Citation needed

I'm a long time PvPer and Raider starting back around 2.3 on The Shadowlands and eventually transferred to The Harbinger shortly after 5.0 when character transfers were on the cheap. I took a hiatus from the game through about 95% of 6.X after years of non-stop enjoyment and played only a couple of months prior and into the launch of R4 finally returning now after another 1.5 year hiatus. All the long time friends I made in the raiding community seem to be gone from the 5.X days for sure, which makes sense. I remember what irked a lot of people back when the server merger occurred and the BioWare also did some server restructuring is that Satele Shan actually ended up being hosted in the same facility seemingly as Star Forge begging the question why for 2 different servers doing nothing more than splitting the community (since it was no longer actually east and west coast as far as connection went). It didn't occur to me since I've only been playing for a few days but even on the weekend GSF and PvP pops are slow and especially non-existent into what were normal server operating times back in the day (granted I know there is a dedicated APAC server again) but even the afternoon feels slow and dead. It's 10pm central time now (yes on a week night) but by comparison Satele Shan has 1 populated Imp Fleet Instance right now and Star Forge has 4. That just seems crazy split. And prices back up to 1000 cartel coins even only transferring a few of my 16 characters would still be a lot theoretically. I know back when the servers originally were going to merge, there's always the people that like the quieter feel of the smaller population servers that prefer more solo play but man these seems like a real bummer for me that likes to play in spurts now these days with adulting taking precedence. What's the plan with the North American community? Could we finally be seeing one single NA server within the next year? Because at least for my own personal take, this kind of sucks. It's obviously not as bad as Jung Ma or PoT5 back in the day but man, it feels like the dying days of The Shadowlands before I moved to Harb to breath life back into the game for myself.

I'm a long time PvPer and Raider starting back around 2.3 on The Shadowlands and eventually transferred to The Harbinger shortly after 5.0 when character transfers were on the cheap. I took a hiatus from the game through about 95% of 6.X and played only a couple of months prior and into the launch of R4 finally returning now after another 1.5 year hiatus. All the long time friends I made in the raiding community seem to be gone from the 5.X days for sure, which makes sense. I remember what irked a lot of people back when the server merger occurred and the BioWare also did some server restructuring is that Satele Shan actually ended up being hosted in the same facility seemingly as Star Forge begging the question why for 2 different servers doing nothing more than splitting the community (since it was no longer actually east and west coast as far as connection went). It didn't occur to me since I've only been playing for a few days but even on the weekend GSF and PvP pops are slow and especially non-existent into what were normal server operating times back in the day (granted I know there is a dedicated APAC server again) but even the afternoon feels slow and dead. It's 10pm central time now (yes on a week night) but by comparison Satele Shan has 1 populated Imp Fleet Instance right now and Star Forge has 4. That just seems crazy split. And prices back up to 1000 cartel coins even only transferring a few of my 16 characters would still be a lot theoretically. I know back when the servers originally were going to merge, there's always the people that like the quieter feel of the smaller population servers that prefer more solo play but man these seems like a real bummer for me that likes to play in spurts now these days with adulting taking precedence. What's the plan with the North American community? Could we finally be seeing one single NA server within the next year? Because at least for my own personal take, this kind of sucks. It's obviously not as bad as Jung Ma or PoT5 back in the day but man, it feels like the dying days of The Shadowlands before I moved to Harb to breath life back into the game for myself.

Currently when in a custom channel, character logins and logouts post in the chat under 'System Feedback' which also contains a lot of useful information such as when grabbing loot or interacting with something. Turning off Character Login has no affect. Is this intended? And if so, can this be implemented as a change to make the main chat pane less noisy without having to turn off 'System Feedback' https://imgur.com/a/bI5MPlH

Any word on issues with the bug boss on Ossus not counting for groups sometimes?

