Server mergers and content updates coming through the rest of the year

[Katchii]

While F2P players were not carrying the game financially, they were carrying it in terms of player pool for Ops and PvP. Whales would buy the Ops tokens and then broker them out to F2P players for creds, or F2P players would purchase the Credit boost tokens to get above the 350k threshold and buy them their selves.

Not to mention most guilds had subbers who would get the Ops/PvP tokens and put them up in the GBanks for the F2Pers to grab and do that stuff. Once tokens were removed and 70 sub only that killed off alot of the F2Pers.

BW just tried to strong arm them with the SW IP and that backfired seriously. I went through 3 guilds because of that. After no Ops(rather HM or NiM ops) due to lack of players I just called it on the game. I tried doing a guild who was Conquest warriors and that was fun for a while, but after getting all but one or 2 achievements on that I got bored again. All they did was run mostly Lockout Ops(Last boss for rewards and conquest) Fps out the ass and crafting wars where Conquest points topped 65Million it was just meh......

I plan on subbing again after Nov 8 for the Hexid companion but after that this game will go on hiatus until I need my commando fix.

- - - Updated - - -



Yea playing KotET and KotFE was fun as my Sage and Inquisitor as they fit the over all story well being Force users. I did it again on both the Commando and Bounty Hunter. While it was somewhat fun paying the Commander of my forces, taking on Arcann and Vaylin as a non force user just felt off. I accepted the idea that Valkorion was embuing me with Force powers to make my self toe to toe with them, it just did not feel as epic or engaging as a Force User.

That's my main issue with it though because for me, I play Light side almost all the time. I'll make Dark Side choices throughout the game sometimes, but never on big stuff. Light side characters reject help from Valkorian and there's a period of time in KotFE and I think KotET where he leaves you for a time and yet you're still able to go toe to toe with the same enemies that Sith and Jedi do. Not to mention the line he uses near the beginning of KotFE where he says "You alone have warranted my full attention" or something along those lines alluding to the idea that the player character is the only being in all of his years of existence that has piqued his interest to fully that he only paid attention to you, above but not necessarily excluding everything else. As a Jedi Knight or Sith Warrior that line makes complete sense given the main story for those classes. As Jedi Consular or Sith Inquisitor, the Emperor obviously paid attention to you but given the story for Warrior and Knight it doesn't make sense that either class would "warrant his full attention." Smuggler, Commando and Bounty Hunter are laughable to think that the Emperor would even know of their existence let alone consider them the ONLY person worthy enough to warrant his full attention. The Imperial Agent was part of a pretty huge clandestine organization that worked closely with Sith and the Dark Council and had a part in some pretty big events so it's not inconceivable that the Emperor would know who you are but again, not even close to being the ONLY person in the universe worthy of his full attention in light of the Warrior and Knight stories.

For me, it's not so bad because Warrior and Knight are the two most fun classes for me to play anyway, but when I played through on my Bounty Hunter it was simply laughable to think that someone who can't even use the Force was capable of giving Arcann a challenge let alone actually defeating him. Which makes going up against Vaylin seem even more absurd. I know I'm playing a space fantasy game set in a completely fictional universe, but my suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

[WoWGoneBad]

That's my main issue with it though because for me, I play Light side almost all the time. I'll make Dark Side choices throughout the game sometimes, but never on big stuff. Light side characters reject help from Valkorian and there's a period of time in KotFE and I think KotET where he leaves you for a time and yet you're still able to go toe to toe with the same enemies that Sith and Jedi do.

Yeah, I had a bit of trouble with this myself as my first play through on Commando was denying Valkorion's power. It felt so off going toe to toe as you say.

Not to mention the line he uses near the beginning of KotFE where he says "You alone have warranted my full attention" or something along those lines alluding to the idea that the player character is the only being in all of his years of existence that has piqued his interest to fully that he only paid attention to you, above but not necessarily excluding everything else.Smuggler, Commando and Bounty Hunter are laughable to think that the Emperor would even know of their existence let alone consider them the ONLY person worthy enough to warrant his full attention. The Imperial Agent was part of a pretty huge clandestine organization that worked closely with Sith and the Dark Council and had a part in some pretty big events so it's not inconceivable that the Emperor would know who you are but again, not even close to being the ONLY person in the universe worthy of his full attention in light of the Warrior and Knight stories.

