I would absolutely love to know what sort of set-up you are using. I think this game would greatly benefit from controllers - seems almost made for it (at least for guardian, where 99% of my abilities are instants). My main questions would be: 1.) Will it work with a Microsoft X-Box Controller for PC? PS3 style controllers hurt my fingers and wrists. 2.) Are there enough buttons? With a D-Pad and 4 buttons with four modifier buttons (two triggers, and two bumpers) I count 40 button combos for binding to abilities... That's 16 less key/button binds than is available on the action bar - and I already have to decide between things getting dropped if I want to actively use everything I have available. And that doesn't even address companion abilities. Regardless, I am very interested in this. I think for PvP especially it would greatly improve my viability. As it is, I have an X-Box controller - but I don't have a mouse that lets me bind movements like strafing, so I have to use the keyboard for movement, and that sucks.

And this constant back and forth as people try to figure out what time it is where in what time zone why developers ignore daylight savings time most of the time. Perhaps you guys are not aware of the ubiquitous (in the tech world at least) UTC. That would be Unix Time Code, also known as Universal Time Code, which is essentially GMT, which does not, in fact, follow daylight savings time (at least, not here in the states - my locale alternates between -7 and -6 GMT depending on the time of the year). If they are being inconsiderate, well, if they are considerate to the UK, they have to be considerate to everyone. And I challenge anyone to wrote a conversion between UTC and SDT/DST (or whatever you call it in your area) for all time zones and variations, and account for all the odd balls - like Arizona, which is a state in the US that completely ignores it because its too annoying, and consequently confuses everyone else in the states who needs to contact Arizona.

Because in 1.2...... Jedi Knight General Awe no longer costs Focus to activate. Dispatch can now be used on targets at or below 30% of maximum health (up from 20%). Force Kick no longer costs Focus to activate. Master Strike can no longer be interrupted. Guardian Due to changes to the Guardian skill trees, Guardians have had their skill points refunded. Added Forceclap, a new passive ability granted at level 10 that causes Force Leap to stun the target for 2 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds. Added Focused Defense, a new ability that allows the Guardian to spend Focus to lower threat. While active, one point of Focus is spent each time damage is taken to heal the Guardian for a small amount. This ability is usable while stunned and is not limited by the global cooldown. Vigilance Commanding Awe is now located in Tier 5 of the skill tree. It increases the Guardian's damage reduction while Focused Defense is active. Single Saber Mastery is no longer restricted to certain stances. Stagger is now located in Tier 1 of the Vigilance skill tree. Sundering Throw is now located in Tier 6 of the Vigilance skill tree. Zen Strike now generates 2 points of Focus when it is triggered. Defense Blade Barrier is now located in Tier 4 of the skill tree. Blade Storm no longer consumes stacks of Courage while the "Momentum" buff is active. Command no longer reduces the cooldown of Challenging Call and is now located in Tier 5 of the skill tree. Dust Storm is now a 3-point skill that provides the same overall effect. Guardian Slash now generates 50% additional threat. Momentum is now a 2-point skill that provides the same overall effect. Pacification is now a 1-point skill with a slightly reduced overall effect. Shield Specialization is now located in Tier 5 of the skill tree. Stasis Mastery is now located in Tier 4 of the skill tree. Focus (Guardian) Felling Blow is now a 3-point skill with the same overall effect. The effect now lasts 20 seconds (up from 15). Force Exhaustion's cooldown has been reduced to 18 seconds. Its overall effect is unchanged. Gravity now specifically affects Freezing Force and Force Exhaustion. Inner Focus has been redesigned. It now requires 2 points in Singularity and causes Combat Focus to immediately grant 2 stacks of Singularity per point. Master Focus now increases the damage of Master Strike instead of affecting Force Stasis. Singularity's buff effects now last 20 seconds (up from 15). Swelling Winds is now located in Tier 1 of the Focus skill tree. It increases the damage dealt by Force Sweep and Cyclone Slash and reduces the cooldown of Force Sweep. Through Peace, a new 2-point skill located in Tier 6, has been added. It reduces the initial activation cost of Focused Defense by 1 Focus per point. Unwavering Focus has been removed from the game. Zealous Leap now immobilizes the target for 1 second. Zephyr has been replaced by Zephyrean Slash, which allows Slash critical hits to have a chance to refund 2 points of Focus while the Guardian is in Shii-Cho Form.

