There are alot of options out there that fit into what your looking for.  The market tends to favor the criteria that falls under good battery life and portable then it does just gaming and heres why.  Currently, laptops made just for gaming are sorta a bad buy, there very expensive for what you get and most the time there components besides there graphics cards in them are pritty much standard with the rest of the market, yet you still end up paying an arm and a leg for them.  No, what your after, there are a lot of good options out there you can soak your self into and decide what you think will best suit your needs or in your case your child. 

You dont want to buy something that isnt going to give you what you want, and if your giving it to a recently graduated student, then most likely there going to want to be able to take the laptop out and about and not be embarrassed by the way the thing looks so getting a gaudy looking laptop made just for gaming probably would be on the backburner unless its insisted.  You want three things in your situation when buying; bang for buck, power, and reliability(build quality, legit componenets, nice keyboard).  Finding all those things in one laptop can be a chore, but given the market and what your looking for its not hard to find.

Iv been suggesting the new Lenovo Ideapad Y480 to everyone, its very mobile given its 14 inch screen, has a very powerfull Nvidia Geforce GT 650m GDDR5 video memory graphics card in it, one of the best keyboards in the market with backlighting and its very stylish laptop that would look good where ever you take it. Its also going to come with the Ivy Bridge processors, its going to be available at the end of this month, april, and it should start at 999.00$ so its great bang for your buck.  Getting something brand spanken new is cool if you have the money up front, its much better then paying top doller for something that has been out for a year or two and not knowing it.  Here is link to it, if you look below it says coming soon, but you can still click on it and read about it http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/y-series/.  I own last years model of this series, and I game on it every day, its by far leaps and bounds better then anything on the market. I own other gaming laptops to, but I really love my Y460 ideapad, you can see how it games on my youtube channel if you like at http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer, everything on that channel was taken off my ideapad.  You would be a silly fool to not at least check out the new Y480 if you were in the market for a cool gaming laptop that is portable currently.  Its one of a kind, very revolutionary, no laptop has ever packed so much power into a 14 inch laptop, its very exciting stuff being a laptop enthusiast.   The battery life is standard for the current market which is about 5 hours, if you want something with better battery life read next paragraph.

The Acer Aspire timeline Ultra M3 is more of what your looking for, it has a 8-9 hour battery life, a powerfull Nvidia Geforce GT 640m graphics chip, SSD, and is 15.6 inches but its so thin, its very portable, sold as a gaming laptop.  Here is the best review of it on the net, "acer timeline ultra M3 review", on the best laptop review website on the net "notebookcheck.net".  Its going to release from what Iv seen "Q2 of 2012", so it should be soon.  Its a real winner, and very innovative, its basically the cheap mans version of the Razer Blade which starts at almost 3k.  The Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 should start at the same price as the Y480, at around 999.00$.

Then we move onto the clevo laptop, it starts at around the same price as both the acer and lenovo, but its currently for sale, its a clevo barebones unit, so resellers sell it, malibal is one of my favorites, here is that "Malibal Lotus P150EM" , this is strickly sold as a gaming laptop unlike the acer and lenovo as there sold more as multimedia/gaming laptops.  Its very beautifull, powerfull and great bang for the buck.  Xoticpc also sells it as do a number of other resellers, sager as well but it costs more at sager.

Those were my top 3 picks currently meeting all my criteria for a great laptop for anyone.  There are plety of other laptop manufactures selling decent laptops, none that I would say are outstandingly great buys currently.   Iv been gaming on laptops since 2003, Im an enthusisast and keep up on market trends and new technoligy, but most of all the best bang for the buck.  About the m11x, its sold as a gaming laptop, other wise it wouldnt be an alienware, it wouldnt be in the alienware line of laptop, it would be in the buisness section or home section.  The m11x is a gaming laptop, and does it well, its had multiple revisions and the kinks that were in it have been fixed.  The Nvidia Geforce GT 540m graphics card in it is very powerfull, and will run Diablo 3 all week long and twice on sunday, no that card can run anything currently very well given the lower resolutions on the m11x, and for a good year to come.  Even though the processor is a ULV, that dosnt make it bad for gaming, its made for battery life in mind but dont get fooled, its a gaming laptop and thats why its called alienware m11x and not Dell 6600E  or some other non gaming name. 