I have a long explanation of all the issues with the current gearing system that I personally would like to see tweaked but I'm going to attempt to keep it short and simple. For one, as with the same issue with Unassembled Components in the past, Masterwork Data Crystals really need to be a Legacy currency. The limit of 4 a week (and that's if you have Unassembled Components to begin with) makes gearing up for NiM Gods an extremely slow and unrewarding process and kills alting to an extent. The monotony of the ways to gear up is already rough enough but it's made worse when the process is also extremely slow. I'm not looking for an easy hand out. I'm not looking for it to be super fast. But I am hoping for a system that is a little better for alting and makes the current Ossus Weekly more rewarding regardless of a set bonus piece or not dropping. The second thing I wanted to bring up is the rotating Masterwork Weekly and some improvements that it needs. I do wish there were more options for obtaining Masterworks in general to allow for less redundant playing of the game but one thing at a time. PvP: This is probably most people's favorite one because it is quite quick to do, the main thing though is it should require the player to actually finish the match. Probably not something most would like as it will make the mission take longer, but it is certainly, imo, and oversight. MM FPs: This is by far the longest one and somewhat confusing, it can easily take 1-2+ hours depending on what FPs you do (most prefer to bang their head against Hammer Station... ooof)... the group you get if you use group finder... and not to mention... the Priority Terminal Weekly actually requires 3x FPs while this requires 4x. To even remotely bring it in line with other content, I really think it should require only 1x MM FPs... or at most 2x. GSF: Setting aside the fact it couldn't even be done, I'm mostly okay with this. It's just GSF has nothing to do with gear in general. I understand the goal is to push people to play this content... but if I'm gearing for NiM Gods, I feel like it should require doing related content. GF Ops: Actually my issue with this one is that it is limited to Activity Finder only. Why not make it complete an Operation instead? If I'm doing a NiM Operation... it seems rather silly that completing that gives me no credit toward this mission... especially if it is the same Operation that Group Finder actively has. The requirement honestly should be complete an operation of any difficulty and not limit it to Story Mode through Group Finder. To kind of push the narrative further, I'm a NiM Raider, I don't enjoy doing SM or even HM at all. The fact I have to go out of my way of enjoying NiM Operations to play SM just to gear for NiM Gods to me personally at least, seems absurd. It's selfish I know, but that's more in line of what it was like to gear in the past. At least if it was any difficulty mode, all parties come out happy.

Thanks for the update Eric, I have a few questions. 1-2 Unassembled Component turn ins ^ Does this mean it is now capped? Will cost after turning in one still go up? Will mainhands and offhands be available for purchase via upgrade? Will mods and enhancements still be bound to piece type? Will players have the ability to purchase specific mods and enhancements of their choice? Such as if a dps or healer wants to buy a different enhancement for min/maxing? Or if a tank wants to run a different set of enhancements or different mod variations?

As the title states, I think we should have the ability to purchase Mods and Enhancements of Legendary Quality directly from vendors for Unassembled Components and Command Tokens just like how PvP gear worked in 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 where PvPer's could buy the specific Mods or Enhancements they wanted at a high price, but still cheaper than buying a whole set piece, thus allowing easier min/maxing or using non-standard pieces. (note: non-standard here on out will mean a mod or enhancement than cannot be obtained from a token set piece). This would help to mitigate the absurd RNG that is hunting for these through Tier 3 and Tier 4 command crates. I personally have easily opened over 1000 crates since their induction as a drop and have roughly only acquired 5 enhancements of 248 quality that are non-standard and usable and 0 non-standard 248 mods that are usable. Such a change would be looking to address three main issues: 1) Over abundance of Command Tokens for long time players in 5.0 and over abundance of Unassembled Components for some PvP'ers and NiM raiders. 2) Having to acquire a whole new set piece as a DPS or Healer just to acquire a different Enhancement to min/max their build. 3) Lastly, but in my opinion the main issue of the three that needs addressing, both PvE and PvP tanks having to settle for 246 crafted gear and hope on RNG from command crates for upgrades. As many tanks are not interested in Immunity/Sturdiness Enhancements or Unlettered Warding or Lethal Mods and would instead rather have Lethal-B or Warding-B Mods or Bastion/Bulwark, Steadfast/Vigilant, Discipline/Barrage, or Efficient/Savant Enhancements. Unfortunately, unlike #2 above, Tanks have no option for acquiring 248 versions of these mods/enhancements without relying purely on luck, requiring them to min/max with technically non-BiS versions of gear (this case being 246 Artifact quality) Having the ability to purchase Legendary Mods and Enhancement directly would allow players another option for spending two of their currencies, allow DPS/Healers an easier option for min/maxing and adjusting their stat allotment, and finally give Tanks the option to actually build their gear the way they want with the best quality/rating available in the game.

