You can get lightsabers with red crystals as mission rewards later on, that you can still equip as long as you don't pull the red crystal out that they come with. I know I've gotten them on my lightside 33 Sorc. So you CAN keep playing with a red saber, but you'll have to work at it a little harder, and you won't be able to always have a state-of-the-art crystal, but you won't have to stick with your +1, either.

Yeah, I realize using two servers isn't an ideal solution for everyone. I'm also hoping they've cleaned up some of the glitches that were still there in Beta. For example, my Sith Inquisitor Synthweaver got a rare recipe for an armor piece that was only usable by Jedi. Great armor that she'd never be able to use, and never even be able to trade or sell to anyone who could use it. All I could do was vendor it. That was a bummer. But stuff like that was to be expected in Beta. I'm sure not all the bugs are out, but the game's in awfully good shape for release.

I've already settled that I'm going to keep all my Empire characters on one server and my Republic characters on another. More room for alts, and since they can't email back and forth, there's no clear advantage to me in keeping them on the same server anyway.

I'm pretty sure they left them in because the effects were small, but still, for a dedicated crafter a +5 crit chance is a major consideration. I know that I'm choosing which alts will take which crew skills with those bonuses in mind. It's not really an inconvenience for me, since I'll be playing all the classes and it doesn't matter much to me if it's my JK or JC takes Synthweaving, so long as one of them has it. But yeah, I wouldn't have been upset to see these taken out. I thought it was probably a good thing when they said they were going to.

I haven't been able to test it live today (have to work until 5:00), but you could not email items cross-faction in Beta, and I'm assuming that's still going to hold true now that we're live.