No 10 chars

I'd completely forgotten about PLEX, good catch lol. Honestly, SWTOR could make a boatload of money by dumping the credit limit on preferred, restricting their access to PVP/Ops/Flashpoints, and selling a "Command Pass" on the cartel market that gave sub access to a preferred account that used it for x amount of time. It also helps combat credit sellers, as BioWare is (effectively) selling credits themselves (albeit not directly). The checks write themselves.

I believe it started with Wildstar, which launche with a CRED system. You could buy a months worth of subscription as a consumable token, that when used, applied it to an account. This token was tradeable and even had a special AH built solely for it, which allowed players to buy these tokens in for in game gold. WoW has adopted a similar model with what they call "WoW Tokens." This is the same theory that is currently in place in SWTOR with ops/pvp passes. The "whales" buy the tokens, then sell them on the AH for personal in game profit, and someone without the means to pay for a sub can gain sub benefits. The company gets more subs paid for, the "whales" get more in game currency, and the more frugal players have a way to gain a sub through work done in game. The fact they are moving away from this paradigm, rather than doubling down on it, is baffling, as it has been a large source of income for both the likes of Wildstar, and now WoW.

Remember they get their funding from their publisher/parent company, EA. EA is an extremely metrics driven company, and will tend to only fund things that metrics tell them will be a success. If BWA games the metrics correctly, they can give the report they want for the quarterly review, and get the funding and orders to do the things they prefer to work on. Corporate shenanigans are fun.

You'll need to be more specific by "shuts down." Does it give you an error screen then reset? Does everything just shut off like powers been killed? Is there a difference between your old PSU and your new one?

It upsets me as a sub that this isn't a thing. Let me change my hairstyle for credits like every other MMO for crimeny sake.

In fact, by his own logic, it makes the guilds and "community" worse. Guilds (and being in a guild) no longer control the loot drops. Each drop is individualized and random, removing control from anyone or any force player side. Given this, guilds no longer have this incentive, as they can no longer guarantee their members the drops they need for completing content, "weakening" the power of guilds, as the OP might put it.

Actually, inflation works the opposite. $0.25 in 1985 is worth $0.56 in 2016, or, a quarter had nearly double the worth 20 years ago as it did today. Your point also doesn't address that competitor MMO's provide better entertainment value for the same (or in FF14's case lesser) dollar value.

That is kind of the rub right now. The system as proposed is elegant, but flimsy. The RNG elements have seemingly no backstopper to prevent catastrophic failure, and the tiers make it easy to see the intentional drawing out of the grind, eliminating one of the major selling points of an RNG based system (disguising the grind). You're almost better off just going back to ye oldene days of BoE gear drop off of bosses, but extending those drops to hard mode story bosses (on a lower drop chance) to give solo players something to grind, because at least then the system is less obtrusive to the gameplay.

No it's actually quite reasonable. As a company with a sub based service, you want those using that service to continue to use it on a regular basis. In this case they have chosen perpetual rewards as their system of choice. You play for a session, and at the end of that session, you get a reward crate. The fact they said they designed it round receiving 1 crate an hour is very telling, as that means they anticipate most of their customer base to be playing for 1-2 hour sessions, giving them 1-2 rewards a day to keep them coming back.

EA Games

You should probably get your tinfoil hat retuned. A large portion of the game are people who sub to get expansion content, then go prefered and use ops/pvp passes to play with their friends, as the 4.0 model encouraged. 5.0 completely shafts this demographic that was created with the model of 4.0, but telling them their ops/pvp passes are worthless, and they can not continue to play the way they have for the last year.

It's quite the opposite, they aren't pissed because they have to work, they are pissed because no matter how much you do or how hard you work, it's all determined by luck whether you get what you want or not. If it was simply work, there wouldn't be this much fervor, but you are merely working for a chance to roll the dice. No matter what you do, no matter how much effort you put in, and no matter how much time you sink in, the game no longer rewards you beyond a % chance. The new system DEVALUES work, in favor of blind luck.

If your crate quality theory does not hold true, then holding on to the crates until you get 70 would effectively eliminate 70 hours worth of grinding, at which point even opening the crates to disintegrate them is a noob trap, as you are doubling your gear speed to that point by doing this. Unless the crates are determined when received rather than when opened, this system is more complex and a bigger trap than tokens ever were.

Not the right place, but no, there is no tokens, the idea (apparently) is do away with token currencies for gear. Each crate gives you a random piece of gear based on your spec. There are no announced plans to integrate command with legacy, as command is intended to be a per character grind by the looks of it.