f13.net

This has probably escaped notice for anyone outside of the SWTOR graveyard, they just announced a new expansion about Revan with a higher level cap.  In order to entice players to get their stuff up to the current cap and be ready for expansion time, game subscribers who pre-order the expansion get 12x multiplier on experience from the class storyline quests.  That's twelve, not a typo.  The result of this is that you don't have to fuck around with the rat tail collecting quests anymore and can play through a character doing just their unique storyline stuff.

So basically you can play SWTOR as a well-produced single-player game with good voice acting and stories for $35.  That's $15 for being a subscriber (non-subscribers don't get the x12 multiplier) and $20 for the expansion.  Players are saying that going through one class's story is taking about fifteen hours of gameplay with the experience boost, and there are eight classes to go through, so plenty to occupy a month's worth of playtime for anyone feeling bored right now.

The F13 remnants are on the Ebon Hawk server, and I'm shilling my referral code here: http://www.swtor.com/r/WmmQN7 (http://www.swtor.com/r/WmmQN7) for anyone who wants to take advantage of it, go through that link to make your account.  It gives some XP boosters and free inventory space to the characters made by new players, or a free server transfer and a pile of different boosters to returning players.  And gets me an ugly free speederbike, hurrah!  The XP boosters do increase the quest experience, so save them until right before doing a quest turn-in to maximize the benefit out of them.

I got the email. I just don't have the drive anymore for TOR.

That 12x multiplier is unbelievable.  Hand in 2 quests and you level up.  Two more, level up again.  1 hour.  Class quests only.

Still not fast enough with the bike travel times.  That game was an empty wasteland for me.

This is very tempting, but my dance card right now is really full.  Plus, DA:I is like in a month.   :|

Yeah, it's tempting... but something just occurred to me: if you're leveling lightning-fast from story missions, where are you going to get gear for yourself + companions? I think the endgame story bosses will be difficult to beat with level 1 gear (and the very few drops you get along the way) if you don't have a max-level character for twinking purposes...

Yah, that would be an issue.  My highest character is 49, so I'm pretty much dirt poor. 

They at least got rid of the training costs.  Which would be a pain.

Paying money for this game. In 2014.

 :uhrr:

I've never felt as let down by f13 with the response to any MMO as I was with this one. This is not a good game. It could be a shitty combat mechanics graphically meh single player game that is some fun. Sadly its not even that because they don't instance the game enough for other players to not be in your quests killing shit you were sent to kill, picking up special magical stuff you were sent to pick up on your grand quest reminding you that its a completely shit themepark MMO.

Some analysts put forward the idea that SWOR now earns over US$100m a year. They also said that LOTR was in a similar position. (http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/20/10-online-pc-games-that-made-more-than-100m-in-microtransaction-sales-last-year/)

It made me laugh.

I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but I thought that the combat was relatively snappy compared to a lot of other MMOs, and the instancing was perfect for all the important class quests.

The story lines are pretty decent for the most part. I would probably do this if I weren't playing Archeage right now.

I thought SWTOR was pretty solid for what it was.  I enjoyed a good 6 months in the game... until all of my friends quit.

If I didn't have a backlog of shit to play already, I would totally take them up on 12x xp.  I only ever finished the Sith Warrior story (well, finished up to Makeb or whatever) and I rather regret not playing out several of the other stories.  I would have loved to do this 2 years ago.

Strange thing about this expansion....me being one of the hugest SW nerds that ever nerded, I read the Revan book, which is now of course totally not canon in any way anymore.  But that motherfucker got straight up murdered to death.  I won't say more, because I suppose it is possible that they are going to draw from that story line.  But yeah, he died like a bitch.  Mostly died.  Sorta.

Yes, it's an absolute tragedy when people have different tastes than you. Maybe we can get the guys who designed the 911 memorial to put something together for you.

Thanks for proving my point? Normally this site is smarter than to go all aggro-fanboi over such a mediocre MMO.

Why so mad that the game is bad?

Game's fine. It's fun to play for many people. Stop being a douche.

I always liked SWTOR, but I hated the ability creep at higher levels. Felt like I needed at least 20 hotkeys just for normal rotations. I wish they could bring this down to 8 to 10. It would make the game much more enjoyable for me.

For future reference (because it's probably a fairly common occurrence for you) if you say something stupid and people call you on it, that's not proving your point. Unless your point is that you're stupid I suppose, but something tells me you aren't really that self-aware.

For future reference if you're going to go insane over a post that says this game is bad and its nuts that people would pay money to play it...

Just fuck off instead?

I mean lets recap. I'm not allowed to say a game is bad because some people like bad games. Whatever you say silly cunt. You can throw money at whatever you want but I will continue to call a mediocre themepark MMO that had its MMO "elements" such as the were tripping over and getting in the way of the only thing it was doing right. Which was the story quests.

Feel free to spew more Bioware x Star Wars fanboi rage at me while acting like I'm not allowing people to have opinions I guess.

Dude.

Only schild gets to make definitive statements about the badness of games.

Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.

Supposedly the 3.0 change from Skill Trees to "Disciplines" is going to thin things out a bit.

You're perfectly free to dislike a game or to say it's bad. Go reread your first post though and see if you can spot where the problem is.

Any answer on the question above about how you would get gear levelling that fast?  Is there some sort of bioware bucks currency where I could exchange a few dollars to get credits to buy from players on the auction house?  I would like to do the class quests.

From what I've heard, picking the gear rewards for all the class quests is enough to stay viable.

I'd be 100% into this if the 12x XP and free training was free. They should do that. Who knows, maybe I would keep playing when I hit level 60 or whatever?

Respect.

If anybody is playing or thinking of coming back hit me up. Name's tksneezey on The Ebon Hawk.

As far as gear goes, its nearly impossible to stay geared, but then thats hardly a reason to frown at free exp.

It's an issue, but along with training costs for class stuff being zeroed out, costs for crafting recipes are also free now I believe. You'd still have to solve how you'd get enough materials to level those up (and it will take time too), but it is another angle you could take towards gearing up.

Really I think it is more aimed at people who already have an endgame presence to get their alts up and ready for the new stuff, though.

Staying geared will be hard if it's your first character.   If it's your 5th-8th alts and you already have L55's with crafting skills, a sizeable collection of orange armor shells, and plenty of credits, then this promo is aimed at you.

The typical method for getting in-game credits with no time invested is to buy hypercrates (24 packs each) from the cartel market and then sell the packs unopened on the GTN auction house.  Check the GTN first, see what packs are the most popular, and try those.  You need approx. 1-3 million to get cheapo green/blue gear from the GTN (the implants cost the most) for levels 15-50, and you can probably get that from 1-2 hypercrates (approx. $25 each I think).

If you want to take it slowly and not spend that much RL cash, definitely take 3 gathering professions and sell mats on the GTN.  The prices are through the roof right now.  Get past level 20 (for the mid level mats) and you can probably make 500k per day, depending on how much you gather.

Staying geared isnt that hard, just pickup some of the "regular" quests as you travel through on your main story arc and see what rewards they give, ditch the ones you dont get gear upgrades with and do the useful ones.  You dont need to do this often, most gear is good enough quite a few levels.  You also get a piece of gear for every part of the story arc so you keep yourself upgraded somewhat as you move through it, plus you get planetary comms you can use for upgrades as well.  Really isnt that bad

I also have crafters and gathers in most professions up to 400 skill on Ebon Hawk.  I'd be willing to make stuff for people.

Mostly Vhashik and Kylantha on Imp side, but also Lashki and Evryali on Rebpublic side if good need to be swapped over.  Speaking of, anyone in the Imp guild playing?  I never got invites back after all the merges.

I enjoyed SWTOR's story content, most of the flashpoints, and the first two raids.

Then the new raid after those two was really really bad and I quit.

What's your character name Lant? I'm playing again and can send you an invitation if I see you on.

My Imps are Vhashik and Kylantha.

I have extremely little interest in SWTOR as a multiplayer game, but as a single player game, I definitely want to experience the story content. I've never played a day of SWTOR in my life before.

I'll take the gear rewards on all the story quests, which it sounds like should cover most of what I need to progress, but is there anyone here who would be willing to craft me any additional gear necessary to make it through the end of the story content, in exchange for me using your referral code or whatever you else you prefer?

I don't know how to craft yet, or I would.  I don't know about the referral codes, but I wouldn't mind if some one sent me one or what ever if they get something nice for it.  If you need my display name, it's Birtie.  (don't ask)  The imp I'm playing right now is named Gravenstein.

I really want the 5th friend reward pet, but I'm not a subscriber so I cannot give a referral.

I'm happy to craft gear, though going through the story line you'll rapidly outgrow it.

I went from 35 to 40 in an evening of not very energetic play, so yeah, any gear will be ludicrously outgrown in no time.  What I did was equip all customizable gear and just threw in better mods wherever I found one.  It tended to suffice.

I made a few sets of armorings on my (ex-main) cybertech, but most of my gear was still outgrown as I levelled from 10 to 48. That said, I managed to complete the story as a squishy Sentinel with no problems, picking up a few quest rewards here and there... though it got pretty crazy in a few fights before I finally got my healer companion. Thankfully I was able to keep both lightsabers up to date purely through story quest rewards, which is nice -- I was afraid a dualwield class would suffer there.

e: also, investing in the Rocket Boost thing has been the best investment of ~200 cartel coins ever. 110% 'mount' usable at level 1, works indoors, can use it with stealth...

Sounds like a plan... 200 coins is like ~$2 right? And presumably the mount can be transferred between chars? What else should I be buying if I'm a story tourist?

Well, it's not a real mount, just a 12-second super-sprint... it's on a 30-sec cooldown if fully upgraded, though.

It's just that so much of the game takes place in 'no mount' areas that it's a real lifesaver... also serves as a pretty great ghetto mount before 20 (or 25? I forget).

Cool, that works -- can I transfer it between chars?

If you buy it with CC, it should unlock for everyone.

Don't craft unless you have characters with all the resource gathering skills, preferably maxed. Also, if you're planning on being serious about it and try to research some of the specific purple plans be prepared to burn through a solid week of crafting and failures and piles of mats that took you a month to gather. For the most part you're better off doing the story missions with your highest character and using the tokens to buy reward gear to twink your alts.

At lower levels crafting is fun and easy, but the upper tiers take horrific amounts of time. Like queue up 5 items to build, go watch a movie or go to the store, and get back with out half the crafting time left on the last item.

