So I've been away from the game for about a year or so and I'm a bit confused on how the game functions now. It seems to me that companions gain no stat bonuses from gear now? I tried to put a focus in Xalek's offhand but that didn't work either. Does any of that matter anymore? Also, I used to run exclusively tank spec due to basically being unkillable and having decent dps to boot when running around soloing, but I'm not sure if that's the case anymore. I used to just run with HK and had no problems taking golds down etc. due to all the perks that assassin tanks got. Now I'm not sure how to spec or if it really even matters. I wouldn't mind staying tank spec, but I just don't want to gimp myself by doing so if the game has changed significantly in that regard. Any advice is appreciated.

On Bastion tonight all 3 were bugged from what I could tell. I selected all 3 and was unable to use the device in the quest log on any of them.

Ok, so I spent most of the last few days getting HK-51 on all of my lvl 50 toons. I found the HK-51 quest to be quite enjoyable and definitely easy enough to bypass the 1million credit cost in order to obtain it on all my toons (even those that I won't even bother using him on). So after I finished my HK-51 quests, I decided to take a shot at the new Section X dailies to see what they were like. My conclusion: the Section X dailies are buggy and the difficulty of them is extremely disproportionate compared to the rewards you receive. Now, let me just say that not all of them are this way, but for most people that don't spend their entire lives doing dailies it seems like a lot of time and effort to spend even for weekly rewards considering how difficult some of the dailies are. Lost Reconnaissance: Whose bright idea was it to make the Wild Beast portion of this so stupidly rare? Ok, so if I kill a group of 4 Tuk'ata I get ONE kill closer to the 18 I need to complete the quest, but if I kill a group of 5 Bogwings I get 5 kills closer? Needless to say Bogwing groups are rare while the place is virtually littered with Tuk'ata and DROID groups that seem to do absolutely nothing (perhaps the droid groups are for the Republic?). Anyway, this needs to be adjusted. Granted it's a heroic 2 mission but who is honestly running more than 1 person regularly for such a simple quest? This is just a time sink as far as I can tell. March of the Dread Guard: Defend the Shipment all over again. Currently this quest seems to be bugged as you are unable to free the Prison Leaders. Targeted Misfire: The drop rate on the Airstrike Codes off of Marksmen is absurdly low. This needs to be adjusted immediately somehow. The amount of Marksmen spawns is already low, though there seems to be no shortage of strong and elite level jedi in the area. On top of this the respawn rates are abysmal. Add to this a low drop rate on the codes and it's a recipe for a ridiculous time sink. Everyone is running around trying to find 1 Marksmen in a group of 6 mobs, and even if you happen to find 3 marksmen in a single group, chances are you're likely to see zero code drops. It reminds me of Deadly Mutations if Deadly Mutations required a drop from the Cthon's. The Aurora Cannon: I have yet to even try Aurora Cannon yet. The consensus seems to be that it requires at least 3 people to do it, if not 4. Therefore I won't be doing this quest until sometime over the weekend. I understand this is a 4man Heroic though so I'll give Bioware the benefit of the doubt on this one for now. Data Raid: A fairly easy mission, though the amount of strongs and elites seem fairly high considering the rewards. I have no major complaints about this mission, it seems balanced enough, though it should be on the more difficult end of the spectrum for a DAILY. Hyperbiology: No problems here, I think this is a well balanced quest, maybe even too easy, but maybe I only think that after I've done the rest of the missions. Let me just say that I ran this on my main and these are my initial impressions. My main is a geared Assassin Tank with a decently geared HK-51 companion, which means that things are usually significantly easier for this toon than for other toons that I have at 50. I can run Black Hole dailies (including Torvix) in 20min solo. I haven't even finished all of the dailies on Section X and it's been over an hour...yet for some reason both of these daily sections give the same amount of Black Hole Commendations. Considering I get 5 Black Hole Comms a day from just doing Flashpoints what incentive do I have to ever come back here for a WEEKLY?

Don't do ranked and just grab Battlemaster relics instead.

You people are crazy. The correct answer is Darkness.

I've done this before with several characters. Hell, I've rerolled before based upon the fact that I didn't like some of the choices I made. With my main (assassin) I still kick myself over choosing the dark side option on Alderaan instead of the politically safe option.

