I think he means the final quest on Korriban, not Dromund Kaas, yeah, I found the one getting the new companion pretty hard too - but it didn't lead me to force pushing droids off the ledge - I just had to slog it to the companion, take it slow, and as soon as I got him... Bingo! Easier. I will say, Jedi Consular and Inquisitor can be tough to level, because you're so fragile - you really finding yourself taking advantage of everything you possibly can just to make it through. Far, far, far easier than leveling a mage in classic and BC WoW though, that was my first and grueling to the point of ridiculous. So many deaths. SO MANY DEATHS. Oh, the flashbacks. No. NO, THEY COME!

I find these quite important, SWTOR is one of those properties that might be a first MMO for some - as much as most DPS loath being classed as damage meter obsessed idiots, careless of everything else - if you were to say "come and do this thing in a group with us!" "W-what! I don't want to let the group down!" "Don't worry, you're just DPS, just follow everyone's example!" Having no clear duty or role can be daunting for...well, most anyone. No one really understands what's expected of them.

Okay - I think I agree. On my "Iconic" playthrough, I think romancing as an alien would break my suspension of disbelief a bit (Haha, there that phrase is), I don't think the "Look in the mirror and who is this" is a valid argument for limiting species at all though. Other than my personal opinion, which may not be like anyone else's, maybe romances shouldn't be limited. Also, in a long-term view, I'm more interested in seeing a new player, running around as a human, to see a Kel Dor Jedi Player and go "Wow! That's awesome, how can I play a Kel Dor!?" I'm not on the crusade you seem to be on though, just willing to discuss it.

Just a status would be nice - I'm on Gav Daragon, a subscriber and loving it, and would like to start looking around for a guild - but I'm waiting to see what happens here. Certainly because there might be more people. That said, if anyone on Gav Daragon has a medium size, mature and active guild - send a mail to Issachar. Plug done.

I see your point - how would you decide to solve the romance issue though? If you wanted that in for new races. I couldn't imagine Nadia wanting to kiss a Rodian's sucker-thing. I could imagine Kel Dor and so on being a legacy unlock? I'm not sure you'd want to show it on the character creation menu, incase new players go "Wild! I'm going to play as these crazy aliens!" Only to find the character interaction style suits the more "vanilla" races. It just dosen't "gel" as well. Plus, for some races, I'm not sure I could listen to a whole game of my main character speaking "Alien" - I'd throw my computer out the window. Having your character using a portable translator device or something too would be more than a little contrived.

There are plenty of other sandbox games out there, sad to say that SWG was that one for Star Wars. But SWTOR is not trying to be that, it's trying to be it's own thing. I like that they've stuck to their guns here. I came to play a spiritual successor to SWTOR, and a real RPG, not a Second Life type mess. If they start whacking, say, Ithorians as playable PC's... well. It'd have to be thought out - I can't imagine humans flirting with Ithorians, or vice-versa, or relationships with Padawans, there should only be the "non-romance" path. If you're an Ithorians who just flirts and has sex with all the humans you find as you go along, you're playing some kind of outlandish fetishist of an Ithorian. Other Ithorians would see you as, well, if not an aberration, certainly unusual. So would humans for that matter. I'm just trying to make a point here. Quite badly, but I hope it was amusing. Point is, I agree.

Just to quickly say - you're not just offering a way to eliminate the jerks in MMO's - you're offering a way to eliminate the game. It's like setting fire to the forest because you don't like one of the animals that lives in there. Also, you're not "getting rid of them" - you're just making everyone indistinguishable from each other, good and bad playing doesn't even come in. You don't know who's a jerk or not - except that most of the cooperative good players will be gone, and all you're left with is transient F2P who want to beat bosses, get gear, realise it's boring, and then quit. All you'll be left with is jerks.

Personally, I'm never a forum-user... except when I'm at work - any free time thinking about a game, I'd rather spend playing the game, but that's not always possible. So I'm here jostling with you guys. I haven't burned though the content at all, but I guess that's because I've got a job. There's so many classes I still want to play, I'm waiting for Bioware to sort out the Oceanic server concerns before finding groups or joining a guild.

