This seems wrong somehow: I mean, I have two guilds with 5 and 8 active characters respectively (all on my one account) and they are levels 88 and 82, so I would have imagined the 'top' guild would be at least an order of magnitude higher than my solo efforts...

Use small mounts: Large mounts move the same actual speed as smaller mounts, but they feel so much slower... If other mounted PCs are actually moving significantly faster than you are, then you might have an actual issue.

Ah, it's a penalty for canceling a posting: I had not considered that. Thank you for enlightening me on this item.

I mean, you get it back within three days regardless of whether the item actually sells or not, so I'm failing to see what purpose it serves: If I remember WoW correctly (it's been a decade, so maybe I'm not), the equivalent AH fee was non-refundable and therefore encouraged you to set reasonable prices (if you set the price too high, you'd lose your initial deposit when the auction expired). Did it used to be non-refundable but was 'nerfed' at some point (I've been here since launch but never really paid any attention to the GTN until recently)?

Actually, it's pretty much anything that covers your head, including hats: There is a lot of headgear that causes your character to go conspicuously bald when you don it even though it just sits on top of your head (like the standard 'cap' for imperial Agents). I presume the issue is that leaving the hair visible will cause it to 'clip' through your outfit pieces: Getting this to work would probably require custom models for each possible hair style + outfit piece style interaction...

I believe the developers publicly stated that putting stats on Color Crystals was a mistake in the first place and that they should have been purely cosmetic...

I'd assume sometime after Galactic Season 2 completes: Season 3 will probably be built around a Selkath companion and the new Manaan Daily area (there's already a placeholder for a Manaan rep in game). Of course, I have no idea how long of a pause there will be between GS2 and GS3...

The Onderon weekly is 250 or 260 tech frags (100 from the weekly, 50 from the daily, and 10 for each of the 10 Pub or 11 Imp missions), you can do it twice per week per character that has finished the previous expansion, and doesn't take too long to complete. Even without the weekly, it's worth 150-160 frags. I mean, I wouldn't want to run it 68 times per week, but it's not a horrible return for the 30 or so minutes invested... Personally, I have 13 80's in 326 greens: 6 characters in the current expansion, each of whom runs Onderon + Iokath to hit Conquest, and then Onderon again for the sweet, sweet frags. 5 Characters who are post-Reven and pre-Onslaught, each of whom typically runs Makeb + one other planet (usually Ziost) for Conquest. 2 Characters who are still in Chapters 1 or 2 who use Syndicate rep or dailies not linked to the storyline (like CZ-198 or Oricon) for conquest (one's basically a bank alt who used to stealth a couple of Heroics to hit Conquest each week, and the other is a leveling contest character that I just never finished the story on). I'm not burned out yet, but I may get there: I can't conceive of doing conquest on 34 characters...

The main 'downside' is that you won't get the flexibility of a second spec: Adding a stealth spec to a non-stealth character gives you a solid 'skip the trash' option, while adding a ranged AoE spec to a stealth character isn't a bad option either. Also, a second spec can help gearing up additional characters after your first: One of the reasons I put an operative spec on my Merc was that I had extra rifle/knife gear from my sniper/operative, which made it easier to get my ILvl up before opening boxes (which in turn gave me a bunch of pistols for that character and my multiple smugglers). Honestly, these are less 'downsides' than 'not getting an upside'...

Ah, this nonsense again... If GS is a monetization scheme, it's really horribly designed: the OP has gotten to 44 without any real effort and is on course to hit 100 by the end without any real issues, which means he'll get 4,000 Cartel Coins without spending an additional dime. Overall, GS almost certainly grants more Cartel Coins than it encourages people to purchase... Keep in mind that if you really need to finish the Season* but can't/won't grind it out for some reason, you only really need to reach rank 60 to at least break even: At that point, the 4,000 cartel coins you'd spend to buy the remaining ranks is now offset by the coins you've 'earned' over the season, so every player that gets past this point is a 'loss' from a monetization point-of-view (every rank past 60 is 100 cartel coins you get 'free'). If this were a monetization scheme, they would have to shorten the season by at least 4-6 weeks for it to actually work... *Spoiler: You don't. Really, it's not 'pay to win' and you don't get anything of real value for completing the season. You may want to complete the season, but it's by no means required...

Purchase gear from the Vendors Reverse Engineer said items Get a couple of Tech Fragments for your trouble Spend said Tech Frags on purchasing/upgrading your Legendary Implants

To be fair, giving players a 'delete' option is just begging for a deluge of 'I need to un-delete something' Customer Support requests... Since you can overwrite any of your Loadouts easily enough, there's no real need to delete anything...

Amplifiers only worked when you would keep the same shell and upgrade the mods to improve your stats: With 7.0, you tend to purchase a whole new piece for each upgrade, meaning any amplifiers you had would be lost at each upgrade.

Yes, Lana can be romanced by any PC, as can Theron. As I recall, there was originally supposed to be non-straight romance options among your class companions, but that idea was dropped before launch: Not certain if they decided 'all companions are bisexual' wasn't a great idea or they just felt the need to avoid controversy, but this was the decision that was made. The first expansion introduced a couple of extremely limited SGR options in the form of two NPCs: The Republic could romance the female primary NPC, while male Imperials could flirt with a major Sith NPC: Neither character has been seen since that expansion, however (Imps lose their guy halfway through the story). Newer companions tend to be 'flexible' in their romantic preferences, but I'm not certain about the returned older companions: I remember Kaliyo actually shoots down female romantic interests by saying "I'm no good with women" or words to that effect when she returns, but I can't say I've tried to pursue any new romances with old companions...

