Good idea on working to make exclusive rewards available in some form that everyone can get it any time for an effort that mimics or is higher in requirement than what it used to be in the past. Not sure if I agree with "time played" but rather with "months subscribed". If HK chapter took 180? days of subscription then any account that has that many days of sub should be able to buy it via credits from this special vendor that is unlocked during the active subscription (account wide unlock and price that should match the account wide unlock). That way those who missed it have to pay more on top of the sub time than those who received it exclusively in the past for the sub time alone. As for the game activities that were not sub rewards, maybe repeat those game activities via seasons/years, like Master Ranos DvL etc.

You do have to pay real money to get the crates. Galactic Command, Purple Gear, and most of group content is real money. You win against those who do not pay for that. An example if you run in a WZ level 70 against preferred player in blue gear because he did not pay to use better gear, that loot is locked to him, and if by any chance he gets hands on such items, they are not equip-able (needs authorization). So it is not just pay to look good, it is pay to have better stats. You have huge advantage simply because you continued to pay for the game, the access and use of the better gear, the more you pay, the more you remain in the race for every time next gear tier appears. Now against another premium player, you both pay same, so it isn't pay to win in that case. But people keep forgetting that Swtor requires you to pay real money for both, stats and fashion, both require real money. Premium account is P2W against every other account class, but not against another Premium account. The occurrence of P2W interaction to actually happen is probably, I am assuming, very low. The way business model in swtor works is to completely cut players off, to divide them from the first class, from the premium players. The boosters are simply there to make progression faster, they don't unlock better stats that will place you in advantage over players who do not use boosters, like premium status does.

I love this idea, new combat poses, idle animations, running animations etc.

I was there yes I remember. It was working at the time because GTN economy was benefiting free to play players. Friends were buying the passes for their free to play friends, and passes were also hosted within the credit cap on GTN (as well as the account wide unlocks but those started going above credit cap fast so it was good to buy them of GTN while you are sub which was cheap for that form anyway, for later use as pref). Those items still required real money (cartel coins) so in a way it was paid for free to play players (usually by a sub but f2p could buy them themselves too), allowing f2p accounts to actually make incomes to the company. Swtor can make more money and have more players by implementing a better business model. It would benefit them as well as the players. I think that would be the final goal, the current buffs to F2P/Pref are half decade late, and removal of passes inflicted further damage. Swtor has been for a very long time pay real world money to gamble. I am not talking about the cartel market alone, this one would be acceptable (if it didnt hurt the rest of the content). More so for a very long time Galactic Command was pay real world money (sub) to gamble lootboxes for real gear with stats, not for fashion. The today so called "Surprise Mechanics" were alone bleeding the subs out of the game. A sub account needs to have real value, it needs not be gamble of lootboxes (for any account status really). The difference should be in how fast you progress (earn currencies, progress bars), so that people who have full time jobs, when they pay for game they do not need to play as a full time job either and to have better cartel coins income per month as well as for example appearance changer could cost credits instead of CC. That alone should be the way free accounts do it, and then they would recognize value of subscribing ("I played with friend same content, I need to sub to catch up it saves up lot of time"). Most unlocks require CC instead credits on free accounts (and appearance changer could be done same way), you know, the things that do not divide players, not cutting out players who chose to stay F2P/Pref for the healthy population. Instead we got a business model where population is divided between subs and free accounts, because they don't get to play real rewarding content together. Subs get thrown into a gamble (either between galactic command or between each other rolls) that requires full time job grind while free accounts can either chose pay to join that "premium account" to do same gambles or quit. Instead to be united.

You can buy WoW subs with in game currency.

F2P are potential money income to the game. Cutting them out will reduce the player number yes, and with it the income. They had to enable F2P to survive, it was big news back then. You are not familiar with game's history and why it added second and third tier accounts, because it couldn't survive on sub alone, and your attitude is awful and hurts this game. Players can now try for free (a big trial) and pay if like, most current subs are former F2P. Having to pay to try is what would cut down subs in significant number. And with current restrictions, it cuts it to some percentage anyway, it's why they finally decided to do something about it, but unfortunately they are still not aware how to properly realize the good idea.

