It's also not nearly as healthy a relationship as many of the others, since you have to manipulate her by hurting/killing those around her to turn her to the dark side before she will enter a romance with you, and while it's main hallmark is passion it's not really one born out of mutual kind of connection. Will be interesting if/when she does show up, though, since the letter indicated that someone was seeking to fill the role of being the "dark center of her universe" but that doesn't really reveal how she feels about it (just that someone is interested in her) as well as implying that she is still grieving about losing you despite believing that she shouldn't be. It apparently hit her harder than she's admitting...and she's gonna be pissed when she finds me alive and well and in other woman's arms. That should be fun. Still, Lana is overall a better person for the SW to be with, and that's why I had mine fall for her so quickly. For my other characters...I only have two that have completed romance arcs and neither are up to KotFE levels yet, but they will be sticking with their current partners - Consular with Nadia (he's committed to her, and they've been through a lot together, including losing her father while they were aboard his ship) and Trooper with Elara. Bounty Hunter will almost certainly go for Lana when they get to that point regardless of if she has a had a partner before then, Imp Agent won't have any partners, and I don't know when I'll get around to leveling the others and will have to see how those play characters play out before I know if they will remain faithful.

If not bad publicity, it's not good publicity either - and I'm talking about the game being attractive to people coming into the game, not those who are already here. SWTOR has really struggled in this area, to the point where other games that have made the switch to F2P have used it to their advantage (Tera took several snipes at SWTOR's version when they switched, and the game itself is considered one of the worst implementations of a F2P system). A simple incentive, like Early Access, would have been nothing but good marketing and likely seen as an extension of goodwill from the company. Instead, you have it described as a cash grab for Q4 to impress investors and/or a parent company. Do you not see the problem with that?

Yeah, let's screw public perception of the game, or the potential marketing benefits of having an early access incentive attached to additional sales of the expansion after the end of Q4 so that we can pad the numbers for investors at the end of this one quarter... SWTOR needs every bit of good publicity it can get - an extra incentive as part of the pre-ordering the expansion would have been an extra bit of good marketing, and was simply a missed opportunity. That people like you are trying to justify it as some good thing is hilarious. Oh please - I don't even have any level capped characters, despite having had the game since launch, and so lack of access to that content doesn't bother me in the slightest. I play off and on, when it suits me, and pre-ordered the expansion when I decided I wanted to get it despite knowing about the early access cut-off date. I can still call Bioware out on making a poor decision with regard to the cut-off date, despite the best efforts of apologists such as yourself.

Pre-orders are still going on... OHHH...you meant pre-orders that put the same amount of money down, but simply did so 3 months ago, seeing as that was the criteria for being a special early access snowflake. Bioware shouldn't be giving early access to those who didn't fit the criteria, that much is true - they promised certain things to customers and should stick by that decision. However, pretending having the cut-off date end so early (I've played a lot of MMOs, and this is the first time I've seen a cut-off date for early access via pre-ordering end 1/4 of a year earlier than the beginning of said access) was anything but a poor decision by Bioware is just laughable.

It really does... Of course, common sense would also suggest that placing the cut-off date for early access to an expansion via preorder a full 3 months before launch of said expansion is a missed marketing opportunity for Bioware, as incentives like that are still a solid encouragement to purchase the expansion 3 months before or 2 weeks before... But it wouldn't be the first time BW has been hamfisted about rewarding current/loyal subscribers.

