Which would be hella annoying. I despise giving my CC information out to more companies than absolutely necessary. If I have to give it to EA, I'd probably just not play SWTOR.

This doesn't seem to be a capacity issue. IF it were, the other servers would be yo-yoing as well, and that doesn't seem to be happening. I actually think throwing hardware at it may fix it. Its signature seems similar to blown ram or a blown disk .

You don't understand how game publishers allocate money. They forecast the future on the past. If the property is growing then it gets love (sequels, expansions, etc), if not, then it doesn't. BW doesn't have the sweatheart deal Blizz has with ATVI (tho if things keep up with Blizz, I'd expect its board to pull the plug on Morhaime), so it follows the normal.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. One reason I didn't complain much about GSF even tho it does nothing for me is that it would be good for the game. But a quick glance at current threads show that its not shared. Consider the thread about Advanced Class changing, a feature request that would add an option to change adv class. It seems to me that like this feature, if you don't like changing your adv class, all you gotta do is not use the feature. But no, there are 600+ pages of argument (some for, mostly against) on that thread. So... IMO its worthless to argue that getting EA revenue for SWTOR is a good thing, b/c it seems that most people care more about their ideology than keeping a game they enjoy.

The issue is execution. Gamers forget that the large public companies are that, companies. JR was fired because he couldn't get EA to execute as a company. If you look at EA, its running with a margin of roughly 5% vs ATVI which is running at approximately 30%. That right there is the problem. EA should be at least in the 20s, if not the 30s in terms of margin. Its revenue numbers are also low compared to what analysts say it should be . BTW, stock price often is not a good comparison. If you're trying to compare and want to factor in price, look at market cap. Better yet examine a whole mess of numbers. I honestly don't think that F2P is EA's answer. I mean look at Zynga or NCSoft. If F2P was a good indicator, Both of those companies should be flying high but both are not, they are as sick as the rest of the industry. I'd love to see some audited numbers from someone like Riot or Rovio to see if their digital sales are really as good as people say. If you look at EA financially, they're going to have to rein in their costs. There's no other choice. If they decide to axe their bread and butter, then they're likely to eat a shareholder lawsuit. On the other hand, they can't keep doing what they're doing. So what suits do in that case, is they start leaning out the organization. I really would be scared were I an EA employee...

Umm, I find it odd that so many people think SimCity was a real factor in this. It wasn't. If you follow finances, EA has not done well in quite a long time. In fact nearly as far back as JR became CEO. Of course he became CEO shortly before an economic depression, but apparently that seems to be ignored by many. I'm not saying JR did well or was a good CEO. I find it interesting that he had the respect of the rank and file EAer. However, specifically his replacement will have two goals: revenue and profit. Making great games will be secondary. I repeat they will do whatever they can to scrape every cent from their customers they can.

In essence my opinion is this. My time is important to me. I'm not going to repeat content just to play a different AC. Were Bioware to do this, they'd have my money for longer, how much longer is anyone's guess. If they do not, its one more reason to leave when I'm done with the content I'm willing to do. Doing so doesn't hurt me in the least, as there are at least a dozen titles I can go and play immediately. I highly doubt I'm in the minority here. This feature is about accessibility, pure and simple. I'm a casual here, but to those that seem to want to interfere with my fun w/o a real legitimate reason, I will say this: This game will not survive w/o casuals, and eventually it will run thru them. Happy SWTORing.

Then why are you grouping with this person? There's two reasons. First reason you're lazy and not checking people before you bring them into your groups. Second is there simply isn't enough players to satisfy so you're stuck taking the dregs, so to speak. The first you have control over. The second you do not, but let me ask you this, do you think that peep that doesn't get to try the other AC is going to run thru the content again ? Nope. That person will just go play another game. And that drives the pool of people you can play with down, and then you'll whine that there's no one to play with.

How does this hurt you exactly if you don't partake? Can you give specifics?

The point is I and the OP at least would stay playing this game longer, and thus paying Bioware/EA money. How does this help you? More money to Bioware/EA means more content for you and everyone else. If you were to unsub because of this, then why not unsub because of the group finder, or legacy xp perks/abilities? Don't they make the game easier? And if you are so petty that you would do this, I would submit you're not the kind of player they want playing because of two reasons. First your pettiness will poison other's entertainment making them less happy and more likely to leave, and second reason if you're gonna leave over something this petty, it is just a matter of time before you leave from any number of enhancements that BW/EA does. A feature like this doesn't mean you are forced to use it. It means you can if you want to. If you want you can pretend it doesn't exist and your life doesn't change at all. If you're pissed because this supposedly lessens your accomplishments, then I have to ask, are you really that shallow and narcissistic? You realize that 99.99999% of the world population will never know what you did in this game, and it doesn't matter one freakin bit.

It is very simple. If Bioware or any company wants me to play their game, they must give me content to play. If Bioware wants HK to be part of the content to keep me, then Bioware needs to let me get HK in a way that makes me feel like I *can* get him. If not, then HK doesn't exist to me, and gives me no reason to continue my sub. It is not Entitlement, I know I have no right to any content. However, the reverse is also true. Bioware is not entitled to my money unless I feel I get value from it. I have already run thru much of the game on 7/8 of the classes, and I don't feel like doing the other to be honest, or repeating it. So, if I run out of content, I guess I'll go play many of the dozens of games that have come out this year that I have ready and waiting. In other words, I don't care if BW gets my money or not. BW sure should, and everyone who actually cares about SWTOR should want as many people to sub as possible as that's the best way to get the most content.

Where's the evidence that the game is failing? Given that school and work has restarted for most, coupled with Bioware expanding server capacity, I can def see why there aren't queues, but the count of people in a given zone hasn't gone down by much from launch week when I have looked, which would be peak time for my server's timezone. So where's the evidence? To me, I'd wait for NPD to release numbers before I start saying the game is failing. Its also kinda hard to say that Bioware isn't supporting the game when the thing is getting stuff fixed practically every day.