I would definitely recommend getting an m11x, although for first time buyers getting an alienware isnt really the ideal situation.  It is strickly sold as a gaming laptop, sometimes its nice to have something that has multiple uses especially for someone doing homework in college wink wink.  I would stay as close as possible to the three digit mark as I could  if I had cash to burn on a new laptop at the moment unless you have researched alot and know what your getting your self into. 

Theres a ton of crap out there not worth your time or money, finding something inbetween them is tough and at  best a crap shot.   Its a good idea to ask enthusisasts what they think is currently cool buys and whats worth the money if you can.  You can page me on my youtube channel if you have a question about something you found or skype me, my name is jefferybaks(nickname)

People seem to think SWTOR was suppose to be something like Skyrim V2.0, well its not and we always new it wasnt going to be so hearing people bitch about it just makes me laugh.

Any true mmo player would see the good in SWTOR and what it has to offer, If the OP could tell me one thing, if he could answer weather or not he has played Skyrim that might bring some light on this flame hate thread.  Im 100% positive he has.  I never played Skyrim, at least yet, I will but I didnt want to let it ruin my expierence in SWTOR, so I really loved SWTOR for the mmo game it is.  Its a true mmo in the design it was made with and thats how it should be looked as. 

There are problems with SWTOR no doubt, but unless you are some mmo hater, you would never list an entire thread of why the game is so terrible and overlook the good it brings to the table at the same time.

There are alot of very very exciting laptops coming around the corner with new Ivy Bridge processors as well as new graphics solutions, late april is when a few Im looking forward to are coming out.  In your situation, making suggestions to you is easy on me given that you probably would tend to favor more of a multiple use laptop instead of strickly gaming.  I bought a Lenovo Ideapad Y460 last year, and it has been great.  I game with my lenovo every day and run gaming servers with it as well at the same time, it works well and is very powerfull. You can see my youtube channel showing how it games at http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer, everything on that channel was taken off of my laptop.  Also just before I get into the thick of it, dont let idiots who have no clue what there talking about tell you laptops arnt ment for gaming, Iv been gaming on laptops since laptops were able to play decent 3D games, namely 2003-2004.  I own alienware laptop as well along with other laptops, I love them all, Im definitely an enthusiast. 

You sound like you have an idea whats out there, or know which sector of the vast market you would like to buy in so Ill spare you the most important rule when looking for a gaming capable laptop which is never to overspend. As for the dell xps, they have been out awhile, I really love 14 inch  laptops and the dell xps 14 was a cool laptop, unfortunetly it didnt have enough graphics power for my taste so I wouldnt recommend that laptop to you plus its bulky and weirdly designed, asus makes a laptop very similar to it called the U46 which is more powerfull. I definitely would take the U46 over the XPS given it has more power or more capable graphics processor in it, I do recommend looking into the Asus U46, it is a very nice laptop and would buy it my self but im not seeing anyplace to buy it just searching for it on net so I dont think they updated it this year yet with a new revision, so that would be a no go for you. 

