So me and my friend are gonna be picking this up quite soon and were both veterans off of WoW so we dont really need to learn the basic MMO concepts, but ive been reading a lot that the game is very easily solo-able (with companions and whatnot) so i was wondering, is it even worth it to play the whole thing with a friend? Also how is XP handled in groups? Because in WoW ive come into situations where id group with a friend for a long period of time and find myself leveling much slower then him, does that happen here? And finally, any specific class combos you duders think work great?

Just generally share your experience of long-term grouping in the game

If you play with a friend, you basically turn into a four man group with your companions and you can enter each other's story instances.

I played with a friend to lvl 20 and we were only separated by a quarter of a level or something like that.

Then there's of course the social points aspect, where you can buy unique stuff the higher Social level you get, and you get Social xp by participating in the dialogues together.

So in my experience it works great.

It works fine as long as you somewhat keep pace with one another. My friend, who actually took the week off work to play when the game came out, and I have stayed within 5 levels of each other and have had no problems grouping up.

Me and my friend are leveling up Assassins that look the same together. It's quite fun, and we're racking up massive amounts of social points doing every single quest together.

With my next semester a few weeks away, I knew I didn't have time to jump head first into a new MMO. Along with a few other friends, we decided to essentially play SWTOR like a co-op game. Every evening, when we're done with our daily lives, we hang out for a few hours, level a bit, kill a few folks in pvp, and have fun. It's essentially replaced the time we usually spend in GoW3.

This game is probably one of the best co-op experiences in any MMO. This game needs to be played alongside friends. Keyword: friends. Invite more than one if you can, though a single partner will work just fine.

Most of the time I've been playing by myself. Reason being because that's how I usually play my Bioware games. However, there's times that I'll join up with my guildmates on Heroics or Flashpoints and they are probably the best multiplayer moments I ever ran into. Well, other than when the first Battlefield came out. Damn that helicopter glitch.

I'm going to buy my friend a game time card in a day or two to play it since I convinced him to go out and buy the game to play it together. It works really well with two people. I believe you both get the same amount of xp regardless of the fact that you are doing it together.

It works fine enough. I've been playing my Consular with a friend that's playing a Knight and it's been going well. There's only something like two or three bars worth of xp difference between us and that has more to do with the Knight having had more class specific quests early on that had more parts to them or required more fighting than mine did, thus resulting in slightly more xp. But you'll also probably be leveling a bit faster than someone leveling solo since you'll be killing guys during not just your class quests, but your friend's class quests as well, plus you'll be able to do the group quests and flashpoints without worry/having to skip over them and come back later.

Stuff dies really fast, though it means you never have to worry about being unable to do any of the group quests that pop up (and there's a good number of them) and won't have to worry about picking up strangers for doing the flashpoints. Plus, you gain social points (if you find yourself at all interested in the rewards that system has to offer.)

The best benefit though is probably that it helps spice up quest conversations and you can see two class quest storylines at the same time (if you both play different classes.) Companions really help fill in any gap you might have, so I don't think there's any real recommendation on what classes go well together, because just about anything goes well together. If you plan on doing flashpoints it doesn't hurt to have a healer somewhere in the four character party (companions can help fill that in, though there seem to be very few first companions that are healers.)

The only thing I haven't really enjoyed about it so far, which has much more to do with our class choices, is that I constantly find myself envious of the knight's companions. As a Consular I've had one companion that I got near the end of the starting planet and I've done a planet and a half since then and there's no new companion in sight. Supposedly I'll get one somewhere on the next planet. The Knight, however, got his companion on and off a couple of times on the starting planet, and then got his second companion about halfway through the next planet. He also has had a droid and a padawan as his companions so far. All I've had is a lizard guy that I thought was going to be really cool.. but instead hates it any time I try to offer anyone help (I lost a large chunk of rep with him after offering some credits to some kids since I was destroying their water supply for a greater good, when he would have preferred I told them 'tough shit, grow stronger then') and wants me to be kind of a jerk about killing anything that might be a challenge. He's not been terrible, but it's felt like 'by comparison' he just feels nowhere near as cool as having my very own padawan at like level 13 or so. And knowing that I've still got at least half a planet, or maybe even up to a full planets worth of content to go, before I even get to see another companion is kind of disheartening. If I didn't have anything to compare it to though, it might feel a bit less sucky, but, anyway, that's just kind of a minor nit-picky thing I've noticed so far.

So yeah, by all means, if you have a good friend (someone you're not going to fight with over things like someone winning more conversation choices, one of you wanting to be dark the other wanting to be light, both having the same gathering profession and fighting over resource nodes, things like that) by all means, I'd say go for it, it's a really good experience over all.

I need to play with my friends on lower level stuff so I can get to social level 3. I saw some nobles clothes on Alderaan that were moddable. Which means I can have a cape and tunic that's as strong as my cortosis weave armor.

The grouping is surprisingly well integrated for a WoW clone. It's a shame more of the quests don't require groups.

Playing socially is handled extremely well in SW:TOR. And there's loads more group content than in modern day WoW.

Every daily quest in SW:TOR is group quest. If you think about it, it's bloody genius.

I've only played the game with friends and its awesome to do, you can level up faster, see some different story lines and do group conversations, which is cool when you have some going light and some going dark