So, wait... Now, I don't know if this has already been discussed... I'd rather not scroll through 12 pages of posts to find out, but... Is this essentially a seperate game with a seperate character? The developer blog makes it sound like it's distinct from the base game. I've been extremely excited for the SSSP since I first found out about it a few months ago, and even more excited when the teaser came out not too long ago. But when the expansion was officially announced, I found myself greatly disappointed. A PvP arena in space would not have been my choice, and definitely not what I would have considered the "obvious" choice for how to pattern this content. However, I wouldn't have been opposed to playing the expansion as a PvP arena until some more interesting PvE content came out for the expansion... but I really have no interest in playing at all if the expansion isn't tied directly into the main game, using my existing characters. When I heard some of the details of the expansion, I had envisioned walking into your fleet hangar and seeing all those empty starfighter bays filled with your personal starfighters, with an npc crew there maintaining those fighters and acting as vendors to customize your ships and buy new upgrades. I envisioned a new queue you could pop into while playing (just like GroupFinder and PvP queues today) while you're out doing whatever other content you were playing. The queue pops, you play a round or two in the starfighter, and get dropped back into your content. The blog, as well as some other outside content, makes it sound like the expansion doesn't tie into the main game at all, other than the rewards you can take with you into the base content. That would be a big mistake.

Dang. I really just wanted to see how the helmet looked on my character, but if it's War Hero Trooper armor, that presents me with two big problems: First, I'm sure it's heavy armor, and I can only wear medium. Second, I'm not the least bit interested in playing PvP. So I guess that's yet another cool armor piece I can't wear.

Anyone know the name of the armor set shown in the Relics of the Gree advertisement pictures here on the site... The character is riding the new red mount, and the armor has a vaguely "stormtrooper" look to it. Anyone know what it's called or how you get it?

I like seeing that at least there's some worthwhile conversation going on... But ultimately, there is, and has only ever been, one response from those defending the way things are now... "It's a PvP mission in a PvP area. I can gank you if I want." And I get it. You're right. It's a mission labeled PvP, and it occurs in a PvP area. But whereas the griefers see this as their "gank freely with no consequence" card, everyone else sees it for what it is... poor design, and a recipe for allowing the worst elements of a community the opportunity to force their stupidity on everyone else. I will continually find it funny how, with the several hundred players on my server running through Ilum during the time I'm also there, nearly all of us manage to walk in the area, get their objectives, and leave without attacking a single player... most grabbing an orb and forming a largely orderly line at the pylon to turn it in, and even without a menacing glare or a brandishing of weapons to be seen... and many helping other players outside of their own group to secure objectives and guard the pylons to actively prevent fighting on turn in... and yet, when that small handful of PvP'ers rolls in and insists on cowardly attacking other players when they're engaged in fights with mobs or mid action during objectives, WE'RE the ones who don't understand what the mission is all about. The hilarity comes from, in part, the desperate clinging to excuses as to why such actions are ok. Why you're not a douche for stealth camping the pylon, waiting for a group to come by and turn in before you attack them... if you really thought it was your mission to turn in orbs and prevent others from doing so, then why aren't you getting orbs for your group, or attacking players straight up when they come to turn in the orb? Why you think it's your mission to engage in PvP combat at all when you gain nothing for it... it takes you longer to get your own objectives done if you're fighting other players, rather than just waiting like everyone else, and you neither win nor lose in preventing other players from getting their own objectives. Why you insist that it's a PvP mission.... when there isn't a single player interaction, or it's a PvP area when not one fight needs to occur. Why you try so hard to convince the rest of the community that you're just not a sad excuse for a human being. No... I wouldn't even lump most PvP players in with the sorts of individuals that attack other players in the PvP area. Any honest PvP player would rather spend a whole night in Warzones playing the game than sitting around Ilum waiting for hapless questers to pounce on. Hell, the honest PvP players treat the Gree event just like the rest of us... get in, get my easy rep and 100 WZ comms, and get out. "You mean I don't actually have to fight anything, but you give me comms anyway?"

