My appologies for having annoyed people with my post. I should have known better than to try to interact with the community. There is a reason i have tried to minimize my public exposure in other games as well as swtor, I should have stuck with that. I will do my best to take the advice, "man up" / take an adult decision (or however people called it) and leave it all behind. Again my appologies for the trouble, with some luck though it was my last mistake. Oh and I did write several CS tickets regarding names. I am sure you can guess the outcome of every single one of them. Finally to adress the question of how I 'prepared' for the server merger (sorry, will be as brief as possible): yes I did create characters on Red Eclipse with the names I wanted to use. But I guess because my subscription was inactive at the time the second merger happened (the merger that combined my first destination server with Red Eclipse) all my existing characternames were being put "back up for grabs" by Bioware to anyone with an active sub.

First of all, if you are reading this expecting a rant about how bad everything is you will be disappointed. Granted this is being written out of frustration, not so much about the game itself though but about a series of personal experiences regarding trying to get back into SWTOR. -- Background (I suppose you can skip this without losing too much actual info) -- Being an old Star Wars Galaxies veteran I was naturally heavily biased against SWTOR. After all (and I still believe so now) if there had been no SWTOR Star Wars Galaxies would likely still be around (not the point of this discussion though). Plus I knew what type of problems the game would inevitably run into. Thus I had no intention of every playing it. A friend of mine thought exactly like I did but was however gifted a collector's edition of the game with beta access shortly before release so he did give it a shot. The two of us have a long history of playing the same MMO(s) and we see eye to eye on most topics and aspects of this genre. So once he was playing SWTOR we talked a lot about it, his experiences, the good things, the bad things and how the game felt overall. Having felt "restless" regarding MMOs for a while at the time anyway (I just couldn't find a game that made me feel "at home" after having left a certain other one a while before) I gradually became more and more interested and after a few weeks was ready to give it a try myself. While still hating the fact that SWG got killed over it I had to admit that on its own SWTOR was a solid game. It did have the flaws I had predicted before but it was a very enjoyable game nonetheless. I played the game for several months, not hardcore but not too casually either and enjoyed it very much. At around two or so weeks after the launch of the Operation 'Explosive Conflict' I decided to drop the subscription though. There were no hard feelings towards the game so to speak, no anger or particular frustration, just a combination of factors inside and outside of the game. -- end of silly 'background' rambling -- I cannot recall the exact sequence of events. It is all a little blurred when it comes to what happened during which of my attempts to return to the game. Anyway here is where things started to go downhill. First were the server mergers. I had anticipated being put on The Red Eclipse and prepared accordingly. My server was however transferred onto some other pve one, resulting in all my character names being lost and me having to chose some gibberish instead, losing all meaningful identification with my characters. During my several months long break there was often the slight urge to resubscribe and give it an other shot which I eventually did, fighting to overcome the distaste for my whole character-name situation I finally logged in thinking it might be a nice idea to give those flashpoints a try that were added towards the end of my initial playing phase. So I queued up in the groupfinder... The "welcome back" experience given to me by the group in there essentially came down to a "**** off out of this group/instance and go farm daily quests for gear for about 2 months before you dare to come back, we don't want you around!". Being the good boy I of course obeyed to at least parts of their demands. Logged off and let the 30 days subscription lapse without bothering to log back in even once. Neither that kind of treatment nor 2 months+ of daily quest grinding for gear just to be allowed to stay in a random group for a flashpoint I had already started looking into many months before when I was still active are not what I come to an MMO for. Now, another several months later, I once again could not resist the urge to come back any longer. I wanted to resub, purchase the expansion and enjoy the game for a while. The first thing that I notice is that Bioware/EA is demanding that I pay in my home country's currency. There is nothing too bad about that all by itself. However, my currency is valued higher than the US $. On top of that, the numerical price in local currency is even higher than what it is in $. On the bottom line I was asked to pay 30% more (on both the subscription and the expansion dlc) compared to anyone paying in US $. Checking my payment history I did realize that this has always been the case, I simply realized it for the first time now. Nonetheless another nice "welcome back" surprise indeed. Oh don't worry there is more. Once through all the payment stuff, I do log in. Rejoice, a second server merger happened and now I am on The Red Eclipse... except that all my names are trashed yet again... Not quite ready give up again yet I spent several days (no kidding) to come up with some combination of names to use that I could sorta, kinda, in a way, live with. I do manage to convince myself of a solution and finally start the renaming process: clicking on my Marauder the rename window pops up. I enter the name I worked so hard on, hit accept... and am presented with the fact that it did not rename the selected Sith Marauder but instead my Assassin. So now my Assassin has not only not got the name I wanted him to have but is also blocking me from using it on the character the name was originally intended for. Yes I know I go on about character names a little much and I am aware that people will find it completely silly and stupid etc. but if a character has some gibberish random name that I cannot identify with in any way form or shape I cannot enjoy an MMO. Sorry I simply am that dumb or whatever you might want to call it. Yes there is yet more to come. Logging in on my Juggernaught I had to realize that two of my favorite abilities were missing. Reading of the patchnotes revealed that Tumult, Savage Kick and most importantly Pummel Strike are gone completely from the game. Yes I know people will say "wut?! 