The two laptops I keep recommending to people at the moment are the Lenovo Ideapad Y480/580 series and the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 notebooks.  There due to release, at least I know for sure the Y480 late this month, as in April.  Im really excited about the Lenovo Y480 series, its going to have a very powerfull graphics card in it along with Ivy Bridge processors.  You can read about it on lenovos website here http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/y-series/, if you look there it says coming soon, but you can click on it still and it tells you all about the laptop.  This hits every aspect of what someone looking for a multi purpose laptop needs, its got the best bang for the buck in the current lineup of laptops from every company out there with a starting price of 999.00$, that comes with a GDDR5 Nvidia Geforce GT 650M graphics processor we have never seen available in a 14 inch laptop, its so powerfull that it will be more powerfull then 99% of the 15 inch laptops available on the market. It has a beautifully crafted backlit keyboard that is also better then probably just about anything available currently, there also coming out with a Y580 that is same laptop as Y480 besides the screen, which is a inch different(Y480 is 14 inch and Y580 is 15.6 inch).  I know my laptops, and whats out there, and any person looking for a multimedia/gaming laptop would be a complete dumbass to passover at least taking a look at the Y480 if they were in the market for a  new laptop currently.

I would also recommend the soon to be released as far as I know Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3, here is a review of it "Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 review" on the best laptop website notebookcheck.net.  Its a 15.6 inch screen, very thin sold as a gaming laptop.  Its nice to be able to buy something right when it releases with the latest cutting edge componenets if you can then spend top doller for something that is old and you didnt know it cause you arnt a laptop expert like me. 

So there are my two favorite laptops soon to release as of now, that get me all excited, but the Y480 x2 more then the M3 even so, the M3 is a kick ass cool laptop.  Then we come to the Clevo, pure gaming laptop that is out right now.  Clevo is a barebones manufacturer so they sell to companys that resell, so there are alot of companys that sell this particular gamning laptop but the two that stick out are Malibal(scroll over notebooks in the menu and its the farthest one to the right starting at 1066.00$) as well as XoticPC, here is link to that xotic one http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np9130-clevo-p151em1-p-4340.html.  I would say your not overspending for what you get on this gaming laptop since your just breaking the 3 digit mark, going much over then this on something ur not sure of would be a bad decision for anyone but especially for a first time buyer. 

Gaming laptops that are made just for gaming, are in my eyes a very bad spend currently.  They are extremely overpriced for what you get, another words the bang for the buck is very very terrible and alot of the times these laptops come with shity keyboards, shity monitors(just because you got Full HD dosnt mean that sRGB is great or the dark value is good and its not a glossy mess). Most the time gaming laptops put on cheap crap through out the entire laptop and make the adult to there children overpay by a good 100%, its silly and you definitely dont want that crap, its bad for the market to even buy shit like that. Its one thing to not have the greatest LCD and get good bang for your buck with the unit, its another to drop 2 grand and have a monitor that really is sub par and is so obvious to any enthusiast just how terribly bad sale it is.

There really is a slew of crap out there that right now in terms of legit sale pricing. Currently the chances of an  unsuspecting customer finding a laptop that hits on the three main buying rules;bang for buck, power and legit components(good screen, GDDR5 graphics card, good keyboard, solid build, good tech support, redundently stable) are to be honestly put "highly unlikely".   There is at least one company and specificly brand of laptop that has all these qulaities, the Lenovo Ideapad Y series laptop, thats why I recommend checking out the Y480. 

Those are the three laptops Id buy right now at least that I mentioned above, Alienware is a great gaming laptop as well and I do own an alienware laptop but for the first time buyer I say stay clear.  Even so, you have to check out the m14x and m11x, there very cool laptops and wont break your bank either, http://www.alienware.com/Landings/laptops.aspx.  There are of course plenty of other laptops to check out, you might like the SA/SB series by sony vaio, although there not really made for gaming as well as the Vaio CA/CB series, you can search for them on sonys site if you like. Also MSI, Cyberpower, Asus, HP, Sager all brands you can check out all having some type or another of gaming laptop, some better then others. 

There are thousands of laptops to talk about, only a few worth mentioning which I have to the best of my abilities being a laptop enthusiast.  You can send me a message over my youtube channel if you have a question about something or hit me up on skype, my nickname is jefferybaks.

I was telling people way long times ago that RIFT was going to be the best game over SWTOR before TOR's release.  Every one called me a nut and a loon. I dont think I was in the wrong with my comments at all.