I'll bite. What is the PvP objective? There's nothing requiring you to attack other players. Hell, it's not even encouraged. You're given absolutely no incentive to do so. You're not told to do it, and you're certainly not rewarded for doing it. You don't earn comms,. xp, or even credits for killing other players, or even preventing them from achieving their objectives. There's no you vs. me... or you vs. anybody. There's no winner or loser. For all intents and purposes, there's no competition at all. What purpose is served by attacking other players or preventing them from being able to achieve their own mission objectives? Nothing. So to the tone of your post, I completely agree. Why have this mission at all? Why even have a PvP area at all? If you're just going to put missions in there that don't require PvP contact, why not just have those missions, and the area, be PvE? Otherwise, you've just got a big wasted part of the map like the Outlaw's Den on Tatooine... another open-world PvP area where missions not requiring any PvP area accomplished. The only arguement being rendered here as to why attacking other players during the pylon and droid missions during those missions is that the area is PvP, and thus PvP attacks are implied. This is such a paper arguement that it's worthless to even attempt. Everyone... and I mean everyone, who walks into that area knows precisely what the missions are and what they require. Everyone knows full well that there is no gain to be had from or requirement to attack another player. The vast overwhelming majority of players understand this, and manage to simply go in there, get their objectives, and get out with incident. The danger/risk of PvP combat is implied, but entirely unexpected because there is utterly no point to it at all.

So, an example of how a staged, event-worthy PvP "mission" could work in the confines of the existing objective structure in the Southern Terminus: Stage one could be similar to the orb-collecting, pylon-activating mechanic that exists in one PvP mission. In this case, though, make it so that the orb score counts not merely for yourself, or members of your group, but for all members of your faction that are within the pylon arena at the time the orb is cashed in, and have this count towards both a main and a bonus mission with lucrative rewards. Obviously, player-to-player damage in this stage will be limited to the opposing faction. For the main mission, any orb scored by either faction counts toward the main objective for both, but only orbs scored by your own faction counts towards the bonus. Make going to get the orbs a bit dangerous, such that you're going to want groups out there going after the orbs, and groups defending other groups or objectives- more enemy mobs around the orb pylons, for instance. Get to, say 5 total orb drops between both factions (and first faction to 3 gets the bonus), and you get to start the next stage. Here in the first stage you have both an incentive to cooperate, and an incentive to compete, all within the same objective. Every player is going to want to see all 5 orbs dropped into the pylon to move onto the next stage, but those bonus rewards will be tempting too. Maybe you could even make it so that the orbs are transferrable to the attacking player upon the death of the current orb holder... so you could see some very cunning strategies. Will the pubs and imps work together and take turns getting the orbs/ bonuses? Is there going to be an honest, all out battle for the orbs? Or will there be some trickery going on... let the enemy get the orbs, but steal it from them and take it for your own? One of the following stages could be truly FFA... give the players incentives to attack anyone they can, and open player-to-player damage into full FFA. The objective could be as simple as to rack up a certain number of kills or points, or could be more involved than that. You could make it a timed stage such that every player gets a debuff added by the activation of the pylon which causes health to slowly drain away, until eventually you are incapacitated. Incapacitated players go immune... can't be damaged, can't move, can't be attacked OR revived... until the next stage. So while incapacitated they can't be killed outright, and return to full health when the stage is over. The trick? Doing damage to other players heals YOU, thus making you live longer. Get through the stage when the time runs out without being incapacitated, earn a bonus. And then one of the phases could be a cross-faction "cooperation" phase. Maybe spawn a number of hard enemies like the Gree Destroyer (but not that one, obviously) and turn player-to-player damage off. Have an objective that requires killing one or more of these big enemies. Pubs and Imps get to work together to take down foes. Or in alternative to a small number of large enemies, which might be hard for smaller groups to manage, instead spawn a larger number of lower-level enemies for players to attack, like the various droids around the arena, and require they kill x number of them. Probably make this a timed event as well, so again smaller groups aren't forced to battle a huge number or enemies to finish the stage, and make mobs continue to respawn as long as the stage is active, ensuring players aren't necessarily competing for kills. Once all 3 stages are done, the arena resets to phase one. Each stage would have different player-damage models, thus ensuring that players can't grief other players during the stages and remain "on task." And each stage would have seperate and distinct objectives that would be active as soon as you picked up the mission, meaning you could jump into whatever stage is just starting when you arrive in the Southern Terminus, and leave whenever your particular objectives are complete. You could even do just ONE objective, leave, and come back to do other ones later, if you want. To makes sure players can't just walk into a stage mid-course, you could have energy barriers that barr players from entering the central pylon arena, where the PvE and FFA stages will occur, while those stages are active. You could only access the central pylon arena freely during the orb stage, or during a short "respite" phase between stages. This helps to make things a little more fair, and ensures the various stages work as intended. Wouldn't something like that be more compelling for your Gree event PvP challenges?