Up and to the KotFE story We were the true badasses of the Galaxy as Commando, Smuggler and Bounty Hunters. We never fought someon on Valkorions level but decently powers ones as non Force users. And while some Force users do have the ability to fling lightning and Force throw not all are able to do it,and when you a shooting a couple hundred blaster bolts, some will get through and kill any Sith/Jedi or we get a lucky stabby stab stab on them. So becoming top dogs at the end of Chapter 3 and on up to Yavin-4 o all non-Force classes, him noticing him taking notice is not that far a stretch.

As a Jedi Knight or Sith Warrior that line makes complete sense given the main story for those classes. As Jedi Consular or Sith Inquisitor, the Emperor obviously paid attention to you but given the story for Warrior and Knight it doesn't make sense that either class would "warrant his full attention."

The Knight class I would agree is the only class where he should have kept a good notice of us. We did kill one of his spirit avatars and take down a group of his. As a rising Sith, he would be wise to keep notice of any an all who are the creme de la creme. those who could one day pose a real threat to him.

For me, it's not so bad because Warrior and Knight are the two most fun classes for me to play anyway, but when I played through on my Bounty Hunter it was simply laughable to think that someone who can't even use the Force was capable of giving Arcann a challenge let alone actually defeating him. Which makes going up against Vaylin seem even more absurd. I know I'm playing a space fantasy game set in a completely fictional universe, but my suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

@Edge, this was one of his favorite quotes about playing the game lol. And I agree that disbelief can only go so far or last as long. I gave up once we got to Iokath and was "Forced" to choose a side again even though I had an innumerable FLEET and ARMY at my beck and call(yeah... right). I played a Vicious BH where I want ed the Throne all for me and then I get to that point and was like, you have GOT to be kidding..... The story was ok, I never got to see who the traitor was because I refuse to play at 70 as F2P lol. but someday I may sub again and see what else there is to the story.

[Katchii]

Up and to the KotFE story We were the true badasses of the Galaxy as Commando, Smuggler and Bounty Hunters. We never fought someon on Valkorions level but decently powers ones as non Force users. And while some Force users do have the ability to fling lightning and Force throw not all are able to do it,and when you a shooting a couple hundred blaster bolts, some will get through and kill any Sith/Jedi or we get a lucky stabby stab stab on them. So becoming top dogs at the end of Chapter 3 and on up to Yavin-4 o all non-Force classes, him noticing him taking notice is not that far a stretch.

Yeah as these characters you went up against Jedi and Sith and took them down, but based on the Emperors character, he likely wouldn't give a shit about any of this as it ultimately didn't have any impact on him or his empire. Just a bunch of pawns dying, which is normal as he does that himself from time to time.

The Knight class I would agree is the only class where he should have kept a good notice of us. We did kill one of his spirit avatars and take down a group of his. As a rising Sith, he would be wise to keep notice of any an all who are the creme de la creme. those who could one day pose a real threat to him.

Sith Warrior literally becomes his right hand enforcer as the Emperor's Wrath, as employed by and through the Emperor's Hand and in so doing releases his True Voice from imprisonment so the Emperor surely knows who the Warrior is. Warrior and Emperor are inherently linked. In which case what you say is probably true, that he's mainly keeping an eye on the Warrior as a very real threat to himself.

@Edge, this was one of his favorite quotes about playing the game lol. And I agree that disbelief can only go so far or last as long. I gave up once we got to Iokath and was "Forced" to choose a side again even though I had an innumerable FLEET and ARMY at my beck and call(yeah... right). I played a Vicious BH where I want ed the Throne all for me and then I get to that point and was like, you have GOT to be kidding..... The story was ok, I never got to see who the traitor was because I refuse to play at 70 as F2P lol. but someday I may sub again and see what else there is to the story.

Yeah that garbage in Iokath pissed me off too. I control the Eternal Throne, and therefore the Eternal Fleet, now and am therefore the de facto leader of Zakuul, the power that nearly decimated BOTH the Empire and the Republic and I'm forced to align with one of them, rather than be my own separate sovereign power because....reasons??? SOOO STUPID.

I also refuse to play the game at all while F2P, but did experience the traitor portion. I'm curious where they're going with this so I'll play, but as I said, the story is mediocre at best and is mainly just an excuse to play my Rage Juggernaut or Concentration Sentinel as I just love their gameplay.

[quras]

Man this server thing has really blown up on the forums and backfired on bioware. What should have been a good move doesn't seem like it will turn out so good for some. While the merge has not happened yet, we were placed on the new hardware Tuesday.

