Lots of hate about this stream, but I think there's some good things to take away from this.
First, the post about the NiM drop rate. I don't PvE so I can't say if this is good or not, but it seems like a step in the direction that people were asking for loot to go... on the way to making NiM operations relevant once again. Perhaps they don't want to admit to the massive blunder they made with the original change, but at least they are recognizing the problem and hopefully (with monthly content updates) are working to fully rectify it. The statement that group content was being heavily discussed and the promise that more information on it will come in the following month(s) gives me hope, because although I don't get much involved in that side of the game, I'd like to see the large amount of people who left the game come back.
There seemed to be a fair amount of indecision as to whether or not class changes should be released in quick succession or over a longer period of time. With chapters and the random content attached to the chapters being released monthly, I think it would be fair to assume that some analysis is going to being done with each release to see how the content is received and how exactly it plays. Because of this, I feel that it would make the most sense to modify classes along the same schedule, releasing the changes as tweaks based on community feedback and data acquisition in order to fine tune class balance in short quips rather than large patches that can potentially further widen the class balance gap with another longer wait before the issue is addressed again. Perhaps this way, more time can be spent on fixing several prevalent mechanic bugs as well.
The announcement of a new Warzone is music to a lot of people's ears, mine included, and although it's not the full extent of what people have been hoping for, it's at least something and certainly sounds like a fun WZ. PvP as a whole has gotten very little attention since Quesh Huttball so it's nice to finally see some amount of effort going into it, hopefully the future class balance changes are done with PvP in mind as well. That being said, I don't know that content beyond this Warzone should be of any importance (save possibly a new 4x4 arena zone and the release of the next season), but instead the bulk of the focus should be aimed at fixing the dwindling queues. A lot of people have returned to the game, despite many leaving over the PvE loot issues, but while "regular" Warzones have seen a benefit from increased pops, ranked pops suffer more than they ever have, and this is due to the sparse server populations, only a very small fraction of whom participate in any PvP at all, and even fewer in ranked PvP. Something absolutely needs to be done to fix the queues, whatever that may be. I know so many people - paying subscribers - spending their monthly CC grant on moving all their characters to a single PvP server, because otherwise they either cannot PvP or are at the mercy of an extremely degraded queueing system that has a severe impact on gameplay quality. (If you don't respond to this in a forum, PLEASE do so in the next stream - I'm not the only one who knows this is of high importance.) Aside from that, expanding the ranked system, or adding different queue options (specifically, queueing for ONLY 4x4 arena maps, and allowing full 8-man groups to queue together) would also be a significant boon to the PvP scene.
Cartel Packs have received quite a bit of negative feedback and I think they've gone, at least somewhat, towards recognizing the discontent surrounding them and will hopefully make them worth my money once again.
One last thing... a suggestion... while the Eternal Championship is meant to be a solo challenge, with the focus on group content that was specifically covered, I don't know that discouraging groups (by offering lesser to no rewards) is a great idea. Instead, akin to Star Fortress achievements, there should be separate rewards for both solo and group play-throughs. All that may take is increased difficulty if you choose to run with a group. Just an idea.
tl;dr: Don't get your panties in a bunch too quickly, read between the lines of their statements and, though it may be false hope, you could find a few instances of the progress we've been asking for as a community in there. Just as there's no reason to assume everything will be perfect and amazing after a few updates, there's no reason to assume the game will be absolute trash either. KOTFE was quite a successful expansion, so hopefully they will try to turn their latest mistakes around and continue the success.