Specifically this thread is about the imbalance of the drop rates of MM final boss mounts between Explosive Conflict (EC), Terror From Beyond (TFB), Scum and Villainy (S&V), Dread Fortress (DF), and Dread Palace (DP). I won't lie, this thread is going to be clearly bias in my interests as a Nightmare raider who currently has the DF and DP mounts on multiple characters, but does not have the EC, TFB, and S&V mounts on a single character. Basically, it is of my opinion, that the Helix Hyperpod from TFB, Titan 6 mount from S&V, and Avalanche Tank from EC should be guaranteed last boss drops from those operations matching that of the Wings from DF and Rancor from DP. I understand that some players may disagree because that would diminish the rarity of the mounts however I think the rarity of the mounts should be held in actually being able to kill these bosses, not in both killing the bosses & fighting hard RNG. I've killed all of these bosses more times than I can count, but I can count having seen the Hyperpod drop only twice, Titan 6 twice, and never seen the Avalanche Tank. As a matter of fact, I've heard (only rumor) that the Avalanche Tank has been seen more in both Story and Veteran mode than it has in Master Mode which is troubling. Further argument for this has to do with encounter difficulty and length. The shortest and hardest (in my opinion) gives a guaranteed drop, where as some of the longest or easiest encounters give extremely rare to seemingly no chance to receive a drop. I understand maybe some people would think well the easier it is the lessor a chance it should drop, and honestly, I can agree with that, just not to the current levels, especially given some of the encounter lengths when we're looking at one fight being 9 min at most where as others sit upwards of 13 minutes or even 16-17 minutes. Like I said, this thread is clearly bias in my own interests but I cannot see a logical reason why 2 of the 5 mounts are guaranteed and 3 of the 5 are crazy rare.

I have well over 3000 matches played across my legacy since 2.0 days and I'd consider myself a fairly decent player. When I look at my or other long time player's achievement progress for PvP there seems to be something off. Everything will be 100% in the PvP section except solo kills, killing blows, and total kills. I think it is especially telling these aren't balanced right since I've seen that there is a community now that attempts to farm these achievements in lower level PvP in an attempt to actually be able to complete them. The achievements themselves are surrounded in luck or not playing the objective collectively mixed in with luck. I would consider the achievements to require minimal skill at best to actually complete compared to having all the right circumstances mixed in. In the cases of things like solo kills for example, you need enough skill to outplay the opposing player, but then you need no healer or other dps to come over an intervene (from your team). But to be able to do it 10 times in a match is near if not impossible given the requirement of actually finding and being allowed to solo 10 times and have enough time to do so. Killing blows is literally all timing. You could do everything right and the majority of the damage but if someone's dot tick is the finishing hit, you don't get the killing blow. And lastly, kills. Really, only Voidstar can become major deathmatches while playing the objectives themselves also reduces chances for kills. Honestly, getting kills is easiest as a healer ironically given the way that works assuming you have a team that can dominate the opposition's healers. Using myself as an example of progress (of course other people's mileage will vary): (note I will exclude Yavin because I have barely PvP'd since its release and I have not gotten it once) Killing Blows: Alderaan: 4/50 for the 20 Hypergate: 0/50 for the 20, only reached 10 Huttball: 0/50 for the 20, only reached 10 Novare: 1/50 for the 20 Odessen: 0/50 for the 20, only reached 5 Voidstar: 7/50 for the 20 Solo Kills: Alderaan: 0/50 for the 10, only reached 5 Hypergate: 0/50 for the 10, only reached 1 Huttball: 0/50 for the 10, only reached 1 Novare: 0/50 for the 10, only reached 5 Odessen: 0/50 for the 10, only reached 1 Voidstar: 0/50 for the 10, only reached 1 Total Kills: Alderaan: 0/50 for the 55, only reached 40 Hypergate: 0/50 for the 55, only reached 25 Huttball: 1/50 for the 55 Novare: 0/50 for the 55, only reached 40 Odessen: 0/50 for the 55, only reached 25 Voidstar: 7/50 for the 55 Given the absurdity it is to accomplish these achievements and the fact the upcoming changes to PvP will generally shorten matches to my understanding, I think the requirements for the achievements need to be revisited. Obviously lowering them diminishes the value of them for those that have completed them, but I find it hard to believe that anyone would have most of these done without boosting to some form. Personally, if I had to give an off the top of my head suggestion, I'd change them accordingly: Solo Kills: 1, 2, and 3 Killing Blows: 1, 4, and 7 (maybe less? maybe more?) Total Kills: 10, 20, 30 I'm not sure what is balanced for something doable for all maps, the upcoming changes, and still being enough to where it's not automatic to get every game like hitting a 5000 heal or 5000 damage single ability, which at this point those too could stand to be changed too but in the opposite however that's not the scope of this post. Whenever I see players that have truly achievement hunted, it's always these 3 types of achievements that they are missing (no, I'm not that heavy of a hunter as I'm missing a lot across the entire game) but it leads me to believe these specific achievements need tweaking.

