This is a real thing that is happening in this game. If you are level 50 then you are aware of it. Hitting the level cap should be the start of the game. You get to 50 and the game REALLY opens up. Well what I am finding as well as others is the opposite. The PvP is really difficult and the final regular mode Flashpoints DO NOT DROP UPGRADES! What is going on here? The only recourse I can see is rolling an alt. I don't really have a problem doing that, but I want my main to be an end game monster! Any thoughts or suggestions on this problem are welcome because I am at a loss.

Post 50, the game really does hit a wall ; ; haha but this will change in the future!

That being said, Hardmodes really are a whole other ballgame and even though it's technically re-running old content, they are horribly fun.

The basics for hardmodes is to get your gear as good as you can without them: this means using your daily tokens to get your tier23 armoring (You can only craft upto tier 22), barrels, mods and enhancements (the nice enhancements come from the Herioc2 on ilum, Darkness)

Once you have these, you'll still want to repeat dailies to bolster your wallet, repair bills suck!

Hardmodes are a great way to get the columi gear plus crafting mats like biometric crystal alloys and so on, even some really nice weapons too!

Rolling an alt never really hurts, it is kinda fun to experience all the other storylines.

PvP is kinda bunk and so broken/imbalanced at the moment I don't even bother half the time when members of the republic side can hardly fill up a warzone match or drop if there's not a full set in there, it's rough and I really hope bioware will fix it soon (even if it means mixing factions on the same team, like they do in huttball).

There are nightmare modes/ops too but at the moment, our guild lacks the 16man team for that, and that being said we'd still need to get our gear from hardmodes too before attempting but that's somethin we can wait a little for.

on a final note, I really do hope they start adding in more content post-50, this is kinda quiet :p

i tend to agree with you horik – level 50 seems to be geared towards either very difficult PVP or HM flashpoints/operations… and all activities seem to be geared towards helping with those.

having said that, here are a couple of sites i found helpful:

http://www.freefrag.com/sw-tor/21601-swtor-what-do-level-50-guide-overview.html

http://feature.mmosite.com/swtor/endgame_gearing_guide_for_empire_players.shtml

(latter is for empire, but still mostly relevant)

actually, both are for the empire side… what a surprise

Yeah, I'll be honest… watching the Red Wings game seems like more fun right now than doing Dailys or grinding PVP.

I'm excited for hardmodes, but totally turned off that I have to do a ton of repeatable quests every day to do it. Repeatable quests, really? Bioware, come on. Repeatable quests were added as an afterthought to WoW, and somehow that afterthought feature is a primary feature of this game years later?