http://www.swtor.com/server-status For US Server, Ebon Hawk is probably the most populated rp server

If you currently have Korriban Incursion [sOLO] on your quest list, you cannot also queue for the group version of the fp. You'll need to abandon the solo fp before you can queue.

That's exactly the point. It's something that would affect pretty much every player that crafts, whether they "play the crafting game" or just casually do it on the side. Every player would be able run exactly the missions they wanted to run to get the exact mats they wanted all the time, the consequences of which would not be trivial. At the moment, only those willing to put in the labor are able to run the exact missions they want. Just because something looks better for the individual, doesn't mean it's actually an improvement for the market as a whole. Now, maybe, the same people who are put off by the lack of missions they want would be put off by length of time, etc, etc, and things wouldn't really change much, but as someone who dabbles in crafting, I suspect that this would destabilise the mats market in unpredicted ways. I'm not absolutely opposed to the idea, mind. I just think it has broader consequences than people may realise when they advocate for it.

It's possible that in six months to a year, the expansion will be released free to subscribers (as happened with Rise of the Hutt Cartel). But if you want it before that happens, you'll need to buy it, whether you preorder it or not.

A few notes: Almost all orange gear is either bind on pickup, or bind on equip, meaning that you cannot transfer it to a different character if another character has put it on. If, say, you put some mods into the orange gear your jedi consular is wearing, they will also bind to that character. You will not be able to rip them out and mail them to your inquisitor for your inquisitor to use. There is armor that is bind on legacy, that people use to transfer mods from one character to another, even if those mods are bound to a character, they can still be transferred via legacy gear. Unfortunately for you, pretty much all bind on legacy gear requires reputation with various factions that you can only really get at level 45+. There is no way to buy reputation. It must be earned. There are the "Exalted" armor sets which are purchasable for credits, however they are extremely expensive, as well as being bound to a particular character class. You could still use them to transfer mods, but in order to use the mods, you would have to rip them out of the armor and put it in a different orange set which costs credits. Using legacy gear to switch mods around is really only cost effective for end-game raiding gear. Basically, it's best to go into this with the mindset that your characters are going to be gearing up more or less self-sufficiently. It's probably the least complicated of your options. Use the quest gear, and supplement it by buying extra pieces with credits/whatever planetary comms you might pick up. The one exception to the self sufficiency idea is that you could pick up some crafting skills. Cybertech (for instance) will let you craft your own armoring and mod pieces, which you could then mail to your various characters. You will get some orange pieces as quest rewards, so you could just pop these into those. Synthweaving and Armormech would let you craft yourself various green armor, which would be plenty sufficient for leveling. Of course, crafting requires materials, and if you're blitzing through the class stories, you may not be able to keep up easily. But it is an option. I really think you're overthinking this. You want to play, go play. If you need to buy armor, find an npc armor vendor and buy some with credits/ go to the GTN I would suggest going to preferences, and turning on comparative companion tooltips and extended item information, which should help you determine whether gear is an upgrade for your companion. Your companion's main stat is listed in their codex entry. My scoundrel that I leveled through 12 xp frequently had armor that was up to ten levels beneath her current level (usually only one or two pieces at a time), and her companion was even worse off. I pretty much solely used quest reward gear for her and her companion, except once in the late 30s when I used my crafting alts to make a bunch of at level green gear for both her and her companion. You will probably need to redo gear more frequently, as I have the advantage of legacy presence bonuses, and lots of experience in game.

As "matrix cube" may be a little unclear, there's a guide here that will explain in more detail what people are talking about and how to make yourself a matrix cube relic. The Thorn Relic that someone mentioned comes from the Rhakgoul event, which occurs periodically. They're great relics for levelling as they are bind to legacy and give you a presence boost (making your companion more effective) however you need reputation with THORN, so you'll have to wait until the next event to get one. As others have said, being neutral isn't a big problem. You can level just fine without relics, and the relics at endgame are not restricted by alignment. Diplomacy's really the only way to get ds/ls points without picking those options in missions.