However, bioware at some point decided to remove all west coast servers and physically have everything at the east coast.

Causing increased latency and ping for west coast people. They will have a west coast name but not really be west coast.

bioware is currently being called liars because that is not how the server merger thing was presented. gamers were not told the west coast servers were going to be gone completely nor let anyone know till after the fact and they were finding out they had higher pings./latency. bioware claimed their test showed no game play issues but apparently players are being affected on the real world side of things.

Doesn't seem like bioware can do anything right with swtor.

[Katchii]

Man this server thing has really blown up on the forums and backfired on bioware. What should have been a good move doesn't seem like it will turn out so good for some. While the merge has not happened yet, we were placed on the new hardware Tuesday.

However, bioware at some point decided to remove all west coast servers and physically have everything at the east coast.

Causing increased latency and ping for west coast people. They will have a west coast name but not really be west coast.

bioware is currently being called liars because that is not how the server merger thing was presented. gamers were not told the west coast servers were going to be gone completely nor let anyone know till after the fact and they were finding out they had higher pings./latency. bioware claimed their test showed no game play issues but apparently players are being affected on the real world side of things.

Doesn't seem like bioware can do anything right with swtor.

So...there are no more servers on the West Coast...at all? Just servers they're going to call West Coast servers? What the actual fuck are they thinking?

[quras]

So...there are no more servers on the West Coast...at all? Just servers they're going to call West Coast servers? What the actual fuck are they thinking?

That is correct:

Originally Posted by SWTOR

Maintenance: October 24th, 2017 | 10.24.2017, 12:36 PM
Hi all,

Today’s maintenance was part of the United Forces effort!

We have completed the upgrade of the Game Servers along with all their supporting infrastructure in the Data Centers. We made a large investment of new hardware and software and one of our primary goals was to substantially reduce our footprint while improving our overall server capacity. During our evaluation of the new servers, we determined we could also combine our North American datacenters. That also occurred today and we have officially moved out of our West Coast location. Our testing showed no impact on the gameplay experience, but we expect some of you playing on formerly West Coast servers may see higher ping times. We’ll use the next two weeks to smooth out any kinks and resolve any performance issues encountered.

You’ll see the same Servers today that you saw yesterday. They’re just running on new hardware and, some, in different locations. As announced previously the move to the five (5) new Servers will be on Wednesday, November 8, 2017. At that time all Game Servers and the SWTOR website will be down for up to 12 hours. We’ll let you know the actual start time a few days before.

Report any specific issues you encounter to Customer Service as we’ve established an escalation process for critical issues. Please be a bit patient with us over the coming weeks as we unite players from a variety of servers and try to make this a smooth and painless process for everyone.

Cheers!

-Keith--

http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php

While the actual server merger hasn't happened yet we were moved to new servers in wait for the merge. Personally I think bioware is nothing but a bunch of liars because you don't just suddenly realism OH we can just stop using a data center and do it all in one data center with out some planning. They had to have known this weeks ago when posting about the original server merger and what would happen.

That kind of thing just doesn't sneak up. bioware is quite underhanded in removing west coast servers without telling them till it was said and done and then threw in their face we did some testing and while you will get more latency and ping, you'll be fine.

[Katchii]

That is correct:

Originally Posted by SWTOR

Maintenance: October 24th, 2017 | 10.24.2017, 12:36 PM
Hi all,

Today’s maintenance was part of the United Forces effort!

We have completed the upgrade of the Game Servers along with all their supporting infrastructure in the Data Centers. We made a large investment of new hardware and software and one of our primary goals was to substantially reduce our footprint while improving our overall server capacity. During our evaluation of the new servers, we determined we could also combine our North American datacenters. That also occurred today and we have officially moved out of our West Coast location. Our testing showed no impact on the gameplay experience, but we expect some of you playing on formerly West Coast servers may see higher ping times. We’ll use the next two weeks to smooth out any kinks and resolve any performance issues encountered.

You’ll see the same Servers today that you saw yesterday. They’re just running on new hardware and, some, in different locations. As announced previously the move to the five (5) new Servers will be on Wednesday, November 8, 2017. At that time all Game Servers and the SWTOR website will be down for up to 12 hours. We’ll let you know the actual start time a few days before.

Report any specific issues you encounter to Customer Service as we’ve established an escalation process for critical issues. Please be a bit patient with us over the coming weeks as we unite players from a variety of servers and try to make this a smooth and painless process for everyone.

Cheers!

