Hmm, after reading this I might have to put my sage down and go full retard.

The concepts in SWG (early SWG) were just awesome. Things like bio-enginered creature handles, combat medics, weapons specialist (carbine, pistoleer, rifle etc), having to earn your jedi and my personal favorite bounty hunters with real missions to hunt jedi. The problem is it wasn't very well executed and very OP. My TKM with doc buffs really was unstoppable. SWTOR doesn't have all the cool ideas that SWG did, but it has better control and more well thought out. I really wish we could have bounty hunter missions in this game, that was just awesome.

Well I have every class in the game over 20, most over 30 and a few to 50. IMO: Range: Pure range I like Gunslinger or Sniper. Something about the feel Gunslinger though makes me like it better. Hybrid Range: Powertech Pyro, Not really an holes with this class and it actually has decent range. If your target starts gapping you then you can grapple them right back into the hurt. I prefer the PT/Pyro over the Vanguard just because the animations are better imo. Melee DPS: Its off an on between my sentinel and my assassin. Sentinel is stronger imo in better hands, but not by much. Assassin is easier to play and the Tank spec/DPS hybrid with DPS gear is a great grouping spec. Taunt and destroy people. Sentinel though is just beast mode, but most people don't bother to slow or interrupt you . Fairly weak when CC'ed if you mistimed your defensive cooldowns. Healing: Operative over Sawbones for animations on healing, but dirty kick still one of the coolest animations. I also found it easier to level as a healer on my operative vs. the smuggler (which is fairly brutal). I actually like healing a lot on my sorc and my sage, its just more challenging. Others: Balance/Madness specced sages and sorcs are really fun in the 1-49 range. If you know what your doing its very mobile, very active and very versitile. I am trying out a balance/seer combination right now that lets me off heal and dps, its proving to be a good node/door guy when coupled some stealthers. Also pretty good at kiting due to the dots, self heals and slows. Meat shields: Can't beat guardians and juggs when you use your in-vulnerabilities and have pocket healing. Problem is good teams will ignore you until everyone else is dead so learn how to taunt right. Current favorites in this order: Assassin, Operative, Sage (I like pebbles), Sentinel, Gunslinger. Story wise: LS Sith Warrior, LS Knight, LS/DS Operative, DS Assasin is ok. That's all I got, just my humble opinion. Most important thing is to pick the playstyle you like the best and then build your spec around it. I like support so you can see that Assassin, Ops and Sage Hybrid are my cup of tea.

nm already got my answer, thanks

I logged into PotF today, my normal republic server) and noticed that all my Fatman (empire) characters are now on this server. Well that is fantastic actually, but here is the problem. I have 14 total characters and only 12 slots. The 14 is showing red, but so far they are all there. Has anyone else had this problem and if so do they really make you delete your characters or are you allowed to be over the mark? It seems to me that they should have accounted for at least16 slots :/

OP speaks the truth. Fact is I have seen very good commando's and mercs that do just fine and I have seen people playing the perceived OP classes do average. Problem is the people who suck complain about the people who dont. You dont get help desk calls very often to tell you about how good of a job your doing. Here is another fact based opinion: balance is a myth, it never has and never will exist and furthermore its not even important in group played games. If this was 1v1 24/7 then it would matter, but 2v1 of equally skill players will always trump mr. bad ***. Always. What we have most of the time is Mr. Bad *** vs. 2 people where one or both are back pedaling wasd tunnel vision button spammers with no clue how to interrupt, guard or anything else. You know, the kind that generally foucus on 3 or 4 abilities and dont think about chains or positioning.

hmm, signs point to troll, i'll bite. So when you quit your former MMO, Did they tell you that you can never come back? SW will never die, this game might but it takes a LOT to kill a game. Basically it has to remain profitable to keep the lights on. We aren't at that point here and they can always cut costs which will just mean not much new. Only problem is we are trending the wrong direction and doing so at a rate faster than most probably anticipated. It hasn't even been a year, we should be growing in subscribers.

Are they twins? Why else would they both retire at the same time other than they are burnt out of EA over BW. Seems highly unlikely that we shouldn't read anything into this. Think of everything that has happened since SWTOR went live (layoffs, mismanagement, broken promises, shareholder profits, transfers and now retiring) and keep throwing up the blinders if you think none of this is related to EA's history with games and the gaming industry. Some of you see "nothing new" and I agree, its nothing new with EA. Retiring in this sense is equivalent to "I'm out, deuces". I wouldn't be surprised if we see something soon from this game that we all [customers] absolutely hate. I am speculating as I am free to do that EA or Mr. Hickman announced something that was a last straw type thing. My guess would be paying for Makeb or something ridiculous on the F2P front.

Its more like we are all hiding on dagobah and tatooine waiting for a new hope. This game may survive yet, they need better marketing and better 50+. Really not that hard to do if they focus on it. If it were up to BW I am sure they would do it, but its up to EA. They put mr. Hickman in charge, he doesnt have a good track record, the force is not strong with that one.

You want the impossible!

It is so unlikely that any game will ever "balance", has any game ever achieved this for real? I think that they could spend their limited resources on things they can affect. Only fight battle's you can win as Dr. Phil said. X-Q would be on that list, as would world pvp and many other things. I like this post, I mean it took 6 movies for the real SW to bring balance to the force, we shouldn't expect rookie mmo to do it in a year.

sir, are you suggesting that marauders, as a pure melee dps class, have an extremely powerful chain that starts with a channeled ability and ravages (pun intended) paper targets when teams refuse to slow, interrupt or taunt them? Take it back now you liar. Seriously, did you notice how 90% of those beat downs were on players who ate a 3 second channel before they even knew they were getting wailed on. If your reaction time is 3 seconds your going to die. Now I am not saying they are not really good at melee dps, but operatives are really good at healing and power techs are really good at face stomping and assassins can put a hurt on for extended stretches and so on and so on. This is how the class is supposed to work and it does have counters that pugs just cant figure out. Look, maybe i am not saying it right, here listen to this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_N1OjGhIFc

And the reasons you mentioned are part of the reason why people get irritated when the company does things that don't make SWTOR's strengths strong and its weaknesses weaker. The fact is the Star Wars franchise is arguably the strongest backbone any game could ever ask for, its timeless in the same way that Tolkein fantasy has supported orc/goblin/elf games for so many years. The problem is they are not taking fully advantage of the potential here and the engine is preventing them from it. To me, the most important aspect of the SW lore that is missing is the epic conflict. The whole thing is a battle of good vs. evil and epic at that and this game is missing the epic part. Epic space, epic ground, epic story. They put all their chips into the epic story and may not be able to afford to keep it that way.

And it depends on how well they adhered to OO practices. Not enough cohesion and too much coupling means changes to A also change B. Could be they cant fix one thing without breaking another. I love C++, but its easy to make mistakes if your careless (not saying they are). Lol Hollerith cards. I remember learning about those in college when classic asp was the new thing, Y2K was making COBOL nerds rich and Microsoft acknowledged the Internet.

So the story that never ends actually does end at 50 and then you have...............nothing [new] to look forward too. Interesting approach, is this game run by the government now? I never thought I would say this but I actually miss wow now. Much more bored as hell stuff to do in that game. Also, hasn't it been 6 weeks since they said 6 week intervals or are they counting the last mini event as an update?