It doesn't take long to download 25 gigs and a few patches.. but yes the general consensus is to get out while you can before EA sinks it. As a whole Bioware makes amazing games.. but being placed into leagues with Mythic and EA who already failed horribly (and probably the biggest mmo failure to date) with Warhammer Online was a recipe for disaster. I said since launch to my friends, "It will be a great game so long as Bioware does the exact opposite of whatever EA suggests to them." Note: Here down is all speculation, opinions, and hearsay and do not reflect actual facts about the current situations:

Well for starters, you have to have an active subscription to post on these forums, so as mentioned above you've technically never left. Next, as for your "rumors" about EA dropping themselves from this game.. that is actual fact as noted by this total public relations disaster.. found here. As a final note to your actual question, I've seen a general loss of three fourths the player base since Feb when everyone was begging for server mergers.. as of then my fleet has rarely broke 40 people online except for when a pvp match lets out. Groups are rare, and many guilds, the one I'm in included, have gone. I'm just finishing up my thread linked below and I'll be heading out the door too. They let the population get too far spread out while further anchoring you to your own server via the legacy system.. and 1.3 is only adding more weight to that anchor with little to clarify on the actual population issue. It sounds to me like they're just going to see how many desperate customers will pay to move before they start merging.

Yup, hide helm is of top priority for the companions.

Start simple... Jukebox via legacy upgrade. They like giving us credit sinks, so why wasn't this an option? It's so dreary and quiet in the ship.

They need to do more than collect the /bug reports.. they need to show they're making the effort to fix them. For a little over five months there were six mobs for a simple killing daily quest on the republic side.. HALF of those mobs would evade and reset after three seconds of attacking them. I'm sure they got several tickets everyday about it, I submitted at least two a month and my first report about it came in December.. FIVE months?? really? They could have just deleted the mobs and made everyone happy instead with a response time like that.

There is obviously one major thing missing.. a jukebox!

Since 1.2 hit, there are only 3 vendors that really matter.. the Security Key Vendor (Kass City / Coruscant, Fleet, and Ilum Orbital Station), the Collector's Edition Vendor (on Fleet), and the vendor in the main base of Ilum who sells everything else. The taris/balmorra/belsavis vendors are there, but no need to figure out who is where when one vendor has them all.

I bought 9 total and got all 8. Vecktor was my only repeat... naturally several people in my guild hated me.. but as you can tell from my link below, it's sorta my thing.

Minus the troopers who have like over half their skins on the security key vendor, I honestly don't find many of the options on that vendor to be very good, and yes.. I do know quite a bit about these options.

Pretty much this, the ship droid is the best option on classes that don't get a healing companion right away (ie: Guss from Hoth) The quests still reward you with droid gear along side the other companions gear.

Okay, thank you

There is a "dropped" Qyzen skin.. it comes from Explosive Conflicts. Posted the picture in my thread below on page 2 with his other skins.

It is a bit of an issue, ideally dps and tanks will always take their healing companion and healers will always take a dps companion. Now of course if you were to group with one other person this whole thing goes down the drain, as you could build your party around a full team (tank 2 dps and healer). I'm not sure how many people play this game with a friend, child spouse.. but you get more xp, social points and essentially are not bound by the "best companion" situation for soloing. But for some people, the extra downtime is worth it just to keep out that preferred companion. Or even if you have to just summon them back for conversations, you'll still experience the game together.

A huge success, would only make two suggestions.. 1) Let us know it's going down! 2) Do not ever again make a limited time availability item "random".

3 comes from the Collector's Edition vendor in the VIP lounge, but is also a quest reward to noobs who just finish Tython. I have begged CS to give me the red skin and save me the hassle of having to delete and start over but they basically said I was SOL. There is also an epic Qyzen skin from the new Operation. All of these are in my link below.