+1 to using the covert armor gloves. The bracers actually look good and are fine without visible gloves. I actually use the set with the Dark Brown/Medium Brown dye in the robe and bracers and it looks great.

Yeah, the clone wars tv show also does the whole double sabers = better thing too. (IMO to an annoying degree) Double sabers/saber-staffs are NOT always better. Anyone who has any martial art weapon training can tell you that duel-wielding is often a BAD idea and not very viable against an equal (or same ballpark) opponent. Staffs especially have issues due to space and can be truly terrible in close quarters combat. (They take to long to position compared to others and the grip/hilt presents an obvious target.) It's mainly just the rule of cool trope. It looks more impressive visually.

Well I flat out dropped Artifice today. I'd been considering it for awhile and had 400 since launch. Going forward it just doesn't seem to be worth it anymore. Especially with the color crystals being up on the cartel shop. I'm changing to biochem because it looks like the only profession that will always stay viable.

+1 to getting rocket boots. Having it span all of you alts is amazing. It's immense useful in getting around. I also used some extra CC I got from my sub on the ship parts. (you can grind them out, but I just found it easier to buy them.)

Personally, I'm just going to use some lower level gear whenever I run pugs or quests/dailies now. My 61/63s will be guild runs only. Also participation in HM TFB and NM EC is going to plummet. People will have to bail much faster now due to being unable to keep up on the the progression costs. Isn't it kinda backwards not to use your best gear?

+1 to repair costs being crazy. Either this is a bug and needs to be fixed, or OPS credits need to be increased. TFB is the only OP that actually drops credits that 1 run can cover your repair bills. Right now PVP has a significant advantage over PVE. You can grind out 63s much faster and you don't take any repair costs for pvp deaths.

Keep in mind that the actual profits for the game might be quite low. The net profit after all the deductions that must be made (server costs, devs, art, designers, office stuff) might not be that much. (if anything) The box sales of the game aren't a good indicator of how well an MMO sells. It might have sold for $60, but a good chunk of that was eaten away by the brick and mortar stores and their shelving fees/cuts. Add in the huge sub loss and EA/Bioware might have a problem with a game that was supposed to last for 5/10 years. The cost of just maintaining the game are easily in the millions figure. Add in the development budget (which was probably overly bloated due to TORs former WOW killer status) and you have a substantial hill to overcome. F2P might actually help this. It's all up in the air at the moment. We'll start to get an indication in a few months if new content keeps up. (I still think we have a LONG way to go before EA commits to an sort of expansion)

I'm planning on buying all the features I need to eventually let my sub lapse. I only play 2 characters and don't really have the interest in pursuing any of the other classes. Once I have all the quick-bars and other stuff I need. Then I'll probably just buy ops passes week to week. Only way I resub is if we get some really crunchy content next year.

Also, I get the feeling we won't be seeing Makeb anytime this year based on how vague they responded. The decision to go FTP and the staff layoffs must have really hurt the original planned roll out times they had planned for content.

Getting really tried of hearing about "stuff is coming that we can't talk about" Guys, the game has been out for almost a year now and you are looking at only having 2 MAJOR content updates in that time. (1.3 being a stop gap, quality of life patch) It's past time to talk seriously about the future. Teasing it only goes so far. Look at HK-51, it has become somewhat of a running joke among the fandom that he was announced so early, yet nowhere to be seen.

I'm a little sad/annoyed we can't copy over new characters or a new copy of our main to the PTS. Going to make testing Terror from beyond harder. Not many will have fully augmented black hole like they do now.

I'm a little sad/annoyed we can't copy over new characters or a new copy of our main to the PTS. Going to make testing Terror from beyond harder. Not many will have fully augmented black hole like they do now.

Dang, I was really hoping that the carbonizer unit was going to make the cut. Would have been awesome in-casing myself in a block of carbonite whenever I needed to make a joke or something goes horribly wrong in a pull.

I'm really rather concerned we haven't seen the PTS go up. They are going to have a heck of a time getting a major content patch ready to go next month if they don't put something up in the next day or so. Unless 1.4 has been ready to go for awhile and they just pushed it back after having to deal with the server transfers/mergers. If they pushed it back, it would have allowed more internal testing. I get the feeling with the track record so far, it would be a disaster if they put up 1.4 without any PTS testing.

Tank pvp does need some serious work. Force/tech needs to be either added to inherent defense-able abilities or as talents added extremely high up in the tanking tree. Heck, the guardian tanking tree needs a massive rework. The vast majority of the talents in the upper part of the tree are immensely lackluster. (and even beaten by talents in the vigilance tree.)

