Pretty much this. I'd hardly call myself a 'whiner', but I knew if I was gonna have to play first come first serve all those months ago, I'd be at the front of the line, and I was. I was there 7am to get my names. I added up the /played on the level 10+ toons I have. It totaled just above 41 days. 41 days of my life, 1.3 months of time, I've spent getting attached to my toons. The outcry, is because there are people like me, who have invested a large amount of time into their characters, only to have the rug pulled from under their feet. Sure, you can say "what's in a name?", but not everyone feels so un-attached to things such as that.

If I go into a warzone, it stops working for me at all. I have to stay out of warzones completely in order to progress/benefit from the plague.

I wouldn't call it a giant waste at all. Horridly overpriced? Perhaps. It is expensive for a keyboard, but it does do many things I've never seen a keyboard do. The ability to use it to pull up webpages without alt-tabbing or leaving my second monitor on is an incredibly cool ability, that I'm sure I'll be taking advantage of. You've got to remember: not everyone likes mechanical keyboards, too.

I just got mine today. Been playing around with it while I'm at work. (Typing on it now actually!) So far, it's loads of fun. The screen/macro keys are neat, and seem to function pretty well. The key-design isn't my favorite, but isn't as bad as typing on a laptop (which I initially thought it would be.) The keypresses feel pretty solid, surprisingly so given the form factor. Though the spacebar seems to 'rattle' a bit as I type. (Minor annoyance, if that.) I'm not quite sure how I'll feel about the key design once I get into the game, but I'll reserve judgement until I get used to it, as I'm sure it will take a bit. The built-in apps are quite nifty, and I can see a huge amount of use to be able to pull up webpages while I'm in the game. (The browser even supports flash, so you can watch videos and what not as well.) The one thing I'm not seeing is a publicly available API, nor a way to modify settings for the built in apps. Seeing as the software is obviously in its' first few revisions, I expect that might be stuff that comes later down the line. (Since I can't seem to find an API, it doesn't appear to be as extensible as the Logitech G-Series screens, which I had before. I really, REALLY want a Ventrilo display, but I suppose I will have to be patient.)

I think many of us enjoy that. The issue is, Ilum not only has some design flaws, but due to current limitations of the client, is rather unplayable by a large portion of the population. Bioware not only acknowledged the flaws, but stated that they're going "back to the drawing board". They've just made Ilum not really worthwhile to go to for now (pretty much turning it off, without actually disabling it), and it will likely stay that way until they get the mechanics working the way they want.

Or if everyone selected the option

This is a constructive idea, and I quite like the idea of it. It could be quite elegantly implemented so that those of us who would like to skip the story can do so! You have my support! How refreshing to see a post that identifies a problem and airs a seemingly wonderful solution.

Those were very close to being my only dark side points.

Oh dear. That made me chuckle. This surely can't be intended... but if for some reason it makes it to live, I'm going to quite enjoy playing my smuggler for a week.

Well thought out, well written posts like this hardly ever seem to receive replies. I'm replying, because I think this is a good idea, and would like to show my support for some sort of resolution to this issue. Cheers.

As a 400 Armortech, I'm sorta excited that I'd be able to make some money on a crit. That'd be neat. But I gotta agree with the OP. I'd rather see all the gear that comes from raid/pvp sets have the Augment Slots in them. Personally, I like the look of the trooper/smuggler pvp gear. I'd hate to be pigeonholed into wearing some random orange armor that doesn't match, or fit my aesthetic prefrences, just because it has an augment slot. I vote for +augment slots to pvp/raid gear!

Most fun powerpoint presentation ever?

I love your 'sky-is-falling' doom-saying. Your 'facts' are based on that 'someone' at EA said they need an arbitrary number of subscriptions to 'break even'. I'm glad that you, who has no connection with the companies responsible for this game, can let us know how close to 'maintenance mode' it is.

So if there is: NA East PvP NA East PvE NA East PvP-RP NA East PvE-RP NA West PvP NA West PvE NA West PvP-RP NA West PvE-RP Euro English PvP Euro English PvE Euro English PvP-RP Euro English PvE-RP Euro French PvP Euro French PvE Euro French PvP-RP Euro French PvE-RP Euro German PvP Euro German PvE Euro German PvP-RP Euro German PvE-RP Euro Russian PvP Euro Russian PvE Euro Russian PvP-RP Euro Russian PvE-RP Etc. How the heck is that all supposed to work on one server?

I played Champions Online. I'd hardly say it "works fine" (this is all my opinion, as much as it working fine is your own). Albeit I stopped playing for numerous reasons, among them was that there was no sense of community. I hardly ran into people I recognized. Everything felt very disconnected.