Key problems of this topics are: 1) Pref/F2P did not get anything of worth value with this change 2) Subs, instead to come with ideas to make Subs better, they find reasons to punish Pref/F2P accounts instead There are many good profitable business models out there that do not punish and split players apart (like Warframe for example) because of the money. But in here, we players, decide to split ourselves, on poor and rich, on elites and newbies, on first class and slaves, instead to stand together. No wonder why we are down to 5 servers today, it isn't just the game that had issues, its the nature of community that wants to continue down this road.

Because it's true? You are still premium player. Attempting to post with a preferred or f2p account pops this message: "- Forum posting is limited to Subscribers of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Become a Subscriber today! http://www.swtor.com/buy" I can see your post. If there is a grace period I would not be aware of it, never attempted to post as soon as sub period ended. You can see the number of the servers at official server status link https://www.swtor.com/server-status. If you have been around since the start, you can compare the number of the servers they started with, to how many they have today. If not you can see this screenshot, I believe it to be accurate (209 servers?) As for the number of subs status, currently there are 95k subs, and at launch it had over one million, so that's about 90% loss. Sources are wiki and mmo population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Old_Republic https://mmo-population.com/r/swtor Now if you have also been active for many years, you could have experience the feel of decrease in everything, stories fusing from class to faction to today 1 story. Servers merging, game getting f2p model because subs cannot maintain it, the traffic on the forums compared to then and today, the personal experience (my own at least) makes me believe the sources to be correct and that we cannot expect better results by repeating same way over and over. If there are sources and experiences that oppose this I would like to hear about them.

Those who have paid nothing cannot complain. Not even preferred can post. The only people who can post here to complain are those who are subs, who are paying. Because we want healthier player base, from 120 servers down to 5, it says something that this business model is heavily flawed. Swtor has lost over 90% of subs since the launch, and subs stopped being main source of money to the company long ago, we are just supplementary resource now for years. Attempt with passes removal and galatic command was attempt to increase number of subs which in the end led to yet another server merge after loss of players. We need to be more friendly towards preferred and f2p players so we can have who to play game with in future. To encourage them to sub, not punish them for not subing. Expansions are good encouragement but it needs more, subs needs to feel worth at same time while not cutting out of the game the preferred and f2p players. Players wont come back to game just because now they have room to slot their pets and mounts on a quickbar ...

Good idea with poor results. It is not enough, not even close. Swtor is not f2p game. It is game with one of the biggest free trials: level 50 with core game content. Should not advertise or be called f2p. F2P is game that offers all content unlocked to every player. How fast you earn the rewards is measured between your account status. Premium/Sub account should earn credits/currencies/xp/cxp/rep/gsf/valor at normal rate with twice faster on weekends and 1000 cartel coins a month and everything costs normal. Preferred accounts should earn credits/currencies/xp/cxp/rep/gsf/valor twice slower/more than Premium/Sub (Preferred should be ex Sub 15$ minimum, not 5$) and all costs in game are increased by 50% (vendors, rep vendors, appearance changer etc). F2P account should earn credits/currencies/xp/cxp/rep/gsf/valor three times slower/more than Premium/Sub and all costs in game are increased by 100% (vendors, rep vendors, appearance changer etc). There should be no restrictions to content, gear, crew skills, credits cap (please punish gold sellers/spammers, not your player base), or something as ridiculous as basic user interface such is quickbars. Warzones, Flashpoints, Operations not even to mention how stale queues became without a premade especially if you are a dps. And the subs who desire things to be locked to Pref/F2P only harm themselves, us, the subs, because subs don't have with who to play anymore. You should help this game get more players, not elite yourself to few of first class travelers, because you are not losing anything by having more people play the game, and if you like other account status more, you can always change. Expansions content should still require 1 month sub to unlock it.

