Alright well I figure I'll pop in here with a quick review of the end game content and stuff. As far as I know I'm one fo the few people that's done it and boy howdy, are you guys missing out.
Our adventure started with me and another person joining 6 members of a French guild to hit up 8man normal mode Eternity Vault. After realizing that high mounted turrets are hard to kill with a melee only composition [I didn't set up this raid, I just tagged along because fuckit whatevs] and trading a DPS into a ranged DPSer (Literally one of 3 players, all healers, that could do range in our group) we managed to hump our way through the first trash pack. It was this ridiculous pair of turrets mounted really high up that did tons of dps but were ccable and shit and god knows why this is so hard just stun it and dps it you fucking bads.
That took about an hour of wipes and bullshit.
After that, a boss immediately spawned where the turrets were. We figured out you had to LOS the salvo and taunt the boss back after he knocks you away. Cool, two shot it after that. Let's talk about loot;
Tonight, 3 people got loot plus someone picking up a piece of blue quality crafting material (used for making level 50 400 skill bop items from crafting). The way loot works is that the three of us won some roll against the server and drew a piece of loot from the boss's loot table for our class. As a Jedi Guardian, I got a token for gloves. A sage got a helmet and a shadow got some gloves too. I think the idea of drawing against your class loot table seems pretty cool and I think it's an innovative step towards getting RNG into a happier place as far as loot goes. I don't know if the system applies to hard/nightmare mode.
We moved on into a long circuit of trash. Trash is horribly tuned in this game. For one thing it all has a fuckload of hp relative to the DPS of a raid (at least an 8 man one). We spent about 3 minutes per pack with the tanks (me and a really shittily equipped shadow tank) pretty much taking no real damage and basically just whittling shit down.
After like 10-12 packs we got to another boss, Gharj the LavaDude. He had some mechanic about knocking us down and us having to jump platforms to avoid lava; that seemed kinda cool and our first rep went really bad. We wiped, only to discover that we couldn't zone back in at all because the game still thought we were fighting the boss. I guess our raid leader hit the instance reset button and we zoned in and realised all the trash was back up and nope.
So we went ot the other raid. It's a one boss raid (A Rancor. in a pit. With cantina music). More trash at about 3 minutes per, maybe 10 packs? Idk. After mindlessly grinding our way through that shit we got to a door. A conversation door that we clicked on and were let into a Hutt Throne Room a la Luke in ROTJ w/ Jabba. The Hutt got all boffy and dumped us through a grate, and that's when the real fun happened.
You see, we got dropped into the Rancor pit and then locked in place, stuck with a set camera position and angle and a set player position. We could move slightly out but we'd rubberband back. The tiny trash pack in the room was visible and unobstructed but we got "Cannot see target". Cool, stuck in the floor. With some combination of magic, profanity and luck we managed to do some weird /stuck and exit area thing and obtained the ability for one person to escape the rubberband point. People then started /stuck'ing out to leap into the pit to die and be rezzed. Except for me, I got stuck outside the door, so I'd click it and be restuck. Fuck. Whatever maybe when they wipe the first rep it'll fix.
So they clear the trash, and then it happens.
Picture, if you will. Me. My camera stuck on an angle paralell to the ground, me jumping wildly, robes a flowing and lightsaber glowing bright red. Always rubberbanding to the same camera position and angle, even as i gyrate it wildly as my compatriots leap into battle against the trash mobs. They die p. much instantly (much lower health), and then a fucking Rancor just appears. Spawned.
Then the music starts. Imagine 6 frenchmen jiving and dancing around a rancor pit while the fucking STAR WARS CANTINA MUSIC blares and my character has what could only be described as a grand mal seizure while I yell at the others to drag the fucker to me so I could try leaping out.
Fuck, no joy. The rancor kills them all (after demonstrating some trivial cleave thing and they realise they could basically 3 man it) and we finally wipe it after they chip away at it for like 2 minutes. I'd finally given up on moving or trying but that FUCKING MUSIC WAS STILL GOING.
After we wiped we ran into the same bug from Eternity Vault and nobody wanted to spend an hour clearing more trash so we called it a day.
I grabbed some guildies and we tried hard mode Esseles and I got basically melted instantly by the first boss. Keep in mind I was tanking a raid boss before that. So we said fuckit and went to another instance (The False Emperor) and ran into a bunch of shitty loot and a boss mob that had half the health of a raid boss and had the ability to oneshot even me with a bleed that ticked for about 30% of my buffed tank hp. (Guess what it did to non tanks). We wiped to him about 7 times.
In conclusion, the endgame content is an amazingly brilliant combination of things. One part completely untuned bullshit, rollercoastering the range of options from 'absolutely trivial' to 'what the fuck are you thinking, you stupid stupid person', two parts 'are you fucking high this shit is boring as hell and its literally tank and spank + cleave + trivial gimmick', and one part 'no seriously you want me to put my dick in there?' meatgrindinger frustrating bugs.
Game's worth a month sub out of the box for free and then a cancellation. Enjoy the story, don't expect BioWare to front any content that's actually worth playing in the sense of 'this has complexity and challenges me. the hard modes are not +10% hp/damage/etc. i like this game' sorta way.