If you're a story tourist, then you should set up your account for easily outfitting alts:

1.  Spend $10 to buy 1000 coins (on the SWTOR website).
2.  Use 500 coins to buy a cartel pack (in-game) of whatever is popular / on the front page of the cartel window (or check GTN prices for the packs, see which one sells for the most).
3.  Sell the cartel pack (unopened) on the GTN auction house for 150k - 250k credits, this will give you some in-game funds.

4.  Use 100k credits to buy a full set of some cheap cartel armor.  You can look in the Collections interface for the names of the outfits, then search the GTN for them, find a cheap one.  Make sure you get ALL the parts, most outfits have 5-7.
5.  Once you equip this outfit on 1 character, it will be placed into Collections for that character.
6.  Make an alt and use some of the remaining 500 coins to unlock this armor outfit account-wide.  You now have a full set of orange that any of your present and future alts can get, for free, unlimited.

7.  Set up a deal with Lantyssa or other crafters, see if she/they can make the mods to put into the orange armor above, for mats.  You mail the mats that are required, she mails back the mods a couple hours later.
7b.  You can also buy mods for your armor from various vendors on each planet, using credits or planet commendations.  You can upgrade every 4-5 levels as you get to each new planet in your story arc.

8.  Train 3 gathering skills on your character so you can get mats.  Sell the surplus on the GTN; you can make a lot of in-game money that way.  Buy whatever mats you can't gather but need, with the money you've made.

The cartel market lets you buy things with cartel coins, but you can also find the same things extremely cheaply on the GTN, for credits.  If you really want something, buy cartel packs with coins, sell the cartel packs unopened for credits (this converts coins to in-game credits), then buy whatever you wanted from the GTN.  Equip it on one character, then pay some more cartel coins to unlock it account-wide (this is how you "transfer" mounts, for example - 5k credits gets you a purple cartel speeder, +90 coins makes it account-wide free).

Recommendations for account-wide unlocks are:
1 speeder
1 set of orange armor (or more)
1 level-10 crystal with +41 endurance or +41 power (some colors are very cheap)

You don't need weapons - you get plenty from quests, and companions come pre-equipped with their own.
You can get orange off-hands (shields, etc) on Nar Shaddaa for planet commendations, or later on Voss for credits.

For your ship, once you get it with your first character, spend cartel coins to unlock (account-wide):
- the GTN access
- the mail box
- extra hangar storage
- extra inventory space
- reduced teleportation delays

Ajax, thank you so much for taking the time to write that out! That's incredibly helpful.

What's the reason for purchasing the level 10 crystal? Will that be helpful for all my characters, or is that a once-per-character thing?

How do I enter in a person's referral code when I subscribe and buy the expansion?


Edit: Motherfucking game won't run, after I hit 'play' at the launcher it just loads up a black screen for a fraction of a second and then nothing, straight to desktop.

That's part of why the only way to play it properly at a certain level was to macro it all on one or two keys. In the end, you just spammed "Main Rotation Macro Hotkey" and kept a few situationals on other buttons.

Instead of buying upgrades for your ship, work on your stronghold.  Not sure when that opens up, but any character on the account can visit.  (1k credits a trip if on an opposite faction planet, which is still cheap.)

You only need one copy of everything for the stronghold as opposed to each ship, and the legacy storage is the greatest thing ever.

Ditto the stronghold upgrades, very nice feature to have and you can go there and then directly back to where you ported from, or to the fleet, or to your ship. Easy town trip and legacy storage. If they put trainers and crafting vendors in there....

Also, the stylistic graphics hold up really well when everything it pushed to ultra. The textures for the most part are neat and sized properly and have a really nice and clean look.

So, uh, hate to lean on y'all for tech support, but has anyone encountered a similar issue to what I'm seeing w/ the brief black screen after hitting 'play' then nothing but desktop?

No, but they just got out of a downtime, so if you've tried recently that might be the issue.  If not, do a repair installation from the launcher options.  If that doesn't resolve, eh...  Hit their tech support forums, I guess. 

Yeah, I think you hit them during downtime.  I'm trying now and its updating the launcher.

I had no idea about the account wide orange gear stuff.

I think I'm giving this a go.

Discovered this is free.  Might try it.

I only lasted about two months into this.  Not because I thought it was bad, but because gameplay became to samey (and a bit too grindy) as other MMO's.  Going back and speed running through this as various characters for their stories is highly appealing to me.  Might be the first thing I do after I get back home, build my new rig, and play that damn Mordor game you all rave about.

It's a well put together experience, just wish they had made KOTOR 3 instead.

The Mordor game looks amazing to me... and I have no idea why anyone would play it right now. It'll be $10 in Game of the Year Edition on a Steam sale in a year or so, there are amazing games to play in the meantime, why pay full price to play right now? Unlike Assassin's Creed, where you might want to drop cash to be the first to see how the story progresses, Mordor doesn't exactly need any spoiler alerts.

What amazing games? You mean the ones we played half a decade ago?

Oh, nevermind. Apparently I can safely disregard your opinion.   :oh_i_see:

It's a crystal that you can put into any weapon (yours, your companions') at level 10 that has level 50 stats.  The regular level 10 crystals have +3 end, this has +41.  If you make one crystal account-wide and put the free copies of it in all your weapons and off-hands, you're basically overpowering yourself and your companions for at least half of the game's levels.  You can be more lax about upgrading your other gear because of the extra hit points that you get from endurance, or the extra damage that you do with the Power.  You can use 2 crystals and your companion can use 2, so you're getting (theoretically) +164 endurance = +1640 hit points, at level 10.  That's a lot.  Diminishing returns as you advance, but it's definitely recommended.

I had this problem a while back and then realized I was using videocard drivers from when I build this computer several years ago. I upgraded my drivers and the problem went away.

Generally speaking I would recommend a power crystal over an endurance crystal.

I accidently put my crystal in my newbie lightsaber and not my dualbladed one. Now I have to spend 7k to get it out. I don't have 7k.

Is it one of the 500 cartel coin ones?  I bought a green +power one last night; once I added it to my gear, it appeared in my Collections tab and now I can make infinite copies of it.  Check there.

Oh. I'll have to check that out.

I didn't realize collections worked that way, that's pretty sweet. Bought an endurance crystal, still a nice deal for my lvl 28ish operative. If I stay subbed another month I might need to look into a power crystal per Ingmar. For my three or four older characters I do have the level 50 crystals from one of the rackghoul events (black/green?), but I don't think replicate like the collections do.

That's the entire reason for collections basically. Collect a suit of armor, now have unlimited copies on that character and the ability to unlock it for every character on your account with some CC.

I wish it was easier to filter what you have though.  You can scroll endlessly looking for a single item if you don't know what category it's in.

Okay wtf am I missing here? Legacy window, not seeing anything for unlocks or that will let me buy the Rocket Boost.

(http://i.imgur.com/2K7PQQ5.png)

Edit: turns out I had to finish the first planet lol

Yeah, on your first character you have to finish the starter planet and get to level 10 to get your Legacy established (pick a name for it, activate it).

After that, it'll be available at level 1 if you create more alts. 

However, some of the unlocks have Legacy level prerequisites.  In general, if you want to pay in-game credits for unlocks instead of cartel coins, you have to also meet the legacy level prerequisites.  They're not too bad, though, LL5 - LL10, can get that from getting your first character to level 40 or so, I think.  The current 12x bonus exp applies.

On the 3rd planet now; w/ improved rocket boost II (which I was able to get w/ almost just the 500 bonus cartel coins I got automatically when I subbed), skipping generic PvE to get to the story content has never been easier.

Jesus christ this game has boring PvE. I like the story stuff, but I was unprepared for just how bad of an MMO SWTOR is as an MMO. Combat actually feels worse than it did in the SWG NGE... or Anarchy Online for that matter, a decade ago. Or Champions Online. This is probably the worst combat I've ever experienced in an MMO. I am trying to think of a way other than "play through BioWare star wars storyline stuff" that this isn't an irredeemibly shitty game.


Also I am level 18 on the 3rd planet and the game has never put a mat in front of me, asked me if I want to learn crafting, any of that shit. So as far as I'm aware that shit doesn't exist for me atm. Is that some level 20 unlock?

The intro to crafting quest is one of the first things you see when your dude goes to Fleet for the first time. Maybe you were so overleveled that you missed it at the terminal?

I don't remember ever ending up at a terminal when I went to fleet. K, grabbed it now.

Okay WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT.

I buy a Builder's Pack to sell on the GTN for some credits, and apparently *it's bound to me for 36 hours for no apparent fucking reason*. So I have to wait 36 hours, AKA all my weekend playtime, to get cash out of it.

Aside from the fun singleplayer, from the first 20 levels this is honestly the worst fucking MMO I've ever played.

All Cartel items are bound for 36 hours.  It has been that way since the start.  It may be longer for f2p, not sure though.

I'm not F2P, I'm subbed. And "It has been that way since the start" doesn't in the slightest excuse the game unless you're already wedded to the game for some reason.

Sums up SWTOR quite well. Should've just been KOTOR3.

On the plus side, moment of genuine joy: Right after he dismounts a taxi, an animation bug causes my bounty hunter to sprint with both hands straight down at his sides like he's Forrest Gump. A+

It's a decent diku game with a cool story element. Probably one of the best dikus  around. But that still ranks as a shitty game these days.

Heh.  Wait till you have to destroy a crate, camera, or whatever by shooting it with your weapon.  Your bounty hunter will forget to holster it, and you'll look quite silly, especially on speeders.  Even worse if you're a force user with a lightsaber, that thing will stay on as you ride your speeder or do animated emotes.

Cutscenes ignore color-coordination for your companions, displaying their outfits in their original color (dye packs are ignored). 
Some armors have skin-colored flaps instead of leather or metal colored flaps. 
Cloaks clip through your speeder.  Weapons clip through some robes.
Companions look up at the ceiling, bending backwards unnaturally, when you ride any elevator.
Bystander NPCs will start a conversation with each other, and if you move away before its end, you'll suddenly hear the end of the conversation at max volume, even though you're miles away.
There's no swimming.  Speeder jet engines work while submerged in water, apparently.

Game has bugs.

