When you use key bindings you simply hit your key and the ability goes off, freeing up time and your mouse to be used for more important things. After typing for a short time you should be familiarized with your keyboard and know what button your fingers are on so you'll never have to stare at your keyboard like you would your mouse curser/toolbar. In short, key bindings are superior to mouse clicking in every way and improve your performance as a player and benefit to your groups significantly. If you haven't used them before it may take some getting used to for a few weeks but it is well worth it and you'll notice it right away.

They just need to slap on 4-6 Blackhole Commendations to the Hardmode Flashpoint Weekly and extend the requirement to completing 4 or 5 Hardmodes. That will make people run them again and before anyone comes up with the bright idea that this would just be handing out free Blackhole Commendations, they already do that with the weekly quest for the Corellia dailies and all of those quests can be done with 1-2 people in about an hour or less. I haven't needed Hardmodes for months but I still run them from time to time because I'm bored but I haven't seen more than 1-2 pugs a week lately so people absolutely do need an incentive to run them and this should be enough.

Deflect is part of the "Defense" stat for tanks. It is the exact same thing as dodge and is just a simple chance to avoid damage.

Now I don't know if 500k is the actual number of legitimate subscribers this game has but 500k is NOT a massive number of subs for a modern MMO, unless you are comparing to a dead game like AoC(and yes I've played AoC several times for months at a time since it's release). 500k may seem like a big number if we had a handful of servers but with the amount of servers we have it is no wonder people feel that the game is dying(if this number is in fact true).

The fastest possible way I've seen to hit 50 is to level with a group. My best time was about 3 days 18 hours played(took me just under a week since I had free time to play) in beta and that was while leveling from 10-50 with a partner and occasionally 2 others. We did all heroics and all flashpoints. In live I leveled solo and it took me about 4 days 10 hours played(about 2 weeks in real time due to work and other obligations) for my main. Leveling in a group just gives you so many more benefits than leveling alone. You kill things faster, you have less down time, if you are both competent you can duo just about every heroic in the game so you'll never have to find groups for them, you get bonus xp for every bonus quest your group members complete, and you get social points. Some tips: -When you log off always log off in a rest zone(cantinas or your ship). -Complete Bonus Quests and the Bonus Series on planets. When starting a new quest, kill a couple different mobs in the area to see there is a bonus quest for it. Stage Bonus Quests are extremely good for xp so definitely do them. -Complete Heroic Quests IF you can find a group while doing your other quests, don't waste your time waiting around for a group if you cannot find one by the time you are done your normal quests. Doing these will put you high enough level above your quest progression that you will be able to skip all side quests on certain planets altogether which definitely helps with time. The rule of thumb I used for this would be if you are 3-4 levels above your class quest on a new planet you will be able to skip all the side quests on that planet and be in line with the next one. -This one is kind of obvious but space bar through side quest dialogue. 90% of these quests are boring drawn out conversations about how some random guy wants you to kill/collect/destroy some random npcs/items that will have no impact on your story anyway. Space barring through your class story quests(and even the planetary story quests) really doesn't save you that much time so you can watch those unless you want to squeeze out a little more time. -Don't be an alt-aholic, pick one character to level and stick with it.

Maybe this is true if you are on an RP server but any other server most people couldn't care less what your name is. You may get laughed at if your name is xXLegolasXx or some **** but I have never seen anyone get passed over for a raid spot or a guild spot just because of their name.

Mods consist of the following types: Barrels - Have some stats and give blasters their min-max damage. Hilts - Have some stats and give melee weapons their min-max damage. Armoring - Have some stats and give armor it's armor rating. Color Crystals - Have some stats and give lightsabers the color of their blade and blasters the color of the bolts Mods - Have stats Enhancements - Have stats Augments - Have stats(only player crafted items that were a critical success will have a slot for these at the moment) Basically the purpose of the mods is to give orange items(and some purple items) their stats. On their own orange items are just empty shells that have multiple slots on them for you to put these mods into them which add together to give the orange item it's stats. This allows you to find mods of the stats that you want and pick an orange item you like the looks of to put them in. For Armoring/Hilts/Barrels the higher the rating on the item the better the armor or damage is going to be. The other mods are straight forward as to the stats they will be adding to the piece. You can open up items with mod slots on them by hitting ctrl+rightclick and then you can either remove the mods in the item if it has any or place your own in there. You can put new mods ontop of mods that are already in the item to replace them if you don't want to spend the credits to remove the mod but it will destroy the mod you are replacing. Finally you can only put mods into slots that have the same name, for example you can only put enhancements in enhancement slots and not enhancements into color crystal slots. It sounds complicated but it's fairly straight forward. Hope it helped.