Right now Sins and Juggs already can do that passively. It's PT's that can't.

An interesting change, especially with how since 4.0 everybody is in the range of 40%+ crit with tons of auto-crits compared to 3.0 and earlier when people stayed around 25% crit chance and had less auto-crits. I had a friend make a recommendation that I thought was a great idea for making tank stats useful in PvP: make Guard redirect percent based on tank stats. The more tank stat pool the higher the guard redirect up to 50%. This solves dps guarding in PvP and forces a tank to wear more mitigation in order to more benefit the target of their guard. While we're on the subject of improving tank stats, let's talk about Defense and PvE. I think it would make Defense slightly more appealing if it also added to resistances instead of just dodge/parry/deflect. Maybe at a lesser scale though. I think maybe at 1/4th or 1/5th the rate. So right now most PvE tanks have in the ballpark of 1800 Defense but up to 4000 if they go full BW token pieces. That adds a range of 15% to 24% to defense chance. So if you scaled it for force/tech resistances, adding in like 3-6% resist chances basically. Not significantly large, maybe won't even get people to run more defense (I'll be honest, I probably wouldn't either), but it'd at least add value to the stat compared to where it is currently at. Edit: After reading some posts and talking with friends, I actually think this change is unfortunately bad until something is done with either guard redirect amount based on tank stats or reducing effectiveness of dps stats on tanks. The reason being is quite simply, after this change goes into effect, current DPS geared tanks will see their survivability go up. This in turn only further reinforces going DPS gear.

If it wasn't for the single datacenter aspect, I wouldn't even think we should just merge them. I'd still not like seeing as people leave faster than growth occurs in some sections of the game. But given it is basically 2 east coast servers in NA, and nothing more, the only real reason to keep them separated is if the infrastructure can't handle it. And that shouldn't be the case given years ago when servers did deal with populations heavier than Star Forge.

I'm in multiple guilds, I'm primarily a Nightmare Raider. I have friends on both Satele Shan and Star Forge. I mainly play Satele Shan. I participate in Conquest in both Imp and Pub side. Occasionally try to do ops pugs on pub side. I've watched over the course of 5.0 (1.5 years now) how the population has fluctuated. Over that time I've mained on Shadowlands, Harbinger, and then Satele Shan. I occasionally do GSF. I used to PvP a lot, usually around primetime into late nights. Each server I've been on has been very different in how it could handle all of those if at all. One thing has been certain though, as friends and fellow guild members leave, replenishing their spot becomes more and more difficult, and it often causes a snowball of more to leave, and then you have to find a new home to play. Nightmare Raiding is hurting the most right now. I know plenty of NiM raiders on both servers. Unfortunately I can only play with one side unless I want to have to maintain double the amount of gear and characters, which I don't and know plenty that don't as well that also wished we'd all just be on one server. I'm not relying on people to be there at my beck and call, I don't know what prompted that comment, seemed super unnecessary. I have my set raid times, I know the difficulty those groups sometimes have in finding a fill. I know certain activities I cannot do on pub side as much as I want to, the fleet and the populated guild I'm in on that side never have any interest. I accept that. But I don't accept the fact that the population is fine. It might be suitable currently. But that doesn't mean it couldn't and shouldn't be healthier. And they don't have to care about those. But if they care about the game and playing it and it still being up, then they should care about a healthy population. We don't know how long the game has left. I like to assume 2 years at this point (around the agreement expiration basically). I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But if a healthier population leads to better retention in the group based endgame aspect of the game then the games stands a better chance of living on longer, and that means more content for the non-group based player in the long run.