Gear should exist but not be focus. Character builds should be the builds, gears should just increase stats, gear should not be builds. Let us customize our characters through abilities. Bioware did amazing job with Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, and you don't need 4 action bars to play different builds, you just need 3 buttons. For Swtor I'd personally be ok with 1 action bar to have active abilities for every class (and 5 passive that don't need action bar), but that we can customize those abilities via character build, not via gear, like the utilities or the upgrades of an ability (like mass effect with branches). Get rid of so many currencies and give us one that we can earn through playing the content, and we can use that one currency to buy gear from vendors. Don't make gear shells to be currency, don't make million more currencies don't complicate things. Galactic Command (Renow?) RNG loot boxes can stay as a "supplementary", a bonus way to earn stuff, open it to preferred at reduced speed progression. Make races matter more than just cosmetics. There are few narrative that address that but its usually human and rest are aliens. At least you can give us some perks, passives and actives that add flavor to gameplay. Social skills are fun to use first 3 times but are just useless after that. We need something better than "animation and skin color" to separate races. New Classes do not require new stories. Every Force and Gun class can have a third branch with its 3 disciplines, with a different play style, weapon, etc. So adding 1 advanced class to every base class would be a way to go, cheaper, does not require new ships and hangars or new story, and still gives us more variety to play. Creating a whole new base class with two advanced classes (and then mirror it for opposite faction) with a new origin stories and updating it through all expansions at this point is just a dream. BioWare locked themselves in the start with this design. All they can do is now make what they have better. Create a feature that allows us to save/name and load builds/loadouts/quickbars/profiles the same/similar way we do with outfit designed. Allow PvP to select what they want to play, just like PvE can (with some indicators which warzone is for example waiting for how many players to join) Release a full expansion for every type of player, because you have them all. Don't do half baked like last time. That means content for every player type Stories (coop friendly pls and to have difficulty options) Companion interactions New Planets New Heroics and Dailies New Flashpoints New Operations New Warzones New Stronghold New PvP GSF map New content a PvE GSF? Maybe where we get to fly our class ships together with friends in a PvE space mission with GSF gameplay? New races (I heard Nautolan is coming but what about Echani, Voss, Zeltron, Kel Dor, these should not be difficult to make, you have models you just play with colors). New mounts that allow us to ride our friends with us too

The game has been pay to win long ago. Free players and even Preferred have no chance to RNG their way to max gear even if they buy CC items (command crates or reward roll against other teammates in ops all require money first to give you this chance to RNG and you still may lose it when paying). Pay to win has been ongoing for very long time, nothing new about it, other than making it stronger pay to win with each "significant" update since subscriptions alone are not enough to maintain the game. But like before they just make game worse and lose players instead. Once I have no longer with who to play, and tank role queue becomes longer than 2 hours as before the last server merge, I will stop playing too, it simply is waste of time.

Yes, thank you. It's possible to do MM ops without that gear either. So is PvP. Multiplayer content did not get slowed down because of solo story players, nor wise versa. The fault is in Swtor funds not being put back into the game, it's not any player's fault. They pay programmers and hire people, even move swtor men to other projects, bringing swtor in such state that they are no longer capable of releasing content for every aspect of the game, and even the one thing they focus on gets stalled and buggy and unfinished. Players should be equal in earning rewards, either everyone can earn same stuff, or story players cannot earn ops and pvp stuff, and ops players cannot earn story and pvp stuff, and pvp players cannot earn story and ops stuff, without playing the content they want to earn the stuff from. Best Quality of Life in swtor would be when players would understand each other, rather than shoot one another down with every opportunity they see.

This happens when you merge servers without actually fixing the issues. And now pops for both, pvp and pve, are at same level as at the pre-merge. Only premades will be the one still using activities window now, so joining a guild with same goals could be a work around, though most guilds have been slain by 5.0 and after.

So we can switch gear the same way we can switch outfits? YES!