Pretty sure I'm going to drop the ~$25 and buy Treek. Seems like she'll massively help with some of the trickier boss battles, works w/ all player classes, and on top of that I don't have to worry about gearing her out. And then presumably whenever I'm doing anything story related, I swap her back out.

Er, why do you think you don't have to worry about gearing her?

She doesn't come with 55 gear.. I think it's level 10 or 20?

I'm sure there's a good reason for the Cartel Market 36 Hour Bind that I can't articulate. It does smell of a preventative measure against some type of abuse.

For sure this game has bugs that the Live team will never fix. It's possible to be unable to complete Corellia's main quest chain if you abandon a specific mission in the chain. That pissed me off because it revealed a huge flaw in their mission design that QA should have immediately caught and identified. This game did take like 5 years to develop.

It'll never work flawlessly, but at least they are putting out new content on a reasonably timely schedule.

She comes with orange gear which you then buy mods for as appropriate.

I would describe that as having to worry about gearing her.  :-P

Yeah.  At 2-3 mods (3-4 if you augment) per piece, that's a lot of gearing.  I prefer doing that since I care more about looks than combat effectiveness, but without a crafter to handle, it's pretty easy to fall behind.

Update: I am having the best damn time with this game. I am studiously ignoring any MMO features whatsoever - other than asking in general chat when I have a question that needs answering, I'm full singleplayer, I think I grouped with one guy once for a pain-in-the-ass boss.

All 8 of my characters are in the level 25-30 range. The storylines are all pretty great, though if I had to pick out one as the weakest it's definitely the Jedi Consular.

I did as suggested, got an orange adaptive suit for 10k credits, and then used the storebought green mods on each planet (nice and cheap, no GTN to worry about) to turn it into real gear. The result has been lovely so far.

Still having fun, but god I hate Alderaan. 5-10 minutes of running to get everywhere, long linear dungeons killing the same group of mobs you can't skip 20x times to get to the end.

Wait until Corellia.  :uhrr: Alderaan's spread out, but Corellia is soulless and one of the worst designed zones I've ever encountered in an MMO. Hellgate: London was more interesting.

Something I just realized that I wish someone had told me earlier:

As soon as you have credits through GTN'ing packs or whatever, if you want to experience the game's romances, use vendor items in the capital city to get your companion up to affection rank 4 (6,000 affection and above). The easy-peasy vendor option only works for ranks 1 and 2 (rank 2 gifts still get you 50% affection in rank 3, which isn't nothing, so 24k creds handles the level), so best to have all your affection gains in conversation go toward getting you through the harder ranks.

The game has its own sub-forum (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?board=99.0), it's just been moved to the graveyard a while ago; companion affection and how to maximize it was a recent topic of discussion there.

Welp, resubbed for that sweet, sweet 12x bonus, I haven't played in the longest time. I have a couple 50s but now I can finally finish up everyone else's stories. I wanted to back when I played but I just could not stomach doing the same quests over and over. Whoever came up with this idea is a marketing genius. Also big thanks to the person a page back with the handy Cartel Coin guide. Nowhere else I've seen laid it out so handily.

I was somehow gifted Bat Country leadership by logging in and it kept bugging me to rename the guild. 'Bat Country' was taken so we are now unfortunately named 'Nobody's Home.' My sincerest apologies.

Nobody's Home is much more apt.

Also could have gone with Tumbleweeds Inc.

The few of us that are active are in the alternative Bot Country.  I think someone else mentioned being in Bat Country?  No telling how many guilds we've ended up having after all the moves.

Yea the various server transfers and naming issues fucked everything right up.

I was the leader of Bat Country, but I let my sub lapse and refunded the xpac.  It's just not fun to me.  I tried, though!

You should have let someone empty out the guild bank. :-P

The old guild had a bank?

It has one called the Bat Cave. Not really much in it aside from assorted greens and crafting recipes.

Voss. I fucking hated Voss.

Corellia is a sprawling mess, but you can avoid shit by going the long way around. Voss is a godawful maze of trash mob aggro radii and impassable walls.

Did you confuse Voss with Belsavis?

There's a difference?

A couple yes.

For starters, Voss gives you unlocked flight points to the whole planet.

Belsavis has locked flight points and a separate teleport network, both of which don't work when you miss any link in the chain.

Voss is mostly open plains with avoidable mobs, outside of the last zone the shadowlands.

Belsavis is literally a prison planet, where getting anywhere on foot is an exercise in "can I climb up this hill/is there a hole in this wall/will this tunnel lead me out?"

Belsavis is planet designed by two devs, one sober and one blitzed. "OK, now here we have a green forest..""ICE AND SNOW EVERYWHERE!" "Now it's a prison planet so let's restrict movement a bit..""YEAH AND MAKE A TRAVEL THINGY SEPARATE FROM THE MAIN TRAVEL THINGY!"

Voss is a planet where they assume you have Speeder Piloting III because, brother there's a lot of brown grass to drive over.  Oh and a bridge that you have to go out of your way to cross between the quest areas and the crafting areas.

Tatooine is my favorite for layout.  I admit I do like driving my speeder over the Dune Sea, up and down the dunes.

Hoth is my favorite

Hoth is retarded large

Tatooine Force Push Sand People Down Cliff So People Can't Get Quest Loot :drill:

You've isolated why it's my favorite.

You're a retard?  Or you're large?

I always got off Hoth ASAP. All the bright white and blue just caused hella eyestrain for me.

Yeah the colors are definitely killing my eyes.
It was only salvaged by the merc companion I got there.
Otherwise, just do the story quest and gtfo. That planet is just a giant bright snowball.

The two new planets, Risha and Yavin 4 are great.  Risha for the cool town and Yavin 4 for everything.  I actually wished there was more I could do in Risha's town. 

HELL YEAH MOTHAFUCKAAAAAAS

12x returns permanently on may 4th for all subscribers.

KOTOR 3 through 10 awwww yea

Also, if you don't have it or don't know it exists, the Old Republic Encyclopedia is beautiful and excellent and well worth a purchase.

It's about time! Back to TOR, y'all.

I don't recall if it was on this forum or another one, but someone had a little mini-guide of "things to do" when leveling anew in TOR. I remember something about legacy bonuses and rocket boots. Does any of that apply if your highest level character was like 32?

Oh wow, great news!  Going to fire this back up sometime down the road, glad 12x is back for good!  STOP.  JAWA TIME.

Cool, gonna finish my last story line.

The "things to do" basically advised you to spend your Cartel coins (you get some each month if you subscribe) wisely, namely on account-wide inventory unlocks, +41 crystal, utility consoles (mail, GTN) for your ship, and cooldown reductions on the travel powers.  Also, a cheap speeder from the GTN.

As someone who's only played in beta, if I started and signed up for one month would I get that bonus permanently, and would it last after my subscription ended?

It's tied to the sub, would fade when sub did.

Got it thanks. Still interesting though, the travel times and the filler were the main problems for me back when I played.

Also they sell a "rocket boots" ability, which is essentially a 12s sprint that can be used indoors. It costs like 400 spacebucks for the base ability, with a 90s cooldown, then another 150 spacebucks to drop it to a 60s cooldown, and an additional 150 to drop it to only 30s. So 700 spacebucks to get it all the way down to a 30s cooldown. That will help a ton in leveling.

Check out this bundle. If you do the math, it's a no-brainer. Two months sub is $30 alone, and you need to sub to get the 12x XP.

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T8NURF8

Hmm annoyingly that bundle doesn't exist in the EU?! Anyone have experience with using the amazon codes for another region?

Update: This time 12x is even better than last time.


-Reduced cooldown on travel powers

-You get much more commendations as you level, to keep you properly geared.

Apparently even old players with accounts can get referral benefits (both ways). Does anybody want to give me their referral link?

What server are people on now days?

That SWTOR amazon bundle is now only $30.

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T8NURF8/

I actually made an attempt to install this today, but my account has an authenticator that is on an old phone I no longer use. Not interested enough to bother dealing with CS.

Unless you had a max level character before, just start a new account with someone's referral code so you get the free bonus bag of goodies. No biggie. You already passed the biggest hurdle downloading the goddamn thing.

Had a level 50 Agent and a mid-level Jedi of some flavor. I am not too concerned about missing out.

I've had to call them twice in the past and they picked up immediately both times. It might be worth it, maybe?

You can remove the key without contacting support.  Just click on "Lost my key" after putting in your login/password. They'll send you a one time key for use.

Actually I called SWTOR support awhile back too. I got an email "You tried to reset your password", when I hadn't. Even though I hadn't played SWTOR since 2011, I called them and changed it. They did pick up right away, it was a pleasant experience.

The 12x XP is *not* permanent, it will end in the fall. Probably right around the time of the next large content expansion.

Nice! I assumed it was like Blizzard and I would need to send in a DNA sample along with a recommendation from Congress. Patching. Where is everyone congregating?

Where it will appear on the Cartel Market for 2400 cc.   :why_so_serious:

Yeah, it will be permanent somehow. They will never take it away again.

Noticed that the 12x was for subs only. Then got in game and found out the character I wanted to play (which was named after my son) needs to be renamed. Fuck it. I am out.

My referral code is still live! http://www.swtor.com/r/WmmQN7

Ah doesn't work, sorry!

Any views on which flashpoints are good/fun? Or are more than just a standard dungeon similar to the Esseles/Black Talon?

Picky much?

Also, additional quality of life benefits beyond gearing being super easy now for 12x:


-They revamped how everything about skills works so it's much more streamlined, you don't have to do a bunch of spreadsheeting/googling to figure out how to not gimp your character

-You can use quick travel very frequently (every 6 minutes)

-Speeder routes appear to be pre-opened for you, so not nearly so much running/backtracking needlessly

Edit: From the 3.2 patch notes:

""All Taxi Destinations are now available to all players.

All Quick Travel Bind Points within a map region are now automatically discovered when the region is revealed.

The cooldown on the Quick Travel ability has been reduced. For Subscribers and Preferred players the cooldown is now 6 minutes, and for Free-To-Play players the cooldown is now 26 minutes.

The Legacy Travel I, II, and III unlocks now reduce the cooldown of the Quick Travel ability by 2 additional minutes each.

The cooldown on the Emergency Fleet Pass ability has been reduced. For Subscribers and Preferred players the cooldown is now 90 minutes, and for Free-To-Play players the cooldown is now 180 minutes.

The Legacy Fleet Pass I, II, and III unlocks now reduce the cooldown of the Emergency Fleet Pass ability by 30 additional minutes each.""