If you want a Ranged class go with Commando but you won't be viable with a Blaster Rifle so you'll have to use the Assault Cannon. The only classes that use a Blaster Rifle are Operative and Vanguard and both are melee classes with some ranged capabilities for when they can't be in melee range. If you have no plans to participate in endgame group content then feel free to use a Rifle on a Commando, you'll kill things slower but you won't run into enrage timers on solo content. However if you plan on doing the endgame group content then you'll either have to play a Vanguard and get over the fact that it is at it's best in melee range or play a Commando and get over the fact that you'll have to use an Assault Cannon if you don't want to intentionally hold back your groups/raids.

It's called a money sink, welcome to MMOs.

Yeah unfortunately we'll never see an SWG 2 because Sandbox MMOs are a dying breed being too complicated for most current MMO players. There is just no money in Sandbox MMOs anymore so we'll only continue to see under budgeted unknown companies make them while the ones with the money continue to make simple Themeparks.

Commando can either play a Ranged DPS role or a Healing role depending on how you spec. I personally play the DPS role most of the time unless my guild is short a healer for a raid, which happens sometimes, and then I respec to healing for the night. Our AOE is good on trash in Flashpoints/Operations and on some boss fights that have adds that need to be AOE'd down so it is not just for leveling. On a side note, I'm sure there will be some angry mouth breathers on here trying to tell you that Commando is not viable in flashpoints or operations anymore so do your best to just ignore them. Most of them are just angry because they were never very good at the class to begin with. Now that we have parsers to reflect that they instead blame the nerfs for the reason of their lack of ability while people that actually know how to adjust to nerfs are still doing perfectly fine. I mean don't get me wrong, I think that them stealth nerfing Demolition Round saying it was a "fix" only after we noticed it(and not even mentioned in the patch notes conveniently) was dumb as **** and entirely unnecessary but it doesn't make us incapable of pulling our weight as DPS at all.

Yes Commando can heal Hardmode Flashpoints and all Operations. I occasionally heal on my Commando from time to time when a guildie levels a new alt that needs to run Hardmodes and we can't find a healer. Once you get used to the ammo management you are fine. Our AOE is weaker than Sage's AOE for sure but having played both I feel our single target is better which a lot of the time is what you'll use anyway unless your group is all grouped up. As for operations, Commando is absolutely viable in them. One of our main healers is a Commando healer and we don't have any healing issues in Operations. Again from my own experience, it is more frustrating trying to heal the entire raid with our bad AOE heals compared to Sage but it is still more than viable. I'm sure if you play a healer fulltime it won't be as frustrating(I mainly DPS unless we're down a healer).

If you are noticing anything different then it is in the npcs you are fighting, not the class. The abilities aren't just similar, they are identical in use/mechanic. They give the same exact benefits, and if in identical gear they will do the same exact damage/healing. The only differences are the names, and animations associated with the abilities. If by "hovering abilities" you mean Death From Above, no it doesn't offer any protections or bonuses, it is the same exact ability as Mortar Volley except with a different animation, just a targeted AOE ability with a 1 minute cooldown. You can find this out by simply reading the ability tooltip and any talents that may be associated with it that you would have picked up. If it doesn't say it offers any protections or other bonuses then it doesn't.

Then you're doing something wrong because Mercenary and Commando are identical in gameplay, especially now that they fixed the animation issues. They get the same exact abilities at the same exact levels, they just have different names and animations. Talent trees and gameplay mechanics are identical as well. Even the equipment is identical(Both Heavy Armor and Assault Cannon Damage = Dual Wield Pistol Damage). On the Op's subject, it is very good that they did it this way so they will have an easier time with balance issues that come up. There are 8 Advanced Classes(which is really your Class after level 10) on each faction with an exact mirror on the other meaning that there are 8 total Advanced Classes in the game. If they nerf Mercenary they will also be nerfing Commando so it will be balanced from faction to faction and they only have to worry about Class-Class balance rather than Class-Class balance as well as Faction-Faction balance.

He did specify UT and it was Georg that posted it. The quote is floating around in a couple of threads like this where people can't seem to find the new Armormech/Synthweaving schematics that we were told would be in 1.2 since we aren't going to be able to RE oranges for schematics.

