well I came back 10 days ago after 8 months,played a new smuggler til end of chapter 1. I felt it was a good ending of the arc and not interested in other chapter. I unsubbed to day, might return in 6 -8 month after the full release of chapters. I too dislike the "nerfing" of companions. and the changes to hk-51 and treek. Now for my tin foil hat time. I think a lot of the trimming and removing of skills,items,etc is to prepare for the release of SWTOR for high end game consoles like xbox one and ps4. as both of them are basically a PC. if they trim it down enough then when they release the console version in about 6-8 months the pc players(us) will not be too upset about the final changes they make. I am reminded of the story how you boil a frog,if you put the frog(alive) into a boiling pot of water, the frog will jump out right away. if you place the frog in a pot of cool water, and slowly raise the temp. you can cook them alive. I have no hard evidence of this happening,but just a gut feeling. I was playing SWTOR when it first came out. The list of servers was 4-5 times what we have now. If they do a server merger again,Then I can see even more reason to move to a console friendly game engine(silver light?) depending on how the final chapter of 4.0 goes.I could even see a shutdown of swtor 1 and a release of swtor 2. with part of what we are doing in this 4.0 as a extended beta test of their new ideas. and if they turn off swtor 1, and bring up swtor 2. with all the micro transactions a very large new revenue stream is opened. my wildest thought is that with all the changes to flashpoints where you can solo them,maybe they will release a stand alone version of swtor without the MMO part. ok now you can start flaming me. I have shared my thoughts

well the "finish" will not be for about 1 year,there is either 16 or 18 "chapters" or the expansion, we get 10 on launch then 1 more each month.

well to me it seems a bit of a NERF to the companions,they all will be doing the same dps/heal/cc.I do have some questions,as we seem to "lose" our comps in the expansion ,will all be able to rejoin? or will we have fewer companion "slots"? as "free" companions are "nerfed" will hk and other PURCHASED also get nerfed? or will they be a "special" class? and as such be a better revenue stream for the game? They mention that you can"kill" them maybe you have to as like i said if you get less "slots".Maybe they should rename the expansion to "Show Me The MONEY"

well mostly it seems a way to SLOW down credit and item grinding,plus a way to "Nudge" people to travel to other planets and spread the planet strain around.My crazy thought (based on my name) is that the DEVS are trimming and slimming the game down for a game engine transfer, to be able to get this game to work on the new high end consoles. Being able to offer SWTOR to console players opens up several revenue paths for them

so if all the companions are basically the same, the only thing different is the looks? ok what about the ones we bought like hk-51?is he a companion?depending on how you geared him he had different functions

I look at all these changes,and what i almost see is a trimming down of the size and scope of what the game engine needs. It almost seems to me like this was done,so that after all the chapters are done,they can switch this game to an newer better engine,that they have been working on. to me this seems to be getting more bland of a game. This new gear requires a new Crafting material that can only be acquired by completing your personal Conquest goals. This means at least for me my chars will be mostly gathers,I really dont like the Conquest and maybe only do 1 out of 10 weeks.(no i will not buy them on the market) And in full disclosure I re-subbed yesterday for 1 month to see how the game is now and will be with the new expansion. after 30 days i most likely will unsub, as 1 month costs about the price of a deluxe pizza,not to big of a waste

Is this game in maintenance mode, and if so, how long has it been and how long will this lack of quantity and quantity to the development of SWTOR continue? i feel we are NOT in maintenance mode, I feel we are in silent BETA mode.That they are adding things to see what is popular or not,what will generate us buying more CC,and how to handle expanding the game. Based on what happens they will make changes to the SWTOR2 using another newer better engine.(this is all rumor) Then in about 2 years SWTOR 2 will come out and This game will shut down. A lot of features they have added and was both popular and worked fine will be in the new game. things that did not work well or was unpopular will be changed. for example the new costume designer works mostly for appearance,but some games in the past you could have two or more full sets of armor one for pvp and one for pve. and a simple click of the button switches.no need to drag and drop between the two sets. or a third set designed for FP with some power differences. once they get swtor 2 ready , we get to buy strongholds and such all over again, once again helping Disney recover the 4.5 Billion they paid GL

