What I am seeing is that when this comes up, if I log out (or click on the "OK" button) and log back in it is fine. It is also very sporadic for me and could be a packet loss issue with busy internet routes as I only really see it during prime time US. It seems to affect both US servers but I haven't seen it logging into the European servers, although, I play there less frequently

The release form was the problem (1 short chapter per month or so). It was a lot better played from start to finish once it was all released. The storyline itself was fine if you were playing a force sensitive (which everyone could if they wanted to). It suffered most from the complainers that got over half the intended content planned for it axed and dumped into useless "story flashpoints". What was left had so many plot holes, it didn't make a lot of sense.

The cap itself is less of an issue than the number of unlocked slots. If you have been through several merges, you can easily have more playable characters than you have unlocked slots. This means to create a new character you have to delete characters to get down below the number of unlocked slots. Depending on how long you have been around you have either 12 or 24 "free" unlocked characters slots (as a subscriber) per server which are not added together when merges occur.

Ping is however one reason they are unlikely to combine all servers into one mega-server (cloud servers still have a physical location which does impact lag based on your location). At worst you could expect one North American server and one European server and possibly an APAC server (though there really isn't a reason not to have an APAC server if they consolidate EU/NA servers to one each - it's still only 3 servers instead of the current 5)

I mispoke. The starter planet Sanctuary zones seem to work fine so you should still be able to do what you are doing. There are several areas, since 7.3, that are preventing you from traveling to your stronghold (whereas before 7.3 you could). The largest one I encountered is a whole section on Makeb (where you do the GSI dig up transmitters mission). As far as I can tell, the entire area now disallows traveling to your stronghold (you have to return to near the Imperial Landing Zone). There are other smaller areas on several other planets.

In general, you can't quick travel to a stronghold from Sanctuary zones (which is what the cantina is). The issue is that entire zones, which prior to 7.3 you could quick travel from, you now can't. They seem to be misidentified as sanctuary zones.

It could be that there were a lot of people posting about a workaround to the QT (and travel from stronghold) fees which involved going to your stronghold, logging out, then logging back in. Or it could be they wanted to make sure more people used quick travel by making it impossible to go to your stronghold without either using quick travel or motoring halfway across the planet to get to a zone where you could. Let's hope it's just a glitch and wasn't a premeditated change.

Level 80 character, 320 gear, and a level 30-50 companion. 7.0 Level Sync is what is dragging you down. The big fights in KoTFE and KoTET were never re-balanced for the reduced companion performance, the reductions in character defenses, or the loss of some abilities. You pretty much can't do them on level now with the squishier classes. You could also try using a Guardian instead of a Sentinel (much better defenses and almost the same damage output).

Cannot travel to Stronghold from anywhere in the Westwater Settlements - Occupied Fields area of Makeb (republic character). Had to go back to near Imperial landing zone for travel to stronghold to work

In my opinion, the biggest cause for this drop is that people are swimming in Tech Fragments now that we are a year plus into 7.0 and it's gearing system resulting in lots of people looking to cash in on their frags (OEM, RPM, and Legendary embers for example). Some additional cause for the drops in Cartel Market items is likely that people are nearing then end of Galactic Seasons and hitting the levels where CCs are given out (CCs were back-loaded this season with most of them only becoming available at the higher levels). This both increases the supply of potential Cartel Market items and makes them less in demand because more people can use their GS CCs to buy them instead of having to pay boatloads of credits for them. The third impact is likely that Bioware went after credit sellers and removed a bunch of creds/accounts/"mules" from the game that way. With the credit sellers supplies of creds disrupted, there are fewer opportunities for players to buy credits at low prices. Keeping the credit sellers from restocking should be a focus and the 30 day limit on accessing the guild bank will slow them down while they try to replace lost "mules" and rebuild Guild Banks storing their credits.

I'd suggest something different. An "unlock" that has a time limit (24 hours, 1 week, 2 week, or whatever) that costs credits. During the time that unlock is active you can make person to person trades not involving credits without you being taxed (GTN fees would still apply at their normal level for items sold through the GTN). Once the timer runs out you are back to paying fees for trades. You could also make a similar unlock for guilds so that officers and the GM could benefit from it (but not random guild members - as a guild unlock anyway) for "prizes". That way, it is a continuous drain on credits since you would have to renew it any time you wanted to trade something "tax-free". You would still need to do something to stop guild hoppers from benefiting from a guild set up specifically to avoid the fees, but it should ease the burden on those guilds that truly are gifting things (rather than using the gifting system to bypass the fees)

Bushes on Alderaan (Star Forge, Alsakan Lowlands zone) have missing textures. https://imgur.com/a/5EyfJPh

Confirmed

The reason people left the game were: 1) It wasn't Star Wars Galaxies 2 (not open world enough for them) 2) It wasn't KotOR 3 (had MMO elements they didn't like) 3) leveling was a massive grind (lots of stopping your story to farm trash mobs to be able to continue your story) 4) players got to end game faster than Bioware expected and even though they launched two more Operations over a couple months, those players had already left. There is zero evidence that difficulty of leveling had anything to do with the declines. I guess we could say that the version of the game increasing caused players to leave since the population generally declined as the game revision number increased. Commonality is not causality. During KotFE and KotET leveling was at its easiest and yet the number of subs increased significantly before falling off when Bioware couldn't keep up the content pace.