Wow... this sparked more of a debate... and sometimes even a civil one, than I had expected when I first wrote the post. After reading through most of the 10 pages here, there are a few points I'd like to address. First, I'd like to say that having open-world PvP on a PvE server is a contradictory design. People sign up for a PvE server specifically to avoid combat with other players, and thus griefing. For those players who love PvP (though I find this laughable considering what it actually is... but that's another post entirely) the game provides an entire system to allow like-minded players to get together and PvP away from questers... hence Warzones. Placing any quest with PvE objectives within a PvP zone is simply bad design, and only likely to lead to the sorts of problems we see with the Gree event, and with the Outlaw's Den on Tattooine. Now, as I acknowledged in the original post, the quests ARE flagged for PvP. However, at least everyone can agree that despite the flagging, there are no actual PvP objectives. Your challenges and mission goals for these missions are entirely PvE, and not require, nor do they even encourage, player interaction. There simply is no point to it. I think the most believable incentive that has been relayed to me as to why the vast majority of players go into the southern terminus merely to run quick quest objectives, while a mere handful of individuals seeks to grief that vast majority is the achievement reward. I am told that there are certain achievements which are largely unobtainable to the average PvP player while doing normal PvP activities, but are very easy to achieve during the Gree event. Since there is no reward other reward for killing players in the PvP area, and no objectives for player interaction involved in completing quests there... it seems that without the incentive the achievement offers, or the simple satisfaction of bullying other unsuspecting players, a PvP'er that's out merely for the WZ comm quest rewards and Gree rep would do exactly as normal questers do - go in, get the objective, get out. Since this is NOT the case, it can be inferred that anyone actually killing players in the PvP area is simply clueless as to what's actually being done in the PvP area, and thus honestly believes he has a need to attack other players, or (and I find this more likely) that player is just a jerk. Now... a second point to address. There was another post saying something to the effect of, "you don't have to do the PvP quests because there are plenty of other quests to do to earn rep." In reality, this is not as true as you might say. The total number of solo and Heroic PvE mission in the Gree event does not even total the same number of the same sorts of missions available in other level 50+ dedicated areas - like Section X, Black Hole, or Makeb. In fact, those areas have 7 daily-repeatable PvE missions that offer creds, xp, and faction rep - one Heroic 4, and 6 solo - and I believe Makeb actually has more, especially when you factor in the staged weekly. The Gree event also offers 7 daily-repeatable rep quests... except in this case, 2 of the daily PvE missions occur within, and thus are flagged for, PvP. Now, if a player were to ignore the PvP quests, that player would be denied about 28% of the reputation, experience, and credit gains that can be achieved doing any other set of 50+ rep dailies. This, of course, would be ridiculous in any normal 50+ daily area... imagine Section X if a full 28% of rep was undesireable to obtain for the overwhelming majority of players - it would be obsurd and unacceptable. For a limited time and rare-occuring event like Gree, it's even more baffling, and seems little more than a remnant of an original miscalculation on the part of BW as to just how compelling PvP would be. So my third solution is easily the best for all concerned. Removing the 2 "PvP" missions from the PvP area, and reworking them back into proper PvE missions gives a total of 7 repeatable daily PvE missions - just the same as any other area - allowing PvE-only players to get full rep and still completely avoid griefing. Further, you can breath new life into the PvP arena, and give dedicated PvP'ers a true event-worthy experience by creating 2 new, wholely-PvP missions that offer a sort of experience that you just can't get in a Warzone, and might even attract PvE'ers into as well. I'd honestly suggest some sort of repeating-staged event... something where players could jump in and jump out very easily at any point... maybe even something that has Rebublic and Emperial players fighting each other in one stage, an absolute FFA melee in another stage, and then maybe require that Pub and Imp players actually fight together against a common enemy in yet another stage.... I'll include an example of how this could work in a seperate posting below, just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Some background. I just started playing SWTOR a few months ago, and when the last Gree event came along I was not high enough level on my first toon to participate. Ever since then, I've been very excited at the prospect of joining in on a community-wide event, as those types of things are rarely seen outside of MMOs. When this current session of the Gree event was announced, I worked very hard to get my second toon (the first is already 55), up to a minimum of level 45 so I could participate in the event from both sides, Republic and Imperial. My expectation was