Been playing this game nearly since launch and this is the first time that a change has actually compelled me to write on the forums. I was okay with the forced bolster / level sync mechanic being applied to flashpoints, since these were always intended to be group content and I've been able to play my way through and experience most of them at least once anyway. The planetary level sync is a completely different story.
As someone who works long hours and frequently has to take months away from the game to work abroad, one of the redeeming features of the game was that I, or my wife and I, could always come back and play through the content we had missed no matter how long it had been. If the content was too difficult for the two of us to do, we could always come back later at a slightly higher level and give it another go. That allowed us to experience large swaths of the game over time, even though there's no way we could ever make the kind of time commitment required to be part of something like a player guild. Level sync removes our ability to experience most content in the game permanently because it forces you to perpetually hunt down other people to do almost anything, even content that you have "surpassed" in the game's progression system.
I can only imagine there would be major challenges to making such a system optional, but without a way to opt out of this change it will eliminate virtually all playability for families, couples, and individuals who can't dedicate the time to be part of a large online social group.
