Wait, what?

I"m just happy that I'll be able to stealth whenever I want, tank whenever I want, heal whenever I want, all without changing characters. I guess I'm easily pleased

Haha, I left around the same time as Ykesha. I don't think I ever experienced that......

There are so many more of us filthy casuals than hardcore players. I know this from experience. I've been on both sides. I was a hardcore raider in EQ, back in 2001, when game mechanics were actually challenging, and you didn't have a "rotation" to rely on, or voice chat to make communication easier. I got older, my life filled up with other things, and I lost the desire to treat video games as a second job. But I remember making the "learn2play u noob" posts, back in the day. But even EQ had it's share of casual players, even with it's punishing XP grind, corpse runs, farming and camping times. People who wanted to chill out, relax, and make some animated pixels fall over.

I think we need to start differentiating classes from story. You don't have a "core" class. You have a combat style and a story. This game, in essence, is basically dumping classes in the way that we have traditionally thought about them. Now, you will choose a story. We can give these stories names to distinguish them, based on what happens in the story, or even maybe on the unique titles given by that story. Hero of Tython Havok Squad The Barsen'thor Privateer Cipher The Wrath The Hunter Forcewalker This is fixed and cannot be changed, once selected. And then you have 16 combat styles, 8 of which you can switch between on any given character. Force-based: Guardian Sentinel Shadow Sage Juggernaut Marauder Assassin Sorcerer Tech-based: Scoundrel Gunslinger Vanguard Commando Operative Sniper Powertech Mercenary This is not fixed and can be changed at any time during play (dark/light side restrictions for force-classes notwithstanding) Your level, gear, story progression, etc will remain independent of those two things. So your character could be, for example: Level: 60 Story: Hero of Tython Story stage: End of chapter 2. Combat Style: Guardian At this point, you could change your combat style to Sage. Your character would remain at level 60. You would still be playing the Hero of Tython story. And you would still be at the end of Chapter 2, about to head to Belsavis. You could do one mission on Belsavis and then decide you needed stealth for the next mission and switch to Shadow. If you wished to switch to Assassin, or any of the other DS-aligned force combat styles, you'll have to grind out the requisite DS Points (We don't know how this is going to work yet) Or, you could be playing through the Hunter story, using the Commando combat style, so you can mow down Tarro Blood with an assault cannon. But for a given mission, you might decide that being a one-shot, one-kill sniper is more appropriate, so you can instantly switch to the sniper combat style, equip a sniper rifle, and away you go! You don't "switch classes". There is no such thing as a class anymore. (Or there won't be, when the expansion drops). The developers could have decided that you gained individual levels in a combat style, but they chose not to. Bear in mind, all of this post is my interpretation of the information that's been released so far. I could be completely incorrect. Only time will tell.

Just another filthy casual here, been playing since beta. I used to play every day, but even when I played a lot, I never chased achievements, and I never do "hard" content. I play video games to relax and unwind, not to be all hardcore and super-focused. I'm usually watching TV while I play. Oh, and I support simplification of combat skills. For me, TOR has too many buttons. I deal with it because that's kind of the way it is, and it's the only MMO that I've ever played that actually has RPG elements. (I freely admit that I have a different definition of "RPG elements" to most everyone else)

Also, if you saved Ranken as an imp during that part of the EE storyline (on the ship where Scorpio betrays you), Krovos says that she and her family send their regards.

Scourge is in the final JK cut scene, looking extremely uncomfortable Also, I don't know if this is common knowledge, but if you have any Mandalorian with you (Akaavi, Shae Vizla, etc), Indigo has completely different dialogue. I assume it's the same if you actually take a BH to talk to him, but I haven't done that yet. I love those little touches!

Well, they do give you options to say you don't care about Jedi, or to stay silent during the Jedi parts. But ultimately, they're not asking a Knight, or a Consular, or a Trooper or a Smuggler - They're asking the Alliance Commander, whoever that happens to be. It's not as if a Trooper or Smuggler doesn't have experience fighting Sith. All Republic characters fight a ton of Sith through the vanilla story, and you fight force users all over the galaxy after that. If you're pro-republic, helping the Jedi can only be a good thing. And if you're a saboteur, taking any opportunity to sabotage the Republic (by weakening the Jedi) is also a good thing.

Just popped in to say... Email from Narlock's daughter. OMG. :( :( Where's my crying emoji??

I do agree - At rank 50, a healer comp heals better than my Consular unless I'm actually actively working and paying attention.

Yeah, Krovos seems pretty cool. You can kill non-Emperor Vowron and Shaar on Mek-Sha, too. I assume for an Empire player who has Emperor Vowron, you just get to kill Shaar, but I haven't played that one through on my Republic-loving LS SW yet.

Yeah, I remember that being all Quinn, LOL. But now we have a billion comps, LOL I was always disappointed by the change, because personally, my DS JK would have preferred the title of General instead of Master.

Companions are better at healing than anything else. I don't run with companions in anything except heal mode, yes, even on my healer characters.

