Dat username! (I do find it funny that these threads tend to kinda mimic the political debates of this election cycle)

My level 31 trooper has 39 active abilities and 24 slots in quick bars at the moment (and I use every single one of those 24 abilities I have in my quick bars in solo-play with at least some frequency), and no room for Quick Travel, Heroic Moment, my legacy unlock, unity and others. I dread to think what my 50 Sage has. Yes, the game is playable, but the game has a noticeable dip in quality for me at a certain level because of this. Honestly, 4 would be plenty, but I see no reason why this should even be an issue. Limiting UI functionality as a way to monetize something is pretty laughable in its own right.

If SWTOR was the only F2P option out there, then maybe you have a point. But why spend 3 bucks here for a basic UI element that almost nobody else would charge for, when I can go find a different game that lets me spend 3 bucks on something I want to spend 3 bucks on? And your response will probably be "Don't let the door hit you on the way out", and that's fine for you. It's not so fine for BioWare/EA. If this new monetization plan doesn't succeed, the game will suffer. There could likely be more layoffs, fewer updates, more player loss, etc. And that's a potential problem for everybody, subscribers included.

The problem you're missing here is that it's MUCH harder to get people to spend money by frustrating them. It's a lot easier to get them to spend money when they are having fun. If you have to spend money just to make the game reasonably playable, then a HUGE chunk of your potential customer base will never get past that barrier. If the game is essentially as enjoyable as it can be with certain high-level content, gear and cosmetics restricted, then people that play it all the way up and enjoy it are more likely to spend money to access that newer content.

/signed I'm okay with pretty much everything else they've restricted for FtP players. I think restricting hide helmet slot and, to a lesser extent, unify colors is a little silly, but it's cosmetic stuff so okay. I'm perfectly fine restricting new titles and legacy names, but restricting titles and legacy names that I earned while playing as a subscriber seemed a little much. But again, cosmetic stuff and you gotta make some money so sure, go for it. But restricting quick bars is really poor form. Just as a for instance, my lvl 31 Trooper that I wanted to come back and play currently has 39 active abilities and only 24 slots to place them. I played for about an hour today and easily used every single ability on my bars. And I've got to hop into my abilities menu if I want to use Unity or Heroic Moment (and my legacy ability) or Quick Travel. And I've still got quite a few abilities on the way in future levels. And it's not just my convenience that causes me to complain about this. I think this ends up hurting BioWare/EA's FtP monetization strategy. Can I play the game with only two quickbars? Yeah, but I'm missing out some substantial gameplay elements here, and if the goal is to keep people playing and interested to the point that they will start taking advantage of microtransactions (or even subscribe) then adding restrictions that make the game frustrating to play and increases the likelihood that players won't reach top-level and won't be interested in paying to explore the high-end restricted content is gonna hurt them in the long run.

I haven't liked Rakghouls since the original KotOR (no psuedo-zombies in my sci-fi, thanks). But I really enjoyed this event. It really seemed to increase the community involvement. Lots more people in fleet, lots more talking and lots more people out in the world doing stuff as opposed to isolated in FPs or Ops. As for the future, some straight Republic vs Empire events might be cool. Say, the PvE oriented dailies as small invasions on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas. Then some more PvP oriented dailies on a higher-lvl "neutral" world. Voss maybe?

All of my experience so far has been Republic side: Taris was my most hated by far. Kind of a personal problem, I've hated the Rakghouls since the original KotOR. In fact, I always hate psuedo-zombies in my sci-fi (The Flood, Head Crabs, etc.). Add in that the planet aside from a few grass patches is a rather uniform brown and it didn't do much for the look of the place either. Quesh was pretty garish, but it was such a short planet that I didn't have time to really start hating it. Balmorra definitely had some travel issues with regard to elevation differences and having to go to that one droid factory umpteen times because I didn't get the quests there at the same time. Once I got out of the Starship Troopers bit in the starting zone ("It's an ugly planet. A bug planet.") though, I found the rest pretty solid. I'm sorta in the minority I guess, but I loved Alderaan. I thought it was gorgeous, from the vistas down to the architecture. I liked the quests too, but I always like the politics-heavy story lines.

The amount of missing the point going on in this thread is simply staggering.