Darth Hater

My personal overall opinion of RotHC is pretty straight forward , its release was a much needed reset button. The story could have felt more personal (no companion interaction or conversations?), the progression could have been tuned to be a little slower, the gear shift could have been less jarring , and there could have been a bit more "Muchness".

RotHC might as well have been called a Customer Appeasement Package, which despite my negative sounding demeanor is something the game sorely needed. SWTOR needed to get a clean slate that didn't involve NGE caliber sweeping changes. I just hope they have a real expansion in the works that involves much more Muchness. 

compatibility mode shouldn't matter, the game is hanging up after launch. Try updating your graphics drivers. If that doesn't work then run dxdiag (open the run box - type in dxdiag) and save the report. Post the full report here.

If you go into the actual item there is a rewarded from tab. Much of the information in those types of databases are Data Mined from the game. The base item for that gear is this set http://db.darthhater.com/items/29831/jedi_sages_vestments/#dissasembles-to which is craftable which is why that item shows up as craftable when it is not. im not sure wether or not you are able to edit that info without admin privileges if at all.

can always use my name

I'm going to agree with Vox that the value of this particular type of expansion , and RotHC in specific , is far greater than many people are willing to realize. Many people view the "Micro Expansion" formula to be a nickel and dime scheme , but in this case the game flat out needed it. Its far too early in the games life cycle to have a full fledged expansion ready to ship , Cost/Time/Expectations are far too high and Bioware/EA "cant afford" to throw unfinished content out the door. But in the same light ToR needed to be reset so to speak , with a clean slate and more appropriate positioned bar to reach for.

The average cost of a full expansion to subscribers is between $40 and $50 and usually adds 4-6 new play areas , large tenuous level cap increases , more craftables , new end game tier of gear, a new PvP arena or two , a few new dungeons and raid areas and some kind of new mechanic gimmick. RotHC gave us a new semi-large planet ,a more manageable 5 level cap increase ( its big enough to matter, but not so big it takes forever to get to the good stuff) , a new tier of craftables, new tiers of end game armors , we got a new PvP map early , a fully new operation and lvl55 hard/nightmare modes , and the macro binoculars/Probe Droid gimmick. So for 1/5th the price you get 3/5 an expansion. And charging subbers less is a great outreach as well.

I believe we will get a full expansion next year if things stay on the up. The normal formula for major expansions to an MMO is every 2 years until end of life , but bioware has stated that they intend to break that mold. I think we will see a mini and a full alternating years until EoL , with new additions every 6-8 weeks in between.

I also think that disks are dead. The overhead cost of putting a physical disk on a shelf or in the mail are extraordinary when compared to Digital Distribution. Since broadband is more or less a requirement for 99% of any serious online gaming you are going to see more and more serious publishers abandoning physical distribution methods.

Pre-NGE Sliced Maroj Melons round the house!  Also this contest apparently ended 3 weeks ago but was just posted 4 hours ago.

They are currently working out the system to purchase additional character slots.

Crtitical bonuses are additional percentages of gaining a critical return. With the Gathering skills it means you have a chance at gaining a higher quantity of materials per mission, with the Mission skills (ie diplomacy) it means you have a chance at a higher quanity of standard materials and/or a higher chance of recieving epic (purple) materials , and with crafting it means you have a higher chance of gaining either an augmentation slot or an extra item depending on the item being crafted.

I understand your fear of a flooded market , and honestly it depends entierly on your server what market prices will be. Gathering is still the better choice for 2 reasons though  1) players will always need materials to craft with and many are lazy and 2) you can travel to a planet and gather the materials for free without the need to spend your own credits on a gamble.

As an example - I am an Archeologist who just spent 300k on a purple color crystal - it drained my credits and now i only have 800c left - i then travel to Corellia which has grade 6 nodes and spend a short period of time farming - i gather 60 upari crystals and 40 primeval artifact fragments - on my server thats 100k+ on a bad day and 150k+ on a good day.

While slicing isnt a terrible choice due to the fact that you can aquire small quantitys of credits from nodes and send out missions for slicing components its not really the best choice if your only going to have one crew skill. The biggest draw for slicing atm is Advanced Neural Augmentors , but its a gamble without a mission item which are rare themselves and ussualy pricey.

In my opinion the best choices are one of the gathering skills. Archaeology , Bioanalysis and Scavanging materials fetch good money across the board and there are always large concentraited areas for each level bracket to farm.

Quote from Cogohi »

 Unless somebody is really into the anemic endgame or pvp, there's no incentive to subscribe.

Actually compaired to every other year one launch MMO ToR's end game if fairly robust. There are 3 seperate raids playable on 3 difficulty levels in 8 or 16 man versions.Also there are 16 seperate flashoints playable by a given faction 7 of which are playable as endgame via hard mode , and 3 seperate end game daily areas.

This may not sound like a whole lot but when you compair it to the elephant in the room that is WoW its about 4x the content. At the end of WoWs first year they had 5 dungeons (flashpoints) and 2 raids (operations). 99% of the player population were unable to play the raids when they opened because they required 40 man groups and many hours to complete which your average player did not have ready access too.