No, the promotion is not subscribe on Oct 25 and get a token to get Shae as a comp before doing her mission. The promotion says to subscribe on Oct 25 to get Shae by either a token or mission. Just like Niko is, you had to be a subscriber on the date to get him. You then can either pull the token from mail anytime, or finish Chapter 9 and do his mission.

So, one of the words that keeps getting debated is "exclusive". So, if EA says that the bonus chapter IS exclusive, does that mean anything? EA Subscriber Rewards Page Quote from that page: "Bonus Chapter! If you’re subscribed continually from January 11 to August 1, you’ll gain access to an exclusive Chapter where you play as HK-55."

In nearly 5 years there has not been a single subscriber reward made available by other means. There may have been similar items, but not 'the' item. That does not mean BW cannot do so, but there is zero precedent for it. And I would be very surprised if they did so now. Saying people are being punished for missing these rewards, any of them, is exaggeration to the extreme. Punishments are having things taken from you that you already had. Like having gear or credits taken away for using an exploit. Or having your Ranked rating reset to 0 for win trading. Rewards are being given something you did not have for meeting some goal or criteria. As far as the cost arguments go, you have to look at it both ways. Did we actually pay $120 solely for the bonus chapter? No. Did we have to pay $120 to get access to the bonus chapter? Yes. And we had to give BW that money when they wanted it, not when we wanted to give it to them.

Okay, nevermind, somehow I goofed.

Let this be a lesson to the newer players here... The bigger the hype from BW about something new, the bigger the let down. "We have this great new event for you guys this summer. You're going to absolutely love it. It's the coolest thing we've ever come up with. We'll tell you more when we are ready to launch it. You'll love it, we promise." "Okay, it's ready for launch. We love this idea and know you will too. Are you excited? Are you ready for this? We are, so here it is...you get to...you'll love this...you get to... Replay everything you've done dozens of times all over again. Isn't that great? We just knew you'd love this as m7ch as we do."

Yea, this one has me pretty ticked off right now. I work nights and during the week, when I am on, most of my guild is not. So, to kill the lonely time I run heroics to get credits to buy shinies on the GTN. Now, this severely limits my character's income to buy said shinies. Not happy at all. Oh, and I do not buy the BS statement of "we forgot to put it in the patch notes." I'm betting on "if we put it in the notes the night before they'll rage on us, and they're already raging about our new 'event', so let's just slip it in there quietly."

Great, another "I didn't qualify for the reward but gimme, gimme, gimme, because...reasons" thread. I've missed out on quite a few things in this game, and others. And while it would be nice to have them, I understand and accept that I did not meet the criteria for getting them. It's called being an adult.

This has been discussed at length in several other threads here. The biggest issue being that F2P/Pref are prohibited from sending credits either in mail or trade. And such a bank would bypass this restriction.

I am going to take a guess that there is a major flaw in your suggestion. I would be willing to bet that the majority of CM sales, including packs and hypercrates, is to subs. I just can't imagine there are a large number of preferred (f2p) players spending $30+ a month on CC's. For one, if you were going to give BW that much money a month, you'd be better of subbing. Second, what is the point of selling a rare item for 30mil credits if 29.7mil credits are going to be immediately locked up in a vault until you pay to get them out in little chunks. TL;DR - Subs already buy the vast majority of CC's, not f2p/pref.

Actually you solved neither problem, you only skirted around them. A Pref player cannot have more than 350K at any time on a character without purchasing a one-time escrow transfer. Also, credits cannot be transferred between characters. Problem 1 - If the legacy bank were automatic/mandatory then to maintain the credit limit for pref players, the bank would have to be capped at 350k. Now you have gone from having 350k on each character to having 350k for all your characters to share. I'm sure people will love that. Problem 2 - Transferring credits. As a pref you cannot do this. Let's say character A has 150k, and character B has 100k. You see a shiny on the GTN for 200k, you cannot mail credits from one character to the other to get the 200k. Having a shared bank bypasses this restriction. The only possible solution I see for a legacy bank is to make it sub only. But even that creates problems if your sub drops to preferred status. I do not have a viable solution for that situation off the top of my head. But it is pretty clear that a legacy bank would circumvent the credit limit and transfer restrictions on F2P/Pref.

