Hey folks. Used to play for the first few months of the game and then left along with the rest of the guild after we got bored.

As a returning player, I'm basically new at this point since so much has changed. I've done some basic research, but I still have some questions I can't find the answers too. Would appreciate some honest answers.

1: Economic inflation has obviously occurred. The 2m credits I had when I logged off for the last time shortly after launch seems to be a paltry amount now. Roughly how much constitutes a large amount of credits for a single player to have now? 50m? 100m? More?

2: How difficult are the end game Operations and Flashpoints currently? I'm coming from a Heroic/Mythic raid team in World of Warcraft as of last month, so is anyone able to provide comparison, or compared to the original Operations at launch?

3: Are there any Australians still playing? Any end game Australian guilds that raid in AEST or similar timezones?

4: Any new companions to bring on board besides the original base story ones?

6: Can anyone suggest a good, detailed "action plan guide" for new/returning players to go from nothing to Operation ready? ( what to farm and in what order, BiS gear, talents, rotations, etc. Bonus points for Powertech Tank specific ones. )

5: Why is everyone in Vaiken Spacedock General Chat so angry all the time?

Thanks!

1: Economic inflation has obviously occurred. The 2m credits I had when I logged off for the last time shortly after launch seems to be a paltry amount now. Roughly how much constitutes a large amount of credits for a single player to have now? 50m? 100m? More?

I can't fully answer this question as I'm not even sure anymore but I do think that is something that I guess could be considered mildly wealthy, inflation has increased quite a lot so having something like 50m might be good depending on how much you spend on the GTN, etc. I'd say if you're not interested in prime cartel market items 40m should be good.

2: How difficult are the end game Operations and Flashpoints currently? I'm coming from a Heroic/Mythic raid team in World of Warcraft as of last month, so is anyone able to provide comparison, or compared to the original Operations at launch?

Well story mode operations and Nightmare/Master mode flashpoints, barring a few exceptions, are incredibly easier than they were at launch. I cannot speak for the difficulty of Hard Mode/Veteran Mode or Nightmare/Master mode operations as I don't do those.

3: Are there any Australians still playing? Any end game Australian guilds that raid in AEST or similar timezones?

Yes, I believe there are still a few Australians playing the game. I don't know anything about an Australian guild that raids around that timezone but perhaps someone else can help you.

4: Any new companions to bring on board besides the original base story ones?

Yes, there has been new companions over the year like HK-51, Treek and the KOTFE ones. The Cartel Market also sells companions but they don't have any story attached to them, besides Treek.

6: Can anyone suggest a good, detailed "action plan guide" for new/returning players to go from nothing to Operation ready? ( what to farm and in what order, BiS gear, talents, rotations, etc. Bonus points for Powertech Tank specific ones. )

5: Why is everyone in Vaiken Spacedock General Chat so angry all the time?

Because it's the Imperial Fleet. If people wouldn't argue with each other all day the universe would implode.

1: Economic inflation has obviously occurred. The 2m credits I had when I logged off for the last time shortly after launch seems to be a paltry amount now. Roughly how much constitutes a large amount of credits for a single player to have now? 50m? 100m? More?

That question is more or less equivalent to "How long is a piece of string?". My general take on it would be to say that if you have more than is required to buy the stuff you want to buy, you have a lot. And in general, the only stuff with hugely inflated prices is:

* Cosmetic frippery from the Cartel Market.

* Certain rare crafting materials for toppest-tier gear.

* A few semi-cosmetic oddments from difficult content.

Most of the things you can buy *for credits* in-game (that is, not from the GTN) are about the same sort of prices they used to be back in the day. Notable exceptions:

* Class ability training (including speeder piloting) is free.

* At the same level and power-colour (green/blue/purple/yellow) as before, modifications are cheaper to remove from gear than they used to be, *but* the highest ranked gear is still not cheap because it's significantly higher in power.

2: How difficult are the end game Operations and Flashpoints currently? I'm coming from a Heroic/Mythic raid team in World of Warcraft as of last month, so is anyone able to provide comparison, or compared to the original Operations at launch?

No comment. My highest level WoW character is level 7, so I haven't done any raiding there, and I didn't play SWTOR right at launch either. (I'm also not a big fan of hard-just-to-be-hard group content anyway.)

3: Are there any Australians still playing? Any end game Australian guilds that raid in AEST or similar timezones?

Fewer than there were because:

* The APAC servers were merged into the West Coast US servers way back when.

* In mid 2017 they ported the servers to new hardware *and* moved the West Coast US servers to the East Coast, resulting in painful ping times for APAC players.

4: Any new companions to bring on board besides the original base story ones?

Lots. In theory, you can end up with a companion list with over 40 companions in it, although in some cases they are companions from the other classes. There are definitely more than ten completely new companions.

5: Why is everyone in Vaiken Spacedock General Chat so angry all the time?

Because rude-and-angry is the Way of the Internet, a bit.

Thanks for the answers! I'll look over the video links and see if I can at least dip my feet into Ops before Onslaught is released.

It does make me a bit sad that they lowered the difficulty of Ops though. It may have been my guild who were all amazing players, but even at launch we found Ops to be a tad bit too easy compared to other MMOs. Ah well, not sure if I can handle ops as a tank with 400ms ping. We'll see.

 

1: Economic inflation has obviously occurred.

2: How difficult are the end game Operations and Flashpoints currently?

3: Are there any Australians still playing?

4: Any new companions to bring on board besides the original base story ones?

5: Can anyone suggest a good, detailed "action plan guide"

6: Why is everyone in Vaiken Spacedock General Chat so angry all the time?

1. Some people claim to have over a billion credits. I have over 300 mil. But I think those would be on the high side. The average "good" amount is probably around 5-10mil.

2. Don't know. I never did any raids in WoW and only few OPs in SWTOR way back when.

3. I don't know. A lot of them threatened to quit after the last server merger (because of pings). Maybe they did.

4. Lots. So many, we could really use a sort function.

5. Start from level 1. Play through the game. When you get close to level 70, start worrying about specifics. That's about as specific as I can get.

6. To paraphrase - "They're bad guys, that's what they do."

Over on the Republic side everyone's always nice.