Edit 2: Gearing FAQ here http://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/34xqi4/quick_dirty_gearing_from_160_for_12x_leveling/

Used it!

I also have no tolerance for a game forcing a character rename.  Allowing everyone to have the character name they want was already a solved thing by the time this came out.  Prior to merging servers they could have implemented a fix.  They had no excuse.  Character names mean a lot to some people.

Agreed. Nothing gets me re-uninstall a game like having to rename my old main.

Especially that particular name. I managed to come up with a Star Wars-y take on my son's name, and he was super excited. He is reading now, and I was looking forward to showing him the name.

I also have a problem with the 'how much have you paid me lately' approach to this. I pre-ordered and subscribed for several months, but someone who was active when the consolidation occurs takes priority. That is shitty.

Did you try just using the same name again? Older non-subscriber characters get their name de-claimed but that doesn't mean anyone actually took it.

I think I tried, but tbh I am not 100% sure. I was on the fence about playing again in any case, and uninstalled soon after.

In case anyone wants a referral link:

http://www.swtor.com/r/S7M9wN

Gives you some free unlocks (including increased inventory) plus 7 days of free subscriber play and a free server transfer. Even works if you're already a subscriber.

Knights of the Fallen Empire. (https://torcommunity.com/database/swtor-news/561-swtor-knights-of-the-fallen-empire-expansion)

Some info on the new expansion coming this fall.  It's not all the details, but it's looking pretty huge.  Maybe Disney is kicking some more money into the game or something.

They did transfer all those devs to TOR a while back.

I'm glad they are continuing with the story campaign idea.  Looks intriguing, but I do wish they had expanded more our our current companion storylines. Gault and Blizz especially.  Didn't like the 'off camera' stuff.

The expansion doesn't continue your class story, everybody is "The Outlander", whether you're a sith marauder or jedi guardian. I'm sure it will have light/darkside choices, but nothing specific to your class. This allows them to offer much more content for the first playthrough.

The most fun I had in the game was running heroic content with friends.  If this expansion offers more of that and improved pvp or ship combat, then I'll give this a try. 

I really loved the ship pvp, but the queue times were awful.

Well ladies and gents, the title of this thread just became 100% apropos.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/15/8736559/star-wars-old-republic-knights-of-the-fallen-empire-expansion

This looks incredible.

Looks really good and I think it's exactly the right direction for SWTOR.  Plus, free to subscribers?  So you basically pay $15 for the new expac, very nice.  The ability to focus only on each classes storyline is VERY appreciated as well.  Plus, if you still want to grind or pvp that stuff is still there.

The faction gaining to gain companions is interesting.  I wonder how they'll do that. 

This explains why I haven't played an MMORPG in a while, I guess.

This is completely wrong.

You play your current character, after a time skip.

So...after the time skip, can you revisit old content? What exactly is going on here?

Reading is essential. I never said you didn't play your character, just that there are no class-specific stories.

Most likely it's going to be just like the past stuff where there is a main story and there are some changes that go along with whatever class you have.  We haven't had class-specific stories since the main one.

That's also wrong; every class has a different story.

In this expansion? That is not what their press material said.

It's right on the page for the expansion and they've mentioned it elsewhere.

http://www.starwarstheoldrepublic.com/fallen-empire

Ahh. I took that to be talking about the 1-50 content. Guess we'll see soon enough.

The trailer didn't do much for me but I'm all in if there's more class story content. IMO that was what they did best and what separated them from every other mmo I've played.

It sounds like you can revist the old worlds but not sure how exactly it works yet not a ton of info.

Yeah they've now clarified and it sounds like it is somewhere in between - the core story is the same for everyone, but there's companion related stuff that changes for the different classes.

06.22.2015
Character Transfers – Get Together With Your Friends
Last week we announced our next Digital Expansion: Knights of the Fallen Empire. Since announcing, we have seen a lot of players coming back and getting into The Old Republic. Whether you are a new player, an old subscriber coming back, or a player who has been around a while, you may have been looking for an opportunity to move to a new server. Maybe your friends transferred servers in the past or you’re just trying to find a new Fleet to call home.

In honor of our Fallen Empire announcement, we wanted to make it a bit easier for you to play on the server you want to. Starting tomorrow, Tuesday June 23rd, all character transfers will be discounted by over 90%, for a limited time. Each character transfer will only cost 90 Cartel Coins each. This promotion will run for a while, and we will make sure to give you a couple weeks of notice before the price goes back to normal.

In order to initiate a character transfer:

Login and then visit: https://account.swtor.com/user/account/transfer
Ensure you character meets the requirements listed
Click “Start a character transfer”
Select the server where the character you wish to transfer is located
Click “Choose a character from source server”
Select the character you wish to transfer
Select the server you wish to transfer that character to
Click “Next”
On this screen, you can confirm that the character is eligible
Click “Start transfer”
Enjoy your new server
Thanks everyone!

Eric
Community Manager


If you are on one of the lower pop servers, here is your chance. 

Is that price per character?

Yeah 90 CC per character.

Is it sad that I am still so bitter and angry that I lost my characters name in the first (forced) server merger that I refuse to return?

I felt exactly like you and didn't go back for the longest time. The first time I signed on to a character whose name had to be changed I changed it to "Reg" just to see what would happen. And I actually got it. I guess whoever took the name on that server didn't play long enough to get to the level where your name is safe.

No, it's not.  The name is one of the most important parts about an RPG character.

I'm no role-player. I don't spray thees and thous about the room like a crazed renaissance festival promoter flailing around a turkey leg. But my character's name is important, it's my identity. I don't get people who name their characters "Billspally" and such. I'd be bummed too.

I try and use obscure names and locations from Dune in every game I play.  I'm surprised at how often my first choice is taken.

Yeah losing Paelos would be enough for me to say fuck it. I'm out.

People who do that are pretentious, not role players. But way to push the stereotype there!

They identify as roleplayers. These are the people that complain when you talk about out of character stuff like game mechanics. Diff'rent strokes, let them have their fun, that's not my point.

Try changing it. I lost two of my names in the merge and then logged in a few months later and got them back because the shitbags that stole them burned out. You might be that lucky too.

I really don't care what my name is, I end up adding a letter or whatever to the name. If I can't get Draegan, it doesn't ruin the game for me. The game being a piece of shit ruins the game for me.

While I did go back and play a bit, I couldn't play the characters that lost their names. It was especially bad because I had the CE and got in early and got the names I wanted for the first time, ever.

After all these years, my first thought reading that press release is, "Shit, I better log in so I don't lose my names."

That was a giant asshole move. I actually really love the game other than not being in a group of folks who can tackle the group/raid content (and that's more my lifestyle than lack of options, probably).

Note that sometimes the names are flagged for rename just as a consequence of the process and not because they're taken; during one of the merges I was able to immediately rename a character to the same thing he had before.

I had a great name too: D'Artagnan (I got the CE so I had early access and could scope out the name i wanted).  People knew me by name and stuff, especially in PvP.  Then *boom* forced server merger no name for you (I couldn't get "amiable" either).  I thought it was petty at the time but now I am even more adamant that they could f right off.

You guys focus on some seriously trivial shit, I've gotta say.

It's a video game discussion forum.  it's ALL trivial shit.

I'm not sure which of these I like best, so just pick your favorite!

Snark 1
So you don't give a shit about your char name and other people do?!  Next you'll be pointing out that you only like the games you like and for the reasons that you like them!

I guess I should just be thankful that you care enough to tell us about your disdain for our attachment to our character names.  YOU DO CARE!

Snark 2
You know, now that I know your disdain for my attachement for my character names... I, (sob!) I, feel like a huge weight has been lifted!  I'm free! FREE I TELL YOU! FREE FROM THE TYRANNY MY CHAR NAMES HAVE HELD OVER ME!  Scold, I can't thank you enough!  Thank you!

Snark 3
Awesome post, so delighted that you shared with us your innermost feelings.  Go fuck yourself.

4Reals
In a silly mood today, don't take this post too seriously.  Mostly though, what part of different strokes for different folks is confusing to you?

Meh, if you like a game enough then losing a name shouldn't matter.

The problem is most of these games are so-so and losing a name you have come to associate with a character in that setting is enough to make the so-so not worth it.

That server merges are necessary can tell you it's already having problems, so doing anything that might hurt retention or returns is stupid.  Especially when ways to allow multiple people to have the same character name is a solved problem.

MMOs aren't good enough games to stand on their own. That's why you need an identity. Removing that identity and the framework of friends from an MMO exposes the lackluster actual gameplay behind it.

You heard it here first. Putting an extra letter in your name somewhere forces you to lose all your friends.

People were rather accepting of Rasixx, Rasir, and Rastrix.  People even figured out who I was.  :-o

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/swedgin.gif)

I'm not playing SWTOR, because for some reason the game just doesn't work for me.  I like the story.  I like the voice acting.  I love the companions.  But the world, quest structure, and combat mechanics grate on me a little too much to put any significant time in.  Plus the social contingent, while nice people that I enjoy playing with, weren't active enough when I'm on.

While not the case in the past, I just can't play MMOs if I don't have people to play with on a consistent basis.  Back in the WoW/EQ/UO days I could solo 100% of the time and be fine.  Now I just get bored.

Why would you invest more than 15 minutes in a game you only thought was so so? YOLO, as it were.

Sometimes one has to play a game a bit to realize there is nothing super exciting about it, a sense of not wanting to waste a purchase, friends and social circles making it feel better than it is, OCD... there are tons of reasons that may make us think a game is better than it really is.  But my question was viewing it from the perspective of the company selling the product anyways.

Kind of OT but KOTOR II has... uh.. gotten an official update??

http://steamed.kotaku.com/ten-years-later-star-wars-kotor-ii-gets-an-official-up-1719284362


I hyave to admit I loved KOTOR II even in the buggy mess state it was so I'll probably check it out.

I hope that asshole who was running the big resto mod before he got pissy and took his toys just fucking chokes on this new version.

And I want to play it, I was waiting for that stupid resto mod for years to play it.

edit: reading the Steam page reminded me...the Force seems to be with Disney's ownership of the SW license. Lucas should've sold it after Jedi, but at least there's....A NEW HOPE

BWAHAHA

I am wondering if this is also because of the huge development push in SWTOR.  Especially with the new expansion.