Ever since the first server merger occurred and it was discovered that there was only one NA and one EU datacenter the idea behind still segregating parts of the community confused me. I didn't understand why it wasn't just brought down to one server for each region to allow each aspect of game to have as healthy a population as possible regardless the time of day. It's been 7 months since the server merge. The Operation side of content releases has finished for now. We all await the incoming PvP changes. The servers have had their time to settle since. Since day one of the merger The Leviathan has been no different than any PvP server prior to merger, maybe a little exaggerated, but it is a dead zone that never left low pop when that information was still available. Tulak Hord seemed healthy along the lines of the west coast RP server. Small, dwindling, some communities exist but hurting in size. All the happenings were on and are on Darth Malgus. I understand the point of the servers is to allow players to better communicate via their preferred language but I'd venture to say that's already happening plenty on DM anyway. Back in the North American side of things, Satele Shan is seemingly smaller now albeit not by much than what Harbinger was pre-merger. Star Forge continues to come out strong and healthy compared to SS thanks to getting the 3 most populated of 5 east coast servers bringing it well above what Harbingers size is. Thing is, the populations for different aspects of the games are broken among the two, made worse by the fact server transfers continue to be expensive. If someone wants RP and are on SS then they're going to have a more difficult time finding what they want. If someone wants NiM raiding but they're on SF they're going to have a more difficult time finding what they want. I'm not saying neither exist on one of the servers because they absolutely do. But with the population for those aspects being segregated by some wires hurts those communities. The upcoming planned changes for Warzone, Arena, and GSF matchmaking are exciting and extremely refreshing to see. But there's a problem. Skill based matchmaking can definitely help better balance a team. And limiting roles will help provide better games, but such a system can only go so far if only 20-30 people are in queue. Take GSF for example. When it is popping on SS, I see at best 1 match going on at a given time, in some occasions 2. More so depends on the Conquest week actually. So if 10-20 people are queuing GSF and 1 match is going on at a time, skill based matchmaking can only do so much if anything to help balance a team, especially depending on the premade setup. Same goes for Warzones. It has a much healthier population than GSF by far, but even at times late at night, in the early morning where population is low, skill based can only do so much. Another place that's hurting, at least on Satele Shan, is pub side. PUGs for Operations, Flashpoints, Uprisings are non-existant at times or slow to form (personally I think a way to cross-faction would help this just like what is coming to PvP) but I think step one is to liven up the population first, via a merger again. I can understand why some people, just like with the previous merger would be against another one. Player names for one. It's something people hold dear to them, and that's fair, I respect that. But maintaining a name at the cost of population health is not ever worth the damage over time that does. Some people worry about not being able to do their objectives for clicking things, all I can say is when the servers were already larger, the issue was much much worse than it could ever be now. That and try out the PvP instances, that's all I play, half the time people don't attack each other... if you even see anyone as PvP instances are typically dead anyway. The only other big one I can see is Conquest, instead of 6 potential winners a week it'd be down to 3 (9 down to 3 on EU), but I think that would lead to better competition because although Conquest from the leaderboard aspect looks quite healthy, there's already some dominating guilds across both SF and SS that cannot be competed with at the moment. Given the changes not requiring top 10 anymore either, a merger would have no effect on hurting the chances of getting the guild target reward anyway. I think we need one last server merger, all EU servers in one, all NA servers in one. Allow PvP, GSF, Operations, Flashpoints, Uprisings, etc. to have as much a player pool to draw from, which in turn helps keep player retention.

