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It’s almost the start of another new year after a turbulent first for The Old Republic. At the end of 2011 came the games release and shortly into 2012 a wave of problems and concerns flooded the forums. Ilum was broken, the guild system was extremely rudimentary, and many players had problems even running the game without severe lag and frame rate issues. While quite a few of the problems were addressed in multiple patches, let’s take a moment and look ahead to some of the more popular “wants” of the SWTOR player base that will hopefully make it in 2013.

Optimize the Engine

Going F2P did help bring up the server numbers but soon after many of these new players started complaining about performance issues that seasoned SWTOR folk have become all too accustomed with. Some drastic work needs to be done with the engine to keep the more casual crowd around who don’t shell out wads of cash for the high end gear needed to run the game at decent settings. An optimized engine would also make large scale PVP encounters viable again, opening up the door for a revamp of Ilum or entirely new open world PVP battleground.

More Space

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It’s been one year since the first batch of players set foot on their home planets looking to start their own personal Star Wars adventure alongside their friends. As that same first batch dinged level 50, word started trickling down the levels of a less than stellar endgame and completely broken planet Ilum. Then came the patches with everything from standard/convenience features that didn’t make it in on launch day to new operations, flashpoints, warzones, and after a brief mis-fire ranked warzones. Throw into the mix a stream of bad press that would seemingly never end, coupled with some ill timed and unfortunate layoffs and you could say it’s been a pretty turbulent first year for The Old Republic. Before this year put this year in the can, why not take some time to celebrate the things you enjoyed by setting off some fireworks or running a favorite flashpoint. Here’s our top 5 ways to ring in a new year of The Old Republic.

Find an Event

With no official event announced for the anniversary or Life Day, it’s up to us the players to make our own. Head over to the SWTOR site and check out your server’s official forum. There you’ll find at least several threads organizing mass firework displays, parades, and hours of planet hopping.

Run a Favorite...

The Cartel Market is the Old Republics new primary source for the most rare items, unlocks, and gameplay enhancements; but what do you do when you've purchased everything you want and/or don't want to shell out the real cash for an item. Lucky for you anything that can be purchased on the Cartel Market can be sold on the GTN including things like weekly warzone passes and quickbar unlocks. This provides a valuable secondary market where you can make some extra credits or pick up a cartel item without spending any of your hard earned dollars.

Selling an Item

The first thing to know about selling items from the Cartel Market is that when they are first purchased, items will be bound to you for a period of time. If you're a subscriber the timer is shorter and you will be able to sell items after having them in your inventory for 2 days. F2Pers have to wait a little longer and can sell their items after 3 days. You can see the bind time remaining by mousing over the item in your inventory.

Once the bind timer has expired you are free to trade or sell your items through any means you choose, including posting them on the GTN. When you bring up the GTN interface you'll notice that it now has a category specifically for Cartel Items and is broken down even...

Crew Skills are a great way for your player to keep their gear up to date, or make some extra credits selling your crafted/collected items on the galactic market. While all companions are capable of carrying out any of the crew skills, each of them has certain ones that they excel at. By using certain companions with specific crew skills you can maximize the amount of items crafted/collected, and increase your chance of receiving a critical.

The two stats that effect companion’s crew skills are efficiency and critical. A bonus to efficiency in a crew skill means it will take that companion less time to complete a mission in that crew skill. A companion’s critical chance increases the odds of receiving rare items when gathering and making a higher level piece of equipment with an augment slot when crafting. Both of these stats can be seen in the crew skill window beside the companion portrait.

 If gift giving is your thing you can increase both the efficiency and critical of your companions specializations by increasing your affection rating with them. A general rule to go by is for every 750 affection gained, crafting/gathering speed will increase by 1%. Critical follows a similar rule, up to a maximum of a 5% bonus critical chance for maxed out affection.

Below are all the companions listed by class and...