OP the game has changed a lot! In my opinion, level sync is pretty cool because you the game will "level you down" to a specific planet's range so that you don't miss out on any cool quests or story lines. What's even MORE cool is that you still get gear appropriate to your actual true level. For example, the wife and I were running our mid 50's characters through some class quests on Dromund Kaas and decided to do the heroic 2's on the planet since we knew about this. We got some nice prototype (blue) gear that was a bit better than our augmented (orange) gear. To me that's just one thing that's changed, which is insanely cool. The population is relatively high and the economy is very healthy. My latest character had over 1 million credits by the time that they were level 40. I've only been back slightly over 2 months, but I am glad I came back. The constant downtimes are pretty much a thing of the past, and the bugs that plagued the game for quite awhile after launch are considerably less. Welcome back!

That worked for me, but others reported that turning anti-aliasing down to medium resolved the issue as well.

All, For whatever reason my launcher.exe icon is displaying as a white blank one on both my desktop and within the Star Wars - the Old Republic directory. For my desktop shortcut, I did try to change the icon to something else and then back to the correct one, but it's not making any difference. What's odd is that all of the other icons are keeping the correct one, only launcher.exe seems to have lost the association. This doesn't affect gameplay, but it's really annoying. I ran a sfc/ scannow and that didn't resolve the missing (from launcher.exe) icon. Any ideas? Thanks.

Did you by chance update your AMD driver recently? I did and experienced many of the things that you are currently seeing in-game. The most annoying one was my ships galaxy map was all black. This happened to me about a week ago. I rolled back the driver to the previous one and it solved everything. I do not know if a newer driver came out to fix the problems, but tbh I'm afraid to update it after all that lol

Well obviously any characters from TFA cannot actually be an NPC in SWTOR, due to the time differential. However, in the Aftermath novel, there are a group of dark side users (who may or may not be associated with the Knights of Ren from the movie) called the Acolytes from the Beyond. Where they're from (the Beyond) could be explored in a future expansion. Since it's only a book, and not actually part of the movie, I'll go ahead and say that it would be cool to see where the dark side originated from, as Palpatine was (unknowingly to us) sending scientists and young men/women out to this Beyond searching for the source. So while it's hard to really tie the game into the new movie(s) but as far as I know, some elements could be in place during the timeline of SWTOR.

If you read Aftermath, you'll discover that a group known as the Acolytes from the Beyond are also seeking out Vader relics, and consider him to be a hero or at least a martyr. I don't think that Kylo Ren's (possible) obsession proves that he's family. It could be more of an ideological association that he feels, similar to how the Acolytes find cause to seek out things related to the famous Sith. I'm pretty sure that none of them know that Vader turned back to the light before he died.

Luke will probably only be in a few (but key) scenes in the Force Awakens. I do not believe (nor have I heard) that we'll see him in any kind of combat. I do believe that he might have a larger role in Episode VIII, as a mentor or teacher. I do think we will eventually we will see him fight someone, just not in the first movie.

Potential movie and actual novel spoilers below, so if you want to avoid them don't read my post. Kylo Ren isn't even his real name. It's an assumed one. He is a member of the Knights of Ren, who are not Sith, rather something that we haven't seen before in Star Wars. They do use the Dark side of the Force. That's all we know. Kylo Ren follows the leader of the First Order (remnants of the Empire who have been refocused and appear to be more polished and professional than Palpatine's version), a mysterious alien character known as Supreme Leader Snoke. Almost nothing is known about Snoke, but a rumor came out awhile ago that he is reptilian in appearance. Snoke also is a Dark side user. In the Aftermath book, which takes place after Return of the Jedi, a group known as the "Acolytes from the Beyond" buys Darth Vader's old lightsaber from a shady weapons dealer, and it's apparent that they see him (Vader) as a martyr of sorts. Apparently shortly before the events of Return of the Jedi, we learn that Emperor Palpatine was sending groups of young men and women out into the edges of the known universe, because he had some idea that it's where the Dark side of the Force originated from. So it's possible that these Acolytes might have been the first iteration of the Knights of Ren. It could be our first clue. As far as familial ties, they're keeping all major character and plot details under wraps, quite well I might add. Some of the comments above bring up the popular rumors, which have no fact behind them but could be true. We'll see. It's also interesting to note that the toys for Luke Skywalker and Snoke have not been released yet. There was a leaked photo of Luke, in which he was wearing a white robe and had a beard, but the leader of the First Order has not been seen yet, that we're aware of. Hopefully the next (real) trailer shows us a few things. I'm really looking forward to it! EDIT - and yeah Kylo Ren is not Luke Skywalker. I think it's safe to say that.