certain rumors on the web suggest that they will be switching to a new engine in little over a year or so .the bad news is it will be for swtor 2

well we should be getting 10 more legacy levels soon,or I could see a special CM purchase to get it 12x booster 30 days per char 2000 CC only good for class stories

yes i unsubbed also, so in 57 days I'll be gone,not even going to play for free. and no you can not have my stuff, only way ill come back is if they add some "ending" to the crew stories.(other than they all die) and even then ill only come to finish the story lines. I am so tired of the heavy handed way they keep "nudging" us to do the endgame ops and such, while some people may like them, I really do not.I feel they are just "coasting" until they get SWTOR 2.0 built with a different game engine, then they can shut down these servers, and not let us transfer items to the new game so guess what we will have to re-purchase strongholds and such. I have been playing computer games since 1977, and the last MMO I played for 8+ years. so I am not a newbie to the games. To all of you good luck enjoy the game have fun

New Legacy Unlock – Improved Mounting! You can now summon any vehicle or creature mount while moving! ok looking at this ,it it not something you would do going into battle, not something that you would do if you were just exploring, unless I am wrong,only useful if your are RUNNING AWAY . so on a scale of 1-10 for usefulness, I give it maybe a 2,and depending on the cost it may go lower. It seems to me that it is just something that they did so they can say in all honesty "And We just added a legacy perk in our last patch!"

My guess is that to balance out buying the shells with CC, there will be some kind of drop that is BOP that will only drop in level 60 NiM Ops.That way they get "cash" from the CC purchase, they "Nudge" us to do more of the high end content, only have 2-3 random pieces drop so we have to do multiple runs. They can then say that the "New" content is very popular as players are doing it a lot. Instead of changing the comments to fix the facts,they change the facts to fit the comments When I heard about this the first thing I thought of was City of Heroes,They had the ability to have up to 4 different builds for your char,So you could have a PVE,PVP,Solo PVE build. If they added something like that and made it a CC unlock say 1000 CC once again they would make money.

yes, I have unsubbed, slowly they have removed the want to do any kind of endgame stuff. I did some crafting and selling,but not so much now,with all the stuff on CM and what may be coming with the new costume designer in 3.1, less selling. I really only enjoy one event any more gree. I was a bit disappointed when it was not happening, and you think they could have told us sooner than they did. And the way they keep "nudging" us to do content. By the way there is a book called Nudge, it explains a lot in simple terms how to get people to do what you want and think it is their idea. A lot I have seen in the game since Disney took over. For example, I find grinding boring,but I will do it if there is a specific item I want. I did it to get the gree white armor.I also did it to get the Bounty armor. stopped doing the Bounty week after that. All was fine, then they changed the payment method for the stuff,instead of credits. It is now completed contracts.which "nudges" you to do bounty week stuff. I am sure they monitor how much these events are done, and saw a steep drop off with players like me getting what was needed then stopping. So they switched the payment option,now if they did it the other way from contracts to credits,I see no problem. Now with the removal of ultimate comms and such from the lower OPS they are Nudging you to do the higher OPS,I have no desire to do them and or any of the "new" storyline. There is one new one that requires you to do a LOT of little mini quests to get items that allow you to take on the main Boss, and if for some reason you dc even for a second, you are kicked out of the chain of missions and lose everything,even if your close to the last boss "ghosts" which I would consider if the servers had a record of solid connections,but they don't. There is on other web sites a "random" rumor that this game will be closed down in about 2 years, and SWTOR 2.0 will come out.They predicted a lot of what was added in 3.0 long before it happened,and they talked about what 2.0 will have. One thing I feel is we are almost going into a Beta test, where they add stuff,find out what works,what can be exploited.what does not work,and what features we want the most. Then this will be added into 2.0. best of all a lot we will pay them for like the preorder and the 12x boost.(I can see a CM item coming soon where for 2000 CC you can get a unlock for 1 char, i am just guessing on the price) As for the new race, if I remember correctly they were surprised we did not vote in the VOSS as the new race instead of the Cathar,It will be interesting to see if they charge the same as the last time.

wow i am impressed,such a fast response to a game breaking bug:p

I read the guide on how to do this(no spoilers), but to me it is a very convoluded, set of missions,I would really hate to DC during it,guess ill skip it