If you expand the spoiler tab in the OP you'll see it: 49M

0/10 Obvious ploy to pad their numbers by luring back veteran OCD completionists to mix with the trickle of new players and make starter zones seem alive again. They can slap new achievements and rewards on the same old content, but I'm not doing the grind again. The event was so depressing in its lack of creativity that it prompted me to reinstall ESO --which I quit after the its first month-- to see what they've done with that over the past couple years (seems a lot better now, tbh). After playing swtor religiously since launch, lately the only reason I log in is to run some NiM raids during their scheduled blocks. I do that because I like the people, and the content is still kind of fun because it's challenging. The rest of the game has just been "meh" for the last year.

From the information provided in the OP, your only realistic chance at getting a Crest is buying a Hateful Entity run from a guild like Not Good Enough. Be prepared to spend 150 million credits though.

Nice work! Even in its 4.0 state, there's a very limited number of groups left on TEH that can do it, and most of those groups have at least a few players common among them, so congrats on getting 8 titles at once.

PM sent on enjin.

I think it's more a case of "The Cartel Market is the 'medicine' animating the corpse". The game would be dead without the CM, but the CM has perverted the developers incentives so much that developing anything other than CM at this point has to be viewed as maintenance only. I mean, people in this thread are talking about spending $200 monthly on re-skinned items that are incredibly easy to develop. I can go to steam and get 4 new, big-budget games for that! As long as Bioware can keep picking the low hanging fruit for zero effort, why strive for more? I don't blame them. Of course, SWTOR *needs* a cash shop or it will die. The problem, in my view, is that the balance is way out of whack when they can sell a single dye for $20, or introduce gambling packs that people will spend hundreds on trying to get a Kylo Ren knock-off lightsaber. That lack of balance is on the players for being crazy enough to ante up -- when there's blood in the water, can't blame the sharks for feeding. Spending a few dollars on a cosmetic item from a cash shop is one thing, but when we have a player base willing to buy cosmetics at greater than full AAA game prices, we're not going to get the game we want, but it will be the game we deserve.

As someone who's only done EC once, and with no vested interest in this contest, I'd say the outrage here is totally justified, and anyone thinking otherwise needs to get over their Bioware crush and look at this objectively. Some players in this thread were streaming their EC runs and helping to generate buzz for Bioware, only to get smacked in the face by byzantine rules. I know if I had dedicated the dozens of hours to gaming out and grinding EC that some of these players did, only to learn I was secretly disqualified from ever winning by using /stuck during the first ten minutes, I'd be done with this game for sure, and probably wouldn't be half a civil as the wronged people in this thread.

This is another example of Bioware not understanding how their game is played by real users, leading to a bunch of false positives -- not unlike the last credit exploit purge that caught up a bunch of legitimately wealthy players. They probably had some intern with no idea how to play sorting through the logs, working from the faulty assumption that "/stuck = exploit" universally. Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage contest. Get your act together Bioware, the few long-term customers you have left are on the way out.

Our teams usually run twice per week. But they aren't really doing "clear all the HMs". At this point we have one team doing NiM, and one working on Revan. If you feel ready for that, feel free to shoot <Shadow Council> an app on our site with your relevant experience. We do have another more casual team doing the highlighted HM one day a week, but it seems you want to raid more often. I'm guessing it'll be difficult to find a raiding guild with a team that is going 3-4 nights a week, as prog is pretty much a non-factor in 4.0 SWTOR. If you want to raid a ton, you may need to join more than one guild. Most guilds are pretty cool about allowing that -- if not, you probably don't want to raid there anyway -- as long as you have multiple toons, so that you can dedicate a lockout to each team.

Looking for 1 solid player (Any class or role, Sunday 10pm - 1am & Monday 1030pm-130 am EST) for NiM raiding. Please apply on our website if interested. Thanks!

The stats were garbage and it cluttered my inventory so I vendored it -- I also only use legacy gear because Ops lockouts. Guess I'll see if I get screwed later, but I think it just gives bonuses against Arcann. Given that nothing in the KotFE storyline has been even remotely challenging, I'm not too worried. Unless Bioware breaks form from all the mollycoddling and there is some one-shot mechanic: Does my choice to vendor the Chapter 12 lightsaber matter Bioware?!?!?

<Shadow Council> (E) checking in. No change to the info.

[removed]

Conquest is pretty much a joke because it's always been about gaming the system through mindless grinding to win...something underwhelming. I mean, does anyone out there really think it's fun to kill the last boss in the group finder Op a dozen times? If so, why (serious question)? Yeah, if it was going to be meaningful, you'd get points for each boss in the Op, or multiplicative points for killing each boss in HM or NiM to encourage people to do something harder. As it stands, Conquest boils down to a contest of both extreme patience and masochism.

