On two of my warriors now that I have leveled over this 2x XP event, the Vette romance progression simply ended. I picked every flirt option that came up in any conversation. In both cases, the last time a flirt option appeared was in the "why choose me?" conversation, but after that, not a peep. So obviously there is something outside of the actual romance conversations that can end your romance with Vette without warning. From everything I found when trying to Google this, nothing is supposed to matter in the romance progression other than companion conversations on your ship that have flirt options; pick the flirt option and the romance continues; pick any other option and the romance could end, and it's that simple. Every other conversation in the game is not supposed to have any effect. That's obviously no longer true, unless the romance is just bugged. However, I found multiple posts of people saying that none of those things have any effect on your ability to continue romancing Vette, but perhaps that was changed. One of the warriors was nice to her, never shocked her, and removed her collar quickly. The other treated her like dirt (except when there was a flirt option), shocked her constantly, and didn't remove the collar until I beat the entire class story. But all of that might be irrelevant since neither warrior could romance her past the aforementioned conversation. So tl;dr, I assume there were changes to the things you can do in Vette's story and still romance her, and you now have to do more to win her favor than simply picking flirt options. Does anyone know exactly what those things are? I probably won't level another warrior, but it would be nice if there existed a post somewhere on the internet with that information.

rofl, sounds like my group got the heck out of here at just the right time (or maybe we stuck around a few months too long). It's been amazing playing other games where the dev team actually gives a crap. #lastpostbeforesublapse

Well I know one thing. A BW dev is certainly never going to casually give players info at a cantina event ever again.

To me, it implies that there isn't going to be an even harder challenge coming up next, otherwise they probably would have saved the honoring for that. Also, it could have been a (crappy) bribe to get Zorz to stick around even though there's not going to be anything for them to do. Third option (and probably most likely) is they just wanted to make a gesture at a very major Star Wars event to make it look like they actually care about their raiding community. And I'm sure someone out there thinks that it was a genuine attempt to do something nice for some of their players, but since that would be so completely and utterly out-of-character, it's pretty safe to assume that is not the case.

Eric's reaction to so many people being legacy 50 is surprising. I'm pretty sure I hit it before 1.2 even came out, or at least soon after, and that was years ago, and I didn't even play the game that much back then. I'd be surprised to meet anyone who is not legacy level 50 unless they just started playing the game this year.

It's rare to find a single sentence that contradicts itself. Your server obviously isn't "dead" if it has a strong enough raider base to compete for world firsts. It doesn't matter if the total population is lower if the population that it does have consists of NiM-level raiders.

I didn't mention gear. Some players took weeks before getting a character to level 60 for one reason or another. Given that before 3.0 the general attitude among the entire raiding community was "no one cares about HM", no one felt a rush to do so. And it sounds like those other servers still retained a healthy enough base of raiders. I can't speak for them, I just know that Harbinger is the go-to server for raiders, and JC is looked at as a casual, basically-RP server for a reason. All of the good players are either already on a team to which they are loyal, or have transferred. And only one of those teams was pre-nerf NiM tier, and most of the people on it are gone.

I don't entirely disagree with your post, but there are a couple counterpoints to it. The dates don't really mean anything. This tier was gated behind a level cap increase. Some teams didn't even start HM progression until February, and then had a 5-6 hours/week schedule. I can tell you at least one raid team still hasn't spent even half the time on Revan as they did before killing NiM Brontes pre-nerf, despite that Revan has been out longer than that fight was around. This is server-dependent. On Harbinger, where basically everyone transfers when they are looking for a raid team, I'm sure you could go through 6-8 people of equal skill and not bat an eye. Especially when you're Zorz, where if you announce a roster opening, you have who knows how many of the best players lined up to try to fill it. On a server like JC, where the number of players who could kill the pre-nerf NiMs probably wouldn't even fill two raid teams, good players are either already on a team or transfer to Harbinger. If you lose even 2 good people, you're pretty much screwed if you want to clear progression content.

Oh I also forgot the outfit. I'm remembering the first time I went to Taris back in the first month of release, and my first thought upon seeing her was "damn that's a cool outfit". I hoped it would be in the game for players, but of course it wasn't until like a year+ later with the cartel market. Pretty much the only reason she was memorable at all is because I spent months saying "I want those boots and that chest piece!". So when I think Thana Vesh, the two things that come to mind are 1) Laura Bailey so sexy, and 2) awesome outfit. Doesn't really say much for the character, though.

Her most likable quality is the sexy Laura Bailey voice. Haven't been to Taris in a really long time, but I'm pretty sure that's who the VA was. Pretty much any character voiced by Laura Bailey is going to seem way hotter. Without that, I think she would have been just another annoying generic Sith.

Static Barrier is the only one on the GCD, and using it instead of Lightning Bolt every once in a while will not make any difference to your damage on the boss.

Frankly, people who say Sorc/Sage is the most fragile class simply do not know how to use their defensive abilities. The important number is damage taken minus self-heals, because that's the actual stress you personally put on the healers, and in my case, that number was far better than anyone else on the team in every fight, without slowing my DPS down at all. I've never once been "one-shotted" in HM unless I did something dumb, and I never even use Force Barrier unless **** hits the fan, and the whole group is dying (or if it's part of the fight strategy, like taking Ion Cutter stacks in Master&Blaster). Sorc survive ability is insane and better than most other classes. I'm debating continuing my Sorc in HM just because of the fact that our healers almost never have to put a single-target heal on me in any fight, but I'll have to see where the DPS falls. Now it's possible that I just don't know how to use the defensives on the other classes, but if you want to tell me they are anywhere near as good as Sorcs, then no DPS in any ops team should ever die from damage on any fight in the game unless they don't know how to use them.

You could try asking on fleet if anyone wants to go to Section X with you. But I agree, quests that mechanically require a bunch of people need to go.

I don't think you are looking at it right. If you are just doing Ravagers, there are only 4 desirable pieces that drop. So half the team isn't going to get anything useful, assuming loot goes out fairly. If you care abut implants and offhand, this only changes slightly. What you're suggesting is basically that you should have priority because you need fewer pieces, when IMO everyone should have the same chance of walking away empty-handed regardless. But, when you save your roll, the opposite ends up being the case. You have a higher chance of walking away empty-handed. Unfortunately there's no catch-all solution for pugs. Rolling on everything with the intent of trading will piss off some people just because you're rolling on pieces you don't need. And if the trade doesn't happen and you're stuck with a piece you can't use, everyone loses because that's 1 less piece from that raid that's going to get used. But, all things considered, it's pretty much the only solution that's fair to you.

My response was mostly meant for the OP. As in, even in the imaginary scenario that making up a whole new canon for SWTOR was on the table, there's simply no point in trying to fill in thousands of years with it.