I bought SWTOR and have enjoyed my time in the game, theres so many good games to play at the moment though that I havnet had time to stay in SWTOR, I will come back to it definitely.  I want to see the game do well, its a good game and gives you that mmo pve feeling of exploring the world and doing quest's like any good mmo does. 

Even so, playing the first month of release, I had people coming up to me asking why the server was so dead.  I thought that was very weird, I seem to be the type of player that will continue playing not noticing the population. I played warhammer online, on a dead server not even noticing it(sea of malice server) untill it was closed down, I guess I cant say I didnt notice it, cause when ID log into the server, there would be like one other person on the entire server!

I think SWTOR needs alot of things, namely better optimization and social interaction being the most basic things that your average joe might notice playing the game.  If it cant do the social interaction thing, this game is going to drop well below a million subscribers soon, so when we see the next player population count I think the anticipation of SWTOR pulling off a upset of being sucessfull might be fully evaporated.

Those are m14x specifications, very powerfull and will definitely run GW2 without trouble on near maximum settings, in heavy pvp situations with many people on the screen you might need to reduce them to inbetween max and medium settings but you could still get buy keeping it at max either way.

Being a first time buyer, you want to stick away from anything over a grand if you ask me.  Its very easy to overpay for laptops currently and not get what you want.  Newegg has a good selection of them but finding one that is worth it takes some time.  The three main things you want to look for when buying a laptop being a first time buyer is bang for buck, powerfull legit components, and technical support.  Its very hard to find all 3 things in a laptop so keeping an eye out for good deals is a must.  I would recommend not getting a full fledged gaming laptop to begin with, alot of the gaming laptops lack the features that most multimedia users could use, little things like backlit keyboards, media controls and other things like ambient light sensors and to be honest just good keyboards in general. 

I own a Lenovo Ideapad Y460, I have an alienware gaming laptop as well.  I have to honestly say my lenovo is a amazing peace of equipement for the price when I got it.  You can see how games run on my lenovo at http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer.  If there was one laptop I would suggest looking into it would be the new Lenovo Ideapad Y480/580 series, its set to release late in april, so a few more weeks.  Here is link, http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/y-series/, you can click on the Y480 part to read about it as it still says coming soon.  Iv never been so excited for a line of laptop, there bringing the very powerfull Nvidia Geforce GT 650/660 series graphics cards to the lineup, the 650 is for the Y480 and 660 is for Y580(Y480 is a 14 inch screen and Y580 is 15.6 inch) which has GDDR5 video memory in the Nvidia graphics cards making them extremely powerfull laptops.  The Y480 is going to start at 999.00$, they will also have the brand new Ivy Bridge processors in them.  Never before has such powerfull components been put into such a small form factor with the Y480, it will be an amazing laptop. 

The next laptop I would recommend would be from Malibal, http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=524, this laptop is cutting edge clevo barebones unit which is very powerfull, it starts at 1066.00$.  Since its a clevo barebones, many companys sell it, xoticpc also sells it as well as sager, although as of right now sager I think only has three laptops in there lineup for sale.  Heres xoticpcs same laptop for same price as malibal, http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np9130-clevo-p151em1-p-4340.html.   Acer is releasing a laptop probably in late april early may, called the Acer Aspire timeline Ultra M3, its cutting edge, 15.6 inch very thin and made for gaming, here is a review of it http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-Timeline-Ultra-M3-581TG-Ultrabook.72194.0.html on notebookcheck.com starting at 999.00$, Its very cool, very! One thing I recommend to people, especially people that have money upfront and are serious about buying something that is good, is to buy brand new, like the Ideapad Y480/580 series or the Acer Timeline M3 series Iv mentioned, they are soon to be released and having something brand spanken new is so much cooler and sweeter then paying top doller for something that has been out for a year or two and has less powerfull components.