Huh, that's very unexpected.
Oh well, I don't own it on Steam anyway.

Awesome. A friend gifted me the game a while ago and I've played the first but not the second.

Hopped back in to KOTORO for a bit to finish out some storylines. Paid for 60 days gametime and am regretting it a bit. It's STILL a massive timesink even running just the class storylines and I'd forgotten about all the running. So. Much. Pointless. Running.  Shrinking it to just class storylines makes it even worse as you do one quest per flight point then run to the next area.  Argh

Remember your quick travel cooldown is pretty quick now.  You may still have to get to the mission, but you should be able to quick travel back as soon as your done.

THIS! I have been forcing myself to make sure to rebind to the biggest hub on the planet I am jetting through. The quick travel recast is I think 6 minutes so it should always be up every time you finish a class quest this halves the amount of running you should be doing.

My quick travel is instant and all the binds points are unlocking automatically when I run past them. It makes getting around on a planet a breeze.

Yeah, you don't have to bind a single goddamn thing. Speeder routes pre opened too

http://massivelyop.com/2015/10/01/swtor-will-introduce-level-scaling-in-fallen-empire/

Time to put down this sick puppy.

Why the ever-loving monkey fuck would they do that?

It's still a great game but that's duuuumb. Kick in the nuts for solo players.

They down-level your power but up-level the rewards, so your always getting money/XP/items useful to your level.

From what I've seen of it the down leveling is just raw stats, you keep your higher level abilities and shit, so you'd still be extremely powerful relative to an actual level 18 or whatever.


It's going to slow down my daily route though.  :why_so_serious:

I never get the problem with this game of being 'too easy'
I mean, I love getting my friend involved for a quick story run so we can melt through the content quickly.
Goes for those instance dungeons too, since we can actually get Lv 30 content down with a pair of Lv 25 and Lv 50 in elite missions without worrying of finding other people to grp with. I have like a friend to duo with on regular basis when I was active and enjoyed the whole 'I help you and you help me' runs on our alts.

Now that both of us are unable to bail each other out in those dungeon / elite mission runs anymore, what's the point really? Forcing people to make friends with 2 strangers in an already shrinking player base is just not a good addition to the game.

Also, I fucking hate GW2 downscaling bullshit. You should upscale people to get ppl more involved in high level content without grinding, not the other way around, retards.
What's the inclination of level 40 player in helping out a lvl 20 in a lower level planet? It's a favor, that's fast, easy and fun to spend time with socializing while killing trash. The high-level players didn't do it for the challenge or reward, MMOdevs.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/90/fukin-a.png)
(http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001788485/w220_answer_3_xlarge.jpeg)

The guy suggesting a switch for the feature is onto something. Win/win.

I personally don't have an issue with this.  You are still pretty OP compared to real level people.  This just seems to be the newest "OMG CHANGE, DOOM, KILL IT WITH FIRE" issue of the week.

It seems like it will negatively impact the way I play, I try to stay just at the limit of getting xp from an area, because I solo a lot. Thus I can do a lot of 2 man heroics solo.

If I could craft myself OP gear I'd be better about the change, but the crafting system is sooo shitty in SWTOR. Trying to gear up my alts is usually what makes me quit a run.

If you outlevel a zone then the down-syncing puts you at the highest possible level you can be while still able to earn xp - essentially the way you play it. The advantage is that you can stay on a planet and keep earning xp if you want because of this new system. Or just move on like you would do now. The livestream showing this also showed the guy soloing a heroic mission easily so there's that.

Also, changes to crafting are coming in that mean all the items will be blue level and adaptive so any class can use them and it's easier to stay geared. (And you won't need to gear companions now either).

There's a load of stuff not mentioned in that article as well - like the upscaling for Operations, Tactical Mode flashpoints and so on - but why let facts get in the way of a good rant?

I don't mind the facts at all! Don't stuff me with your straw!  :grin:

In light of that info, I have now waffled over to liking the changes.  :drillf:

edit: so no more ability to craft purple gear? It was pretty much my best route to good gear as a solo player, as much as it was a horrific grind that had to be repeated every 10-15 levels per armor type...). How about the purple reusable stims/adrenals/etc?

Won't have to gear companions?  Thank the Maker!  I think.  It was annoying mostly.

Wasn't you I was indirectly referring to, Mr Paranoid. ;)

They haven't released full details of crafting changes yet so can't answer the bit about purples. But as a solo player myself, I've never worried about it at all and levelled just fine. Then again, I also don't mind the Space Combat missions and am not averse to a bit (read quite a lot) of pvp in warzones. Multiple characters over 50 and still haven't done planet quests on Alderaan, Hoth, Voss or Corellia.

I like to steamroll content as much as I can. I'm not in it for a challenge. I want to be the lightsaber-weilding bring of righteous fury. If this helps me on that path, then I like it.

From what I've briefly read, they're:

- removing str, dex, wil, cu, and replacing them with a universal primary stat, so you can take the gear off any class and put it on any other class and it will work (more or less, there's still the issue of defense vs. crit, but still).
- all companions will have tank, healer, AND DPS modes, so basically pick the least annoying one and stick with it in all situations.
- companions ignore gear stats (their power is based on your level), so basically outfit them just for looks.
- if you're L60 and go to a L30 zone, you get L60 experience and keep all your powers, but do damage comparable to a L30 and probably have the health of a L30.
- search filters for your collections.

So companions finally work the way they were supposed to and you can pick the one you like to companionate with rather than the healer. Nice!

That and streamlining the gear actually has me kind of excited. Still a heavy/med/light split on armor?

Those are some really nice companion changes.  Gah, that could get me to sub again for a month.

Nice changes on the companions.  Finally back to the original system that they should have kept.

I am curious about what they're doing with the crafting system.  The item bloat was significant considering what you had to do to get a single purple quality recipe learned.  But that makes me wonder what is going to happen to all those recipes I spent time getting...

Technically there probably still is a heavy medium light setting on armors, but everybody uses "adaptive" ( = universal) armor sets from the cartel market, because you can get them easily (there are ugly, but super-cheap versions, on the GTN).

From what I read they took out all the green items and said that everything that you can craft should be an upgrade from basic loot.

Or they could a blog today about it. 

I didn't see anything in there that outraged me, so I'll likely re-sub and check it all out.  Reduction of companion task times is good.

It's not bad:

- gathering skills get crafting options, so they can be power-leveled.
- they're changing which skills can make the armorings, mods, enhancements, etc. to even them out a bit
- making something is a lot faster
- we'll have to buy and learn new recipes but the old ones will still be available

I have 3 crafters and have leveled the others as gatherers; I'll just switch them to crafters, one of each, I guess.

Stock up on mats and wait for the patch to hit and everyone to try to re-level their crafting, heh.

Looks good at first blush, the only thing I don't like is the removal of the re-usable bio stuff, which I really liked a lot. I get what they were going for, but the problem is you need to be a biochem of high skill to use them, so 'making a market' for them is a false statement, unless everyone was taking biochem at higher levels? I always saw it as a perk for folks who took biochem, though I do admit everyone outside my core crafter alts had biochem to use the kits while levelling.

A majority of PvP'ers all took Biochem for the reusables.  I think at least half my characters are Biochem and slicers.

Hey gang, quick (but possibly dumb question). Is that 12x XP feature still in the game, or still being left in with the X-pac. I read went a few pages back to read about it but the consensus seemed to be it was not here to stay.

If it is then I am resubbing just after (Canadian) Thanksgiving. There are several story lines I want to finish, and a few I would like to take a look through, but I hated the MMo around it.

It was still in place a month ago when I last played to finish up my Sith Inquisitor and Warrior storylines. It's only available to subscribers, but since you can buy in month or two-month chunks it works better than other MMOs you forget to cancel the sub on.

They're changing it so everyone can level through the story alone.  There won't be any need for the 12x bonus.

All good changes so far.  I just wish I had any desire to take advantage of them.

I logged into account management two days ago to check my subscription status and saw something about extra XP; I think it's still on.

It's still on.  I used it this weekend to get 15 levels on a Republic trooper.  Important points:

1) 12X applies only to class story missions,  Not the planet story lines, not flashpoint quests, and definitely not the random "kill 12 rats" quests.

2) 12X is only for subs

3) 12X goes away when Fallen Empire launches.  It is replaced by the new system where you should be able to stay on-level by JUST doing class story and planet story missions.

The new system looks like it should functionally be the same as 12X, just maybe a little slower since you're supposed to do the planet stories as well.  Not a big deal, since the planet stories are pretty well written.  The main difference is that the scaling system means that you can't ROFLstomp -4 to -5 planets and still get passable rewards.  You'll be scaled back to the zone's power level (your HP/attack power is reduced), but you'll still have all the powers available due to your level.  And you get rewards based on your level (that is, better rewards that someone doing it on-level).  Remarkably similar to the way Guild Wars 2 handles overlevelled characters in zones. 

I think, for alts, it's more about skipping Taris and a couple other annoying planets than it is about roflstomping anything.  Which the new system allows.  I also read a patch note that they'll let us create new characters that are already level 60.  Which skips all the planets.

No more Esseles / Black Talon speed runs for social points, though.  

Subs get 1 Level 60, I think you can then buy more with Cartel Coins.  Not sure on that second part.

New expansion has been pretty fun so far.  First time in awhile that I got sucked into playing for 4-5 hours straight.

I'm just playing a lowbie but it's sooo much better. Tons of QoL improvements and the ability to choose whichever companion you want rather than be stuck with the one that matches your build is finally fixing one of the most bone-headed pre-launch decisions.

For the folks who hate daily quests, the weekly heroic missions on the fleet are a great alternative.

Little to no travel time (they give you a teleport item) and the down leveling scaling makes them very soloable and quick. I did the four Courscant heroics and their associated bonus quests in like 15-20 minutes and made 100k and tons of XP and shit. Some planets have more quests, others less, do whichever amount you'd like where ever, since you can just teleport to your next one!

Im really enjoying the new story driven content, easily got sucked in for hours.  Also really like the companion changes. 

Sword Coast Legends was supposed to trump this, but since it's a dumpster fire, looks like I'm going back to SWTOR.

This is probably the 4th time now I've reinstalled this, logged on and been utterly clueless about how it all works again.

Would I really, really regret starting entirely again ?

Nope, it's much better now, assuming you like teh story bits. They've probably gone overboard easing things up now, but it's way more conducive to seeing the story content.