More importantly, if they were to become a craftable item in 1.2, people WOULDN'T buy them now, and all those credits would stay in player's hands. And then? Well, artificers would get them at cost, and everyone else for 15mil or 20mil cause hey, that's what the big boys can afford, and since SOMEONE can pay that much, that's what they will sell for. Eventually the price would go down as supply went up and demand went down, but the initial few months would be horrible. In theory at least, the +41 stat crafted crystals will be cheaper now when 1.2 comes out because so many credits have left the economy. Here's hoping the theory proves true, and they are significantly cheaper than they otherwise would have been.

To reduce the amount of credits that the top 20% have to help combat hyper-inflation. By doing this, when they release new craftable items, the crafted item prices are (in theory) available at a lower cost that is more available and attainable to the 80%. This was clarified in a dev post to "or" not "and" for most of the unlocks (though some may prove to be the exceptions that prove the rule). Which is in part why they introduced these high priced vendor items, to prevent the new crafted items from costing 20mil for the first six months they are available (to pick a random absurd number). Whether it works... well, we'll see. But it is an issue that every MMO faces... and that SWTOR at least is trying to combat before it becomes an issue. It can be done. Using Ilum as an example, I make about 10k in rewards from each quest. I make at least that for each item I make and put on the GTN (synthweaving). Getting a an item worth 10k+ takes more initial time (because of the RNG in reverse engineering) but once it is done, it takes significantly less time than dalies and provides residuals. Certainly it took less time to get my schems than to get to 50 (took two days to get the first full set of schems I wanted, which I did while watching T.V. and reading). My primary market is people leveling alts who want to buy top-tier gear (with augment slots). Even my level 13 crafted gear goes for 10k. My non-augmented stuff that can be sold at or above cost gets sold for whatever I can get, and stuff that doesn't sell at or above costs goes back into my inventory to be RE'd. I don't "watch" or "play" the market beyond putting something up, and seeing how long it takes to sell. If it sells fast, I sell more. I don't play price wars against other players. Essentially, my entire business plan boils down to, "stick up for auction for hell of a lot more than I would ever pay for it, and see if it sells."

BoL (Bind on legacy) will be a different thing than BoP (bind on pickup). I suppose you could try submitting a ticket to get it moved, but I wouldn't expect it to happen. Probably SOL.

I have a 35/6 build, which I use in ops, hms, and pvp. It seems weakest in pvp in terms of leading the charge, but once you get into the swing of things as a support role, it does wonders, with damage mitigation being the primary thing I do (both by defending our allies, and laying down debuffs on enemies) followed by a bit of CC (we have a lot of potential stuns as well as self-movement tools). The trick is just getting used to the concept that "tanking" in pvp is all about keeping people away from team members, instead of focused on you. At least, that has been my experience.

I would like at least one more. As it is, mine are full, and I still don't have everything I want. three more would be preferred, so that I could have two on the left, two on the right, and three on the bottom.

Sure, I will resub. I do not play this game fastfastfastfast, so I have not done everything yet. The rate at which I play means that I have just barely not finished current content before new content comes out, so I always find the game reasonably enjoyable. The only way that I would not sub is if a new MMO comes out that has a concept I like, an engaging IP, and caters specifically to the crowd of players that enjoys NOT having anything spoon-fed (no threat meters, no indication of what mobs ago and when or why, simple but not advanced combat macros, multi-player weapon/skill combos, long and hard boss fights that take lots and lots of practice to figure out, and then even more practice to master once you do figure it out, etc.) And then, only if I can't afford two subs. In short, this game is amusing for what it is, and exactly what I expected it to be.