'I' never used those abilities so it is good they are gone, so ****!". Matter of the fact is though, a notable part of my enjoyment when playing Juggernaught was to use such abilities as they not only helped in PvE but were extremely fun for me to watch. But oh well, all gone now and an additional entry on the list of 'welcome backs'. On the bottom line, all these "welcome back" experiences have become one huge waving sign that is screaming at me to stop bothering altogether. It has reached a point where I don't know how to ignore it any longer, or rather where to find yet more motivation to overcome all these obstacles. So why do I bother posting this? No, sorry to disappoint again, it is not an attempt at getting attention or looking for confirmation of the problems and hurdles described. I suppose part of it is just to get it out. Maybe "shared frustration is half the frustration"? But the main reason is me looking for some kind of input that might re-spark my motivation to try yet again. I think I would like to enjoy the game again but it has become extremely difficult to ignore the continued slaps in the face both from the community and the technical/administrative side of things each and every time I make an effort to return. So, any comments would be appreciated, yes even the inevitable flames. They might seal the coffin for me so to speak but at least I would finally not be pulled to and away from the game all at the same time anymore. ps: for added irony: even trying to post this I ran into trouble and had to wrestle with the website/browser for a while until the forum would let me.

It really does seem that I am simply not meant to play and enjoy SWTOR anymore. -- introductory semi-ranty background (= feel free to skip): -- I played SWTOR for quite a while after its release and truly enjoyed it, including somewhat of a (dps) juggernaught focus. After a while though, roughly a few weeks after release of the "Explosive Conflict" operation, I quit and took a break. Several months later I began to feel tempted to come back and play my warrior once again. After some time I gave in and resubscribed. Unfortunately the first thing I did was queue up for one of the "new" FPs introduced shortly before my break. The group there gave me a "welcome back" experience that essentially came down to a "**** out of this group/instance and go farm daily quests for gear for about 2 months before you dare to come back, we don't want you around!". In a way I listened to them: I left the group, logged out and didn't bother coming back to the game, until now, many months later. Trying to resubscribe and purchase the expansion I encountered yet another ... shall we say 'interesting' welcome again: I noticed that EA/Bioware is essentially demanding me to pay in my country's currency, with a numerically higher price tag, despite my currency being valued higher than the US-dollar, making everything roughly 30% more expensive on the bottom line, compared to when calculating with the US-$ price. But oh well here I am nontheless. -- end of semi-ranty introduction -- So now here I am logging on my Juggernaught for the first time since quite a while ago... just to notice two of my favorite abilities being entirely gone from the game. Pommel strike, Savage Kick (as well as Tumult for my Sorcerer for that matter) were all extremely fun abilities. Especially pommel strike had a truly "heavy" feeling to it, getting "up close and personal" with both a powerful animation and cool sound effects to go with it. Each fight I was eager to use them not only because they were useful to somewhat quickly decimate weaker enemies but because it was simply cool to use and watch the character perform them. This even went so far that when playing with a friend of mine we coordinated the use of our stuns over voice comms so we would be able to apply those now removed abilities more often. The desire to reduce the overall number of skills/hotkeys one has to keep ready for use is understandable, especially in the light of the addition of newone(s) with the expansion. Maybe merging pommel strike and savage kick could have been an option since they essentially did the same, but instead they are all removed and the Juggernaught gets Saber Reflect as a new ability which is more than just 'close' to the already existing Saber Ward in function and, if I may speculate so boldly (since I admittedly haven't seen it in action myself yet), in all likelyhood way less spectacular/fun to use than the two removed ones. As others have stated, the power of pommel strike, savage kick or tumult etc. was hardly game-changing, making their removal rather unlikely to be balance related. That leaves the bottom line that BioWare has decided to eliminate a gameplay element that many people enjoyed and that (in my oppinion) wasn't affecting the game balance in any noteworthy way. So my question would have to be: why remove existing, enjoyable aspects of the game? All in all this was yet an other really unpleasant "welcome back" experience for me, not as bad as the last one and not enough to deter me from playing for a while this time, but still a remarkably negative one. -- my slighly longer than planned 2c on the matter.