The companion changes alone are great. Both in the execution of the original vision of each companion can heal, dps or tank and they were saying something about now they have a chance to die (in the new expansion content, I'd assume, story-based death). Also, solo flashpoints!

If you like games to be a tough challenge, maybe not. But there are other games for that, this game is now what I think it should've been at launch. They also took out a LOT of gear, with promises to trickle it back in through various means. But for now, variety in low-mid level gear has taken a major hit. In the long run it should be cool, since the changes are otherwise massively positive (no more ditching heavy armor with aim when you needed str, for instance). Pretty much anyone can wear anything now. And gear is only cosmetic on companions, so no dicking around trying to gear several companions - since you can now take out whomever you like since they can fit your character's role.

And yes, there is a ton of confusing crap. I don't know what half of it is. I want to try solo Hammer Station FP but can only find the group tactical version, for instance.

Actually broke away from Destiny for a few days to play this. The changes are good and the new story isn't horrible.

Changes that affect levelling new characters:

- you only need to gear yourself, not the companions
- each companion can function as tank, healer, or DPS, your pick, and it can be changed on the fly
- revamped tradeskills + much less costly to level up trade skills = you can either find cheap armor / weapons for yourself, or make some alts for manufacturing
- class and planet missions give, basically, 12x XP, allowing you to ignore all other side missions (you have to actually enable the side missions to even see them)
- heroics are all 2+ (no more 4+) and you always get a teleport-to-location item when you accept the mission
- if you're level 50+ and go to the starter planet and fight there / do missions, your level will be matched to the monsters, but you'll get level 50+ experience, so basically do whatever you want, and you'll still level up fast

Ok, with that in mind :

1 - Why do my companions still have gear boxes ?  Why is my mail now Flooded with Gear and other shit that, er, I would guess used to be elsewhere ?
2 - Yup, that one looks good.
3 - I opened up my tradeskills and realised I have no clue what any of the armorsmithing stuff of which I have a shitload DOES anymore.  :D
4 - 12x XP ?  Holy fuckballs.
5 - Nice.
6 - Nice.

Any boxes you have left are there for appearance. 

Also all that stuff in your mail is your companions gear that was stripped off.

So I can sell that shit then ?  After I make sure my chars are, you know, dressed and whatnot ?

(seriously, naked people.  Arg...)

Makes for some funny initial appearances. Hey there, naked Vette!

And now they're upgrading the servers to handle the capacity. I'd say we're not alone in appreciating the changes here. Not sure how long-lived it will be, but maybe with the mouse behind it the game will get teh love it deserves.

1 - As mentioned, companions have gear boxes so you can put whatever gear you like on them. Yes, you can sell the gear. Or keep some of it if you like the look of it (Imperial Officers unifoms for example). Another change for playing dress up since you last logged in is the appearance tab on your character sheet - works similar to how it does in LOTRO (but if you've never played that then, well, good luck.)

3 - Crafting is the only real part of the update that I'm not liking and think they've dropped the ball on. Basically, they've moved all old crafting schematics to an Archive so they can still be created to use or for level up. Main changes to crafting are that a) you have to create components using the basic crafting mats (ie ones you gather) and then use these to craft your new schematics which are all now Prototype quality (blue). This would be great except that they also need a blue mat from one of the mission skills as well (e.g. the blue metals from Underworld Trading).  What it means is that if you previously levelled up your crafting by making green items but didn't level up your mission skill (if you had one) then you're stuffed in making anything until you level up your mission skill to the same level as well.

Not only that, but the time and resources required to make, for example, several mods for use in a moddable bit of gear is so ridiculous now that you will probably have been better off running a few heroics, getting XP and cash and buying what you need on the GTN. Or just go with the green mods from the vendor.

On the plus side, RE-ing is less confusing as it only creates a single schematic from an item (an improved version - not multiple versions thereof) and has been upped to 60% chance of success. Although then you have to rely on the RNG gods to get the relevant purple materials from your mission skill so really, what's the point?


Still on the same server btw so if you come back to that, look me up if you need anything. May be on the Pub side for a bit though.

Aren't I still in your guild ?  When I logged on, some of the peeps were lurking around....

Or possible I'm wrong.

Yes, I think you are. And yes, there has been activity as of late. At least two of us, sometimes 3 at any one time.   :grin:

I agree that the crafting changes are a bit odd, given the relaxing of things everywhere else. I did end up making a suit of blues for the two characters I'm playing (jugg and guardian so I don't mess up the playstyle when switching) that was better than rewards/drops. But that's mostly because I'm so overleveled for the zones I'm in. Playing two characters isn't too horrid because I can do most of my synthweaving subcombines while I'm playing the other character (who has artifice).

Your mail is full of gear because they returned all the gear you had on the non-human companions, and all the implants / ear pieces.

I just leveled up Armormech, Armstech, Synthweaving 0 to 450 for about 800k credits each (before, it would have taken 4+ million to get blue schematics reverse engineered).  Companions don't need mods at all, their gear is just for looks, so now I only have to create mods for my character, rather than character + 3 companions (healer, tank, DPS).  To me it looks like a huge improvement.  The blue mats should be as cheap as before; I have storage-tabs full of them and can't seem to sell them.

12x XP for class quests - I don't know if it's exactly 12x, but basically you can level up on just the class quests, so it should be around that.  Except it's no longer a server-wide limited-time promo, so now the 25% XP consummables should work with it.  So 15x XP.

Legacy teleport abilities - to fleet, to ship, to capital city etc, are now spammable with no cooldown.

Is the new story individualized for each class or a a one size fits all like Makeb? I left because they gave up on the class storylines and weren't going to add any to the companions. I had the free time to do all the class stories, level the tradeskills and equip all my companions so the gameplay changes aren't going to draw me back.

I believe it was one size fits all, according to an earlier post.  Maybe a separate "choose your own darkside" path but it wasn't class-based.

I just spent four pleasant hours finishing the sith inquisitor quest line on Alderaan.  Very nice.  They have moved some quests around and things flow very well.  Crafting I like so far but haven't dug into it as Drac One has though.  Am I weird that I try to level all three of my crafts at the same time?  For some reason I still haven't started the new expansion story, guess I'm still tinkering around.  I have a level 60, but need to decide what class I'll take for my free 60.

I try to level all 3 at the same time, but it can be a pain unless you are actually taking the time to harvest and stuff while not actively leveling.

I usually level gathering and mission while adventuring, then crafting while playing the other character. If I get way ahead on the other two I might switch those two minions to crafting while I adventure (I only have 3 companions on each char right now).

Also, I'm perpetually broke so buying all new crafting recipes sucks :)

I just blew all my money expanding my stronghold, but I forgot they added the Yavin one.. now I want that.  :(

Someone please explain how strongholds are better than the personal ship with all the enhancements.  Should I bother with strongholds?  They don't sound cost-effective.

What enhancements on the ship? I like the stronghold because it is a cheap teleport base with GTN, bank and legacy bank. Then I can port back to the planet I was on, or my ship or the fleet.

I can't afford to unlock those legacy ports on all my characters, especially when I have a free port with the stronghold. Also, it looks cool.

Strongholds are kinda fluff but that's where the Legacy bank is for your characters. 

Ok, I THINK I have the hang of this now.

(http://i.imgur.com/6SvyusE.jpg)

Mail, bank, legacy bank and GTN; plus easy ports to fleet, last planet, ship and Kaas. And I can click a button from anywhere and load in directly in front of that wall. I use it a LOT, one of the best things about the game before this expansion.

You can get a Courscant/Drommund Kas house for 5k credits and the little intro to housing quest gives you all the basic utility shit like banks and mailbox and junk. One you have a house you can port to it from anywhere and then return to the exact spot you ported out from (or go to ship/fleet/planet the house is on).

And if you stick the decoration vendor there you also have a merchant you can port to, unload your shit on, then port back to exactly where you were standing and keep playing. This game has come a long way in QOL stuff.

So, legacy bank and the ability to teleport back to where I was questing.  Thank you.

My ship already has mail, bank, GTN, droid vendor, and my legacy already has no-cooldown teleport to quest hubs, ship, fleet, capital, etc.  And with legacy-wide max inventory space + 3 bank tabs, and 6 tradeskill alts, I can go through a whole planet before needing to stop and vendor. 

But if it's only 5k to unlock, I guess I'll check it out.  Thanks again.

Also as far as housing systems go, it's pretty good.  Not sure if that tickles your pickle or not.

I just couldn't get past how a luxury apartment in the very heart of galactic civilization costs 5k to get, while a mud hud in Buttfuck, Tantooine has the price tag of something like few millions. Though I guess it explains why one is crazily overpopulated and the other remains Buttfuck, Tantooine.  :uhrr:

It's more about the size and the popularity of the location really.  Tatooine is way bigger than the core worlds ones.  I haven't seen the Yavin one yet personally.

I have the Yavin one. Reminds me of SWG, which makes me sad.

Sooo your home is infested by Killiks?

Woolamanders.

One shitty byproduct of the crafting changes: I can't use common crafting mats as well with Artifice/Synthweaving, since the new 'combo material' thing is specific to the craft that made it. I've been leveling on making those, and then was curious why my Synthweaver ran out when my Artificer had been pumping them out...dammit. Now I've used up a shitload of mats making Artifice combomats that I don't need and my Synthweaver is SOL.

Check the GTN, people are selling their surplus.   Limit to crafting materials, archeology, and search for synth and/or the power crystal name.  Or wait till the weekend; someone's trying to control the GTN but come the weekend it should be swamped with low priced mats. 

Although, it IS harder to gather now, because of the level sync thing; you have to fight mobs on each planet at matching difficulty in order to gather.  So mat prices won't crash for a while.

Yup, noticed that on my gathering main. Was hoping to gather on my Jugg as I leveled him, but tafa 12x exp means I'm almost 10 levels over the planet I'm questing on. I mean, technically I don't need level-appropriate gear, but forgetting I have a gathering lvl 55, there is a pretty hard cap on progressing crafting skills since you get so far behind in ability to gather that making level-appropriate gear is no longer possible. Just a kind of weird situation.

The new reverse engineering being back like the original reverse engineering seems much nicer initially, though. I forgot how bad that had gotten as well, my first crafter from launch (armormech) had a ton of purple recipes as he leveled and RE'd items. Then they changed it and I pretty much gave up as I burned through so many mats.