So being a hardcore laptop enthusiast that spends the better part of my day gawking over all the new laptops and revisions(laptop line upgrades) I would definitely look into the soon to be released Lenovo Ideapad Y480/580 series or the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3.  Theres still more to recommend though then those two sweet ass laptops, definitely check into the malibal and xoticpc one I linked.  The nice thing about the two ones I mentioned above though is they wont break the bank and if you want to resell them there so new you would be able to get 80-90% of your money back if you wanted to go all out on an expensive gaming laptop. 

Being a first time buyer I would never recommend Alienware, there very easy to turn into bricks it seems and if there not tweaked just right you get alot of blue errors or bsod's it seems, even so checking out alienwares m11x/m14x is a must for anyone looking into purchasing a laptop, you can get good deals for a first time buyer using there outlet for refurbished or used ones if you watch close enough.  Here is there website, http://www.alienware.com/Landings/laptops.aspx and here is the outlet which you can find great deals sometimes for much cheaper then retail price http://www.dell.com/us/dfh/p/alienware-laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&~ck=mn specifically for alienware laptops.  The outlet even though there used still gives you the same warranty as if it were new, so even though I could never recommend buying used equipement especially alienware, if something does go wrong you still got the warranty there to cover you.  

Ill go through a few more, I could really keep going on for days, alot of people like Asus branded gaming laptops but im not that into them.  Most people think there the only legit gaming laptops out there, thats hardly the case.  They are overly heavy and probably the most bulky laptops there are on the market at the moment, the G series at least.  Sony has a few nice laptops that can game, but I wouldnt recommend them, the CA/CB series(starts at 799.00$(you have to watch tho cause they dont come with dedicatd gaming GPU by default) and the SA/SB series laptops both have capable dedicated graphics chips in them but there underclocked and have slower GDDR3 memory as apposed to something like the Lenovo Y480 which has GDDR5 memory and there really not made for gaming as the cooling especially in the S series I would say is flat out terribly designed.  MSI makes gaming laptops, I wouldnt recommend them at this time though, there upgrades are silly terrible this year and are very expensive for what you get.  Cyberpower also makes gaming laptops but there sorta the same thing as MSI currently which is overpriced for what you get which isnt much.  There gaming laptops, thats it, there sold as that, and to be honest are pritty lame compared to some of the really cool newer multimedia laptops like the Y480 and Acer M3 i keep mentioning.

I wouldnt recommend finding your own laptop on newegg either as a first time buyer, theres is a whole hell of a lot of crap crap out there that would probably make you a very unhappy laptop fan as well as overpriced for your needs.  Finding a laptop that would cater to the 3 things I mentioned in the first paragraph would be almost impossible unless you were a fan like me and looked threw them everyday and knew what was worth it or not.  If you do how ever find something you like on newegg make sure to double check with someone that its the one your looking for and not just something that seems like it.  You can message me over my youtube channel if you like when ever or skype me, my nickname is jefferybaks if you have any questions.

Yea most definitely a good video with nice quality HD footage. 

Did anyone notice the bolt of what looked to be electricity continue to flow over the land as it was shot, that was so cool seeing that at around 13:05.  Most mmos have a certain distance of how far a animation goes but it looked as if to travel and keep traveling to where you couldnt even see it any more.

Originally posted by jacklo

Originally posted by sapphen

I was on a low population server and stopped leveling my main at 45.  From there I only did warzone at peak times and reached lvl 48.  Because of the low population I never really attempted to get all the way to 50.  I have many alts between the levels 15-30 among many servers with absolute no concern to reach peak level.

Strange and stupid move IMO to only give level 50's a free month but atlas I don't care.  I already canceled my sub and was hoping leagacy would change my mind but it just didn't hit it for me.  I'm getting tired of devs just not understanding what the players want... but I guess out of fairness, we don't even know what we want.

You don't want a kick in the teeth, that's for sure.

Yah being lvl 48 would kinda piss me off not getting to 50 in these cercumstances.