Eric, any chance in looking into the warzone achievements as something to revamp as well? Currently the necessary amount of solo kills, killing blows, and kill needed to complete are near impossible without boosting or a stacked team vs a poor team and not playing the objective. Especially coming now more than ever with the intended changes making matches shorter.

As much as I like this, when the amount of people queueing are small, will this cause matchmaking to slow down while the system tries to determine how to sort the teams? I like these changes but I worry that we already need another server merge (1 NA and 1 EU server ideally) to really be able to take advantage of this. Also, any news on possibly making the warzone achievements more possible to actually accomplish as part of this warzone revamp? Edit: what about when premades run trolly comps such as 3 or 4 tanks/healers? will they not be allowed to queue? will they slow down the queues while the system tries to balance it? will they be split up? or will they just be passed over?

Eric & Keith, Since we're on the idea of revamping Warzones, what about revamping the achievements that coincide? Right now obtaining 10 solo kills, 20 killing blows, or 55 kills in a single match is nearly impossible to do requiring not only the right circumstances but some luck. Skill comes into play but no where near the luck of being the actual killing blow in a group, or having the team comp (and usually being on Voidstar) to actually reach 55 kills, or both the skill and luck to actually have 10 opportunities to get true solo kills. And then to do these all over 50 matches on each map... they are only ever boosted to actually obtain these days not really making them remotely achievements anymore. From my personal experiences, I've never reached 10 solo kills but have obtained 5 a couple times. I've only ever obtained 20 killing blows on 3 of the maps for a total of 12 matches and one map I've never even reached 10. I've only obtained 55 player kills on 2 maps for a total of 8 matches and on two maps never even reached 40 kills. Over the course of easily over 2000 games, this just doesn't seem right. How I think we should have them tiered: Solo: 1, 2, 3 and 50x3 Killing Blow: 1, 3, 6 and 50x6 Kills: 10, 20, 30 and 50x30 I think that is a decent enough set of values to not make the achievements super easy but at the same time obtainable over time unlike their current state.

It's nice to see some more PvP content coming for the game as well as cross-faction throughout PvP. This kind of leads into another issue I think the game should move toward: 1) I think it's time for a server merge again. One NA server and one EU server. Considering both regions are already each in the same datacenters, it just comes down to doing what they did after they moved the server location prior to the last merge. Why do we need another merge? Quite simply, the separation of community, even after the last merger, the community is still spread too thin. NiM raiders are limited depending on the server they are on. HM raiders even as well, and pugging HMs doesn't really seem to exist anymore. Waiting for HM Flashpoint pops can still take awhile. PvP dies out after a certain time of night or slows significantly. RP'ers find themselves on the less than ideal RP server. Raiders find themselves on the less than ideal raiding server. Late night players such as 3rd shift workers, APAC players, etc have a small server population to play with. Pub side players have less options for various activities compared to Imp side. Conquest can't even get 10 guilds to complete the large yield goals. All of these factors wouldn't be solved by further merging the servers, but they would benefit from it greatly. As it currently stands, Satele Shan is no bigger, potentially even smaller than what Harbinger was pre-merger. Star Forge obviously has been the most profound gain since the merger but still lacks in some areas endgame wise compared to Satele Shan due to how prior to merger many players migrated to Harbinger. Merging both would keep queues active longer, bring NiM raiders together that may be limited on one server, bring RPers together that may be limited on the other server. As for EU servers, I can't comment on Darth Malgus population but based on the servers grouped into it, I can't imagine it is any bigger than what The Red Eclipse was at this point. The German server is barely chugging along, and the French server is dead. I'm pretty sure more French players play on Darth Malgus at this point than The Leviathan as well. The biggest potential lost any player could have from such a move is player names, but that is inconsequential to the importance of keeping the community as populated and integrated as possible to keep the game feeling healthy in all game modes as long throughout the day and night as possible. 2) To piggy back off of #1 and trying to bring as much of the community together as possible, and the to piggy back off the fact cross-faction will be arriving for most if not (hopefully) all warzones... we need cross-faction in PvE. Pub side players shouldn't have to feel required to either deal with a smaller sized community or deal with living imperial just to enjoy certain facets of the game. That being said Imps that want to do Pub side as well shouldn't feel like they can't just because they know Pub side is smaller. I'm not sure how this would be doable for fleet integration or being able to communicate to group up, but ground work is clearly there. For example on Iokath if you fight for the opposite faction you can't group with your own faction for the Gods Operation. The ability to do GF Ops, SM Ops, HM Ops, and NiM Ops would be a welcomed changed to letting people be more free in their class/character choice for playing. Same thing for Uprisings and Flashpoints. Let Pubs and Imps running Ops and Uprsings together on all difficulties via walk in or Actifivty Finder. I know some items are faction specific, either just leave them out of the cross-faction play (likely the easiest options) or somehow tweak the PvE instance to allow dialogue or bosses to be of the majority faction when playing. As this game continues to decline in population, one of the worst things is to allow the community to be split too long. It only enhances the rate at which people leave. I can only imagine with how long it took for the last merge to happen, how many people that could potentially still be playing today left just because their server was dead or dying and felt like there was nothing left to do/enjoy in the game just because they couldn't find the community to do it with.

