New to the game

[Stalfos19]

I just downloaded SW:TOR and I have played a little through the tutorial.
Any recommendations now how to get started?

[Nakida]

Here are a couple steps.

1) Look at the official SWTOR forums to see how active they are, cause where you start your legacy cannot be transferred by creating a new character elsewhere. (If you despise your starting server down the road, and want to keep your legacy you ahve to pay for a charachter transfer of the main legacy holder to new server)
2) Play around on the starting planet with races/classes you are interested in.
3) Don't waste your credits on the GTN (auction house) on item enhancements cause you can buy some every 10 levels or so from the fleet with commendations you get from doing the weekly heroics. (You can save quite a lot for when you really need high level enhancements)
4) Invest to one Stronghold once you can buy them on Nar Shadaa or Coruscant (5,000 credit initial buy in, I believe), because you get a free legacy cargo (personal bank all characters in your legacy can store items); but don't buy all the Stronghold expansions right off the bat. Empire players can visit Coruscant Stronghold and Republic players can visit Nar Shadaa Stronghold for a 1,000 credit fee. SO basically have one Stronghold at the start to move things around for free essentially.
5) If you want some more benefits than free to play, invest the bare minimum of Cartel Coin purchase to become a Preferred Player.

That is the list I think is very useful from my own experience. 3-5 are the ones I can say from experience really help you out. I put $10 down for cartel coins to become Preferred, was worth it while trying out the game at the start.

**EDIT**

One last point for starting out. Buy a color crystal from the GTN whenever you ahve the credits for it, one of the ones that have the cartel logo on the bottom left of the item. Once you equip it to a weapon you can actually pull it from your collections tab from the Cartel Button or Inventory. So basically free color crystal forever.