Pugs generally scare good tanks away. Nothing stinks more than being a decent tank and getting blamed for everything when DPS can't learn to stop DPS/ move out of the fire. Also, a good chunk respeced DPS when the 1.3 tank nerfs hit. (or flat out quit) Why were tanking guardians nerfed in the DPS department when they were already the lowest DPS of the tanking classes?) Simply put, MMO players do NOT give leeway with nerfs outside of WOW. Bioware basically hung itself by nerfing Healing/Tanking so early in this game.

As someone who is mostly augmented War Hero, I would like to see the prices drop on a few pieces. Especially with the Main and Off-hand weapons as newer tier versions will be coming with the next operation. Perhaps the chest as well... Most of the other pieces and implant/relics/earpiece aren't THAT bad.

If this is really it. (No new quests no new items of the vendor) Then I guess we know what kind of quality the new content in F2P will be like. Garbage. I'm still holding out hope, but this is bleak.

Why would you even consider a lifetime sub? They have shown that they can't push content in a timely manner. The utter silence leading up to the F2P announcement speaks volumes about how this game is going to be treated down the line. We are likely only going to get slow trickles of new content. (That will be amateur in quality and amateur in game design, the lacking quality of the current world event is only the future.) Also, we can probably kiss VO for the player characters goodbye. We still have bugs in the codex and bugs in stuff that has been here since launch. Not even touching upon the fact that they can't even release patches without causing new bugs. Take into account the huge dev cuts and you have a fairly bleak future.

I just don't see a expansion coming anymore after the f2p announcement. We will get occasional updates, but most of it is going to be updates in the cash shop. It's HIGHLY unlikely we will get a boxed expansion now.

WOW will eventually go to a hybrid F2P/sub model in time. Probably at least another year and a half. It all depends on how much they drag out content. (Cata dragged heavily with the year break between Deathwing) While WOW has always been the outlier, the market has shifted. The F2P model is the accepted model in the MMO industry now. Just like $15 a month was established in Everquest so many years ago. While TOR going F2P before even a year is up is indeed sad, it just reinforces the notion that the game should have launched with a F2P system from the get go.

Can't really do ranked for a few reasons: 1) People demand certain FOTM classes right now. Goodness help you if your one of the other AC classes that aren't as widely desired. (I'm looking at you powertechs and sent/mar) You can be a Guardian in full War Hero and people will just laugh at you wanting to join. 2. The day 1.3 went live people were already demanding full War Hero gear in addition to being a certain AC class. Doesn't matter if your 90% full WH with Battlemaster. The community basically segregated itself on the first day. 3. Requiring a full 8 man group to que for rated. (This was a colossal mistake and at the very least it should have been a min. of 4 people.) 4. Exploits/Hacks are there. Not a huge issue, but will probably get worse over time. 5. If you aren't DPS or healing you don't really have a purpose. Tanking in rated is frankly laughed at. You can try and make a difference, but any good team will shut you down and make your wet noodle damage dealing all the more comical. I know at least 10 pvp focused guilds that have flat out dropped tanks from their nightly groups.

1) Nightmare Denova: It's needed at this point. Especially with the advent of the daily black hole comms. People are really starting to gear on black hole loot and starting to push into SM EC and HM EC. Any totally new ops content is still probably a ways off. Make nightmare what it should be: the top difficulty ops. 2) Please give something to artifice. Removing all the BOP items or at least some sort of new crafting items that are actually worthwhile. Color crystals are the only real thing they seem to have and that only goes so far. It honestly feels that it is one of the most useless crafting professions now. 3) Rework the jedi guardian tanking tree. The 17/24 vengeance build is frankly far better for tanking than the full 31 point guardian skill tree. Commanding awe should basically replace inner peace. Add some sort of endurance increase in the tree to match the other tanking classes. 4) Give the ability to unify colors for companion gear. 5) Some sort of guild mass mailing list. The message of the day works, but I'm talking about sending out groups of messages in groups. (like to different raid groups and officers) 6) More options for companion customizations. Keep them as varied as possible. (different hair styles, complexions, skin color, etc.) 7) Please up certain re-spawn timers in the black hole area. Waiting for the boxes to re-spawn can be one of the most frustraining parts of the area.

Hopefully the forthcoming patch is a fix for these issues. I've given up on getting anything done tonight.

Shadowlands having serious issues. Can't talk in gen chat and keep losing connection.