So long as friendly fire was enabled so that I could blast the opposite faction to bits just before we looted the chests in true Sith style I'd be fine with it

This game is geared towards casual play, it's not how much you play or how many hours that you put in that makes someone a casual player, it's how seriously you take the game. The whole setup here is casual, you can take your time to get to level 50 solo, run solo daily quests out of places like Ilum once a night for half an hour and you will have a full set of orange armour with a purple armour mod in it within a couple of week, then queue for HM FPs and you will have a full set of Columni within a few weeks without touching an operation or breaking a sweat. If you are in a guild that has people already equipped then you can get a full set of columni from running HM KP and EV in a single night. The point that makes it casual orientated is the group finder comm system and dailies, in older MMOs if you wanted an item you would have to try and fail to get it multiple times, in a game with a comm system you can play casually and simply save up your comms from doing easy bits and pieces (you get the comms for taking part even if you fail the instance) and save up over a period of time. Look at PvP for the prime example, queue up, take part in a Warzone, lose, get comms. Eventually the worst PvP player in the world will have the best armour and can even get it without ever having won a single match all it takes is time. Comm systems for gear are the MMO equivalent of having a save game button in single player games, that is what makes it casual.

I agree with you 100%, I would also add that the clincher for me was the fact that everything is instanced, there is no room for different levels of character raiding together, different numbers in your raids and flashpoints, it's all calculated and blocked to 8 man at level 50. Lack of open world content spoilt it for me I would have liked to be able to run EV at level 48 with 12 people instead of have to wait until level 50 and only take 8. Give me lower Guk over this instanced style of raiding any day.

The issue here is that although you were part of the game since day one the person who had a duplicate name to you on Ebon Hawk may also have been part of the game since day one (on a different origin server) so this argument is irrelevant. You had to change because there was a duplicate name on the server that you moved to.

I've never had an issue after 2 mergers, all 8 of my characters still have their original names.

How exactly would another choice of play style ruin the game? It's not like it is compulsory, I for one and sick of all the instanced content, as it stands ALL of the Operations are instanced, ALL of the PVP is instanced, ALL of the group content that carries any rewards worth having is instanced. On top of that not just instanced, but instanced with teleporting and queues. As of this moment we have a waiting room known as fleet and a bunch of queues to go and play instanced minigames.

There is no progression worth talking about as the gear progression is chaotic and non-linear (you can get higher end gear doing simple dailies than more difficult raids meaning most raids are skipped), there is no gear upgrading using previous gear (yes you can swap out mods but I miss needing a full set of tier 1 to combine with components to create tier 2 etc). The Operations and Flashpoints are not interlinked, I prefer a plains of power style of progression where you need to get a drop from the end boos of raid 1 before you can enter raid 2. The game is reduced to queuing systems and teleports, to me the Ops, Fps and Wzs are as much minigames as the space combat system. They are quite separate from the MMO world and for me don't feel like part of the game.

For me the issue isn't how easy and quickly that you can get the BH gear, it's the implementation of it allowing you to get it through dailies and FPs. This means that all Operations except EC are rendered irrelevant as you no longer need any gear from them at all. They should have separated Flashpoint and gear bought from daily comms from Operation gear.

According to the restriction page, you will lose the ability to wear purple gear unless you purchase that ability and a whole selection of other things that you already have. My worry is that things will get deleted between me dropping subscription and paying cartel coins to unlock what I want.

By resubbing you miss your 200 coins from August 1st due to being inactive in that period, so no harm done, I don't see any difference between resubbing for a month to get your coins and people (like me) who will go to F2P the day after it's launched so as to get the maximum coins available.

If you're lucky they will make them tradable so you can buy with in game credits what someone else has bought with real cash. This way it would allow people to buy from the GTN with Cartel coins.

You can move the armourings now, the set bonus is on the shell though. To be fair you only need 4 pieces for a set bonus so headslot (with helm graphic off), gloves, legs and boots, then tailor it with you chest piece is the best option that you have right now.

Buy the level 13 orange legacy armour, send it to you level 50, spend your low level comms/tionese comms on mods to fill up the armour, fill it up and send it back. Problem solved.

And weapons, also in some cases (like the JK) armour types.

It' not just the fleets that are tearing the game apart it's the whole endgame being a collection of instanced mini-games. The game lacks any motivation to go somewhere else as it's all queues and teleports, what it needs are open world dungeons and open world raid zones and open world PvP zones.