I look at SWTOR from the perspective, at least it wasnt given to cryptic or SOE.  I think the game would have been alot worse.  Be thankfull we got a AAA release by a competent developer, even if its not made with the best graphics engine or designed the greatest.  At least we got something that is worth the time and cost of playing through story arcs of different factions which was very fun.

I thought it was a joke when I first read this, but after letting it set in a few hours It dosnt really seem all that unreal. Even so, giving players a free month only to players who have reached level 50 seems really strange indeed.  Most the time mmos give free time only for players who have subscribed for a certain amount of months or similar things, but giving free time for anythhing done in game by players Iv never heard of. 

I dont think theres any question, GW2 is a must buy, anything else just rests in its wake.  If you cant own both then get GW2 for god sakes!

Iv been purchasing gaming laptops since they were made available, well the good ones, in at around 2002-2003 when laptops became a viable alternative to desktops, with 128 mebabytes of video memory.  The current market is one that its easy to overpay like Iv mentioned in alot of my previous posts.  If your a first time buyer, I would definitely not overspend on something your not to sure about.  The 15 inch market for laptops is definitely there but, in that class size its easy to start overspending on stuff that isnt worth it as apposed to the smaller 11-14 inch market.  To be honest, from my perspective as a buyer, who only wants the best of the best in terms of bang for buck and usability and power, there really isnt a whole lot out there to suggest to you. Sure theres dozens of gaming laptop brands but none that hit the 3 things i mentioned.  I will go ahead and list some any way to you. 

The first thing that comes to my mind when looking at your specific requirements would be a clevo branded laptop, malibal makes a very nice one for exactly $1000.00, here is link http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=524.  That is a very powerfull laptop that would definitely run all your games you could throw at it for years with the 670m nvidia.  Its a clevo made laptop though, so sager makes the same thing as well as xotic pc but its cheap at malibal.  

Even tho you said you didnt want to go lower then 15 inch laptop, I cant help but mentioning the new Lenovo Ideapad Y480/580, the 580 is a 15 inch laptop.  Its shipping with brand new Nvidia Geforce GT 650/660 graphics cards.  The 480 is set to release later this month in april, here is link to that, http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/y-series/, the y480 is there to click on it if you want to read about it.  I own the Y460, it was last years model, and after owning gaming laptops, I have to say Im so very impressed with the Y series Ideapad.  I game on it every day with all the latest games, you can see how it runs games on my youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer, everything on that channel was run of my laptop.

  Like I was saying at the start of my reply, its hard to find a laptop that hits all the areas well thats makes it a good buy.  I have to say, being a laptop enthusiast, the best possible buy you could do this month is by leaps and bounds the Y480/580 series.  It will have the new Ivy bridge processors as well as the brand new Nvidia GPUs. A good portion of the laptop market is non-legit with overly expensive SSD's and video cards that are underclocked with GDDR3 memory in them instead of better GDDR5 memory(the new Y series lenovos have GDDR5), also lacking many features for no good reason which the Ideapad series has backlit keyboard and just a better keyboard in general compared to most laptops specifically gaming laptops. 

Other brands to look at of course would be asus,acer,sony,hp,dell/alienware,cyberpower,msi, in all those though I cant really recommend anything at the moment.  Alienware is nice but I would never recommend it to a first time buyer, owning an alienware my self they are very expensive and you dont get a whole lot unless your an enthusiast.  Asus, everyone seems to love them but I wouldn't recommend the G series in any circumstances, just to gaudy looking to me, altough they are built well I think, they are so damn cheesy, I tend to recomend something that has more taste that you wouldn't be embarrassed to show to adults or some where in public.

Another new laptop to watch out for is the Acer Timeline Ultra M3, its labled as a gaming laptop on the go, its 15 inch laptop which should start at 999.00$ and have a late april release or early may.   With a buy like this laptop, the best thing to do if you got cash to spend on a laptop is not to buy something that has been released for years and pay top dollar for it, your better of buying something brand spanken new, being the first few to get your hands on it and own it is worth it if at all possible.  So before buying something that is old, I would suggest the M3 acer or the new Ideapad Y480/580 to be released later in april.  I would have to say though, to definitely check out the Y480 laptop, Iv never been so excited for a release of a laptop, its very revolutionary being able to fit a GDDR5 dedicated graphics card with so much power in a 14 inch laptop, its definitely more powerfull then 99% of the 15 inch laptops available I would say.

