Sadly, BW is doing this and it can't be stopped. While the initial announcement sounded great, the reality shown on the PTS was the opposite for me. I was hoping that the story would make up for the issues, but the more I have heard about that, the less I feel that it will. Destruction on an established world, one new world and a delayed operation. I already felt that they had lost the plot a while ago, but what really cemented it for me was when we got an event that was pulled directly from the Food Network. The money, resources and man hours devoted to this could have been much better spent in my opinion. But with the changes, I almost guarantee I'll not stay. I checked and over the last 17 months I have spend an average of $190 a month amusing myself in this game. How many subscribers who likely spend at least $50 a month on the game can they shed and stay viable? It may not immediately kill the game. But I do believe that it will start the downward spiral that will likely turn the 10 year anniversary celebration into the 10 year game ending event. The key is not how many new/returning subscribers they have at launch, but how many they have three and six months later. They do not have the subscribers to shed like Wow did and still survive. And even if update 7.01 was a complete reversal of all the changes that people have been citing as bad, I doubt they will come back. I don't know that I would unless they showed a commitment to content that brought actual story content quarterly, instead of new hairstyles, outfits and stronghold decorations. And as I understand it, that won't happen.

This hits the nail on the head. I play solo and could not care what happens for raids or ops. I play storyline and dailies/weeklies. If this goes live as it appears to be, I will not be able to make (more precisely, re-make, every single one) my characters as I enjoy them now. I think that the new pruning and skill advancement tree is a horrid abomination. That along with all of the myriad of other changes for the worse mean that after this launches and I confirm how bad it is, I will be taking my money elsewhere. I will be disappointed if they can't fix the mess I am expecting this to create and it kills the game, but as it appears that they have lost the plot I won't lose any sleep over it. This update will not draw in many new players, but I believe it will bring back old ones for a month to see. The key will be subscription rates in March and June. But, I expect mine will not be in that count.

See, I really don't see that happening based on actual past performance. And, as each new "Exciting Announcement" shows more reasons for me not to be excited, I also don't see your success in retaining my subscription come January.

Yet another nail in the coffin. I've already stopped buying Cartel Coins every month to amuse myself. Now I'll just keep the sub long enough to see the expansion. After that, no more until they fix the disaster they are planning to release. If they can fix it.

This is almost a CC of my review of the Mercenary. Really, the impression is the same, but I did want to note that I did actually log into the PST and look at the changes for this class. I have a list of abilities that now force me to select between abilities that I now get almost all of on my characters. Instead of having defensives and offensives I now have to choose and the options are poor either way. Items that I currently get at low levels now appear at ridiculously high levels. And, as I noted on other classes, adding 5 levels and just rearranging the abilities instead of giving new ones makes no sense. Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Juggernaut? Why or why not? It feels like a pale comparison. However, the changes and limitations remove much of my enjoyment in playing the game. You have the basics there, but after level 10 it fails to live up to what I currently have on my characters. Plainly put, this is a poor design change and in no way enhances or improves my enjoyment of the game. It accomplishes the opposite. I also note with interest that you have changed your questioning down to just the rotation. Concentrating on "the rotation" tells me that you are concentrating on a specific group of players and not all players to justify your decisions. I never like to write this, and a normally have a "Meh, whatever" attitude when other people do write this, but I am actually considering pulling my sub money if this goes live. Seeing as I spend that plus another $40 to $200 per month on this game to amuse myself, that will be a good chunk I can put into another game. Changing the game this much and in this way will drive people away and I doubt your new adventure options will pull enough people back or newly in to make up the difference in the long run. After the initial boost from non-sub players to gain access and see the new adventure, I would be interested to see the numbers 3 and six months on. You had a great thing with adding the Galactic Seasons, and I was excited with the idea of opening combat styles to other classes. But this basically ruins that excitement. My advice personally would be to drop the 5 extra levels and the pruning/redesign, just open up the combat styles to other classes as you described and revisit this pruning/redesign idea later.

I was planning to do a detailed breakdown, but as some items are broken with no description, I can't even accurately do that. And really, its just going to be a rehash of what I said about the other classes. I have a list of abilities that now force me to select between abilities that I now get almost all of on my characters. Instead of having defensives and offensives I now have to choose and the options are poor either way. Items that I currently get at low levels now appear at ridiculously high levels. And, as I noted on other classes, adding 5 levels and just rearranging the abilities instead of giving new ones makes no sense. Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Mercenary? Why or why not? It feels like a pale comparison. However, the changes and limitations remove much of my enjoyment in playing the game. You have the basics there, but after level 10 it fails to live up to what I currently have on my characters. Plainly put, this is a poor design change and in no way enhances or improves my enjoyment of the game. It accomplishes the opposite. I also note with interest that you have changed your questioning down to just the rotation. Concentrating on "the rotation" tells me that you are concentrating on a specific group of players and not all players to justify your decisions. I never like to write this, and a normally have a "Meh, whatever" attitude when other people do write this, but I am actually considering pulling my sub money if this goes live. Seeing as I spend that plus another $40 to $200 per month on this game to amuse myself, that will be a good chunk I can put into another game. Changing the game this much and in this way will drive people away and I doubt your new adventure options will pull enough people back or newly in to make up the difference in the long run. After the initial boost from non-sub players to gain access and see the new adventure, I would be interested to see the numbers 3 and six months on. You had a great thing with adding the Galactic Seasons, and I was excited with the idea of opening combat styles to other classes. But this basically ruins that excitement. My advice personally would be to drop the 5 extra levels and the pruning/redesign, just open up the combat styles to other classes as you described and revisit this pruning/redesign idea later.