The first sentence you said seems a little hyperbole. Unless you were doing EV/KP NiM back in early 1.0 then yes, they were always easy. But since 2.0 on they haven't had the opportunity to be anything but a joke. I don't understand that frame of thought though. If the bosses were tweaked to have very tight DPS and Heal checks, why is it bad for it to be brought back? Or not have retooled them to that difficulty to begin with instead of removing them back in 4.0. There are plenty of NiM fights already that I think many could say that's not what NiM is about. Nefra is the prime example, Raptus, half of SnV, TFB Kephess, etc. The game needs content. It's content that already exists. It just needs a quick tweaking before being unarchived. In the end, even if it does end up a joke, why does it matter that it is called NiM and exists? How does it hurt the community at all? It just provides more content. And the precedent is already there that Difficulty Name =/= Actual Difficulty. The HM tier of raids is the best example of that right now, where there is seemingly 3 different tiers of HMs. So why not 2 different tiers of NiM. Ideally the DPS and Heals checks would be pretty dang hard to close that gap. But I can't see a justifiable reason for it to not be in the game still.

Maybe this idea is kind of memey, but I've talked it over with quite a few of my fellow NiM raiders and each of them has agreed that given the content release cycle for this game, the last thing we need is content that once existed to be removed. tl:dr, I think Nightmare Master Mode difficulty Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace should be returned to the game. I get that Hard Mode tier EV & KP have become somewhat the joke of HM Ops, especially when compared to the main 5 Ops that have a Nightmare tier or the "Hardmare" of the 3 last Ops we've received that never got NiM to begin with. Maybe a NiM KP & EV would also become the joke of NiM Ops compared to the other 5 from a mechanical standpoint but if the DPS and Heal requirements were made difficult enough, it would still be a rewarding experience to go in and play and not to mention give people the opportunity to play content (mainly those that started after 4.0) and experience something they never played before or people that started after 2.0 the chance to experience an actual difficult EV & KP. I still don't fully understand why Nightmare difficulty Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace were removed at the start of 4.0 when everything was synced up to player max level. Yes, the mechanics from Nightmare Mode were exactly the same as Hard Mode, but DPS and Heal checks were still higher. Not to mention at the launch of 4.0, you could only get the highest tier gear from priority Hard Mode Operations and not Nightmare anyway so it's not like people could just run NiM EV and KP for gear till they turned blue... which is instead what they did for HM EV & KP when it was priority. Throughout all of 4.0 and not until 5 months into 5.0 did we finally get a new Operation Boss. And even then it took 11 months for the full Operation to complete. I understand it has been said in interviews that another Operation is planned and that the raiding community in this game is at such a small size compared to the rest of the game, especially the NiM community, that allocating heavy resources into Operations at this point to get a quicker release cycle that many of us desire is financially irresponsible for the game. However having content that once existed removed is also unhealthy for the game. As much as I personally dislike level sync on the planets, Flashpoints & Operations being bounced up to max level in 4.0 and 5.0 was a huge step forward in keeping content alive, but removing a piece from that puzzle unfortunately was a small step back. I don't think asking for the return of NiM EV & KP is asking too much of the dev team. The assets already exist, the mechanics were already the same, so really all that's left is to properly balance the fights' Health and Damage Output of the various bosses. Given that the devs are well aware of their target DPS numbers for all the disciplines and constantly tweaking them, I would assume (maybe I'm wrong) that tweaking the various damage output and health pools of all 10 encounters probably couldn't be too much more work than completely building a new boss from scratch, especially given that there is already a baseline of values thanks to Hard Mode. Ideally the Heal and DPS checks for NiM EV & KP would be quite difficult given the lack of hard mechanics. Make the checks tight. Maybe healing is hard enough that traditionally single tank fights require 2 tanks just for swapping purely for cooldown usage or instead balance the DPS checks around 5 dps. Make it truly hard where even great performance might mean seeing a few seconds of enrage. As far as rewards go, 248 Unassembled Bracers and Belts are still the only 248 pieces not available via Ops and the Archived Ops achievements could be moved back to their respective sections (this isn't about me wanting the Archived achievements because I already have 100% there). I think it would be really nice if this could be something we get returned to the game, especially as we wait for the new To Be Announced Operation. I get that completed Gods is finally here, and many are still progging and playing through it obviously, but it would be nice to have more options in game knowing that it once existed. Hopefully the community agrees with me. I would love for a response from Eric, Keith, Charles, or Mr. Ops Mastermind himself MattP <3