Just curious if you have ever been in an OP. FP mechanics =/= OP mechanics. FP mechanics usually revolve around massive damage with the possibility of instant death. If they nerf the damage by changing a number in the database that makes it survivable. And the GSIsus droid can survive a lot. OP mechanics have nasty things like floors vanishing and dropping you to certain death. Or, those puzzles that require more than one person to complete. Even the GSIsus droid cannot survive the floor drop in Eternity Vault, and it is too stupid to move before the floor drops. From the list I have seen, not all FPs are soloable. I did not see List Island on that list, perhaps because the mechanics made it unfeasable to convert into solo mode. Converting an OP to a solo mode is not a simple matter of changing damage and HP of a boss. And a lot of the mechanics are far more complex than just not standing in the fire.

The biggest problem with these F2P expansion requests is that they all differ. Player 1 wants more credits. Player 2 wants more PvE access. Player 3 wants more PvP access. Bioware then has a problem if they agree to one of the requests. If they give Player 2 what they want, 1 and 3 cry foul. You can rearrange the numbers with the same outcome. If they give all 3 players what they want, then subs drop because they can get free what they used to pay for. Not saying all subs, or even a majority. But they will lose subs to some extent. As far as the cost goes, well, EA/BW has zero control over currency exchange rates, bank fees, or local economic conditions (check local listings). They set the price at $15USD/month, everyone pays $15USD/month regardless of where they live. They have zero control over whether that $15USD is 1 hour's pay for you, or 1 week's pay. This is a video game, it is not a necessity of life that would instill charity in their pricing to keep children in 3rd world countries from starving.

Let's use Eternity Vault (EV) as an example of why making OPs is not as simply as nerfing Bosses HP and Damage, or giving us the GSIsus droid. First boss - not really an issue since the droid is pretty much tank and spank with some circles to not stand in. Second boss - not really a boss, per se, but counted as one. The pylons have to be set at the same time, GSIsus or companions do not have the AI functionality to accomplish this. Basically they would have to remove the pylons all together. Third boss - the room full of guys to kill. Normally split up by the party, 1 mob per member. The Devs would have to remove 7 of the 8. And they are already easy to solo. So basically removing the boss encounter again. Last boss - SOA, well first we have the falling floor. GSIsus might be able to keep you alive during that, unless of course he drops to his death when the floor vanishes. Maybe we'll just have to remove that mechanic. Then there is the mind traps, again the AI probably won't be smart enough to switch from SOA to the trap when you get stuck in it. So, another mechanic to eliminate. Lastly, there are the pylons you have to drop on SOA by kiting him under them. Unless you are a tank class you won't be able to taunt SOA off GSIsus, who is again too stupid to kite SOA to a specific spot on the floor. Ooops, there goes another mechanic. As you can see, the changes to the OPs would be more than just a simple HP nerf + GSIsus droid. Now, I'm not saying this cannot be done. But the time it would take the devs to completely rework these OPs to make them soloable would be huge. And, imo, that time would be much better spent on either fixing existing bugs or making new content, i.e. new OPs, FPs, WZs, etc. Plus, I have nightmares about all the bugs that would be introduced by them modifying every OP in the game.

Except that you failed to explain how this would function properly without removing either the F2P/Preferred credit cap or transfer restrictions. Those restrictions are probably the largest reason that legacy credit storage does not exist.

Plus, I wouldn't even want to imagine the coding nightmare of making Ops soloable. You'd almost have to strip out every boss fight mechanic. Not to mention the 1,001 bugs they would probably include in the complete overhaul of the Ops.

