I'll just state briefly that I loathe KotFE and KotET. It is a departure from being a Star Wars story into being a Keeping Up With The Valkorians story. I voted with my money and cancelled my subscription within a month of the launch of 4.0. But I'd like to explore this issue from the standpoint of how the opening and endings scenes are constructed. How stories begin and how they end have tremendous importance. And what it says about the writers of the respective stories. The short version of what I'm about to say is that both the opening and ending scenes of the first Star Wars movie put the emphasis on the protagonists by showing them first in the opening, and showing them last in the ending. On the other hand, KotFE shows the Valkorians first in the opening and shows the Valkorians last in the ending. Just as the audience knew who the main characters were in Episode 4 based on the opening, we knew who the stories would revolve around based on KotFE's opening. Let's examine the story that began all of this: the first Star Wars movie. The opening crawl has become a trademark of sorts of Star Wars. In the first movie, the crawl goes, and I'm paraphrasing here: The galaxy is in dire straits and goes on to briefly explain how. Then it mentions that all is not lost, as the good guys (who are the protagonists) are doing something desperate to reverse the tide. Then the final paragraph briefly describes the circumstances that take place shortly before the first scene. And then in the first scene, you see a small ship under attack by a much larger ship and then the scene changes to inside the smaller ship and there, right in the centre of the screen is R2-D2 and slightly to the side, is C3-P0. The audience immediately and subconsciously knows that R2-D2 is one of the protagonists. The little droid is front and centre of the screen and the scene shows how they escape from their dire predicament and R2 becoming the bearer of an important message. This is important, because without using words, the audience knows that R2 and its friends play an important role in the story, simply because they are shown first. They are the protagonists. Now let's look at how KotFE does it. The opening crawl, like Episode 4, says the galaxy is in strive, and goes on to describe how bad things are. Then it says all is not lost, as Darth Marr is gathering allies to combat the threat. And then we are shown what we later know is Zakuul, and the character that appears first is not our own characters. It was very jarring for me when I played it. The first character to appear is Arcann, as he approaches Valkorian. They exchange some words, some ships appear, which then warp away. Only then do our characters appear. Our characters do not appear first. It is Arcann who appears first. I'm guessing for many others, but for me especially, already had a bad feeling that the story would turn out to be not about our characters, but about Arcann. It's the same with the ending scenes. The very last scene of Episode 4 shows the famous medal ceremony. It even has a brief moment where the focus is on R2, as it displays elation at the events, and then the camera pans out to show every major character before the movie ends. This ending gives the audience a great sense of closure. The heroes have won! Now compare this with KotFE's ending. the last scene is not one in which our characters celebrate the successful defence of their base. No. The last scene is one in which Vaylin claims the throne and ends with her sitting on it. This ending gives the audience very little sense of closure. It is one that says, "You have won, but ... " The ending scene of Episode 4 does not end with a "... but ...". All in all, I can't help but feel that where the writers of Episode 4 strove to tell a great story for their audience, the writers of KotFE instead only wanted to tell a story that they wanted to tell, regardless of the audience. The Episode 4 writers put their audience first, by striving to put together a story that their experience told them the audience would love. On the other hand, the writers of KotFE put themselves first, and wrote a story that they themselves loved, regardless of what they knew their audience would love.

So ... any sign of trouble on Harbinger so far? Missing items? Instability? Long queues?

Thanks for the theorycrafting that helped me be a better Shadow tank. This game is bleeding passionate players who helped to raise the quality of game play.

Yes, given the proliferation of such links in signatures, I gathered as much. It still doesn't change the fact that these people are conniving to get rewarded for not actually doing the work of recruiting someone to subscribe. I take a dim view of such actions, and, but extension, the people who perpetuate it.

The point isn't about whether it is beneficial for you to misuse the referral scheme. Of course it is beneficial for you, since you're getting rewarded for not doing the work of actually recruiting someone to subscribe. The issue is whether such actions are abusing the scheme.

I would certainly hope that Bioware sees this as an exploit and put a stop to it. But based on the proliferation of people here putting their reference link in their signature, I can only assume that Bioware is looking the other way.

In a way, it is a scam, albeit one that Bioware allows to happen. Basically, the reference link is meant to reward players who successfully got other players to subscribe to the game, and when the latter click on the former's reference link, both get some rewards, but the one whose link is clicked gets more, since he's supposed to have helped to grow the game's subscribers. What you see instead, are players who do not get people to subscribe to the game, but rather, chase after those who have already subscribed to click on their reference link, pretending to Bioware that they've recruited that new player into the game to subscribe. The person whose reference link you clicked didn't recruit you to the game, but is getting rewarded as if he did.

The class stories as well as KotFE and KotET story modes are easy because this game is not really targeted at gamers anymore. The intended audience now is Star Wars fans, whether they are gamers or not. So the skill threshold required to beat the bosses has been lowered to accommodate non-gamer Star Wars fans, so much that you can kill bosses in class stories by just spamming your basic attack.

I wouldn't put it past Bioware to have implemented this to slow players down more, on top of the onerous Galactic Command system. They didn't make this system because players would enjoy it. They made this in an attempt to slow players down and lengthen their subscription time. So, from their perspective, this is working as intended. Remember, Bioware Austin isn't in the business of making fun games as a means to earn profits anymore. They are now about earning profits first, with or without their players having fun.

It applies to Republic side too, as out of the 4 Pub side Heroics, you only need to complete 3. And only one Heroic is open world. You can just do the 3 instanced ones. I'd also like to add that if you're Imp side, avoid Dromund Kaas. It needs 5 Heroics to complete and there are exactly 5 you can pick up, one of which requires you to kill a boss in the Dark Temple that is on a LONG timer.

Bioware isn't going to expend any resources for this. Their bean counters see no return on investment on this. This is all they care about now. What they might do, is put an outfit on sale that looks like what Leia wore in the first movie, and call it Patriotic Princess, or something like that.

You're missing the sarcasm of the post you're quoting.

That is correct, but forum access isn't updated in real time, so players who have their game time expired still have posting access until the next forum maintenance.

You're assuming that Bioware developers actually know what they are doing. How cute.