The amusingly tragic thing about all of this, isn't the OP, or defensive fanboys. It's having to pay for something that's been time and time again (including the deadline extension notice), called 'complimentary'. It's simple english folks.

Ok ladies, gentlemen and unmentionable alien species, buckle up your seatbelts, stow your tray tables and lock your chairs into their full upright position, we're going full on ludicrous speed! I propose creating new star wars lore, since we are so far into the past the devs are somewhat doing that anyhow. I want playable ewoks. Wait, you say! They weren't discovered until around the time of the movies! This I am well aware of, but I have... A SOLUTION! What if, in the time of TOR, there was a space faring race of ewoks? What if, the ewoks of the movies, are really the descendants of a ship that crashed onto the moon of endor that were never rescued? Think about it, if you and a enough breedable friends are dropped on a jungle moon, forgotten about and left there for 3000 years, what survives to be found after all that time is bound to be pretty darn primative. I'm asking for the devs to create an ewok progenitor race. Their ancestors, a proud space faring race of little fuzzballs of unprecidented bravery and cunning! Sure they might actually wear something resembling clothes in our modern era, but it would be a price worth paying! Somewhere along the line before the game shuts down for good the devs just have to make sure to commit genocide on the progenitor ewok race and leave the crashed ewok vessel on endor's moon to follow the course that nature dictates until the time of the movies. The movie lore would be safe, our lore would be amazing, and the Star Wars: EU will have yet another reason to write books completely unrelated to the movies. Who's with me?!

And then make you pay to unlock the quest to go get HK-51! Ok, I'm just joking with that one... but you know, it's EA after all. They love their money, if they could they'd throw strippers at money.

I did... though I got out a long long time ago... in a galaxy far away

I still say it's lazy, they should have at least announced "The next four operations are going to have the same poorly designed armor sets, so if you're waiting for something you can be proud to earn and wear, unsubscribe for 6 months to a year and save yourself some money" Granted, I do know that kind of honesty is fundamentally against good business practices, and even more so against EA's universally bad business practices, but I can dream damnit.

Erm, sorry, you are correct. I was counting the Hazmat set, but those are just implants at this point, though it won't surprise me if Hazmat becomes a full suit of armor at some point, using the same skins as the others. Tier is the correct terminology, just not within the precident that wow set. However, I'm sorry for the confusion.

the problem is, the developers first set the bar high, there is a different set of armor graphically for each flashpoint. BT gear had a different look from Hammer Station which had a different look from mandalorian etc. Then you get to the end game, and suddenly, you've got three tiers of the same look in different shades of color, followed up by a new look but four tiers of that in different colors. It's like they just gave up caring or trying (especially with some of the designs, Sith Inquisitor gear is a good example of just god awful, that kind of look shouldn't make it into a comic book let alone a MMO with a two hundred million dollar budget).

How about gain that planet's datacrons when you complete the questline for that planet (and I do mean the planet questline, not the character storyline quests on that planet, although, not the bonus quests since some of those come in much later)? That way you don't really gain any advantage before you normally would have it, but you're properly up to speed for the next planet.

1.4, big event, new stuff "Best armor EVAR" introduced. Oh look, the same armor skin, recolored, two more times. We now have 4 colors of the exact same armor. Does bioware even have an art department anymore? I know you bioware guys have been suffering as EA does it's usually thing of destroying the dev studios it buys, but please, surely you can work out an internship with a local college to get some kids to work out some new armor designs for the game. You know, they work for free, in turn they get some real world experience. Heck, maybe one of those kids has the star wars movies they could loan you, because at times I do wonder if what's left of the art department has even seen star wars. STOP THE RECOLORING!! New armor/clothing designs please.

It's a terrible trend the devs have started, and I will hold Bioware forever in contempt for any future mmos that decide jumping puzzles should be considered. Yes, I've seen the videos of Guild Wars 2, and while I don't play it, I blame Bioware for it. PC MMOs aren't platform games, and shouldn't aspire to sink to those levels.

shieldtech in pvp still sucks, because they didn't do anything at all for it in 1.4

I'm very sad to find nothing for shield techs in this patch, with all the negative feedback from the survey thread for the pvp side of shieldtech, I'd have expected a small buff at least. Or a change, or something.

thanks for the suggestions Hatterson, I'll go back and give a more power centric itemization another look.

I find this disappointing, yet, encouraging. Mixed emotions now.

We've only had one Community Q&A since july 27th, this used to be a regular weekly friday feature. Sure, I could see taking a week to deal with the F2P drama, but that was august 10th, it's now the 24th and nothing. Please devs, re-establish your uplink to the community.