We're both 21 after Coruscant. We did both H2's there, again it was really easy and fun. We're also avoiding buying gear off the market unless we see something that's a huge upgrade for our followers. We're sticking with orange gear and mods for leveling. We also created a couple of Sith characters (both DPS) because we wanted some evil toons. So how is this new (well, new to us I mean) Starfighter PvP stuff? That looks cool. I got burnt out on WoW PVP (arena and battlegrounds) and have also tried it in other games (this one and EQ2) but this space combat deal seems different. Thanks for the tip about the NPC who can turn off the x12 experience for class quests. We may do that, because it's going to come to a point where we're arriving on planets and all quests will be grey. While we do like to level up, we enjoy smelling the roses and for content to not all be trivial. I have noticed less annoying bugs in the game, too. The one where lips don't move in cut scenes has showed up a few times, but not as often as I remember, and less of the 5-7 hour daily downtimes are nice

I have nothing against same sex couples in real life. Grown adults should be able to choose their partners, free of government interference. I'm straight, but individual liberty is very important to me, especially in my country (U.S.A.) But in game? I really don't play Star Wars for romantic relationships, and it's really a non-issue in the movies so I'm not sure why it matters. Actually some parents might not want their children to play, so it could have some negative impact on sub numbers, too. I'm trying to be realistic without hurting anyone's feelings, but yeah, really what do real life social issues have to do with a space fantasy game?

You can't save every life in war, and sometimes the Republic and/or Jedi have to make tough choices that will cost lives, in order for the greater good to prevail. The Empire is out to enslave and conquer. You can't bring up how there's shady characters in the Republic or good characters in the Empire. That's not the discussion. Republic is good and Empire is evil, there's really no question, BUT those that said that Bioware didn't make it cut and dry are right. The Empire is less malicious, I guess, but they're still bad.

Yeah so I ended up going Vanguard, and she went with Jedi Consular. We just finished Esseles (both had just hit 14 due to XP increased gains, we even skipped a bunch of quests near the end on our starter worlds, and didn't do the H2's). The FP was laughably easy. She didn't have to even heal me very much. I did taunt and stuff, but we burned through all of the bosses in like less than a minute and got a couple of nice pieces of gear each in the process. I remember doing Esseles a few years ago, it wasn't that hard but it wasn't this easy lol What sucks is we're both level 15 now, so we're pretty much at max for Coruscant even though we just started it. EDIT - I mean we burned through each boss fight in around a minute, of course it took us longer to do the instance heh (55 mins I believe).

Wow awesome. You all are really helping a lot. We're not in a rush to level, but we want to play together... so now I'm thinking that we should play on different starting planets and join up later. I may go Vanguard, that way I still get to have a gun but can survive while the wife heals me. Our goal is to get to the Esselles flashpoint and do it together to start off. Yeah as far as the heroic areas, her and I really like them, so we'll probably do some.

Cool... appreciate the responses So next question. I'm downloading the game now, then gonna copy it to my wife's computer. We want to create two new characters, so that we do the two-person heroic areas, and iirc the first flashpoint is also intended for two. Previously I played a bounty hunter to level 50 so I'm thinking ranged. The wife generally likes to play healers. Any suggestions on what combo might work for us? We're willing to try things outside of our comfort zone, but as I said she'll probably heal.

Hi all, Just re-subscribed to SWTOR. Was wondering, are all expansions included with the monthly subscription price or do I have to pay for those separately? Thanks.