I am a subscriber, generally a story player with few group sessions or flashpoints and almost no PVP play. I enjoy making characters and running them through the story and doing daily and weekly heroics. My primary preference is to play the lightning sorcerer. Initial Notes: Level 10 Basic, no surprises so far. Level 15 Minor choices, not impressed with the decisions made. Lost Tempest Mastery utility for Force Storm as an option as far as I can see. What is here is (to me) wasted choices for minimal gain no matter which one I choose. Level 20 Select one of two different attacks, or get Cloud Mind. Lose a defensive ability if you don't choose Cloud Mind here. Again, not a fan and really questioning the decisions made. level 30 Minor choices, not impressed. Really, these options are not improvements. It looks more like a wasted level of choices. Drop all three and put Extrication here. Level 50 I get Lightning Barrier about 14 levels late, and I have to give up Backlash to get it. Right now I have both. For me this is unacceptable. Level 60 I now have to choose between a Defensive, a cleansing power and a cooldown assist. Additionally, since the next set forces me into another exceptionally poor choice, the cooldown choice is almost worthless to me. Level 70 A choice between Extrication, Volt Rush and Force Barrier, all of which I use. This is the most unacceptable set of choices yet. Right now I get all three and use them. How does this improve my experience? Level 80 Are you kidding me? Force Mobility is moved to 80? Really? "Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing an Sorcerer? Why or why not?" As with the Sniper before, while it has the basic feel of a lightning sorcerer, missing key abilities due to the poor decisions made on the redesign do not make it as enjoyable for me. Running the basic 270 gear on Onderon I had my lunch eaten several times in fights that I normally have won. You add 5 levels and fill the space with a single option at 80 wherein we have to choose one of three abilities, three we get all of with the current system and five levels less. Why did you even add five levels if you had no plans to add abilities? Moving abilities around like you have appears more like rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic's band played on. The limitations you have invested in this redesign do not enhance my enjoyment of the game. I won't plead with you to discard the changes because you obviously have generally baked them in and are just testing for minor adjustment. Which is sad. Really, this is where testing should have been 2 or 3 months ago. This initial class testing should already be done on the PTS. We should be testing the other half of the combat style announcement now (the part everyone actually was excited about) instead of this. The fact that you are rolling this level of testing out this late in the development process means that what we see is inevitable and we have to hope for the best. Which is not a recommendation in any way. This is a poor direction to take to accomplish your goal. I really hope that the new storyline is substantially better than the design and decision making that I am seeing on the PTS right now. I was excited about the expansion and the combat style announcement, but now I am just resigned to the fact that it appears the developers have lost sight of the ball and (in my opinion) are running way behind where they should be.

I normally play story content and (very) occasional operations. I tested the Marksmanship sniper. It generally did not feel too far different than normal, but I would not take that as a good thing. As I noticed when testing the jedi classes, I am not a fan of the "choose one of three items" configuration. When I read about pruning, I was hoping it would be the plethora of items that give a 2 second boost on Tuesdays, but only if three other abilities are active. Yes, a bit of hyperbole, but I fail to see how making us choose between actually useful abilities that we automatically get now will make this a better experience. My testing experience with this class fell short of the enjoyment that I have come to expect when playing a sniper of this level. It mostly felt like the class I normally play, but not entirely and that does not lead me to in any way compliment this approach or endorse it. I noticed several things missing that I normally use in my style of play which detracted from the experience. I also noticed that things appear to not be where they were before, as it appears that you are not adding anything, just rearranging where they normally appear. I could be wrong, as your "WIP" interface is living up to it's acronym. A better idea for pruning but not detracting from the gameplay would be to take several of the non-attack items (the enhancers, it you will) and combine them into a single click that enhances several items while leaving my attack selections alone and where they have been in my level progression. My actual suggestion is to drop this line of thinking entirely and move to testing the secondary class/combat style alternate selection, which as I saw it was what everyone was actually excited about. This current line of testing, as explained and shown, seems more like people justifying their jobs by making things "different", not "better".