I have been playing Devil's Advocate quite a lot for the upcoming expansion, but this time I cannot. Funny enough, I think this might be a change that some aren't really bothered by, unlike others presented to us in 7.0, but I still feel the need to tell my gripes with it. You may call it nit picking, but so far it's the first thing that really got to me. I get into all of the activities that exist in this game, except for GSF(sorry GSF peeps ). But at the forefront, I always enjoy the journey Bioware has created with the story, and I mean all story aspects, be them side, exploratory, heroic quests etc.. You'll find me searching for people to do the Seeker Droid and Macrobinacular quests on almost all of my characters. And I am that weirdo you may have seem on occasion asking for people to join him in the Colicoid War Game flashpoint. I'm just that sort of a guy, not really a full-on completionist, but I enjoy the world building in this game and all the aspects that add to it through ALL story elements. All this being said, I can't believe that I only have 8 Veteran Flashpoints I can do per week using the GF. I mean I guess they did this because most people would spam Hammer Station or Red Reaper, but for someone like myself that used to take each of my characters through all the Flashpoints available in this game, at least once, this is a joke. I used to just have to look for groups for Colicoid War Game or for Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island if we go a couple months back. Now I have to look for a group for all of them to play on Veteran if I am unlucky? I know for sure I am not alone in this weird aspect because I've met plenty of peeps who follow different guides online to get into the story of the game and are doing the Flashpoints in a certain order posted on those respective forums. Now if the "next in line" Flashpoint is not available on the GF, people will skip it and not go back to them. People were doing all the Operations regardless, even though when the GF actually worked for Operations, some were focusing on the ones listed there. But you would also manage to find groups for all of them in any event. But now to start spamming General chat for a certain Veteran Flashpoint I want to do? As I said, maybe I'm one of the few blokes who is irritated by this, but it really annoyed me more than a lot of other things for the upcoming expansion.

I understand all the complaints listed here by everyone. Yet with all this taken into account, still, 50% of the people I encounter and talk about these specific changes to the loot system find them appealing. And not just the "I'm okay with it" type of response, but more towards the "Jesus Christ they are finally scrapping the 6.0 **** and finally making different tiers of gear from different activities." Honestly, I usually tend to see what exactly will be happening when the expansion comes out to throw out my opinion on new gearing systems. From what I've read, I don't find it that unappealing myself. But maybe when actually experimenting with it, I'll find out the error of my thinking.

Maybe it's because you have not completed any quest but that should not be the problem. I honestly don't know. Make a ticket in-game and submit it so that the mods can help you out. I really don't know what's causing this.

This is very weird. What are the flashpoints that are available? And what status are you(free-to-play, preferred, subscribed)?

Hey there, mate. To answer your last question, with chapter 3 comes the end of the class stories. As such, the remaining Operations, Flashpoints, daily areas up until Rise of the Hutt Cartel are going to be pretty much the same per your faction. Ilum as well, which serves as an epilogue for the original story of the game. There will still be some different dialogue depending on your class, but the story will have no significant changes. Afterwards, the expansion Rise of the Hutt Cartel has 2 separate storylines, depending on your faction, Empire or Republic. I think in terms of time, I think doing the Republic story on Makeb first is the way to go, and then finishing it off with the Empire story. The rest of the content in the expansion makes no difference because even though you talk to different NPCs and stuff, the challenges you face will be the same so you can just proceed in any way you like. After that, Shadow of Revan, Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne follow the same storyline, no matter your faction. At this point you can just do the story with one character because it's the same(maybe your favorite). However, it is true that you will still have different dialogue depending on your class, and obviously, your faction. Furthermore, especially during Shadow of Revan, you will have more interactions with the NPCs from your faction, even though you still have the same story. This is very different from the planet Makeb from Rise of the Hutt Cartel, which has a very different story depending on your faction. The last part of the KotET expansion is basically the planet Ossus which serves as a Prelude to Onslaught a.k.a. the Jedi Under Siege storyline. Starting on Ossus, your stories will once again separate depending on your faction and it will be the same for the Onslaught expansion. One last thing I forgot to mention is that in the Shadow of Revan expansion, on the first planet, Rishi, there is actually a quest that is a class mission. So every class has a different interaction which is related to their original class story in the base game. As to the first part of your question, it is not very easy to determine. The class stories basically take place at the same time so the temporal difference is very small. The only thing that you can say are different are the exact moment at which the chapters end or begin. I think for the Empire the safest order is Bounty Hunter>Sith Warrior>Sith Inquisitor>Imperial Agent. For the Republic I think the Jed Knight is the one you should end it with, but I can't really say for the order of the other 3.

Personally I can't offer any concrete information about the NA servers because I play on Darth Malgus. However the RP community here is still quite okay, especially on the imp side. Still plenty of people trying their hand at doing events here and there and building a community. And I've seen some discussions both here and on the subreddit about different RP topics so I guess you will definitely find people to RP with if that is your wish. Again, I'm sorry for not offering anything really concrete, just some basic information.

