Fresh level 50 gearing guide

Congratulations, you are 50, it's a major milestone in your SWTOR career, but the game is far from over for this character. There are ton of content that is meant for max level characters and as many people say "The game starts at max level". To be able to experience much of this endgame content, you will need better gear than you have at this point. Hard mode Flashpoints are very challenging without proper gear and Operations simply can't be done without it. So how do you get that much needed equipment upgrades?

There are 2 main ways to start gearing up your characters, FP and dailies. You can also get some nice PVE upgrades through PVP, an epic (purple) level 50 PVP item is almost certainly better than green, blue or even custom quality level 50 item. There is also the PVE trinket you can get from PVP which I mentioned at my last post.

Epic PVE trinket available with PVP rewards

Just a tip today which I've seen often missed in gearing guides. When you are gearing your level 50 character, aside from the obvious HM and dailies, you can also get a nice purple trinket using PVP commendations. You will need 800 PVP Warzone Commendations. You can easily get these buy running a daily PVP warzone few times even before you hit 50. These are also nice way to get some quick XP, especially if you enjoy the Warzones.

Once you have 800 of these, you can trade 600 for Mercenary commendations at the vendor next to the PVP quest terminal. 200 Warzone Commendations plus 200 Mercenary commendations is the cost of a Champion Bag, which contains Centurion commendations, as well as a small chance for a Champion token (PVP token similar to PVE gear tokens which is still better for PVE than most gear you get when you just hit 50). These Centurion commendations can be trades for PVP gear, however the PVP trinket is also very much a PVE trinket. So there you have it, a quick easy way to get an epic trinket which doesn't require any HM or dailies.

Subscription numbers soon with Asia Pacific

Bioware announced yesterday the coming release of SWTOR in Asia Pacific. You can read their new release here: The Old Republic Asia Pacific Launch. What people don't mention often when discussing the subscription numbers is that so far there are servers only in the US and Europe. There are people from outside of the current server regions who already play the game, but obviously the majority of potential subscribers in different regions will join when they have regional servers to play on.

Now, how much of the total subscription number actually come from different regions? according to Wikipedia  "As of January 22, 2008, World of Warcraft has more than 10 million subscribers worldwide, with more than 2 million subscribers in Europe, more than 2.5 million in North America, and about 5.5 million in Asia."  However this is far from being the full picture and there is no way to really compare SWTOR and WOW numbers and assume it'll be similar in any way. Wow has a different subscription plan for Asia, also the exact region and locations of the servers are different.

So what can we say about the potential subscription numbers of SWTOR?

SWTOR frustrating bugs.

Last night I was running HM Boarding Party and hit what is apparently a pretty common bug on the second boss (Sakan Do'nair), the Jedi with the 2 healers. To make a long story short, basically what it does is making the healers immune to damage completely, making this fight impossible to complete, as you must burn down the healers or they keep healing the boss. This was pretty frustrating. After 5-6 tries, when we realized this is consistent and trying couple of things that didn't work, we gave up. This was really frustrating. Now I've found out later that there are possible, hard to execute, workarounds, but it doesn't change the fact that this bug makes this boss much harder than intended.

Another frustrating bug I've seen is the infamous HK-47 bug, to make a long story short, what basically happens is that when you destroy the 4 panels of his chamber (which you should destroy) too quickly, he enrage too soon, causing an almost sure wipe. Thankfully for us, we learned of the workaround, just don't hit the panels too quickly, after "only" 3 needless wipes.

Early PVE endgame experience

After 3 busy SWTOR days of exclusively playing my level 50 Operative, I have a much better picture of what the endgame feels like, what I need to do, what I still need to check out and how early level 50 feels like. I ran 5 HM FP (hard mode flashpoints) at this point, completed the Belsavis bonus series (level 50 daily quest hub), did most of the Ilum series and maxed out my trading skills. Told you I was busy :)

The daily quest zones feel very much like the leveling zones, which I think is a very good thing. Great plot and interesting quests, with the only difference being that you get daily commendations instead of XP which can be used to buy some endgame quality gear and mods.

As for the HM, what I was mostly thinking is how well they captured (AKA copied) WOW's feel of endgame gearing experience. The most similar gaming experience I can compare this to is playing following 80 in WotLK, or 85 in Cataclysm. The new challenging group instances, the great feeling or getting that new epic piece of gear. The satisfaction of completing a hard challenge with a competent group for the first time. Basically a really fun and familiar gaming experience. However there are some notable differences.