Halo also has it's trinity, and this MMO has adopted a tried and true MMO trinity - but with an SWTOR skin. Perfect for those who like it, but also love Star Wars. Oh, and also the leveling and conversation system is great for an old RPG-fan like me. Not always perfect, but a million times better than the WoW - "Read a Scroll" Quests. EA never planned to do something ground-breaking with the system, I'm personally not particularly bothered. Besides, the game is already out, reworking everything would be ridiculous. There are plenty of other games with different systems - try some of them? As for trinity based systems from the dawn of tabletop RPG's - I'd say it's a direct source, except everything's more streamlined, (say, from 4E) the lines used to blur a lot. I'd say, from Tank/Healer/DPS - the only thing we didn't have is the Thief (Stealth/Traps/Pickpocketing) which they tried in WoW Classic, but it didn't quite work out. The game only got more and more fastpaced, and the rewards for thieving skills were so negligible it was left behind. Not to mention only one rogue class. Another classic is diplomacy, SWTOR has some of that, but hardly on the scale of "The Paladin is the best speaker, so let's let him do the talking" Essentially even though we add little sidebits, it keeps boiling down to the trinity. In a perfectly designed encounter, if one part of the trinity isn't doing it's job, the triangle will collapse. If the Tank and Healer can survive on their own, the encounter is poorly designed, or they outlevel/outgear the content. There has to be time limits, or added mobs coming that the DPS have to burn down. I'm sure you already know this, but it works as a good basis for encounter design. The problem with a GW2 system, is that if people aren't flexible and adaptable at all roles, well - it all boils down to people. The design doc is fine, but if someone wants to say "Look, I kept the group alive just by my healing!" - "Well, everyone else in the group was healing as well, so no" - OR "Everyone's healing!? Can someone DPS!?" It'd take an extremely flexible and adaptable team, who know each other extremely well to naturally slip into the roles the situation demands, and then even, once they get used to it, they might not feel like they "excel" at anything. Well, not everyone's cup of tea.

I imagine this was one of their planned major content updates to release periodically - now that the game has changed to F2P, circumstances have changed, and they're looking for payment for entry. I think the discount for subscribers has something to do with this. The new level cap sort of says "Expansion" a bit too much though. Personally, I'd rather an expansions be much more... mind-blowing. Bioware can't be that short of ideas.

So when you crit on a slicing mission you often get an "unlock" item, for say, treasure hunt or investigation: my question is this. Does what rank slicing mission you get them on determine what missions they are? For instance, if I get one or two unlocks from slicing rank 1 missions, and then start doing rank 2 missions, if I want to unlock all the bonus missions, do I have to keep doing more rank 1's to get them all? Please explain the mechanics of this. Sponsored by your favourite Padawan educational show - "Teach me, Jedi!" - Taking the place of absentee masters since the advent of the Jedi order.

You should be able to buy them at your local post office! Well, you can in Australia at least.

Founder here as well, I've probably put down 80 dollars thus far, and can see myself spending more at a later date.

Haven't read the whole thread, but too many girls accidentally "let slip" that they're a girl, while saying they hate how they're treated because of it. Most of them secretly want the attention. They might make a big deal of it, they might make forum posts loudly exclaiming "wow, I can't believe you guys aren't over this already!" Most players won't care, most girls who don't want this to happen simply won't let it be known that they are a girl, and the ones that do, will just say "shut up". "deal with it" or just leave if they feel they're getting harassed. From my experience most of these occurrences are usually someone in a group asks, the girl "accidentally" let's slip that she's female, and the most immature person of the group needles her about it, and she "reluctantly" plays along - and if the conversation dies, keeps saying "Wow, you're really surprised I'm a girl?" - while the rest of the group just ignores her/them. Maybe I'm cold or being too mean toward the issue, but I tend to feel this way towards those who don't define themselves as gamers, but being The Female Gamer, with capital letters. Ugh.

Untrue. Unlike buying cartel coins, subscribers are signed in as ongoing, recurring payments, even if realistically they won't stay subscribed forever, Bioware and EA will look at them as such in the numbers. Cartel Coins will be important revenue, but it's not the same "reliable income" Companies are so eager to have these subscribers signed up that they gladly offer discounts for longer intervals.