-Keith--

http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php

While the actual server merger hasn't happened yet we were moved to new servers in wait for the merge. Personally I think bioware is nothing but a bunch of liars because you don't just suddenly realism OH we can just stop using a data center and do it all in one data center with out some planning. They had to have known this weeks ago when posting about the original server merger and what would happen.

That kind of thing just doesn't sneak up. bioware is quite underhanded in removing west coast servers without telling them till it was said and done and then threw in their face we did some testing and while you will get more latency and ping, you'll be fine.

I'm going to play tonight and see how much my play experience is impacted, but yes, the bolded is absolutely correct. BW is filled with idiots.

[WoWGoneBad]

So...there are no more servers on the West Coast...at all? Just servers they're going to call West Coast servers? What the actual fuck are they thinking?

You seem to be under the impression that BW has EVER thought anything through........ They should have just stuck to single player world and never set foot in the MMO market.

[quras]

You seem to be under the impression that BW has EVER thought anything through........ They should have just stuck to single player world and never set foot in the MMO market.

I guess so.

Without making a mega server and sticking it in the middle of the US somewhere where it's a bit even for most NA players. I just can't grasp how bioware thought this was ever going to be a good idea.

It just blows my mind they thought they could keep their mouths shut and wipe away the west coast servers and then just drop the bomb on them like, oh BTW.... You're going to get higher latency but we show your fine. You're all good.

It's a business move I just can't grasp in a game that isn't doing so well it can piss that many gamers off.

[Katchii]

You seem to be under the impression that BW has EVER thought anything through........ They should have just stuck to single player world and never set foot in the MMO market.

I'm under the assumption, and give them the benefit of the doubt, that SOMEONE there has a clue and pays attention to how things work with MMO's and communication with their player base. I just can't believe (as in, won't alter my mindset to think otherwise) that a studio is so completely detached from their game that they make every bad decision and never learn from their or others mistakes. The MMO market is saturated with games who have already tread this path and made these mistakes...does no one at BW do any research? at all? The backlash from every decision they've ever made has been out there for other games since before this game ever made those mistakes. Why do they refuse to pay attention and research this crap?

- - - Updated - - -

So...new post on official forums.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...85#edit9452485

Hey folks,

As many of you know, on Tuesday Keith explained that in preparation for United Forces we moved all current west coast servers into our Virginia data center. Here’s some of the key questions we have received about the North American datacenter change:

Why not communicate this ahead of time?
We made the decision to not communicate this information ahead of time because we wanted you to have the ability to immediately login and determine the impact to your gameplay experience. This meant we could quickly start gathering feedback on what you were seeing in-game (more on this in the next question). However, we have seen posts from players who made specific decisions based on location (such as character transfers) and we will be in touch with them to discuss. To ensure there is no confusion about this update in-game, we adjusted the server selection screen to reflect that all NA servers are on the east coast.

My ping has gone up since the change and it is affecting my gameplay, what options do I have?
Please continue to report it! As Keith mentioned in his forum post this is something we are actively tracking and working with our network partners to address where possible. We will be working through this especially over the next two weeks as we ramp up to United Forces.

Could there be one data center in the Central US so that pings are more even for each coast?
Creating an entirely new datacenter is a daunting task, even above and beyond the substantial changes we have already made this year. This just isn’t something that was viable in the scope of the changes we made for United Forces.

Since all of NA is in one datacenter, shouldn’t we just have one server?
Moving all of NA together would create a very heavily populated server. This would introduce several challenges: 1) Players would likely experience queues accessing the server and 2) It would increase the chances for server instability and downtime. There are also a variety of other issues, but a key concern was combining all of North America would result in substantially more character name collisions.

We hope this answers some of your questions and lets you know what’s going to happen over the next couple weeks. Please remember, on November 8th we will move all players to their new servers during an extended maintenance (currently looking like 12 hours). We are also discussing starting a few hours earlier than usual (e.g., 2 or 3am CT), but will let you know a few days beforehand.

Thanks everyone.

-eric

So they chose to deliberately hold the information back from us to see if we'd even notice because, based on previous posts, their internal testing showed everything would be OK? Are they serious? And their plan of action is to work with the network partners....which won't do a fucking thing for the people on the West Coast because nothing will change the fact that the geographical location is what is causing the higher ping. So, blah blah blah, we didn't tell you because we didn't want you to leave the game and because we didn't think it would be a problem based on internal testing and our way of addressing it is about as effective as a throwing a glass of water on a forest fire.