Responding to the conversations about Makeb, Revan, etc (too much to quote): i think KOTXX represented the nadir of single-player storytelling in TOR. We went from 8 class stories to 2 faction stories down to 1 single story that basically removed every other class from the universe. In vanilla, you had a real sense that the protags of the other class stories were out there, doing their thing, affecting the universe that you lived in. The galaxy changed, based on their actions. For example, the BH's removal of Janarus affected the galaxy for every other class, whether they wanted it to or not. Never forget that the war was re-ignited in Chapter 3, purely on the basis of Hunter's actions in the IA mid-chapter interlude. I'm sure it required a significant amount of plot juggling to keep it all straight, and I tip my hat to the writers for doing so. Then we had Makeb - We dropped from 8 class stories to 2 faction stories. You still had the sense that A. N. Member of the opposite faction was doing things while you were doing things, but there weren't 7 other classes out there all affecting your world. I suspect this was due to budgetary constraints. Making 2 stories with class flavor and tweaks is 4 times cheaper than making 8 completely unique stories. In fact, I suspect given the complexity of keeping 8 stories straight, it was probably more than 4 times cheaper. Revan started out with as 2 faction-based stories, but very quickly showed us that that was a veneer over what was essentially just a single story. Mirror flashpoints, replaceable enemies, etc etc. Introducing Lana and Theron meant that they didn't have to write and record dialogue for 40 different companion characters for every NPC conversation. While I had a lot of fun in vanilla ESC-ing out, then switching different companions to see their various reactions to any given cut scene, it's a metric boatload of writing and recording, especially when you realize that you then have to do it all over again for each language you're localized in. That gets expensive. Fast. Revan was the point where they started the autodialogue infection, too, where I lost control over every little thing that my character says. I still had control over a lot of the important parts, but a lot of it was taken away from me, and my character would speak lines without me being given a choice. For every choice they replace with autodialogue, it cuts their costs by a 1/3rd, because that's 2 other lines they don't need to write and record in multiple languages. (and differing NPC responses they have to write and record) KoTXX dropped the pretense entirely. Now there's no more "other" class protagonists. The log entries very clearly state that all the other class protags "mysteriously vanished" at the start of the Eternal Empire's invasion. Prior to KoTXX, all those characters existed. The Champion of the Great Hunt, the Hero of Tython, Cypher 9, the Barsen'thor, Nox/Imperius, the Wrath, etc etc etc, there was exactly 1 of those in every "parallel reality" of TOR that existed, at least that's how it worked in my own headcanon. But all of the ones that aren't the character that you happen to be playing - are NPCs. TOR is very much your story, and everyone else is an NPC in it. I could go on at length about the mental gymnastics required to hold multiple parallel realities in your head when you're grouped with other players, or when you're playing an alt, but I'm a roleplayer, we're used to that kind of stuff, haha. I'm sure other people who RP in TOR understand where I'm coming from. And at the start of KoTXX, all those other NPCs mysteriously vanished. If you're playing an Agent, T4's profile clearly states that he traveled the galaxy with the hero of tython until said hero vanished at the start of the war. Boom, gone. It became a single player story and a single player universe. And more autodialogue. Of course writing 8 individual paths through the KoTXX story, each leading to the same conclusion of "Defeat Valkorian" would have been ... nightmareish, I think. In vanilla, each class contributed in its own way to the end of the war. KoTXX's story did not lend itself nearly as well to an 8-person (or even 4-person, faction based) collaborative end to Valkorian. One class would always have had to shine, being "the one" that actually ended him and while the JK was the one that killed Vitiate, it wasn't the war-ending masterstroke that hailed them as the super special chosen class that ended the war, rendering all the other classes as supporting roles. No, KoTXX was always a single player story, and removing the majority of class specific things saved them even more money (both on the player side and the NPC reactions side). Variations existed, but they were much reduced. IMO, the KotXX story has enough player choice that adding in class-based player choice as well, would have made the task gargantuan, and it already took too long for each chapter to come out. Player complaints about the speed are why we had abbreviated alliance alerts for people like Mako, Andronikus, etc. Our second visit to Iokath started to open things up a bit again. We're still the "only" protagonist in the galaxy, but at least now the game is giving us some choices and recognizing our backgrounds, faction affiliation, that kind of thing. Thematically, it made sense. With the Eternal Empire no longer a threat, the Republic and the Empire can - as Vitiate said - go back to doing what they do best - Making war. Iokath felt like Revan or Oricon to me - Mirrored missions, replaceable enemies again. (And perhaps Oricon is the best analogy, because like Oricon, I have never seen the end of it, because I don't raid) I don't know if we'll ever get back to 8 class stories, especially since all those other class protags have mysteriously vanished. If the PC was a Barsen'thor, they'd probably want to know what the celebrated Hero of Tython was doing during KotXX. But right now, I'm very happy with the two faction stories, (four, if you count saboteur variants), and the way that each faction story feels different based on which class I happen to be playing. Vowran doesn't call my Agent "old friend". That's reserved for my Sith Warrior. (didn't stop my Warrior from killing him at the end, of course ) And the game feels like TOR again to me. That makes me very happy. It's an indefinable thing, but I feel like they got it right this time around.