Odds are the ones you are seeing on the GTN for that price are Grade 25 modifications which drop from Hardmode/Nightmare Mode Eternity Vault and Karraga's Palace(the Tier 1 Operations). You can get Grade 22 Modifications from Belsavis and Ilum dailies and Grade 23 Armoring/Hilts/Barrels with daily commendations you get from doing your Ilum/Belsavis/Corellia dailies.

The legacy gear requirements are 10 for 1 set and 20 for the other. If you aren't at least legacy 10 and have been playing the game for at least a month then you aren't doing it right. 20 doesn't take that much longer either. Sitting in the fleet staring at the GTN isn't going to get you legacy XP and isn't what I was referring to by "playing the game". Even if you play very casually but know how to manage your time you can easily get enough legacy to get both sets. Don't use the fulltime job and obligations crutch either, I have both and I am legacy 33 atm and I stopped really going out and doing dailies 2 months ago(aside from starting again in 1.2 for the new relic). If your guildies spend the few hours or whatever they play the game chatting way in the fleet then of course they are only going to be legacy 8.

Loot is the same except for the chest at the end for extra loot and Nightmare KP now drops Blackhole Commendations.

You have a skewed sense of "rare" if you are being serious. First, it takes almost no time to get to the legacy requirement for the gear if you actually play the game. As for the price it is hardly a "considerable amount of credits". You can make 300k+ a day just doing your Corellia/Belsavis/Ilum dailies now which you should be doing anyway at 50 for daily/blackhole commendations unless you plan on doing nothing but PvP. Augmented Oranges aren't even rare, they run for maybe 100-150k on my server because they are USEFUL(not rare) and that's pretty cheap imo. They don't take insane amounts of mats to craft or anything and the crit chance isn't that low if you are using the right companion with maxed affection, hell I crafted 4 orange chests last night just to make some extra credits and 2 or them crit. When they do add the ability to add augment slots to gear I can see it costing a decent amount of mats because you are bypassing an RNG system but I don't by any means think it is going to be some crazy time consuming process.

This. If you want to play another melee class play Vanguard, if you want to play a ranged class play Commando.

A FP that requires full Columi at least to run successfully in the first place, yes.

I hope you're joking. Let's look at it this way, it takes ~100 hours to hit level 50 WITHOUT skipping the dialogue(I have done it myself in about 4 days 8 hours played on my first 50 and 4 days 2 hours played on my alt, I skipped all side quest dialogue on my main, I watched literally everything on my alt but was leveling with someone else the entire time) if you are actively questing and not simply standing around scratching your ***. Now let's look at how often the OP says he plays, 2 hours a night + 4 hours a night on weekends which comes to 18 hours a week which IS casual. It would take him ~6 weeks(1 and 1/2 months) to hit level 50 at that rate, maybe sooner due to all the rested xp he would be getting if he logged out in a cantina every night and being offline for so long. The game has been out for 4 months so even someone as casual as the OP should be able to have a level 50 by now if he wasn't an alt-o-holic. Even if you played 1 hour a night and have been playing since the game came out you should be getting your first level 50 around now or very soon(7 hours a week would take you ~14 weeks so just under 4 months). If people are taking longer than ~100 hours to hit 50 it is purely a time management problem, not a problem with the amount of time someone plays. If you spend most of your time staring at the scenery, leveling alts, or crafting, instead of following the story line then obviously it is going to take you longer to hit 50 than if you simply followed your quest line. It's all about time management and focus.

While I absolutely love the fact that they are adding actual challenging content now, I do completely agree that the loot should reflect that. It makes no sense to drop Columi in there when it requires at least full Columi to run it.

He knows that, and that is why he is saying they should change it. It's not that hard to understand, I got what he was saying my first read through. I completely agree with him too, even though I'll have campaign gear in a matter of weeks and begin setting up my orange set with the mods from it(so this issue doesn't really effect me much). I think that not giving us the ability to move the set bonuses from Tionese/Columi/Rakata/Centurion/Champion/Battlemaster gear because they designed it differently to begin with is just lazy. I'm sure they can fix it to where the armoring has the set bonus on it and it would take some work, but not doing so is just laziness especially when they make the patch notes as misleading as they are. It's like they had a great idea to allow us to customize our characters and just half assed it to save themselves some work instead of going all the way with it. It's just one of several things they half assed in 1.2 so far.