[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Fokkusu:
Well, I purchased this phone about a month ago, and this thread has helped a lot! I was scared to death to root mine because $500, including tax and the phone card, is too much money to throw away. I took the risk... and everything worked perfectly!

To make sure you root it correctly, you need Kies installed, it automatically installs the device's driver. I then used Cydia Impactor, and enabled USB Debugging and then rooted it in like 10 seconds. :D After that, I was looking for CWM, so I came here, and downloaded from the Play Store, EZ-Recovery, and downloaded the Verizon Version of the latest CWM Touch. I loaded the custom recovery image, successfully booted into recovery mode, and made a backup! After that, I decided to test some roms, my first choice was the Verizon Version of Cyanogenmod 11, the latest nightly. Everything installed in about 5 minutes, It booted with the cyanogen guy and it looked epic! :D I made my account, got on my wifi and began to look at it. I decided to test the texting, etc. Came to found out, no service what so ever. I rebooted, then it requested a SIM Card. Obviously the phone did not use one, so I decided to go back to stock. I may flash 10.2, but I was looking forward to find a TouchWiz rom for it, but updated. Would the original Verizon Touchwiz 4.3 rom work? (OTA Update one?) I didn't test anymore roms, due to my failure of that one. I did test a lot of mods though, and almost none of them worked. I few did, but they did not perform as expected. Then I was looking into using a transparent status bar mod, that claimed to work for "4.1.2". I flashed it and the systemui.apk was corrupted it said, and then I had to restore. I repeated the process about 15-30 times. So, has anyone found a way to get CM 11 working? And what is Gummy? o.o Thanks and if you need any help, let me know!~ Overall the phone is great and provides maximum functionality. It is fast and performs well. The price is not worth it though, but the free $100 gift card I got was a nice gift, but still did not make up for it. If you buy this phone, just be careful about the things you do to it, because it is not technically a "Official" phone, comparing to other carriers. If I were you, save up for a S5 off contract. Or buy a AT&T S3, S4, or Note 3 and then put them on Straighttalk. Verizon gets decent coverage in my area, but AT&T has so much better.

So, let me know if you can get CM 11 working! :D Thanks.~

UPDATE:

So I re-flashed CM 11. I toggled with some network and mobile settings and nothing changed, still no service.

I flashed Gummy 2.1, latest nightly, no service.

I then flashed CM 10.2, I have service, but it has drastically reduced my mobile networking performance. I normally have all bars of service in my house. I had all bars before I flashed it and after flashing, only 1 bar, and it rarely changes.It sometimes gets to 2 bars, and SMS, etc. works, but not as reliable. I will say, it runs smooth and nice. But I prefer a working phone over that. Installing was a breeze, took about 3 minutes. Including gapps. It offers the CM 10.2.1 update, but I heard it removes cellular, so no gonna do it. Lol. The performance is otstanding and I see no lag. But if widgets overlap, it freezes in place and won't remove. So that sucks. Rebooting fixes that though. Service after a couple reboots seems to fix itself. That is good. :3

UPDATE 2:

After playing around with CM 10.2, and after a few reboots, service has been restored and is quite fast! Much more snappy than before. Since we can't have CM 11, I installed Nova Launcher Prime, and couldn't tell a difference! :D It is snappy and my phone only uses about 28% Ram and is so snappy. Much better than expected, if you are looking for a rom to flash, CM 10.2 is my recommendation. Stable, snappy, and eye candy galore! xD