that events like these would bring out the best in a community, and foster the sort of connection, esprit de corps, and cooperation that you'd see in other less involved events in other types of communities, but on a vast MMO scale. Imagine my disappointment... my frustration really... as instead seeing perhaps some of the worst sorts of behavior in gaming communities on display as the most constant and memorable fixture of this event. First, let me say that I recognize that no all players are bad. In fact, the overhelming majority just go into this event intending to quest, at minumum, as if it was any other mission series or dialies. There are, however, a small but fiercely dedicated percentage that insist on doing whatever they can to ruin other people's fun. Much of this problem, I think, stems from a set of contradictory goals for players... largely from the "PvP" section of the event. There are two missions which are flagged as "PvP," and occur only within the PvP area, but are, ostensibly, PvE missions... requiring no intra-player activity whatsoever to complete. If not for occuring in a PvP area, there is nothing "PvP" about these missions. Most players take these missions and do exactly what they objectives tell them to do. Go here, kill some droids, go home. However, as you'd expect, there are players who will forego any missions or objectives, and merely walk around killing other unsuspecting players who are only there to quest. Now, I have heard arguements from dedicated PvP'ers that walking into a PvP area should cause some expectation of being attacked and killed by other players. While I understand the arguement, the counterarguements are simply too numerous to bother repeating here. Because the missions do not require any interaction between players, ultimately, there is a conflict of interest here. Questers, which make up the vast majority of players (significantly moreso on the PvE server I am on), only go into the PvP area because a quest tells them too, and the quest has nothing to do with PvP combat. Dedicated PvP players go into the PvP area specifically because their intended targets do not fight back, which makes working towards otherwise difficult achievements much much easier.. and of course griefers merely go into the area to ensure that other players simply can't complete their mission objectives. In other words "griefers gonna grief." There is no reason, and no reward, for a quester to attack another player in the PvP zone nor any reason to believe they'll be attacked at random while working mission objectives, and PvP players get no reward other than progress toward an achievement. Unsuspecting PvE'ers make an easy target for a dedicated group of PvP'ers. Ultimately, this has lead to a situation of predation on questers, and to a lack of any sort of enjoyment in this event for anyone but the most rotten fruit of the community. There are several solutions that could be recommended to remedy the problem of conflicting interests. One of the most simple solutions, especially on PvE servers, it to entirely remove the open-world PvP area of the map. Leave the objectives, mind you, but simply remove the automatic flagging for free-for-all PvP. Since the quests do not require any player-on-player action as it is, it changes nothing in regards to how the quest is run. While certainly this removes some of the enjoyment from predatory PvP players and griefers, it's otherwise universally beneficial for the whole server. However, my feeling is that this does remove an opportunity for some honest PvP action for PvP players looking for some event-worthy experiences. A second solution. Simply rework the missions so that all current missions occur outside the dedicated PvP arena. Since the objectives are PvE objectives anyway, there's no real reason to have them occur in the PvP arena at all. This lets PvP players keep their arena, including the FFA fights, ... not much different than having the Outlaw's Den on Tattooine... but ensures PvE questers have no reason to go in there. But here too is a missed opportunity. A third solution. Remove all existing PvE mission objectives from the PvP arena. Leave the PvP quests active in the PvP arena, but beef the missions up to include actual PvP objectives. If you're going to have a mission marked "PvP," maybe it should have some objective that requires you to at least interact with, let alone kill, other players. Maybe build in some sort of FFA group objectives. "Kill X number of opposite faction players." or "Kill X number of your faction's players." Or something more creative. Basically give PvP players something to satiate their bloodlust, but put them on equal footing in engagements with other PvP players, instead of preying on hapless questers to get their kicks. Then, in place of the reworked PvP missions, add 2 new dedicated PvE missions. Perhaps a Heroic 2+, or something unique. This way, PvP players get actually PvP event content, and PvE players have more to do away from the PvP'ers. Now, any of these 3 solutions eliminates PvP player predation and griefing. Any one would greatly improve the player experience during the event and make it something more memorable for interesting missions than for anger and frustration at the worst a community has to offer. However, since they event is being reworked anyway for the future level 55 interpretation, why not take the opportunity to do something better with it, as the third solution suggests?