I don't GTN, I'm a pauper.

They changed gathering though so you can gather any node you like regardless of your skill level - eg even if your skill was 55, you could harvest on Corellia. That now only affects how much you get from a node - just means you need to harvest more nodes. Not only that but you get both types of mats from a node - so harvesting a crystal will give you crystal and an artifact piece. (The exception to this may be harvesting from mobs where you sometimes only get one type of material - at least with bio).

Right, but my skill is too high to gain increases from Nar Shadaa, where my lvl 35ish Jugg just finished up.  I could go to the next higher planet just to harvest, but being able to harvest at a higher crew skill level doesn't help me at all that I can see, as the planets I'm playing on are all grey harvests. Getting more stuff from each node is really nice, though!

I may have to break out my gatherer, who is at least an Assassin and can sneak past most mobs to harvest, mitigating the level thing. But I hate to do that, since I want to actually, you know, play the character I'm currently playing who has the skill I am using. Also doesn't help the Jugg get the mission/bought component, since he's crew skill capped a level below what he needs for that mission...

Just seems like a weird wall to hit when most things are about removing walls like that.

Oh god, Jedi Consular has got to be the worst of all Republic story.

It's easily the worst class story in the game, period. If I blow a token to get someone straight to 60, it'll be for that.

The best thing about it was that its bland terribleness made my Trooper's story (a friend and I were duoing a Sage and Vanguard) look amazing by comparison.

IMO, there's a very big disconnect between the story and the gameplay for Consular.  Story cutscenes make you look more powerful than Yoda at force telekinetics and force persuade, but your actual combat power is on par with the blaster classes (for game balance, I guess).   It probably would have worked ok as a single-player story where in-game combat abilities could match the power shown by the cutscene videos, without the "balanced for PVP" design decisions.

Just finished the new xpac, good stuff.  Borrows a bit from Dragon Age: Inquisition but it's a radical change from old SWTOR.  Plus, hey, free sub.  If they keep putting out suff like this I can see them extending the game's life quite a bit. 

SWTOR actually makes a shitload of money so I don't think it has a problem there.

People love their space hats!

Actually, you have to pay to turn off your space hat... so yeah, they get you if you do or if you don't.

I tried again... just can't get combat to work for me - the buttons, oh the buttons.

The "secret" (and no, it's not a big secret, everyone knows it) is that each class has maybe 8 or so abilities to use in every fight. Maybe...3 or 4 situational abilities and the rest can be safely ignored.

Having a gaming keypad also helps (or G510 keyboard).  You can reconfigure the UI to have ability blocks instead of bars, so the look of your pad or keyboard is mirrored in the UI.

Thinking of going back to this to solo.  I never finished my original launch sub.  Basic questions on returning to an MMO:

1) how fast is the leveling curve now?  Meaning, how fast can I get through the storyline?
2) is travel any easier and faster?
3) I don't mind paying for a sub.  Is there any advantage?  Other than probably more locker space I assume.
4) can you solo most of the content including instances?  I got frustrated with empty lowbie planets and cool group quests taunting me after the launch.
5) advice?

Game overall is a lot more solo friendly now.  Most of the heroics are doable with just you and your companion now.  Flashpoints I think some have solo modes now, but not all of them.  A lot of the newer expansion stuff is very solo friendly, especially the new KOTFE expansion.  Personally I think having the sub is worth it if you are going to actively play.  There are lots of limitations thrown at you, that can be solved by  spending money in the cartel market though.

Leveling and Travel are both significantly fasther and easier now and one of the advantages of a sub is having access to a no cooldown 'hearthstone' ability.

Pretty much everything is solo friendly now (solo as in you+NPC companion) including a lot of the dungeons that either scale to solo levels or literally give you a super powerful NPC droid that is utterly OP.


If you haven't played in a really long time, I'd recommend just making a fresh character, it's a much more streamlined experience then it was at launch.

Sounds sane and what I wanted to hear.  Thank ye.

I might pick this up again too. I think I left my main toon on...Hoth perhaps? I dunno. I think I was in the 40s.

Too many demands on my time. I'll play for a few weeks then have to stop for ages. And by then I've found another game. MMORPGs are just hard to stick with these days.

I also stopped playing on Hoth.  It was a (frozen) desert. 

Yeah the timesink mechanic is BS today.  I'm happy to pay the trivial $15/month or whatever for 20+ hours of solo fun with no grind.  And no delays from travel, inventory mgmt, etc.

I got the SW itch back in December, rolled a new JK, and slowly ran the character to the level cap. That was my first character to actually make it through the game, and I think SWTOR is better than it ever has been: faster leveling, less ability bloat, more focus on the content in the game that is actually good, and just friendlier & more convenient to play in general. For example you automatically learn all the flight points on a planet as soon as you start it, so there is much less tedious travel.

Leveling is much faster now. Class and Main Planet Story quests are marked as Purple quests in your log/map. Doing only those will be enough to get you all the EXP you need from a planet. If you want to run a FP or do a heroic quest or two, which are completely soloable with a companion at this point, you can even skip the Main Planet Story quests and just do your class stuff.

One of the (imo) nice changes is that once you pass the level range of a planet, the game will de-level you and allow you to continue gaining exp. For example if a planet was 16-20 and you hit level 22, it would show you as 22 (20) and you'd still be treated as a level 20 for mob scaling and exp gain. You never reach the point where everything has turned grey for you and you suddenly need to decide whether to see the end of the storyline you were working on or move on to resume gaining exp.

I'd suggest checking out this reddit FAQ if you're a returning player.

https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/wiki/returning_player

It has a lot of very helpful stuff like Class Story Summaries by act if you are returning mid-story to an old character, as well as topics like what a subscription gets you these days and what the expansions do.

Thanks.  I will wait for the wife to go out of town and then start.  First up: inventory mgmt, then a new char.  Hoping not to burn out to try both factions fully.

The good thing now is that the Heroic quests (which are ridiculously easy with your companion set to healing) reward you with level appropriate blue gear no matter where you do them.  It's more than enough to level with and you don't have to waste your crystal things buying gear or mods until you reach max level.

The gear might be sub only, if I remember right.


The basic crystal currency is not hard to obtain, and you usually have 'too much' of it most of the time, so spend it freely.

What are some popular classes and story lines?  I'm almost done with Counsular and need a new epic.  Thanks.

I really liked the Imperial Agent storyline.

Both Sith storylines were fun. I heard the smuggler was good, too. Bounty hunter was rather lame, to the point I don't even remember it.

My favorite for dark side is the Inquisitor one. You build up your own evil power base, bit by bit, including seizing control of a superweapon, backstabbing and being stabbed and lots of dabbling in things that were not meant to be tampered with. It suffers a little by your character being cutscene stupid on several occasions where you walk into obvious traps, but it's what I was hoping for in a Sith story.

Light side the Smuggler has by far the best first half of the game, though it becomes forgettable after that.

In my opinion:

Imperial Agent - it's a good story because it has a decent plot, with twists, and endings that depend on your choices

Sith Warrior, light side - hilarious dialogue (make sure to interrupt with esc. to see all dialogue options), plausible explanations how you can be light-side empire-side

Scoundrel - story tries to be funny, often misses, but it picks up in the second half and ends up being great, as you're always one step ahead of your enemy and totally ruin them.  EDIT:  IMO plot dialogue and premise are better if you play as female, but the Corso Riggs companion dialogue is annoyingly crappy.

Jedi Consular - the combat abilities for the class are boring and "balanced" in terms of power, but the cutscenes portray you as having more Force at your disposal than Yoda, and you do some cool stuff with that.  Which is great but kinda sucks when you realize you can't do anything from the cutscenes outside the cutscenes.

Jedi Knight (male, light side) - typical "hero" stuff, a lot of the story is carried by the Kira Carsen companion and her story line, so play as a male and light-side so you can see the full version of that.

Sith Inquisitor - interesting premise, actually, and the story exposes a lot of dark side force and lore details.

Trooper, Bounty Hunter - ok story, some plot development, shrug.  Not horrible, not great, imo.  Bounty Hunter has a few funny one-liners in the dialogue, not as many as Sith Warrior though.

As far as the overall story (the 8 classes run their stories in parallel, intertwined), you probably want to go through Sith Warrior, Jedi Knight, and Jedi Consular before Imperial Agent, as the Imperial Agent ties them all together (in a spy novel way).  Although most people want to experience the best story first, and thus can't wait.

EDIT:  I paused gameplay to keep in-character notes (in notepad) of the plot details and the names of the NPC's I was talking to; you can catch the cameo appearances and the overall story cross-links that way (as you can search to see if the current names appear in other classes' story).

That's very helpful everyone, thanks.  Great to see there's more depth to plumb.  Cheers.

The bounty hunter has some hilarious dark side options. Such as cut some dudes head off and put it into a sack and hand it to his kid. I chose it because I did not think he would actually do it. But he does exactly that and the kid was like WTFFFFFFFFFF.

I really wish i had the time/energy for MMORPGs. These days, I have interest for a few hours a day for a week or two then....nothing for a couple of months.

I restarted this. I don't understand anything, but I most especially don't understand what the fuck is going on with the skill trees and why are all my companions standing around in their underpants?

They got REALLY bored while you were away and, well, things happened.

Equipment stripped for some reason in a past patch, the same thing happened to mine when I went back during the pre-expansion "finish your storylines!" hype last year. Probably when they redid all that crafting stuff, if I had to guess. You should be able to reequip them, I was able to but I was also using all slotted gear on mine.

Where is the best place to look for story quest spoilers?

I need to jog my memory on what the hell was going on to this point.

Also, for that matter, for character builds, figuring it out one level at a time is one thing, trying to build level 50s from in game info is less fun.

The "Returning Player" thread on the SWTOR sub-reddit has good resources for this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/wiki/returning_player

https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/wiki/returning_player/general/returning/classstories

etc.

The cinematic for the upcoming expansion is out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbpDxrew4A0

Like the other cinematics, it's really gorgeous.  Story-wise, though, it tells us nothing we didn't already know.  Watching younger (hotter) Senya open a can on a gaggle of Sith enforcer types was satisfying.

Loaded this up to play on the new machine and getting random disconnects to an empty server selection screen.

Yay.  :oh_i_see:

First character, crafting - is there one great choice for crew skills for earning credits, or is crafting just a money sink/for fun?

