Plus more than one server to earn those Season tokens and unlock it in your Collections.

You get Jolt at lvl 19. And no, it is not just a Sorc thing. All ranged Combat Styles get their interrupt at lvl 19 (Sorcerer, Sage, Sniper, Gunslinger, Mercenary, Commando).

They do, but this game is not even big enough on their ledger that they bother to include it in their annual revenue reports. EA makes all of their money with the EA Sports franchises and mobile games. SWTOR is nothing compared to that. I am admitting that slightly altering difficulty could bring in more players, but it could just as well make existing players turn away from the game. As another poster has already explained, when BioWare decided to make the companions less op and the enemies stronger, the overall response was that the majority did not like the more grinding approach to leveling and complained about it. Therefore I am not under the impression that making leveling more challenging would benefit the game in any reasonable way. Yes, that is how EA thinks about this game ever since KOTFE and KOTET didn't make enough splash for its investment to attract and keep a larger player base. My idea is that the game has hit the development ceiling a long time ago that is not sustainable for growth, so any effort to appeal to a wider audience is rather futile and potentially even counterproductive.

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=10029837#edit10029837

That difficulty setting is only applicable to the KOTFE and KOTET story chapters and has no effect on any other content in the game. These are the conversations that we had many times over long before you posted this thread. I don't think you bring more people in by making leveling harder and more grindy. At least not to offset all the casuals that would stop playing this game if they did that. I think you vastly overestimate EA's desire to appeal to a wider audience with a severely outdated game that is heading towards the end of its life cycle. They are fine with having a small but dedicated community that keeps the game afloat until the Cartel Market is not able to make a profit anymore or a new Star Wars MMO comes out.

Ok, this is getting a bit embarassing now. They simply copied and pasted the old text regarding the double xp event from last time without even bothering to proofread it. Which is very strange, as they had to have changed the dates in that text.

Like I wrote in the other thread, Ubisoft is not working on an MMO in the Star Wars universe, but an open world Looter Shooter like The Division 2. I don't see how anyone playing SWTOR for the RPG portion will bail for that. There are actually several new Star Wars games in the works right now from different companies including EA, who is developing the sequel to Fallen Order as well as an unknown shooter and an unknown strategy game. None of them are MMORPGs that are supposed to succeed this game.

Ubisoft is working on an open world looter shooter like The Division 2 in the Star Wars universe, not an MMO and most certainly not an MMORPG. So no one of us will bail for that game when it comes out.

If you want to compare SWTOR to SWG, or more acurately 7.0 to NGE which is a nonsensical comparision anyway, you should also take into account that SWG was only shut down in the same month of the same year that SWTOR came out, in december of 2011. So as long as there is no new Star Wars MMORPG on the horizon, which there is not, the game will keep going even with lower subscriber numbers just like SWG.

I am sorry, but this sounds way more like a conspiracy theory rather than an actual theory based on experiential facts regarding the history of this game and our experiences with lack of communication. There was literally no other reason for a delay? So there was not a PTS build prior to release that made it abundantly clear that the expansion was not ready for prime time whatsoever and that even the most prominent feature, Combat Styles and Loadouts, did not work? There was also not a humbling dev post prior to launch admitting to the community that some of the promised features of the expansion could not be made possible due to technical issues (changing the primary Combat Style) or had to be postponed to a later date because it hadn't been sufficiently tested yet (Manaan Daily Area, Weapon Outfitter slot)? There was also not a cinematic trailer for the expansion that cost a lot of money to produce even though the previous expansion did not get one? And there was not another MMORPG called FF14 that had to delay the release of their expansion around the same time because it was not ready yet? Really think about what is more likely. That the expansion was delayed and we are getting minimal communication now because their plans for the 10 year anniversary were far too ambitious and their small team is scrambling to fix the most egregious bugs and broken mechanics and release delayed features before they can set their sights on a roadmap for the future. Or that EA told them in secret about maintenance mode and BioWare delayed the release of the buggy expansion by just 2 months instead of dragging it out even longer to keep the community in the dark and in the game?

Even with your clarification of what you mean, I don't agree with your assessment that the game will be in maintenance mode and not get any new content updates from now on. I actually believe that we will see an 8.0 some time in the future and maybe even higher than that. The premise behind your theory is that something has fundamentally changed regarding the communication from the team and that we are not getting a clear development goal for the future, but this is nothing new at all. There have been several occasions already where we heard virtually nothing from BioWare for months on end and had no roadmap for the future. This was most noticeable in the 3 years between 5.0 and 6.0. Many people in the community were entirely convinced that a new expansion would not see the light of day and that the game will get shut down, because the majority of the team had been pulled away to work on Anthem. The announcement for 6.0 came totally out of the blue and there was certainly no roadmap in the months leading up to that moment. I see no difference at all to what is happening right now, except that people simply expected too much on the outset of a 10 year anniversary and the hope of getting an increased budget to revitalize the game. I think that BioWare themselves also fell into that trap and are scrambling now to deal with all the issues that got introduced with the new gearing system and especially with the new approach to classes.

I agree with this assessment. I don't see anything different regarding communication and content updates compared to the last years that would hint at a looming shutdown. The only difference I see is that everyone expected a grand thing for the 10 year anniversary, including the devs, and that everyone is disappointed now that the game is still seriously underfunded, understaffed and underdeveloped, again including the devs, so that it will be business as usual until the next Star Wars MMORPG comes out.

