15 dollars for one set of armor?

Take a closer look at the armor pieces on discounts - these are nasty sets nobody wants and they're easily attainable through gameplay. Not adaptive and with faction/class restriction, but attainable.

I disagree.

Successful lottery box sales are what will lead publishers to decide that their best customer base is not players who are willing to pay a monthly subscription of $10-$15 a month and expect continual updates of expensive to create content such as new group PVE or PVP encounters, but rather rabid fans of the IP used by the game willing to spend $100s a month on the chance for a bunch of pixels.

If you were running EA, would you choose to spend several tens of millions on significant new content or large scale game innovation with the hope it attracts or retains many hundreds of thousands of subscribers while carrying a high risk of failing, or would you rather spend less than a million recoloring pixes, stuffing them in lottery boxes, and selling $100s of dollars worth a month to 100K or less rabid fans / impulsive purchasers while doling out small cheap content patches?

From a gamer perspective, I see these boxes as part of a shift where publishers no longer focus on creating fresh compelling content with the intent to provide a unique gaming experience, but rather focus on delivering the bare minimum of a game and while devoting most of their resources to pushing digital sales of game related items.

And since I don't play games such as SWTOR as a form of 'dress up Barbie' in space, this concerns me greatly.

Some have been reduced, some have come on top the Cashshop with -X% reduced (having never been on sale for that amount at all), it's an old marketing trick, which is actually illegal in many countries these days.

Only few chestpieces went below 200 coins but those are nasty sets nobody wants. And where I live the practice of putting items on discount when they were not sold before is indeed illegal.

If I were mananging an MMO I'd take a long hard and objective look at what the market has done right and wrong in the space. Both Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds and Mulligan's Developing Online Games contain post-mortem sections on the early MMO's. The take-away is that MMO's are a long term investment, something that is a notable weakness for EA.

Pretty sure the Life Day stuff came on at -35% "off" (in fact I'm certain), I think the pilot suits and others may have too.

They have actually reduced some stuff after having it for sale too.

I have a mount just like that in SWTOR. Came with my collector's edition.

Ya kinda crazy bioware puts out Omega for me3 charges 15$ adds few hours of content, which include vo, cinematics etc. Stuff with real production costs. People say its too much money.

Bioware puts out 1 set of armor for 15 with no production cost, most being recolors. People say no I think that's fair cause its vanity...

Dont buy it.

No need for dramas, just dont buy it. There is no better message than that. You will see the prices will lower after that.
The cartel shop is beeing experimented with for several things. They are trying to find out where the biggest profits are and what is worth it at what prices. You buying behaviour is the best weapon you have against/in favor of it.

I personally only bought the Items i did when they were on discount.

Im sat here reflecting over the changes in this game since beta to launch then over the steady year of decline. I have seen a thousand arguements on these forums were fanbois and haters have stood off against each other about the direction this game is going. Looking at the forums today... Seeing the threads where people are literally justifying price gouging I cant help but wonder if this isn't how America ended up in this sh*t economic disaster that it is today.

Greed is wrong. There is no justification for the path EAware is going. They are literally just milking players for every penny they can get. Running a business shouldnt be a charity, but seriously, when is enough profit enough? And when did your reputation mean less than the almighty dollar?