This game's leadership are complete morons

[Edge-]

Jesus, that's one of the worst "explanations" I've read in a long time.

[Katchii]

Jesus, that's one of the worst "explanations" I've read in a long time.

Agreed. I used to have at least a glimmer of hope that the team there was just a bunch of goofs who get things wrong now and then, but ultimately have the best of intentions. Turns out they're all a bunch of bumbling idiots that intentionally mislead and/ or flat out lie to their player base.

No faith whatsoever that this game will ever pull itself up out of the hole it's in now, since they seem intent on digging their own grave.

[WoWGoneBad]

DAYUMNNNnnnnnn

After that BS excuse I have nothing left to want to play swtor again.... "We did not want to tgell you what we are doing cuz we wanted to take all the coins outta you with transfers first and then let you play test the servers to let us know if it was a good move or not....

What is it about each new Director that starts out with good intentions but just turns out to be the same old garbage.....

[Golden]

I lost hope in this game when that Bioware dev from the other Star Wars game was talking about how EA was pressuring game developers to make multiplayer games in order to micro-transaction players to death - he was talking about how some "whales" would spend almost 15K a year on these micro-transactions.

It makes sense to me now why this dev team spent so much time making new crates to sell instead of adding new content or balancing the classes.

[Kazgrel]

Square-Enix: Ok guys, we're gonna be moving our NA servers for FF14 to a new datacenter; chances are it's gonna suck for EU players still playing on NA servers.

FF14 players, upon pinging and realizing new servers are in California (the old ones were in Montreal): OMG WTF WORST SERVER MOVE EVER!

Bioware: Lol, hold my beer.

As much flak as people gave SE for the server move with FF14, at least they had some level of transparency regarding it. They stated several months in advance that the move would impact EU folks still on NA servers (for the unaware, EU has had it's own datacenter now for 2ish years, so they didn't completely throw those players in front of a bus). Everyone (rightfully) assumed the servers would thus be going west, even though SE didn't specifically state that.

[Katchii]

Square-Enix: Ok guys, we're gonna be moving our NA servers for FF14 to a new datacenter; chances are it's gonna suck for EU players still playing on NA servers.

FF14 players, upon pinging and realizing new servers are in California (the old ones were in Montreal): OMG WTF WORST SERVER MOVE EVER!

Bioware: Lol, hold my beer.

As much flak as people gave SE for the server move with FF14, at least they had some level of transparency regarding it. They stated several months in advance that the move would impact EU folks still on NA servers (for the unaware, EU has had it's own datacenter now for 2ish years, so they didn't completely throw those players in front of a bus). Everyone (rightfully) assumed the servers would thus be going west, even though SE didn't specifically state that.

Maybe it's just because I was happy for the most part and never really looked critically or cared, but I'm realizing now that BioWare has never been transparent about their communication and that it's always sucked. IIRC, it's never been quite this blatant that it was a bullshit response, but BW has always been terrible at communicating in addition to managing their game horribly. They're getting dangerously close to the point I did with Microsoft back in 2013 with the horrible PR of the XBox One, I vowed to never give Microsoft another dime for console sales with how they handled that launch and all the PR leading up to it making it blatantly obvious that they are 1) out of touch with the player base 2) truly only see players as a dollar sign and 3) don't really care about their players other than for their money.

BioWare is starting to hit that level of incompetence, disregarding/ disrespecting players and blatant cash grabby-ness that Microsoft did for me.

[Kazgrel]

Maybe it's just because I was happy for the most part and never really looked critically or cared, but I'm realizing now that BioWare has never been transparent about their communication and that it's always sucked. IIRC, it's never been quite this blatant that it was a bullshit response, but BW has always been terrible at communicating in addition to managing their game horribly. They're getting dangerously close to the point I did with Microsoft back in 2013 with the horrible PR of the XBox One, I vowed to never give Microsoft another dime for console sales with how they handled that launch and all the PR leading up to it making it blatantly obvious that they are 1) out of touch with the player base 2) truly only see players as a dollar sign and 3) don't really care about their players other than for their money.

BioWare is starting to hit that level of incompetence, disregarding/ disrespecting players and blatant cash grabby-ness that Microsoft did for me.

Considering how much of my college years were spent playing Neverwinter Nights, it pains me to see how far the mighty can fall when it comes to Bioware. Not that I'm disregarding their other titles (KOTOR was a staple among friends who borrowed and played my Xbox back then). I'm not easily convinced that the whole "customer = $$$" mindset you're seeing with BW is purely them...aka, take note of who owns them.