Things they have done to make the game easier 1) increased xp gain rate 2) increased companion strength (the complaints were about performance in heroics no leveling play) 3) increased xp rate a second time 4) reduced mob strength in heroics so they could be soloed 5) increased gear ratings 6) added level sync (which allowed very high level characters to stomp low level NPCs and get rewarded for it) 7) Changed level sync to allow even higher levels of stats with no cap. in no particular order There's more but we can stop there. Those are the highlights 7.0 was hated because it was a massive disappointment for a 10 year anniversary update after all the build-up not to mention being delayed and not fixing any of the bugs pointed out in the first or second PTS testing.

Apparently they forgot to add it to their reasons for canceling their subs when they quit because Bioware has done nothing that would indicate large numbers of players quit because the leveling content was too easy. They have only made it easier (including with 7.0). In 7.0 they had mobs do more damage but turned right around and gave everyone more health by uncapping the endurance stat (along with all the other ones that increased the damage players did)

They are not actually bracers, they are gifts for Amity. It has the wrong picture.

By far the vast majority of players left SWTOR before 3.0 which was when the game was first simplified and XP gains increased. Their leaving had nothing to do with leveling difficulty because they left long before anything changed. Edit: later players left because Bioware kept ricocheting from one type of content to a different content instead of providing everyone with something.

That I wouldn't disagree with as long as the choice of difficulty is optional. I think though you will find that most people doing "harder" content do not think achievements, titles, or cosmetics are sufficiently rewarding. Look at all the complaining about the gearing system that went on and how certain posters were dead set against cosmetic only rewards for "harder" content. They wanted a concrete advantage from doing it. Soloing FPs, Heroics, and even World Bosses in vanilla was actually quite easy (very few had any multiplayer mechanics). All you needed to be was 6 levels above the content (for Heroic 4s and World Bosses you needed to be 10 levels above) and the NPCs did virtually no damage to you. I think it would be more accurate to say Bioware didn't expect people to try to solo FPs

It would take resources far in excess of the value to change the mechanics of NPCs to make them more challenging.

But it's already too easy for them so they should get less rewards right. Less challenging = less rewards in your book right?

Equally probable is that the players currently playing the game find the difficulty just fine and don't come here to complain about it. After all, how often do you see a "I love the way this works" post.

The "gimicky stuff" is how you fix the issue for the people who have a problem with not feeling challenged while not imposing your preferences on someone else. Is it perfect?, no, but it is most certainly an option to increase difficulty (and most definitely the direction Bioware should take in creating an optional difficulty increase should they choose to do so). In fact most of it is just an extension of something that already exists in the game (Level Sync), which doesn't work properly on low level planets on its own and is why you need these extra "gimmicks" to create more challenge. What you and the other "game is too easy" people continue to fail to realize is that the game is functioning exactly the same as it did at launch. When you massively out-leveled the content at launch it was trivial (heck I used to solo World Bosses for the weekly gearing crystals, try doing that now and tell me how easy it is). It is exactly the same now (nothing different other than the pace at which you increase in level). The problem now is that experienced players with BIS gear and max influence companions are so much more powerful than someone playing their first character, that balancing the entire game around anything is all but impossible. Make it hard enough for the elites to feel challenged even slightly and it becomes a massive uninteresting slog where the tedious combat muddles the story (oh, I have to stop my story progression and grind mobs for a couple of levels so I can take on the next planet's story). The correct solution is to nerf the elites further (as an option) in the "trivial" content, not increase the overall difficulty of the game. It is just wishful thinking to believe people left the game because it was too easy when back at launch all the clamoring was about how difficult (mostly read time consuming) it was for players to get their second or third alt to endgame. Bioware responded to those requests by speeding up leveling which leads us to where we are now with overleveled characters trivializing the low end content and then complaining it is too easy.

The self-sabotage as you put it is mechanistically the same as making the game harder except that it impacts only those finding the game too easy. You have called for increasing the damage of the mobs. That is functionally equivalent to reducing your gear rating and companion strength. The difference between what you are suggesting and what others in the thread have suggested is that your suggestion impacts everyone else negatively while the optional approach allows people to play the game the "hard" way if they choose or go the easy route if they find it more fun and fun is what games are all about.

Yeah, that one went from nearly impossible on level at launch to nothing at all now. The Voice of the Emperor insta-kill takes a long time to charge up and with his reduced health in that low level instance, you can pretty safely ignore it. He'll be dead long before the channel completes. It's kind of like the insta-kill ability of the Golden Droid on Makeb, though the droid usually gets to use it before you can take it out so you need to get your positioning right.