It really does seem that I am simply not meant to play and enjoy SWTOR anymore. -- introductory semi-ranty background (= feel free to skip): -- I played SWTOR for quite a while after its release and truly enjoyed it, including somewhat of a (dps) juggernaught focus. After a while though, roughly a few weeks after release of the "Explosive Conflict" operation, I quit and took a break. Several months later I began to feel tempted to come back and play my warrior once again. After some time I gave in and resubscribed. Unfortunately the first thing I did was queue up for one of the "new" FPs introduced shortly before my break. The group there gave me a "welcome back" experience that essentially came down to a "**** out of this group/instance and go farm daily quests for gear for about 2 months before you dare to come back, we don't want you around!". In a way I listened to them: I left the group, logged out and didn't bother coming back to the game, until now, many months later. Trying to resubscribe and purchase the expansion I encountered yet another ... shall we say 'interesting' welcome again: I noticed that EA/Bioware is essentially demanding me to pay in my country's currency, with a numerically higher price tag, despite my currency being valued higher than the US-dollar, making everything roughly 30% more expensive on the bottom line, compared to when calculating with the US-$ price. But oh well here I am nontheless. -- end of semi-ranty introduction -- So now here I am logging on my Juggernaught for the first time since quite a while ago... just to notice two of my favorite abilities being entirely gone from the game. Pommel strike, Savage Kick (as well as Tumult for my Sorcerer for that matter) were all extremely fun abilities. Especially pommel strike had a truly "heavy" feeling to it, getting "up close and personal" with both a powerful animation and cool sound effects to go with it. Each fight I was eager to use them not only because they were useful to somewhat quickly decimate weaker enemies but because it was simply cool to use and watch the character perform them. This even went so far that when playing with a friend of mine we coordinated the use of our stuns over voice comms so we would be able to apply those now removed abilities more often. The desire to reduce the overall number of skills/hotkeys one has to keep ready for use is understandable, especially in the light of the addition of newone(s) with the expansion. Maybe merging pommel strike and savage kick could have been an option since they essentially did the same, but instead they are all removed and the Juggernaught gets Saber Reflect as a new ability which is more than just 'close' to the already existing Saber Ward in function and, if I may speculate so boldly (since I admittedly haven't seen it in action myself yet), in all likelyhood way less spectacular/fun to use than the two removed ones. As others have stated, the power of pommel strike, savage kick or tumult etc. was hardly game-changing, making their removal rather unlikely to be balance related. That leaves the bottom line that BioWare has decided to eliminate a gameplay element that many people enjoyed and that (in my oppinion) wasn't affecting the game balance in any noteworthy way. So my question would have to be: why remove existing, enjoyable aspects of the game? All in all this was yet an other really unpleasant "welcome back" experience for me, not as bad as the last one and not enough to deter me from playing for a while this time, but still a remarkably negative one. my slighly longer than planned 2 cents on the matter.