Theres a ton of laptops to talk about, not all of them as exciting as the soon to be released Y480 or Acer M3 but there out there none the less. Envy has some cool new 15 and 17 inch laptops, they even got IPS displays but there expensive and used underclocked GDDR3 graphics cards in them. I would steer clear of MSI this year, even though they got some good gaming laptops there very expensive for what you get and there upgrades are terrible this year if you ask me.  If you have any questions if you find something you like hit me up on my youtube channel if you like or skype, my nick name is jefferybaks.

Ill be playing both most likely at some point.

Theres alot to like about SWTOR as iv mentioned in my prevoous threads, seemings as GW2 is a B2P I dont really see how it would effect my SWTOR play.

There are alot of good things in this game, it just makes me wonder why everyone jumps to the "this game is terrible honestly, its true, no kidding stuff" when there is alot to like about the game.  If your an mmo fan and you bought the game your self and played it on your new hardware you might have an idea what im talking about. 

I think the way the zones were layed out is better then any other mmo Iv ever played and quest progression is very spot on. The story flows with a great ambience of Star Wars on either faction.  The art style is very beatifull, the combat is resposive and fun with many CC abilities and great looking animations to bash threw mobs, Iv never had so much fun just killing mobs in a mmo.  It does alot of things good and people should at least be able to find the good things from the bad when bashing the game.

There are things of course that it dosnt do so well, the pvp isnt all that great with only a handfull of areas to do that.  The game dosnt really flow that well outside of the player group questing, socially. It breaks down and dosnt really recover in some ways, the entire game world isnt really developed that well to be honest, lots of open space when there dosnt need to be, and in places the game just feels thrown togather and call it good sorta like.  I guess the ambience and atmoshpere outside of questing really breaks down to nothingness fast.  

Hi!, your talking my language when it comes to notebooks.  I started gaming on laptops when dedicated graphics cards were first being intoduced into them, myn was an alienware area 51m 776(same thing as a 5500).  I own newer laptops as well, I love them. 

MSI for me as of this year has disappointed me extremely mainly because the slim DX series upgrade was terrible, they replaced the Nvidia Geforce GT 540 in there older DX with a Nvidia Geforce GT 630, which isnt an upgrade at all, in fact its the exact same card which is so silly.  I stopped taking them serious this year, there way overpriced for what you get to be honest in my opinion. 

With that said, there are some great things about the laptop your looking at, the gaming keyboard is a very cool feature and they also got matte screens on them which barely any gaming laptops do or any laptops at all for that matter.  If your a first time buyer of any laptop, especially a gaming laptop, I would definitely recommend against getting a MSI for over 2 grand for sure.  Stick below 1200, or better yet stay in tripple diggits.  You can find a lot of great deals across the internet for under a grand and still game very well and will give you an idea of what you might better like if you plan on spending more money on something better equiped. 

I own a Lenovo Ideapad Y460 and I have to say its one fine peace of hardware, everything about it is outstanding and I run my own Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 gaming server with it every day and play on it all at the same time.  Here is my youtube channel, everything on it deals with my Ideapad Y460, http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer, all the gaming footage was taken off of my laptop using fraps. There is a new model coming out in a few weeks, the Y480, you can read a bit more about it here, http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/y-series/y480/, there is a Y580 that comes in 15.6 inch as well if you want something bigger. The soon to be released Y480 in late april is suppose to have a starting price of 999.00$, and you get an extremely fast graphics card in them. The Y480(14 inch) comes with a Nvidia Geforce GT 650m which has the faster GDDR5 memory in it, and the Y580(15.6 inch) comes with the Nvidia Geforce GT 660m with GDDR5 memory.  I havent ever been so excited for a laptop lineup, we've never seen GDDR5 memory in a 14 inch laptop that was a true powerhouse laptop, it will be interesting.  Reselling something like this would be easy to and you could get some good money back  for something more expensive if you plan on going that route.