I pretty much wrote BW off after the Muzyka and Zeschuck (probably murdered those spellings) went off into early retirement land a couple of years ago.

[Katchii]

Considering how much of my college years were spent playing Neverwinter Nights, it pains me to see how far the mighty can fall when it comes to Bioware. Not that I'm disregarding their other titles (KOTOR was a staple among friends who borrowed and played my Xbox back then). I'm not easily convinced that the whole "customer = $$$" mindset you're seeing with BW is purely them...aka, take note of who owns them.

I pretty much wrote BW off after the Muzyka and Zeschuck (probably murdered those spellings) went off into early retirement land a couple of years ago.

While I see your point, it really makes no difference, IMO. EA does own them, but they're still the ones implementing the stuff they are, it's still their game, ultimately their decisions that run the game. EA just cares about money, we know that, but it's still up to BioWare how to make EA the money they're asking for.

Admittedly I have absolutely no idea how things go on behind the scenes between EA and BioWare, but I'm assuming EA has very little say in the game design and design choices being made with the game. EA simply gives BioWare a goal, and BioWare needs to figure out how to meet that goal, and I'm guessing the goal is financial in nature, not specifically game related. Additionally, I'm almost positive that EA has zero guidance or say in how BW runs their forums, as BW has been running it this way since day 1. So the fact that BioWare continues down this road of horrible communication and blatant lies, along with them deciding to spend as much time as they do with all of their loot crates and Cartel Market stuff rather than improving the rest of the game and making it a better experience for everyone, not just the new guys who haven't been here since Beta (like me), shows that they are choosing money over players.

And it just kind of struck me as I wrote this, but as someone who bought the game before it launched (CE, but that doesn't really matter here) participated in the Beta and payed an uninterrupted subscription until the game went F2P, their behavior and choices just make it pretty obvious they don't necessarily care about players like me anymore, which sucks.

[Edge-]

Maybe it's just because I was happy for the most part and never really looked critically or cared, but I'm realizing now that BioWare has never been transparent about their communication and that it's always sucked.

Yup, and the kicker is that we've had better communication since Keith came on board than pretty much any time in the games history. At least since the F2P transition, though likely even before then.

BW Austin has always been fucking terrible on this front with SWTOR.

[Kazgrel]

While I see your point, it really makes no difference, IMO. EA does own them, but they're still the ones implementing the stuff they are, it's still their game, ultimately their decisions that run the game. EA just cares about money, we know that, but it's still up to BioWare how to make EA the money they're asking for.

Admittedly I have absolutely no idea how things go on behind the scenes between EA and BioWare, but I'm assuming EA has very little say in the game design and design choices being made with the game. EA simply gives BioWare a goal, and BioWare needs to figure out how to meet that goal, and I'm guessing the goal is financial in nature, not specifically game related. Additionally, I'm almost positive that EA has zero guidance or say in how BW runs their forums, as BW has been running it this way since day 1. So the fact that BioWare continues down this road of horrible communication and blatant lies, along with them deciding to spend as much time as they do with all of their loot crates and Cartel Market stuff rather than improving the rest of the game and making it a better experience for everyone, not just the new guys who haven't been here since Beta (like me), shows that they are choosing money over players.

And it just kind of struck me as I wrote this, but as someone who bought the game before it launched (CE, but that doesn't really matter here) participated in the Beta and payed an uninterrupted subscription until the game went F2P, their behavior and choices just make it pretty obvious they don't necessarily care about players like me anymore, which sucks.

Right. Doesn't really matter who's at fault for the "milk people for all they're worth" approach here. The game itself suffers regardless.

Heck, I don't have much of a leg to stand on in this forum, seeing that my play experience with TOR was the first month of it's existence. Reached level 50, completed the story line for Inquistor (which was fun; the storytelling they did shits on every MMO), but then saw nothing but a rehash of vanilla/TBC WoW, but with lightsabers. Oh, and the joke that was Ilum...lol. I was there for the first round of nuclear nerfs they dropped on Sorcs, especially the healer ones like me at that time (since the rest of my guild/friends that joined were all dps or tanks). We all wanted this game to be really, really good, just as several of us wanted SWG to become the behemoth that WoW eventually became, only having use a more sandbox approach to things. Basically, a really good sci-fi MMO setting, and the SW license would've made for icing on the cake.

This game and fans of the franchise deserve better. :-/