Players, unfortunately, lack any imagination or creativity, thus they must be lead by the nose or bribed into doing something or they just won't do it. Plop down a piece of land, give them tools, populate it... they stand there wondering why they are there and what they should do. If there isn't a reward attached, they don't see a reason to do it. Will I get XP for killing this creature or not? No reward? I won't kill it then. Will I get something if I climb to the top of this mountain? No reward? Then I won't climb it then. WoW added all the useless achievements to encourage people to do what they always could do long before achievements existed. You could always grind rep with useless factions for nothing more than the self-pride of having done it. Now it's an achievement, so instead of something unique that you did, now it's common because everyone and their brother does it for some stupid achievement... and it's a 1000 times easier to do to boot. Yes, MMOs need a story... its why they fall apart at end game so easily... because there is no story left... it's more like a broken record repeating itself. The leveling process has the most engaging content in the game... THE MOST ENGAGING CONTENT... dailies, flashpoints, operation, hard modes... this is just the broken record left playing to keep you around until the next expansion in which, get this, you are given new story as part as your leveling again. Rinse repeat. All MMOs follow this same formula. All of them.

Take a screen shot then make it your desktop wallpaper... Your character outside of game!

If they add arenas, they will follow WoW and make it so that it is accessible to all. You can't stop it from happening... try as you might. Even the developers at Blizzard said arenas were a big mistake and they have been trying to figure out how to fix that fiasco ever since. If gear didn't matter to PVPers, they'd never whine about the drop rates now would they? It's all about the gear, always has been. If merely killing a player is all that mattered, you already have that in game right now. But you get nothing for killing a player out in the open world... nothing. No one is out there PVPing either.

Are you sure he is not summoned? I know that the companion can be *dumb* at times and just stand somewhere for no apparent reason. Like if you hop off an elevator and enter combat, he'll sometimes just stand there on the elevator going up and down and never enter combat. Since you are in combat, you can't resummon him... the game disallows that. I'd call it a delightful glitch. Getting dismounted due to getting attacked puts you at a disadvantage in every case. Luckily the NPCs are stupid and you can recover, if it's a player, you're usually in for a world of hurt.

LOL, reminds me of the old joke... "Hey Doctor, it hurts when I do this..." "Then don't do that." Having the beastliest machine in the world doesn't change the fact that your machine is having issues that are only being highlighted by a particular application. You could run apps for years never knowing you had some bad RAM... until that one day you actually ran an app that addressed the bad sector of your RAM. You will swear up and down that it's the software because everything else runs just fine. Just an example, but people are always looking at the latest software added to the system as the problem... when the problem may have been there all along just dormant. If a lesser machine is running it just fine, you have already proven that the issue doesn't affect all machines. Thus the problem can be traced back to the individuals machine... be it hardware or software.

Probably has to do with your class choice. I leveled to 50 as a Shadow Jedi Counselor and found myself at level if not under level later in the leveling process because I could stealth my way to the objectives. I'm currently leveling a Sage Jedi Counselor and am clearly 3 levels ahead of the content that I was at or below level on my Shadow. Difference in the two is one you have to clear your way to objectives, the other one you don't. Has a major impact on your overall XP gain. Just get into the habit of killing everything around you and you will never run into an XP problem again.

Generally speaking the problem with gear is that those who have it, are allowed to PVP with those that do not. You want the better gear, you want the better rank, you want something to show for your efforts... and yet, you still want to be allowed to pop into any old PVP skirmish you'd like at will. Fundamentally that is what is wrong with the gearing system as a whole. You can establish a separate arena for those that are more skilled/geared, but so long as you allow them to PVP with those that have none of this gear, you will always have an outcry about gear imbalance. Plain and simple, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You either give everyone the same gear, or your separate those with the better gear from those with the lesser gear. In the end, they refuse to do that, so the problem persists forever, and will persist forever. Being at the top with only 2 people to PVP against is no fun. Being at the bottom with thousands of players that out gear you is no fun either. It's a game. It's supposed to be fun. But they go out of their way to design it in such a way as to guarantee that it is unfun. Dump arenas and battlegrounds and let PVP happen out in the real world. No special gear to be earned... it's just plain old, kill or be killed. But players that don't get anything for killing another player just won't bother to do it. It's always about gear... nothing but the gear.

LOL, all this proves is that people are cheap and accept crap as the norm. Which begs the question... why complain about SWTOR when you happily accept mediocrity in your OS?

How about an off-topic forum that directs you to an off-site forum!

Did this quest as a Balance Jedi Shadow and died a lot. Did it as a Balance Jedi Sage and it was a complete and utter joke. It really comes down to CC to be honest. As a Sage I could run with Q without even breaking a sweat, turn off AoE on the minion, Force lift the strongest and the one next to it (talented), kill weakest to strongest, one by one. Sage's Force Lift is incredibly OP especially when you put extra points into it.

Insanely difficult mode... you get DC'd as soon as you enter the instance... every time... if you manage to actually kill anything, your account gets flagged for using a cheat and you are banned for 60 days. That make you feel better?

If it is *just* a game, none of this really matters. But it isn't *just* a game, hence it does. Eventually you will realize everything will drop again, you will be doing the instance again and again, everything that you have today will be replaced tomorrow... why even stress yourself over any of it.

Yea nodes like in archeology. Every gathering profession gathers from nodes... be it a plant, a gem, et al. They are nodes that you gather from. I always take slicing when leveling then an appropriate gathering profession to support my crafting profession. You're not really going to craft much of anything useful as you level. Stuff gets replaced too fast. Best to just gather materials to level the profession as you go (nodes, not crew skill missions) and slicing to line your wallet with credits which you can always use no matter what. Then when you hit 50, then worry about leveling your crew skills. You should easily hit 400 slicing as you level so long as you gather all the nodes that you see as you go along. Worth it for the credits alone.

Much like a gym membership... you pay your monthly fee... can spend 24/7 in there and really get your money's worth or you can never go there at all and basically hand the gym money for nothing. You know, like all those WoW players that pay a monthly sub just to check their auctions.

My bet is that it treats it as one item even if it's in a stack, so basically you waste the other items in said stack. Reason I believe that to be the case is that it doesn't return mats beyond what one would get for a single RE'd item. So if it's a stack of 10 and you get 1 mat item back, that means 9 other items were totally wasted. Separate the items out before REing them. That ensures the RE isn't wasted.