Obviously this is pretty terrible. But it's really a devastating blow to attracting new raiders and potential raiding talent to swtor. Hardcore ops vets (the few of us left) know where the animations *should* be and we can adjust. Casuals and new players drawn in by story and movie hype are going to get wrecked, they are going to get angry, and then they are going to give up on swtor ops. If KotFE is supposed to be about attracting new players, this will certainly leave a horrible impression with that group. Bioware needs to move this up the priority queue because right now this game is screaming that it's in the decline phase of its product life cycle.

I may be getting old, because back in my day, game companies had to make actual games you could play; we'd read some reviews...and maybe give them $40-50 if the game seemed good. Otherwise, maybe we'd give it another look when it hit the $20 bargain bin. Today we have people spending hundreds of dollars trying to get a single cosmetic item that probably took a day or two for someone to model and/or reskin. If anyone wonders why this game gets no real content anymore, this thread (and others like it) is why. CM whale fishing is basically Bioware shooting fish in a barrel.

<Shadow Council> on Ebon Hawk is still doing NiM Ops. Pre nerfs we were 4/5 TFB, 6/7 S&V, 4/5 DF, 1/5 DP, mostly in 220 gear. We lost a couple people post-nerf due to the "NiM loot outrage" and Bioware's general disdain for the raiding community these days...so we've spent the month finding and gearing a few replacements across various teams and farming HMs (why Bioware!?) for 224s to mitigate some of the dps loss due to nerfs. Our intent is to be back at the NiMs next week, or possibly the one after to see how the nerfs shake out.

-Red Team (Sunday, Monday, 10pm-1am EST) is still looking, preferably, for 1 skilled DPS or Healer for NiM Ops. We'll take an excellent tank too, but we'd prefer not to break up the cohesion of our current tanking pair if it can be avoided. Gear is not an issue -- we'll gear a good player who can help out the team. -Brown Mustard Team (Sunday, 5pm-730pm) is our new pubside 16-man team, and it's looking for 2 DPS. The intent of this team is to complete all the HM and NiM operations, so it is preferred applicants have some on-tier NiM experience, or be 8/10 on 3.0 HMs. Please apply at our website or PM me for more information.

Red Team (Sunday, Monday, 10pm-1am EST) is looking for 1 skilled DPS or Healer for NiM Ops. This team will be exclusively running NiM content, so applicants should have a solid understanding of the mechanics involved in fights and be able to put up solid numbers while executing them. Please apply at our website or PM me for more information.

I'd look into Weekly Ops passes, as they are selling like hotcakes on my server (sold out last I checked) as all the raiders are buying up a ton of them before cancelling their subs. I know several people who cancelled their sub in protest and now only raid casually with friends by burning through their piles of accumulated Ops passes. I expect the trend to continue.

This is what I really don't understand about all the people saying they want more single player/solo content. Treated solely as a single-player experience, this game (and every other MMO) is absolute garbage (and much more expensive) when compared to actual single player story-driven games like Witcher, Fallout, Mass Effect, Kotor, Dragon Age, etc. Why wouldn't people play those for that experience? The only reason I can see to stay invested in this game is the communities that have built up around the MMO experience, and for whatever reason, Bioware is letting those die in an attempt to break into a market where their product is vastly inferior to others on offer.

We are still looking for a NiM-ready Tank or DPS, but we've moved the team to a new time. We will now be raiding Sunday and Monday from 10pm-1am EST. As always, feel free to PM me with any questions or apply directly on our site (linked in my sig). Thanks!

We are still looking for a NiM capable DPS or Tank for our Mon/Wed 11pm-2am EST team. Feel free to PM me with any questions or apply directly on our site (linked in my sig). Thanks!

Faction: Empire Guild Name: Shadow Council Guild Leader: Hypacia Officers: Rath, Alvas PvP: Casual PvE: Progression GSF: Light Role Play: None Website: http://www.shadow-council-swtor.enjin.com/

The lack of Ops is bad, but even worse is how ethically challenged EA/Bioware seems to be when it comes to communication with their customers. A lot of people who raid in this game have countless hours invested in friendships, guilds, networks, and in-game resources that we don't want to abandon because we remember the good times from past tiers. Bioware knows this, so they hype no-news streams and constantly obfuscate their long-term strategic plans in an attempt to keep us subscribing in the "sunk-cost-fallacy-based" hope that "next month things are due to be back on track". Really, I'd respect whatever they were doing if they just cut all the BS and manipulation and simply said what they were planning so those of us who have sunk costs can make an informed decision to move on or not. Those plans may be "sorry guys, Ops and PvP aren't a viable business model, so it's all story and cartel market now", or maybe "No new raids until late 2016 or 2017". Fine. Either case will cost them subs from remaining raiders and PvPers in the short-term, true, but at least they'd be less scummy.