Poor PTs, still getting no extra needed TLC. But hey, at least they get 2% DR up to 3 stacks when people crit on them, then again, by the time they've built up 6% they're already lost like 40% health.

Not surprised Fury got nerfed, still can't believe though that Rage hasn't been buffed given that it parses so much lower than Fury and still will after this change.

I guess this will help technically with asjusting the skank tank performance, how much I guess we'll see, but this also doesn't remotely curve the usage of skank tanks since all tanks are being nerfed across the board. Then again I don't think any tanks that took ranked seriously wore pure tank gear anyway so yea. I wonder what the PvE parse drop will be for each of the 3 classes, especially PTs.

This has probably been one of the more depressing roadmaps I've read in a while. It really does feel like the game is on the brink of maintenance mode and it makes my heart hurt thinking that. No doubt the idea of a NiM Power for Izax is pretty cool and I'm happy to see something like that. But at the same time, confirming no Master Mode for the new Operation is very souring for the long term. It basically sits at the level of Rav/ToS in a way and will likely be one of the lesser played Ops just like Rav/ToS at higher difficulties. Where no one ever pugs it on the fleet, HM raiders struggle to prog/clear it, and NiM raiders want more. It leaves both the HM and NiM community to dwindle because some leave out of boredom while others out of frustration. At least that's my memory of 3.0 from beginning to end when the raiding community seemingly dropped over the course of a year. Seeing new augments again leaves me baffled. The improvements to conquests rewards are nice especially for those that still continue to enjoy it, but as someone that lost interest like many back around 3.0, it's really more of a feature to entice the newer players or those that more so took it up recently within the last year it feels like as the rest of us are likely burned out from it. Maybe in the end I'm just jaded, soured, pessimistic. Maybe the confirmation of no Master Mode Gods is just pouring over unnecessarily into other aspects for me. I've usually been really excited over reading roadmaps and always have left happy. But this one has me fairly bummed. When I see regular content cycles of Raids from WoW and FF14, both games which I've tried and have no interest in, it's painful to see the lack of resources given to keep a decent content stream of larger group content in the game. Honestly even from a flashpoint standpoint, 2 in the last year, only one new pvp map that is nothing more than a reskin. It's nice to see the effort put forth, and I do appreciate it. But the problem is it isn't enough content quick enough. It doesn't compare to other games. I don't want to abandon this game, I love it too much. I just wish the development team was given the resources it needed to really put forward the content stream that many in the community wish this game had, especially given we pay the same amount for a subscription as those other games.