The best advice I can give being a laptop enthusiast is not to overspend, whether you got plenty of money or your saving every penny for it it doesn't make a difference, paying more then you should on shit never works out well and theres alot of shit out there.  Separating whats legit and what is bunk is kinda tough in are current evolution of the mobile PC industry, most everything currently is a bunch of bs, lots of expensive laptops with GDDR3 graphics cards claiming there so fast and they use the most expensive stuff which there not, also watch out with memory, theres no reason you need more then 8 gigabytes of memory currently for gaming, the rest would never be used one bit, and super expensive SSD's 3 or 4 times the normal price are being used in laptops made by corporations/companys, its a waste theres no reason to overpay.   The Ideapad Y series line currently is way way WAY ahead in terms of price to performance as well as legit specifications.  I can honestly say with out a doubt, there isnt one company that even comes close to what there offering with the new Y480/Y580 line. 

Theres many different places to look for gaming laptops though, just google Xoticpc, malibal gaming pc, alienware(never in million years would recommend to first time gaming laptop buyer), cyberpower, razer has a cool new gaming laptop I would recommend but its extremely expensive, its new though so its justified. Asus has gaming laptops but I wouldnt really recommend them at least there not my cup of tea, the G53 series was cool though, I wouldnt mind a 14 inch laptop in there G lineup, still the stealth figher look is so fricken corny and cheesy.  If your not all that sold on the new lenovo line, browse newegg for cheap laptops and give one of them a shot, go to Newegg here, then scroll down where u get the options and click "more options" and then click graphics type and dedicated card, just browse threw those till you find one you like. 

Also use notebookcheck, its your friend when looking up information on graphics cards, if you find a laptop you like but arnt sure about the graphics card, just copy what the name of it says and put it into a search engine and notebookcheck will usually come up on the first page, and it will tell you everything there is to know about it.  Here is the link to notebookcheck, its the best website for any buyer, although there reviews can be bias sometimes from what I can tell, http://www.notebookcheck.net/.  I could really keep going on and on about different places you could check out, and different brands of laptops you could try, its really an endless discussion, but having a foothold when it comes to gaming laptops is a must and will save you very very much frustration and anger and tons of other offal emotions if you just research a bit about what your getting your self into.

Of course if you ever have any questions about anything to do with laptops, you can skype me, im jefferybaks(nickname)

Titans IP is avatar?  Thats a bit tough to swallow.

Also I decided to compete with the animated sig everyone has been clamoring about, here is what I came up with.

9751

The part about  Seoul,Korea being one of the cities in game but not being able to play from there is so damn funny. 

Sorry for your troubles charlie, hope they get it sorted out for you.

No open world exploration and heavily instanced makes me a sad panda but we knew that already.  Im just wondering how linear the entire game truly is. 

I cant wait to give it a go my self none the less.

You know how when you get so excited for something and even though you know when the time comes its not going to be near as good as you had always antisipated but it dosnt matter cause the excitement you felt was part of what made it worth it all anyway, thats how I feel about this game at the moment. 

I dont know whos with me when they can honestly say "im so fricken sick of themepark instanced games that I could puke", but mmo players arnt sissy boys and we have to accept what is out there.  Im willing to look past the standard mmo fair and consume what good the game can bring. 

I dont understand though, where are all the spread sheets and number crunchers that every other mmo deals with.  Why dont I know what kinda playerbase this game is going to have and how well its going to do in todays market?  Is this game going to be a niche game to a few hundread thousand or even less, like 50-125k?  I keep up with my mmos and I have posted many times on TSW's forums, but it puzzles me this game what its trying to acomplish.