As you said, it is quite difficult especially for the characters that have an option to be killed. Probably one of the more popular characters people would love to see return is Lord Cytharat, but for this same reason he will most likely not make any more appearances. The only way something like this will happen is if they do it with a major character, so other "episodic" characters are not going to grace us with their presence most likely. And indeed they have been making great efforts to diverse their possible character outcomes. I mean depending on your playthrough even as a Sith, you can kill 3 of the 5 Dark Council members. And this diversity further applies to even characters like Senya, Arcann, Theron, Koth, Gnost-Dural etc.. Honestly, I think this took balls from Bioware as basically, now they have to diversify future cutscenes to include player choices. That is quite difficult to achieve. You can always have Lana be at the forefront and it would work, but you still have to include some of the other "main players" if they are still around. I'm just afraid they might write themselves in a corner due to all these possible outcomes.

I would have enjoyed to have something that acts as a prelude to 7.0, as each expansion up until this point had such a thing(well, maybe except for RotHC). I also am kind of confused because each expansion until now opened up with the main thing for that specific content update(RotHC had Makeb and the dealings with the Hutts, KotFE had everything with Valkorion and his Eternal Empire, Onslaught had the main conflicts in the Third Galactic War between the Empire and the Republic etc.). But it seems that the expansion entitled LEGACY OF THE SITH, starts off on Manaan and just continues more of the Onslaught storyline. I love me some Empire on Republic action don't get me wrong, and I definitely want to see where it leads, but where is the Sith part of it? Unless we discover some ancient hidden lore on Manaan or something...

I think the issue is fixed because, although it took a while, I did manage to connect to Darth Malgus and see my character list. Haven't logged in yet, just wanted to let you all know.

I just experienced something like this and I posted about on the subreddit. Here is my post from there: "I was just playing on Darth Malgus 10 minutes ago and I suddenly got DCed from the server. Afterwards, it won't connect to either Darth Malgus or Tulak Hord or The Leviathan, but I can connect without any issues to both Satele Shan and Star Forge. Anyone else experiencing this? It's a premiere for me." And someone just replied that they had the same issue on Darth Malgus.

Not only what Tsillah said just above me, but the problem is that I think the possibility of playing "as you always have" might be thrown out the window if in certain areas of content, people will be forced to adhere to even stricter METAs. In another post there were some people discussing about how to go around the "unable to change loadout inside an ops or fp" by going outside to change it, then coming back in so everyone can do exactly "what is required of them" to make boss fights even easier.

Honestly, I guess it depends on luck. Overall the SWTOR community in all its aspects is better then a lot of other MMOs, however you will find your "douches" around here as well. However, I do think that people doing RP in most video games are pretty cool blokes. Worst case scenario, I think that if there are RP guilds recruiting, maybe you won't be accepted in some scenarios because some won't want to take the time to teach you or show you the ropes or stuff like that. I guess it's like those guilds who are in the phase of just recruiting people for Veteran Operations and are not in the mood to run Story mode with people to show them and teach them or help them gear up. However there are guilds who want to start or who already have an RP community and have no qualms with inexperienced people and welcome both old and new to this area. Most time I think they will even say in their advertisement that it's a medium-RP guild(meaning you don't have to be a hardcore RPer) or that "new RPers are welcome".

Dude... First of all, I felt it was redundant to write that for pub characters, the first two flashpoints from the Forged Alliances storyline are switched. Second of all, I did not forget to write Oricon, it's not part of the "core story" of the game. The entire Dread War, apart from the beginning which takes place on Belsavis' imp side, is told through Operations, Daily Areas or the Seeker Droid questline. Third of all, I thought it might overcomplicate things to say that there are SOME things you will not be locked out of, as I presume the main purpose of Netmaat is to try and complete the story in order, and not come back and do it afterwards. As such it doesn't matter if Ilum and Makeb can be done later.

This last part of your comment is what worries me. People will expect you to stealth through every bit of group content from now on, or else they will kick you from the party if you don't comply. I still stand by the opinion that the SWTOR community still is one of the better ones out there, however recently the number of people who don't abide even by small mistakes or not getting their way in flashpoints and operations is getting worrisome. The other day I was in a flashpoint with two Sith Assassins, and probably one of them was newer at the game or at that class, and he wasn't using Mind Trap on the required NPCs to quickly skip every fight. Without even a single word being uttered in chat, the vote to kick came. This might all be speculation and I dearly hope that what I say won't come to pass, but I am worried about how some others worded it in a previous post of mine, the "stealth elitism" and honestly just elitism in general.

Well, there isn't a place where let's say, you get the complete story written as a summary, but there are I guess some sites that can give you a clearer image. https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/wiki/story => Over here you get everything in order and a few words here and there about what happens, but without spoilers obviously. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_galactic_history/Legends#Inter-Sith_Wars_period => I guess you can also check out this timeline of galactic history from Wookiepedia. It has the main moments of the story with bullet points. Far from what anyone would consider a summary, but I think it contains some nice information. The Inter-Sith Wars period starts over 300 years before the beginning of the game. So just scroll down to around 3681 BBY to when the Great Galactic War begins and go from there I would say to get some backstory on the war as well. Of course you could read from even further behind like 5100 BBY to see about the early days of the Sith Empire, and just read the bullet points of the things that actually interest you. Have fun!