There is something to be said for guaranteed damage increases on every attack plus bonuses to other relevant stats. Yes, obviously when you do the math, you will see an increase in damage output over time using something other than a matrix cube. A lot of that is up to chance or cooldowns, and thus your best result is going to be from those folks who read sites like Noxxic and only engage in fights a specifc way and engage a specific rotation all the time. So in that regard, at level 50, a matrix cube isn't all that bad for we "casuals," or as I'd like to say "95% of all players." Unfortunately, the Matrix Cubes were not updated to be improved with the new level cap, and the difference between level 50 gear and even the merest of 55 can be staggering. Past level 50, the matrix cubes simply fail to keep up with the curve.

The collections system is designed exclusively to allow players to unlock cartel items gained through one character to all other characters in the same legacy, rather than having each character in that legacy have to buy that set on the GTN or deal with the gamble of packs to get it. In that light, it would neither be fair to allow cross-toon set pieces to count toward the whole set, nor would it make any sense given what the collection system is all about. While I certainly sympathize that we are not able to further exploit an already too generous system for our own personal gains, there really isn't any point in doing it any other way.

Gree event this upcoming week, 2.1 added last week. I doubt you'll see anything more than Gree.

Seriously, please just STOP. Noone is lying to you. You want to interpret a few specific phrases in marketing to mean you get everything you want as a subscriber without having to pay anything extra for optional paid features. I'm sorry you wish to persist in continuing on with this particular interpretation even though you know it's wrong. I'm sorry the world doesn't hand you everything you could possible want for free. Noone cares how you wish to interpret reality, or how you feel about that interpretation. What you're railing against are optional paid features that you are under no obligation to participate in, and BW is under no obligation to provide free access to. These are options that occur above and beyond the scope of the original game mechanics... they're paid upgrades. Why you insist on including even paid optional content within your inclusive "what I get as a sub" content is beyond my comprehension. Noone gets the paid upgrades for free... but as a sub, for your loyal support of the game, the devs have seen fit to gift you with a means to acquire this optional upgrade item at no cost to you if you wish. If you don't feel like paying for the new upgrades... then use your free coins to do it. Don't want to do that? Then too bad for you. I'm asking you to please stop making repeated posts in the forums about the same thing over and over. If noone was interested in previous threads, they won't be if you create a new one.

This is ridiculous and nonsensical. Sorry, you just don't get how a free-to-play system works. It's a revenue stream built on consumer stupidity. Many people are more willing to pay more for something they want over time by breaking it up into many chunks whose total cost adds up to more than the normal total whole cost than they are to just pay that whole cost outright. Many of us, we like to drink soda... so we go to the store, see a 12-pack of 20os bottles for $6, and we say to ourselves, "yeah, I'm going to drink 12 sodas, and $6 isn't a bad prices, so I'll buy the 12-pack." Other people go to the store... see the same 12-pack, and say "hell no.... why should I pay $6 for soda." Then they see a 16oz soda for $1 and say "yeah, see... I only have to pay a buck to get the soda I want... those people paying $6 are suckers." But of course, you're not just going to want the one soda, so here I sit with my $6 12-pack of 20oz sodas, and here this other guy is, running back to the store every day to buy his smaller $1 soda every time he wants one... of course, he's getting less than I am, and paying more for it.. But that's not what he thinks, of course. He thinks I'm stupid for paying all that money up front for my soda. Free-to-play systems are exactly the same thing, and they depend on that sort of consumer stupidity... they thrive on it.

On that note, though, adaptive reputation gear is still only available to players at or near level 50 and above (with the exception of Voss gear which is slightly lower). Ultimately, the result is the same, with high level players being the only ones in most cases who will gain access to the perks associated with the better gear... and especially in the case of rep gear, you REALLY have to work for it, making it more exclusive than cartel gear by far.

All I'm hearing is "I feel like I should be entitled to everything I want for free, and I should never have to pay for anything... even optional content I am provided access to above and beyond the scope of whatever I already do (not) pay for." "Oh noes... extra content is not directly "free." The people who provided this paid optional content to me also provided me with a means of obtaining this content without any additional cost to me (which they are under no obligation to do), as a gratuity for my continued support of a product which I enjoy... thus essentially making all this additional content FREE to me, should I choose to consume it (which I am also under no obligation to do)." *world comes to abrupt end, explodes.*