O.k., I've been playing this for nearly a year (I decided not to plunk down the money for the 'founder' title) and I'm still confused by so much of this game. Everyone uses special terms like:

cc

mob (I presume that's not a literal word 'mob' but some anagram)

aggro

nuke

AoE

and so on.

Bioware seems to be under the presumption that we've all been playing multiplayer games forever and didn't bother to explain such things as:

Defense Chance

Surge

Power

Presence

or why a fighter character even bothers to carry a lightsabrer as the damages done by such a character a specified in the ability description.

The parts of this game that make no sense that I list are not exhaustive; there's a lot more I don't get.

Does anyone know of an actual, meaningful manual out there?

CC= Crowd Control, skills like Whirlwind, Sleep Dart etc.

Mob does literally mean 'mob' - it's an odd gamer term that refers to either a group (group of mobs) or a single target (a mob). Yeah, don't ask about the plural being a singular in this case...

Aggro - aggression! It's how much an enemy NPC hates you and wants to hit you upside the head. Aggro on tanks is good, aggro on DPS is bad, aggro on healers is very bad.

Nuke - Overkill, use all the DPS etc. comes from the idea of "to nuke", as in, dropping a nuclear bomb on something.

Defense Chance - the percentage chance that you will defend against an attack based on your defense stat.

Surge - the stat that makes up your Critical Hit Multiplier

Power - the stat that adds base damage or healing to your respective skills (the higher you Power is, the better your attack skills and your healing skills)

Presence - adds bonus stats to your companions, but it's not amazingly useful

or why a fighter character even bothers to carry a lightsabrer as the damages done by such a character a specified in the ability description.

Style, mostly.

There's also a lot of stuff in this thread, but you can always just ask more questions in this one.

O.k., I've been playing this for nearly a year (I decided not to plunk down the money for the 'founder' title) and I'm still confused by so much of this game. Everyone uses special terms like:

cc

mob (I presume that's not a literal word 'mob' but some anagram)

aggro

nuke

AoE

and so on.

 

Bioware seems to be under the presumption that we've all been playing multiplayer games forever and didn't bother to explain such things as:

Defense Chance

Surge

Power

Presence

or why a fighter character even bothers to carry a lightsabrer as the damages done by such a character a specified in the ability description.

 

The parts of this game that make no sense that I list are not exhaustive; there's a lot more I don't get.

 

Does anyone know of an actual, meaningful manual out there?

as for the first bit...those are just all general gaming terms that people use in mostly in MMOs. the above poster explained them well.

as for the second group, i'm pretty sure that if you open up your character window and hover your mouse over each stat, it gives more detailed information on what it's for. but again, the above poster explained them well.

Some suggestions to get you up to speed:

1. Check this link out:

http://mmoterms.com/full-mmorpg-terms-glossary

This literally has every acronym you will ever need to know in an MMO.

2. Have you read the tutorial guide?? Seems like a silly question but going on general chat on [planet x].... I will take a wild guess and say that maybe you turned off the tutorial mode when you first played as it was an unwanted distraction?

Press ESC and then tutorials from the menu. There is a 28 page guide to pretty much every aspect of the game in fairly clear language. The Bottom right checkbox brings up an index and there is also an option to enable tutorial popups.

Whenever you encounter some new game mechanic there will be a small on screen helper window expaining the bare bones of whatever it is you've just found.

3. Also as you progress you wil see `blah,blah.. place, person entry added to your Codex`. If you are quick enough you have the chance to click a link directly to the Codex to read the entry in full.

You can look it up at any time via the in game menu if you need reminding of anything.Here is a link to the off game codex:

http://www.swtor-spy.com/codex/

4. shamless self promotion , but useful ...

http://sdrv.ms/SpztJu

My skydrive mini new players guide plus a ton of links to must see sites.

Anyway hope this helps.

or why a fighter character even bothers to carry a lightsabrer as the damages done by such a character a specified in the ability description.

The damage in the ability description is dynamic and is based on your weapon's damage range and your stats (in general).

Oh, and MMOs almost never come with a detailed manual. They become outdated too fast to be useful. Since a MMO is a constantly patched and updated piece of software, nearly everything is subject to change.

Mob does literally mean 'mob' - it's an odd gamer term that refers to either a group (group of mobs) or a single target (a mob). Yeah, don't ask about the plural being a singular in this case

Actually Mob is short for Mobile as in a moving monster of some sorts. I ended up looking this one to see how close i was and came up with the following:

An AI controlled monster. ‘Mob’ originally comes from the MUD era, where it was short for ‘mobile’, to differentiate monsters that would patrol a set of rooms as opposed to monsters which would stay in one place until killed.

Actually Mob is short for Mobile as in a moving monster of some sorts. I ended up looking this one to see how close i was and came up with the following:

An AI controlled monster. ‘Mob’ originally comes from the MUD era, where it was short for ‘mobile’, to differentiate monsters that would patrol a set of rooms as opposed to monsters which would stay in one place until killed.

I did not know that I'd assumed it came from the word 'mob', for obvious reasons.