Each of your characters has to buy and consume the "Authorization: Gray Secant" unlock from the Gree reputation vendor on the fleet or on Ilum so they are allowed to enter the Gree ship where you get the quest. If a character has the unlock and the droid inside the ship does not grant the mission, then that character has already completed the one-time quest before. The only other reason I can think of why the droid has a muted quest triangle over its head and still not give the mission would be that the character has not reached the minimum level requirement for that quest. It should be something around lvl 47-48.

Most certainly because it is bound to be much more difficult to implement than a "regular" Combat Style. Companions have already been the source of a lot of bugs and frustrations over the years and continue to do so due to their seriously underdeveloped combat and pathing AI that is only able to function with band-aids. Adding a summoner Combat Style to the game that is fully dependent on the correct behaviour of pets in combat would be a balancing and bug nightmare for sure.

It isn't even the only item in Collections that is showing up but cannot be claimed. There are also 3 Emotes (Golf Swing, Typing, Think) that have been added to the Collections about a year ago but never added to the Cartel Market for purchase. Usually those items were added to the Collections in preparation for a release a few weeks later, but it seems that this particular armor set and those emotes are still not ready for release somehow.

Actually there was a dev post explaining this in detail:

Sorry, but I had a good laugh at that. EA makes all the major money with their Sports franchises and especially with their mobile games. The money that SWTOR makes is less than peanuts compared to that, which is the entire reason why this game gets consistently ignored in the annual financial reports to their investors and why they are completely uninterested in pouring any serious resources into the continued development of this game. Once the income fails to offset the costs anymore or a new Star Wars Mmorpg comes out, EA wouldn't bat an eyelid and immediately pull the plug on this thing.

You are correct. Galactic Season objectives are mainly just there to offer something to do for veteran players that have already seen everything the game has to offer. For players that don't have the time, the incentive or game progression to complete those objectives, they can pay Cartel Coins or Credits to skip most of the work and by doing so the devs use it as a money sink.

In what world was I rude to him? I simply explained to him why none of us gets reimbursed for any ingame changes and what his only options are, namely to cancel the sub and stop supporting this game. And when the op became even more agitated, claimed that the ToS have been altered and threatened legal action, I told him that this is a complete waste of time, because it is all covered within the Terms of Service that I was forthcoming enough to quote to him.

Your friend has two options: 1) Try to log into the Account without typing in the Security Key code and use the "Lost your Security Key?" link that pops up to remove it via a one-time-password that will be sent to the registered Email address. 2) If that option is not available, you have to call customer support and answer some security questions to get the Security Key removed from that account and set up a new one. https://help.ea.com/en/help/star-wars/star-wars-the-old-republic/swtor-support/

I'm sorry, but even BioWare made this distinction when they talked about GS2, with one caveat. Next to the 6 solo-oriented objectives, they list 3 multiplayer-oriented objectives and 1 subscriber objective. The subscriber objective can be a multiplayer-oriented objective like this week with the "Heart of Ruin" objective. But we also had weeks before with a subscriber objective that can be done solo like the veteran chapters, which would bump up the solo-oriented objectives to 7 as a subscriber during that week. https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9966924#edit9966924 I also have to chuckle at your claim that it takes 50% more work to do the 6 solo objectives compared to the 4 group objectives. I don't think that for example completing 8 Warzone matches compares at all to completing the "Syndicate Infighting" objective as far as time investment is concerned.

Not at all absurd when you cannot argue that all the group objectives can also be completed solo without other players, which is the crucial point here and why the system was changed accordingly to give solo players the choice that they didn't have before. So your point about calling solo objectives group objectives because you can do them in a group is rather moot when it won't apply conversely.

Ummm... yes. "Infiltrating the Competition" is most certainly a solo objective. They key distinguishing factor is that you don't need other players to complete it, or, as you try to argue, is "neutral" and can be completed along the way by doing the other objectives. Same with "Influencing the Galaxy", which I didn't even take into account for the calculation as it is a daily objective and therefore won't count towards the Fen Zeil seasonal achievement. You also seem to have missed another solo objective somewhere in your count, probably "March Across the Galaxy" because you lump that one in with the "neutral" ones. The 6 solo objectives: "Infiltrating The Competition" "March Across The Galaxy" "Seat of the Empire Daily Sweep" "Serenity or Passion" "Syndicate Infighting" "Liabilities of Balmorra" are solo objectives because you don't even once have to touch any group content in the game or have to group up with other players to finish them. That is the crucial difference here and what many players criticized about the old system during the initial Season. And that does look very fair now.

Except it isn't. You get 48 points for completing all solo objectives and 48 points for completing all group objectives. If anything, players who only like to do group content could be the ones complaining about the fact that they are forced to do solo objectives to be able to complete the Fen Zeil Outlaw achievement, because there are less group objectives in the list each week.

No, this is not a problem at all. If you add up the numbers, then all 6 solo objectives grant 48 Season points and all 4 group objectives grant the same 48 Season points. Yes, you can earn more points in a week if you complete a mix of group and solo objectives and therefore finish the season faster, but that is very fair considering the required time investment. I would agree with your criticism If you were not able to finish the Season in a comfortable time frame by just doing solo objectives, but even if you never once touch a group objective, you have more than enough time considering that you also get easy points from the daily objective.