Now that transfers have gone through I find that there's enough people with the gear to actually do Lost Island. I enjoy the challenge of this Flashpoint, but I'll agree with the idea that the rewards need to be better balanced. If I'm using group finder for Lost Island it needs to run a gear check. We got thrown into an instance with a healer in full Centurion gear...it's not enough when you notice that even full Rakata geared healers will struggle if the rest of the group isn't entirely geared out and on the ball. I will wipe at least two or three times on average. Once or twice on the first boss, then once on the second boss if people don't know it, or once or twice on trash. If I'm running with guild members we don't have issues, but I honestly enjoy pugging things. For this kind of headache the instance should drop more Rakata gear and give absolutely no Tionese commendations. To be honest, even dropping Columi commendations seems relatively pointless to people that have already geared out all of their comps with full Columi.

What do you mean? The Legacy system has always been in the game since it launched. The only thing they have done is added rewards to it. Originally it was just a secondary leveling system that provided you with a surname and no rewards, but you were still able to earn experience with it.

Exactly. Put a million subs on 20 different servers and people will complain it's too crowded and that the game is doing excellent and then put a million subs on 200 different servers and you'll hear people talking about how the game is dying because there's only 20 people in the fleet on THEIR server. The total number of subs doesn't change, but your perception does.

If you knew "enough" about business then you wouldn't be claiming that peak subscriptions have been reached after only 6 months. The game is new. It took years for WoW to get where it's at now and there are still markets that SWTOR hasn't penetrated yet (China, for example). Servers look dead but it's only because there were so many to begin with. The initial server push had something like 140 servers. That's insane, especially for a new MMO. Right now they're running at around 215, which is WAY too many. WoW only has about 500, but most of those are dead servers and they actually have the population to support that many. That is an extremely small minority of people. Out of all the people playing how many of them only play because it's Star Wars and not because of any other reason. And out of those how many will play even if the game isn't fun? You're trying to wave away 1.5 million subscriptions by saying that "oh, there's always these people that will stay just because it's Star Wars." That's crap. People play because the game is fun. If it's not fun for you, fine, don't play. If it is fun for you, then why are you complaining on the forums? Are you frightened that other people don't think it's fun? That 1.5 million subscribers are just a bunch of idiots that wouldn't know fun if they got run over by it? Even people playing Galaxies didn't think that way...most of those people enjoyed Galaxies because it was Star Wars but also because that sort of sandbox style MMO wasn't really available elsewhere. No one ever said that it's in perfect shape or that it's completely ideal. That's not the point. The point is there's a big difference between "needs improvement" and "this game needs to be saved from its certain demise." Further, there isn't any indication that Bioware is not going to make future changes or that they won't implement stuff the community wants or that they are suddenly going to have a massive drop in developers because they aren't making enough money. SWTOR had 1 million subscribers on DAY 1. WoW wished it could have had those numbers in its wildest dreams.

I dislike them as well, and doubly so because they are the only real "status" colors for lightsabers that currently exist. I'm using black-orange now which looks suspiciously like black-yellow. If having a black-orange wasn't a sort of status symbol then I wouldn't be using it, I'd be using red as a good sith should (or white because I spent a lot of cash on it).

You chose to remain on your server instead of transferring? Or there aren't transfers for your server yet? Because my server has about 750 people on the fleet now.

This isn't Guild Wars 2. Level 15 is not max level here. The idea that a free trial to level 15 is somehow making this game a "free-to-play" is retarded.

You seem to know very little or nothing at all about business. At 6 months it's far too early to tell even if subscriptions dropped in every single month since then. It's far too early to tell whether this is the peak of this product or not, because there are still plenty of ways that Bioware can turn that around. On top of that, as was mentioned earlier, the game was never expected to have so many subscribers in the first place. The game is still exceeding expectations that the developers had. Plus the numbers are far higher than every other game out there except for WoW and Aion (based upon the latest numbers that I checked). Bioware can still turn subscriptions around as well, and their free-to-play to level 15 is a step in that direction. There were a lot of people that I know that didn't buy the game because they couldn't try it first; now Bioware is giving them that chance. Will all of them stick around? No, but depending on who tries and who stays the subscriptions can come back up. Also, content can boost subscriptions as well, and we keep seeing more of it. The idea that this game is suffering, dying, or needs to be saved is stupid. Stop perpetuating this myth.

Haters gon' hate.