No, no, and just to be clear, NO. Ops were never meant to be solo'd, and never should be. SWTOR is an MMO, despite BW's recent efforts to turn it into a single player game.

Exclusive rewards, like Nico, need to remain exclusive. Not for the bragging rights of players who got them. But for BW/EA to keep what little credibility they have left. I have Nico, but in honesty I could care less if the fleet were filled with him. The point is that if they offer him, or any other exclusive reward, up for CC's or any other method, it instantly ruins any incentive to sub for future rewards. It also has the possibility of alienating customers who subbed to get said reward. If, the sole reason for the sub was the reward, then they could be a bit irritated. This last life day had a similar effect on me. Last year (2014) I bought the life day pretties from the CM. Then in 2015 the sold those same pretties for credits at an in game vendor. I did not buy the 2015 CM pretties. I'll just wait till next life day and buy them for credits.

Why do people insist on repeating this myth? If you did not sub by the cutoff date you did not get Nico as a companion. The only change they made is being able to get him at level 1 instead of having to do KOTFE to get him. But if you subbed after August 10, 2015 you do not get Nico in any form, or at any point.

I completely agree with Rorshach on this. It should be an optional unlock in the Cartel Market, for the bargain price of 10,000,000,000 CC's. On second thought... Dear Eric and Tait, Please, please, please, make this part of this year's April Fool's prank. Seriously though, you probably have better chances of getting hit by a vending machine, that was dropped off a fishing boat, that was being carried by a zeppelin, twice, before getting this animation back at this point. I would wager they (BW) don't even read your posts any more. They probably just see your name and hit the delete button.

I want... a pet riding a reskinned speeder that shoots fireworks HK-51's assassinate ability back

I'm not upset that the stuff will not be exclusive. I'm kinda used to them making exclusive items non-exclusive. I am even quite used to them putting new reskinned items into the Cartel Market. I am not used to them taking an item from the CM and putting it at an in game vendor without even reskinning it. The exceptions being the stuff from the various CM reputation vendors, but even those did require the use of CC to get. What I am irritated by is that they took items I payed real money for, and are now giving them away for free. I would have cared less if they put them in the CM again this year. I wouldn't even mind if they sold them on the CM for a 25% discount off last year's price. I do mind that it makes me really feel like I wasted my money on them. So, on the new items they are adding, given this precedent, what is my incentive to give Bioware real money when I will probably be able to get it next year from an in game vendor. Not exactly a brilliant marketing move on their part.

Ok, am I the only one who bought life day stuff in past years from the Cartel Market who feels ripped off right now? And Eric, what possible incentive is there for me to buy the new life day items from the Cartel Market, when next year I can just use my FREE saved parcels to buy them?

Given the recent companion fiasco. "They are OP so let's nerf them. Oops, sorry we hit the 'nuke from orbit' not the 'nerf' button. Ok, there we go, found a 'buff from nuke' button. Everything is good now, carry on." I thought perhaps we could revisit the nuking from orbit of the slot machine. I am not say they were never OP, but what BW did was overkill, and the patch notes were misleading, at best.

Well, I did not get my hopes up too high before the BIG reveal. However, I am saddened that we did not get a pet riding a re-colored speeder that shoots fireworks. Seriously though I really have to wonder if BW Austin secretly moved and is now BW Denver. They have dropped the ball on so many things, so many times. It really would be much, much easier on them if they tried not to hype this kind of stuff prior to releasing the details. It always ends up being far less impressive than we hope for. I'm kinda meh about the HK-55 comp, we have HK-51 already (even if they did remove his best feature, thanks for making that painful grind seem worthless now). The bonus chapter may be fun, but again not getting my hopes up too much on that. Not certain a "minigame" is going to be worth 9 months of sub time.

Maybe it is just me. But the way it reads to me is that items from the Cartel Market from previous years, that you had to purchase with Cartel Coins (i.e. real money) will now be sold by a vendor for credits or life day parcels (can't remember the exact name of the Life Day Event currency tokens).