Mailing the items to you means you don't have to unlock them in collections in the first place...

Dyes are actually more complicated than they seem at first: Some are crafted, which means they might have different 'Crafted By' names Some are BoP (Catina tour rewards for the most part, I think) Some are BoL (Daily Login Rewards) The rest are 'BoE' (or basically not bound at all) This makes stacking them kinda complicated. I do agree that rewarding 10 dyes that don't stack and aren't likely to be used immediately was just a bad idea...

The general 'rule of thumb' with all online games is: You Own Nothing. Everything in game is the property of the game owner (EA/Bioware in this case) and you just have permission to play with it (which can be revoked at any time).

Given how few they have added, I think it is pretty safe to say the 'Return on Investment' is not particularly good for alien races and customization options. Also, any new player species still needs to use the standard body models, the standard gear models, and the standard character voice tracks, so you can't actually get very 'alien' (when the Cathar were offered as a PC option, they changed all the Cathar NPCs in the game to match the new 'More Human/Less Feline PC Compliant' model).

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: I just repeated my process on my Darkness Assassin (Tank) with no secondary spec: Gear Level was boosted using my Guardian's gear, which is a mix of Force Lord and Targeter sets with Pummeler's MH + OH. Opened about 17 crates without issue. Filled all my slots with 326 Duelist gear except Mainhand and Head. So, the mix of sets doesn't seem to be a factor (at least, not this time)...

UPDATE: My Tactics Trooper just hit 80 so I 'borrowed' a bunch of 326 gear from another character and opened his backlog of green 'solo' crates: Of the roughly 8 crates, the last one just disappeared when I opened it. This character doesn't have a secondary class yet, so that presumably is not a factor (or at least, not the only factor). He was equipped with a mix of Boltblaster and Targeter gear, so maybe that has something to do with it, but maybe not... Of course, it just occurs to me as I post this that I might not have set a loot preference on this character...

I lost about half of my 'green conquest crates' on one of my characters, but have had no issues on my other characters: My crate 'strategy': Grind up one character (my Sniper / Operative) to all 326 greens Set my loot preference to 'Operative' (secondary spec with a 320 rifle) and open my backlog of crates. Transfer the 'box loot' to my next character (my Guardian / Shadow) and repeat the process (grind up the MH / OH if needed, borrow equipment from other characters to get all 326s, then open the crates). Overall, here's how this has worked out so far: Sniper / Operative: Worked great, no issues (other than too many belts and knives) Guardian / Shadow: Lost about half of his boxes Mercenary / Operative: Worked great (Geared up as an operative, set loot preference to 'Mercenary' to get plenty of pistol drops) Scoundrel - Worked great Commando - Worked great The key differences I see with my Guardian are: He is a force-using class equipped with 'Tech' gear (Targeter set), and He is the only character who had his loot preference set to his secondary class which was a different 'classic' class, which I believe is a known issue when it comes to MH + OH drops Judging by the sheer number of pistol drops I got for my Merc, the second item seems like the 'more likely' issue: Every time it tries to drop a dual-saber or generator for my Guardian, I instead lose the box entirely... I'll probably be testing this a little more over the next day or two to see if changing my loot preference helps, but I doubt I'll grind up enough crates for a real test...

in my limited experience, having decent crowd control is vital to doing veteran modes: The incoming damage at those difficulties seems to require you be able to 'lock down' a foe while you deal with the other mobs (In chapter X, the elite knights can obliterate your health pool really quickly so my Merc usually had to use concussion missile on them while dealing with the rest of the pull). My attempt to do Heskal's test on my own Vigilance Knight a couple of weeks ago was crushed by the initial 'two elites' phase but I found the entire chapter quite manageable when I ran it on a character with actual CC.

Honestly, Medals of Commendation just seem kinda pointless and should probably be removed entirely: They serve no real purpose beyond a 320 'speed bump' and even then I'm guessing most players* aren't slowed down significantly... *I imagine they become significant if your first character just hit 80 and you don't hit conquest routinely - or - you are trying to gear up 5+ characters each week.

Loadouts save your bar layouts along with your tree choices and gear...

From a gearing perspective, this change is a huge upgrade: No more '25% chance this crate item is an ilvl upgrade' followed by the 'items in this crate are 50% likely to be ilvl downgrades, and the ones that aren't probably have subpar stat allocations or be a static piece in a slot you have a set-piece for, so get ready to reverse engineer everything'... From a gameplay perspective, however, there is a distinct lack of 'cheese' to chase after... My memories of Command Crates is a bit limited, but I don't recall getting actual stats from them: I remember loads of cosmetic shells and reputation items, but that's about it. The base issue here is: What would they give out as a reward for such a system in 7.0? The lack of random stats makes it tougher to reward actual gear (and you already get equipment crates from a lot of activities), while every cosmetic item they might offer is an item they can't use somewhere else and wouldn't appeal to a fair number of players in any case...