Note that after you buy something, it'll be bound to your character for two days. It's not until the two days are up that you can sell it.

There's a GSI bolster terminal on the Makeb Orbital station. If I remember correctly, it's to the right of the shuttle you take to the crash site. Basically it looks a little like the GSI quest terminals, with a blue glowy panel that you click for the buff, but no circle/triangle hovering above it.

Certainty tends to be the determining factor, from what I can tell. If you're sacrificing one person to save many now, then sacrificing that one person is a light sided choice. If you're sacrificing one or a few people because something might potentially happen down the line that would hurt more people, it's a dark side option. Particularly when you have options to both save them and potentially mitigate the future consequences of doing so.

From my understanding, what happens is changing your skill tree "resets" your health and other stats as there's the possibility that you changed one of those through your skill tree. You're put at full health, in your normal state. However, as you're in an area with bolster, your "full health" is significantly less than your "bolstered health." So resetting your health will cause you to briefly go down to half hit points. There's no chance of this killing you directly. People using GSF bolster on Makeb will notice the same thing happening. It can be annoying, but it's likely not a priority to fix.

Each "section" of the groupfinder has it's own automatic daily. So if you queue with all the flashpoints checked, with all tactical flashpoints, operations, etc unchecked, you'll get credit for the "queue for random flashpoint" mission. If you queue for everything, and KDY pops, or if you only queue for KDY, you get credit for the "queue for random tactical flashpoint" mission. (at lower levels KDY is the only tactical so it's a randomness of 1) You can see your status on these dailies, and their rewards, on the far right of the groupfinder screen broken down by section. Both of these dailies happen automatically when you queue. They are unrelated to the daily mission you can pick up from the Priority Missions terminal. If you pick up Emerging Conflicts III, you can still turn in that daily if you only queue for Taral V.

To expand on 2 and 5, pretty much anything that can be bought for real money, can also be sold in game by someone who has bought it. This includes various unlocks, all kinds of adaptable moddable armour, color crystals, dyes, mounts, etc. Furthermore, if you buy the entire set of a particular type of armor, equip it on one character, you can then unlock it in collections for a few cartel coins, and it becomes available on all your characters account-wide, unlimited copies. I've now spent (a lot) of ingame credits buying various armor sets, using the subscription cartel coin stipend to unlock them, and then mixing and matching with dyes to come up with my own looks, without spending a penny over the cost of my subscription. Free to play can be quite frustrating. Preferred is loads better, although you still run into some irritations.

When you clicked on the mission trainer, something should have popped up in the upper middle of your screen saying something like "Archaeaology codex entry" with a tab that said "open" if you'd clicked on this, it would have taken you to the codex page on archaeology which includes exactly what you are asking for. Now, you can go to the codex page, as previous posters have stated. There's an entire section devoted to Crew Skills, with a page about each one. You should also have noticed a question mark box popping up periodically in the bottom of your screen. This is the tutorial, and it comes up every time you're doing something the game thinks you may need a more thorough explanation on. If you've somehow managed to turn tutorial notifications off, you can access the tutorial manually by going to the menu (hit esc while logged in) and clicking on it there. As others mentioned, the game does do a fairly good job of providing you with information as long as you read the information it provides when it pops up.

Yes. There are loads of people doing end game level 55 flashpoints and operations (although there is an increase in people levelling in preparation for the new content) If you're not getting pops for flashpoints, it's quite likely that you are a DPS. It can take a long time to get a flashpoint as a DPS as opposed to as a tank or a healer. Are you sure you are queuing for tacticals? Those should pop just fine. Are you playing at peak server time? If you're interested in operations, you'll want to keep an eye out for people forming pick up groups on the fleet. You can also run flashpoints this way instead. You should also seriously consider joining an endgame guild.

If you open your character information page © you'll see a vertical bar that goes from red to blue to the left of where your character and equipment is. Hover over this, and it will tell you how many light side and how many dark side points you have, and how close you are to the next tier.