Likewise. Sure, my extra £100-£150 per pack launch was a drop in the ocean to BW, especially noting that they are continuing their shady (or inept, giving them the benefit of the doubt) business practices through 4.0. Some others have awfully short memories it seems, or are lured too easily by the shiny stuff.

Personally I don't think they will ever go back to typical reps vs imps in SWTOR. Alliances are cheaper to design and produce, 1 story is massively cheaper and faster than 8, or even 2 as per Makeb, and since everyone is happy with this current situation, since people are still subbing, it will never change, BW currently have no need to up their game.

Would you prefer a button you can click each time you want a level? I mean, come on, SWTOR has always been the easiest and most casual friendly MMO ever, and I am comparing it first hand with most of them since UO. 4.0 took it to a whole new level of essentially playing a cartoon on your TV screen, with zero gameplay challenge within any of the story content. As for XP, you have to be joking right? It is handed out in bucket loads. What exactly do you want, a level per quest?

Why not take advantage of the glaring red text in game?

I heard they are using their metrics to evaluate how many people have used this exploit, and are doing 2 waves of punishments, depending on the severity of the players usage of said exploit. Either a blanket credit loss for an amount representing approx. to what they would of been been paying in repairs during their exploiting. For people who consistently can be shown to have used this exploit, after it came to light, when it was spread on the forums by the arch-exploiters, permanent bans.

Why is that a problem? You have to start somewhere, new players should not have the same benefits or perks as long time players, it defeats of the whole object of MMO character development. Give the new player everything on day 1, he has no periphery reasons to stick around once the boredom sets in.

Besides the technical issues behind this bug, due to level sync, people are generally not looting corpses when they down levelled. There is no point, given the pittance you gain for wasting that extra 2 seconds. I say that tongue on cheek, but we all know its true, add that up to every trash mob you are butchering in these H2s and that's a whole lot of garbage left on the floor, even before this apparent BW issue.

Whilst I am pushing upper middle age, and we have grandkids staying over a fair amount of time, I consider my game style to be currently far from casual, however, I personally dislike grouping, for anything other than PVP, and even that annoys me sometimes, it due to the fact that I don't give a rats about listening to people whine in groupchat. Other players, usually, are nothing more than better than average AI as far as I am concerned. When I was younger, playing UO etc, of course things were different, and to be fair, in those niche gaming markets, most people were decent, in the modern MMO, a lot are complete bell whiffs who I have zero interest in.

You will gain a sense of enormous well being, finally being free of BW's shackles.

All polls/surveys are not an entirely accurate view of something. However, they are still empirical data against a cross section on this community, there do represent the accurate views of the cross section. Given that both sides of the argument, as actual forum posters, have been somewhat fanatical in their views, you could I am sure, add or subtract maybe 10% from the results.

Incorrect. Subscribers spend significantly more than F2P on cartel coins, taken from BWs own amazing metrics.

They will not change them back, BW are too indifferent with regards to their customers. BW always knows better what is best for their customers, we are just sheep who will keep paying and paying with each setback. Think slot machine for your comparison. Some loud whining on the forums for a nerf. Giant nerf happens, rendering the machines worthless. Some whining on the forums for a more appropriate balancing, No interest or response from BW. They know what you find fun, better than you do. That said, as a PVP player who has tried the expac on the free 60 only, even I still find the heroics easy, and with the exception of the end boss in the star fortress heroic 2, everything else is still straightforward after this nerfbat. But, not everyone is the same. They essentially relaunched this product to existing and potential customers, based on the premise that it was now all about story and labelled as super-casual friendly as any MMO has ever been. They succeeded. Now, they have broken what they succeeded with and have moved the bar upwards only slightly with regards to what constitutes "easy", and this no longer falls into the group that they tried to recruit, in order to replace the MMO subs they expected to lose, given their lack of focus on the core game elements. Personally, once the die was cast to make the game super simplistic, they should have left it open to everyone to succeed, those who found the content too easy, generally being the ones who are not here for just the story elements, they were already here for the failing MMO aspects of this game, and likely to drift away when subs expire anyway. Of course now, it is entirely possible that BW will lose some of both groups of subs. The existing MMO'rs, well their patience was already thin, and just getting their way over the companion nerf really does not solve the lack of real content issue for them, and the new players, the story players, who are likely to be transient at best, well, why would they now bother staying subbed until the next one hour cutscene in January?

I find it quite staggering that this kind of thing slips through even the most incompetent QA net.

If you are actually a real, new player, and given that you have subbed, since you are posting here, I would avoid buying the L60 token, and actually play the core game. You will not get a free one if you have only just subbed. The story 1-50 was the original, main selling point of the game, and is still the most unique part of the game. The storylines have depth and some of the 8 available can actually be quite intriguing. All the stories outside the vanilla game are lacklustre in comparison.

As per the last line of the post you quoted but clearly did not actually read. I took the free 60 through it, and to be fair, actually geared him in 216/220 PVE gear, a first for me, but a convenient way to get my head around the crafting changes. I also liked the look of some of the Star Fortress titles, Follower of the Old Ways, Fallen Knight, so used it to get those. Plus the nice decorations to be had, I quite like playing Sims In Space between warzones.

Actually there are three ways. Option 1. Be the required class, you get them back anyway. Option 2. Lets call this one the alternate way, for those who would like extra companions for their existing class. Do the quests gated behind PVP, or gated behind PVE. I would never waste my time doing the Qyzen quest for example on non consular characters, why subject myself to a mind numbingly dull PVE grind? In the same breath, I fully appreciate the PVErs reluctance to enter PVP. Option 3. Do not play the expansion story, therefore retaining all your companions. I see zero point doing the story more than once (twice at best, once each side). If anyone can explain to me the benefit of taking multiple toons through the same story, I am all ears. Legacy wide alliance building would be the only reason to my mind, but we do not have that option anyway, and yet we can pass the little influence boxes around happily within our legacy, and characters who have never set foot in KofTE can wear Star Fortress achievement titles, make no sense!

The answer to your questions is - do not use an instant 60. You have and should not have, any of the inherent titles earned through actually levelling the toon, since, you did not level it. Instant 60s are bad enough for the game. This is from someone who used his to avoid putting any of his existing toons through the new hellish expansion.

Who really cares? The game is dead as a PVP spectacle anyway. Most of us are treading water waiting for something more appropriate to play. In the meantime, BW has invited these clowns into our side of the game, whatever happens to them, and however annoyed they get, is entirely BWs fault.

Exactly, hence why they are there to be exploited etc etc.

I don't pay my sub to wetnurse PVE'rs. I could not give a flying toss if these people never set foot in a warzone again.

Why do you care? Just swap sides and slaughter them. BW don't give a damn about our chosen game style, so just make the most of the mess they created and slaughter these idiots. Eventually the BW penny might finally drop.

Solo ranked has been a pile of bollocks since it was created, what exactly are you expecting from such a random game style?

Agreed, ranked is dull as hell, so why not ruin these clowns in lowbies? When you have all 16 classes maxed via PVP, what else is there to do but find fun in any way you can, slaughtering these people, due to BWs incompetence is hilarious to say the least. Keep rolling lowbies until BW get rid of these PVE'rs from our WZs ! On a serious note, there was a time when I would take longer queues over playing against these idiots, but not now, just play the game BW has made, and that is now called destroy the PVE lowbie. Disclaimer...............Obviously I would not violate any of my 16 mains with this behaviour, it is what duplicate class, lowbie alts were made for though !

Lowbie PVP is actually brilliant fun!

Also, remove the PVE requirements from the other companions please, I don't want to do that drivel.