I like crafting but it's kind of a pain in the butt. I do the normal thing of putting harvesting stuff on my main that has the widest range of zones to collect from. It's a pretty huge money sink, though.

Slicing is the best money maker, because you can harvest (vs running missions that cost money), so it's pure profit. The missions are good, too, iirc they are a net profit. I think Treasure Hunting is ok for making money.

Not considering the market value of selling on the trade network, because I don't mess around with that part.

Slicing, and the Mission skills (Treasure Hunting, Diplomacy, Investigation, Underworld Trading) were the only ones that made money. To the point they nerfed slicing, TH and UT pretty hard early on.

Crafting itself was only worthwhile if you wanted to keep the best mods on your companions. Even then you can really only focus one or two companions without grinding for supplies.

You can make decent money from crafting, but probably not until you've maxed out. You don't need to gear companions anymore. So it depends on what you want, if you just want extra income while leveling then slicing. Maybe a couple of gathering and sell the mats. Not sure on prices, but I suspect archeology for colour crystals might be good.

If you want to gear yourself (and crafted blues are both quite easy to do and very good for your level) then maybe pick the appropriate armour crafting. Armour will give you the biggest boost simply because of the number of useful pieces one profession can do. It's easier to make the single pieces than mods now, as the mod stuff is spread over multiple professions.

Thanks for the info.

This game is really packed with all sorts of things to do. I'm having a blast playing.

Aye.

Strangely fun at the mo.

So my Jedi Consular Sage is level 43, and last level I clicked on Combat Proficiencies. At that point, I realized I could spec into something beyond Sage, and chose telekinesis, and BAM things die even faster.

I am at about level 30 in my storyline arc. I have a ship that I can play space battles in! And it's easy enough for me to handle without the frustration of learning to dock a starship.

There is so much in this game. I feel like Mr. Magoo bumbling around in it. I'm surprised it is not more popular.

You can respec ?

 :ye_gods:

I hadn't even realized there were even specs, much less respecs.

My Jedi Consular TK Sage is now 50 but storyline about 34, I think. I started a Sith Inquisitor Assassin and went Darkness at 10. I also realized there is such a thing as rested xp. (I like the Sith Inquisitor storyline better so far; JC has become tedious although I like the playstyle a lot).

Playing with the crafting system.

I bought a stronghold apartment, and am having fun furnishing it.

I loved the assassin from both gameplay and story. While sometimes it's fun to wade through hordes of mobs, sometimes you just want to get in and out quickly.

And the assassin is great for tackling tough groups because he felt almost like an eq illusionist at times with memory wipes. Used to be able to break up the group individually, soloed a bunch of the pre-nerf group content with my assassin (which geared him decently allowing him to take even more).

Not sure how much they've changed it, this was a couple major revisions ago.

The Inquisitor storyline was a lot of fun. The Warrior was OK but I stalled out on it to run through the SI instead.  Bounty Hunter was generally MEH. someday I'll go back and finish Republic Trooper which was just getting good when I was distracted by some WOW expansion or travel.

I thought I might download SWTOR and give it a whirl again, some hack-n-slash sounds like a good break from Rocket League. But, apparently you can't reset your password if you had a security code tied to your account in the past. There is a way to remove an old security code, that is, if you knew your password. And since I can't log in, I can't even subscribe so that I can open a support ticket to remove the old security code.. so I guess I'm SOL!

No idea if this will help but swtor accounts are the same as ea/origin - have you tried doing a password reset from there rather than the swtor site/launcher?

Try emailing support@SWTOR.com?

I want to add a security thingie to my account for an extra 100 cartel coins/month, but not if I can't ever reset my password in the future.

So I've got two of my chars to 70 - my solo Bounty Hunter (who's fucking awesome and I don't care what you say, I enjoy the story) and my Sith Tank, who levels with the wife.

I enjoyed the story, but then you run screeching into 'The Hutt Cartel' and it would seem to miss little by skipping it.  So FUCKING SKIP IT.  IT'S AWFUL.

Then you're into Revan stuff and, like it or not, it's actually really well done thus far and has a story that drags you along.

I really, really wanted just to skip ahead to the new stuff, but Revan is keeping me here for the moment and Goddamn if opening Command Crates isn't fun as hell.

What are command crates?

I just discovered that each character has a Sprint command. (Jedi Sage is now 56; Sith Inq is 21. Found it on my Inq first.)

You can call them by phone, at least that's what I did a year ago. It was quick and painless at that time; no wait on hold and was off the phone in ~2min. If that option is available still, try it!

Once you hit 70, you no longer get conventional loot drops, but crates that contain 5 random items.

Oddly, it's much more fun, rewarding and better than the old system.  I like it.

I shot them an email, we'll see if they hit me back!


Maybe my account is too old (created when SWTOR launched years .. ? .. ago), it doesn't seem to be linked to an Origin account. Oh well, we'll see if the support guys will help out.

Got a different but password related issue myself. I connect to MMOs through a cellular wireless account, and for some reason it always trips their account protection system. Every time I log in I have to jump through the password reset hoops, and that is just a little too much effort.

I ended up creating a new account. Not sure if using my old account would have gotten my anything anyways. Ah well.

So .. much .. running. (And annoyed the sprint ability isn't bound to a key!)

Dude, it's a toggle ?  And it should never be off ?

There are two sprints. One is called Sprint and is a toggle that increases out of combat speed (that's the one I found at level 56 after discovering it on my level 21 - I think it comes at 14). The other is a power that lasts a few seconds with a 30 second cooldown (Force Speed for Jedi Consular, comes at level 16).

Yeah, I have that on my Consular.

So, you know, bind it to a key ?

What's the toggle? None of the typical ones worked for me. Didn't see a control map either, but I was in hurry and only took a quick glance at preferences.

Travel is so much better than it used to be, though.

It's "Run' I think.. I'm 90% certain it's under general skills if it's not on your toolbar.

It's under Jedi Consular (or whatever class you are) and available at the beginning.

Sprint. Put it on a quickbar and toggle it.

Yeah I found it, thanks! FYI: Not available until level 10 for non-premium characters.

The Shadow of Revan stuff was actually quite good.  The latest Eternal Empire stuff.... well, it's a shift, that's for sure.

Great storyline, but there's not much actual 'game' there and, worse, there's certainly no 'multiplayer' game there.

I'm on about Chapter 12 or so and, frankly, I'm kinda underwhelmed.

I played the hell out of this game for the first year after release.  Having gone back to it on several occasions since, I still see the same issues with content, the same bugs, and the same lack of endgame fun that was there years ago.  It's painfully obvious that SWTOR is in maintanence mode with little new to get excited about.  Shame really, this had the potential to be a very good game for a long time.

I haven't really played it as an MMO at all. There is a new raid coming out tomorrow, I think - the first in a couple of years? I have no interest in doing that, though, because my interest in MMOs is more along the exploration/crafting/story lines than endgame/raiding lines.

My 70 Jedi Consular is in the 40s level in the storyline (Chapter 3). Haven't touched any of the expansions' contents yet.

I've played a few other classes to see what they're about, but haven't gone past 20s on them. They're all fun, but Trooper Commando is especially so, with aoe explody damage.

I don't know how long I'll play but I've already gotten my 15 bucks out of it (one month sub).

If you're mainly interested in the story then the 1-50 class storylines are still by far the best content in the game.  I'd definitely recommend doing the Imperial Agent one if you plan to continue playing after the Consular since it's widely regarded as the best in the game.  Although if you plan on playing some of the other classes you might want to leave IA til last as it ties together threads from the others iirc.  The Sith Inquisitor can be a lot of fun too, if you like delivering lines absolutely dripping with sarcasm. And randomly shocking people with lightning just because you can  :grin:

Yeah I've never had any interest in MMO endgame content (aside from Realm vs. Realm stuff in DAOC I guess). Shit like memorizing boss fights, DPS rotations, and gear progression all make my eye twitch.

Also there's apparently a news story/rumor making the rounds today that there's a new KOTOR in the works from Bioware Austin. (http://www.swgameoutpost.com/2017/04/09/rumor-bioware-kotor-reboot/)

I picked this back up. I have no idea what I'm doing. Last time I played, even briefly, was back when strongholds had just come out.

It appears you don't have to gear companions anymore (yay!). I sold a lot of excess stuff. I continued my Hoth missions. I took ages to figure out how to summon a vehicle, and my spec confuses me. It does seem simpler.

is there a way to handle heroics without spamming looking for group? Because I get...antsy...if I don't finish all the quests, and I still have heroics from the previous planet to finish.

I do enjoy just getting to assign your companions roles. I might have to switch off of the one I've been stuck with to a new one.

I leveled up several characters for the first time a few months back and never had any trouble soloing heroics (I think they've buffed companions significantly?).  Set your companion of choice to the Healer role and have at it.

Yes they buffed companions and changed heroics so that they are all solo friendly for leveling.

Also, due to the scaling and the end level rewards, there are plenty of level 70's doing heroics to get lewts.  So you'll find a pal when you zone in anyway.

Awesome. Also I had to spend all my money on crafting schematics because they redid that too. And like...nothing I had would level my guy.

Oh well. All fixed. I found some...starfightery thing I'll look at later.

In the meantime, I'm gonna play around with my Jedi Knight and try out some of the companions I hadn't really been able to use before. Except that protocol droid. That guy looks annoying.

So...you kind kind of play this game now by just playing the main story lines?  I never got past 50 something in the original Sith Warrior line, just got MMO fatigue.  You people are making it sound interesting again.

Yes, you can skip all the bullshit side quests entirely when leveling-up and do only the stories. It goes even faster if you drop $30 on it for a 60-day sub. I finished my Sith Sorcerer last year that way and got through about half of the Republic Trooper before apathy took me again.

It's still shitty.

Did your parents not hug you?

This entire site runs on cynicism, hate, and a desire to kill anyone who experiences enjoyment.

Probably why I like it. :) I figure if a game is only hated like it beat up your Mom, it's probably pretty fun. :) Now killed a baby hate, probably a bad game.

I tried this game because they gave out a level boost on Twitch Prime and then made a new character instead.  I made it off the first planet to some big empty spaceship wandered around for half an hour and couldn't find my class trainer but found a million vendors with items I didn't need, googled for advice and still couldn't find a trainer, and uninstalled.  Not sure if that's my fault or the game's.