Lots of posts, didn't read them all. To the OP... Ignore the science part of the science fiction. At its core, Star Wars is a very classic medieval fantasy story. Replace blasters with crossbows. Rifles with Long bows. Lightsabers with Swords. Magic with the Force. Star-ships with dragons. And you have tactics that make more sense. The story was written using a very, very, classic formula used to tell that type of fantasy story. There is nothing original about it from a technical standpoint. What makes it unique is that those traditional aspects are altered to make it science fantastic. Which gets to your point... and mine. The reason that the tactics seem out of place is because it IS that type of classic medieval era story, but with a very intentionally skewed setting. Lucas didn't update the story - only the details in how it was told - and that choice by him is reflected throughout the entire IP, including this game. Look at Attack of the Clones as an example. When was the last time two armies faced off like that on a large scale, ARMY v. ARMY in one massive rush? (EDIT: Hit submit on accident) Everything about the universe that explains this away has been done by other people adding to the IP to explain away a technical aspect of the original writings (that would be the movies), making it seem even more artificial. TL;DR Version: Common sense WOULD say doing it another way is a no brainier - but as a story telling tool, it was/is a very classic method in this type of story, and likely the stylistic choice was very deliberate chosen for its classic appeal for this type of story. The attempts to explain it away (personal shields, etc.) just make it stand out more as being artificial.

The whole love issue (and really the entire code for that matter) is no different than modern religion in real life. Using Christianity as an example, compare a non-denominational to an evangelical to a greek orthodox to a catholic. They are all Christian. But they all have very, very, very, different interpretation on how the rules are enforced, which aspects are focused on, which rituals are observed, which tenants were social products of their time vs. actual dogma... And account for the fact that regional variations exist. It can be expected that a Catholic in Rome will be slightly different than a Catholic in Vegas. So how different do you suppose a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater from Planet of the Crazies will be compared to a two-eyed two-armed banana eating silver back from Planet of the Apes? Of course there are dogmatic variations, even within the Jedi Order (to say nothing of Jedi v. Sith). TL;DR: Just because the Pope says contraceptives are a no-no, doesn't mean all Christian denominations believe that (or even all churches within a denomination). Same for the Jedi - just because the council says it... doesn't mean that all Jedi within the order believe it.

Bah! Its not a good argument unless you can take someone's own example, turn it on 'em, and kick 'em in the nuts with it. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go find an icepack...

Yes, I do prefer things more unpredictable, but I believe the tools you need are already there to achieve that toe-the-line optimized DPS. Namely, if you take too much hate, the mob will turn. I am of the opinion (and it is just opinion), the battles that are the most fun are the ones where you just barely cross the line, as opposed to just barely stop short. I understand I'm probably in the minority in this aspect, but I don't think a tank should ALWAYS have hate (unless they are REALLY good - in the top 10% of players to throw out a random number). A well designed battle is difficult, but not impossible, and that includes being difficult for the tank. In a well balanced battle a -good- tank should, for example, barely be able to keep hate off the healer all the time, but at the expense of loosing hate occasionally to a DPS. An extremely excellent tank should be the only player capable of keeping full threat, all the time (other than threat independent attacks, threat wipes, etc., etc.), even from DPS. I can see how a threat meter can make DPS more enjoyable (it would not be my personal preference for the discussed reasons, but I can understand it), but as a tank it seems like it would make my job, my role, hell of a lot more boring. Why would I want that? 2credits.

While it would be nice if you could fully interact with every NPC... BW can't do it. In this game, if you can "talk" with a person, they actually talk. Can you imagine how much more the voice acting costs would be if EVERY NPC had its own dialog? And if it didn't, people would just complain about how every NPC was a cookie cutter. Also, the non-interactive NPCs are client side, and improvements are being made to scale them. I believe they also said they were not happy with the static nature of those NPCs, and wanted to make them more "alive". I.E., not just stand there doing nothing. So we will see more of things like the NPCs on Belsavis that detain a passerby, who then attacks them, and gets gunned down. Aaaaand.... Buy having them non-interactive and handled client side, they can do a hell of a lot more of them because there is no database entry required server side. I suppose they -might- have the very basics server side, just so everyone sees the same thing. Object X at location Y. But without having to keep track of health, mob type, class, ability, armor/weapons, etc., etc., etc. overhead is reduced significantly. To top it off, because of that reduced overhead they can do unique actions for those NPCs - like the aforementioned fight - without having to worry about a whole slew of animation interactions for that mob to transition into, say, combat with a PC. TLDR version: No, it doesn't bother me. Wish they were a little more "alive" and there were more of them, though.

Call me dense (no, don't really), but I'm not sure what you are getting at.