Lotro was P2P from April of 2007 until it switched to it's F2P/Premium model in September 2010. It's still roughly the same game, once you get past the rather invasive store implementation. It honestly feels more like a P2P MMO with the option to not pay and still play if finances or your schedule make that the better option. Paying the monthly fee gets you so much stuff plus the monthly stipend of points that it's simply the best deal. If you can ignore how pervasive the store implementation is it's actually a solid and fun game - or was the last time I played it seriously, which ran from a couple months before Moria released until just after F2P launched. I still dabble in it, but I personally find it hard to get around their store implementation (which has become worse at this point). Ironically, the best F2P system I've seen thus far comes from a Korean game (granted, one that is still in its infancy), the North American F2P version of Aion. You can buy some buff scrolls, some instance cooldown reset scrolls, a bunch of vanity skins, dyes, wings that are nice but have in-game equivalents, a few other items and a few pets - basically convenience and vanity items - but not one piece of actual content is locked behind any sort of subscription fee or additional purchase. That might work because the company still makes money off the Korean version, allowing for a more lax approach regarding the store, but it seems to have started well (even some EU players, who have a version run by Gameforge that is more like the hybrid Free or VIP of Lotro, are looking at switching to the NA version). No clue if such a restricted version of the micro-transaction store will remain true, but it's off to a good start, since most F2P fall squarely in the Pay to Win category, which is a direct influence on the overwhelmingly negative response most western MMO players have toward F2P. Now, regarding SWTOR? While I have less issue with F2P than many (at least the systems seen in NA Aion, AoC Unchained, and Lotro - even with their annoying store), and believe it does have a place in the MMO industry, I don't know if the model would be all that popular with a game like this. With the story separated into planets and chapters, it could easily adopt the "quest zone packs" system that Lotro uses and follow suit with a similar hybrid model that allows for access to all via the traditional subscription price or the ability to purchase planets piece-meal. Keep the store as non-invasive as possible, and it could work - SHOULD subscription numbers fall to the point where such a system would be an increase in revenue. Unless that criteria is met, they are definitely better off sticking with the P2P model. The game either has to be created as F2P (or Buy to Play, as is the case with Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2) with the systems in place at launch and accepted by the intended audience, or the switch has to be the definitive better business move. I'd definitely play SWTOR if it was F2P, IF the right F2P system was used.

Does look nice - especially like the thread related options at the bottom of each thread allowing you to easily subscribe, search, and rate the thread. Nice touch.

Korriban - that massive ancient ruins feel with the massive star destroyers up above is simply awe inspiring. Hoth - it has this dangerous quality about its beauty (or maybe I've watched too many episodes of Frozen Planet recently and find cold weather climates fascinating...).

That exact plan bit NCSoft in the butt when they released Aion. As server queues grew to 1 and 2 hours, players figured out how to stay online just about indefinitely, increasing some queues into the 6-7 hour estimated time range. It is actually better to open more servers (within reason) and consolidate later, but the MMO industry (primarily the community) has attached such a negative vibe to any sort of server merges (claims that it signals failure rather than the usual post-launch slump for a new MMO) that companies are wary of doing so. Even Blizzard has more than a few empty and low-pop servers that need to be consolidated, but you won't ever see them do that.

Forbid that should ever happen, anywhere. Seriously, world events that made everything crazy used to be something people raved about. Now it's all "wah, I can't check the GN and sit around the capital hub like I do the vast majority of the time between the rare world event." The lack of an ability to embrace and adapt to the unexpected among players these days is disheartening.

Oh it certainly could be, but as with anything from a company the message has to be carefully constructed (and that's assuming what you say is true). It wasn't...not by a long shot. Bioware goofed on that, and thus deserve the response they are getting.

Granted the free thing "he has" actually has a monetary value associated with it.

Maybe your subscription options will start coming in red, green, or blue varieties...

Words like "loyalty" bring strong connotations, you can't use them in a PR post in such a throw away manner. Being from customer service, I would have thought you'd understand just how powerful words can be when used in the right or wrong way. As for being rewarded for simply being a customer? NCSoft, of all companies, did exactly that. You could have a level 1 character only and never play it, and if you maintained a subscription to Aion (up until recently, with the switch to F2P) you earned veteran rewards that could be applied to any and all characters made simply by maintaining a subscription. They also used a similar system in CoH, if I'm not mistaken.

Some people are being rewarded for loyalty they didn't display, and those of us who have displayed loyalty by buying CE's and/or staying subbed since launch but didn't yet level to 50 are supposed to just accept that they got lucky? Do you not see the issue there?