Wrong, as an example Section X is not available to Free Players unless they buy a pass.

I can argue this because you are wrong. If you offer something for free under restricted conditions with the intent of gaining more customers and getting them to spend money that they would not otherwise spend then the value of the item is not $0. The value of the item is the normal price but the company is taking that loss to attract customers and raise revenue overall.

No. Even if you accept the view that allowing people access to the story reduces the value of a sub the Class Story content still has value because even though it can be got for free its with limitations if you go that route. Playing the story content takes less time and effort with a subscription. For $0 you can experience the story, but you have to work harder at it because you level more slowly, you can't do all the class stories on one server (without deleting toons when they finish chapter 3), you can't use some equipment, you get 1 crew skill, very small inventory, quick travel cooldown is longer etc. Yes you can lift these using the GTN but that means extra effort to grind credits. By your logic that is value that has been added to your subscription.

Would you have preferred if Cathar was included in RotHC but the price was higher? That way some people would be paying for a race they did not want to play while others would be forced to pay for an expansion just to unlock a race. If it was included in RotHC it would have cost subscribers more cash because whether you call the monthly CC free or not there is no arguing against the fact that we can get Cather without paying any more cash than our sub.

High end crystals that have no better stats than ones you can get from trading in drops prior to end game and sabre hilts that are worse than the ones you get for Elite comms. They both got a boost when Augments were added (while Artifice got nothing). And Mk-9s came with 2.0 to keep those relevant.

And what it is not is P2W. P2W requires that there be an in game advantage that can solely be gained by someone paying cash. A slightly different looking speeder is not an advantage especially when they are sold for in game currency on the GTN. Yes you funded crafting by spending cash, I have 450 in all the crew skills I use and I did it without spending any CC. Your paying did not allow you to win when compared to me because we ended up at the same point. If anything I won because I can spend my CC on long term items such as cargo bay unlocks.

Synthweavers and Armourmechs can make augments, they can also produce moddable gear for cosmetic purposes (a market that will expand once these can be dyed), Artifice currently makes absolutely nothing that is useful at end game.

You replied to him in the relevant thread already

Bzzt. Wrong. There is a definition of Pay 2 Win in the real world, and what you described is not it.

Your personal, and skewed, definition of P2W is irrelevant. The real world definition of P2W is the one I mentioned above and it does not apply to SWTOR.

Except Augments and the upcoming crafted armour Dyes of course.

Well thanks for admitting that its not P2W its "Pay2SaveTime". What? You don't need to spend your 500CC a month on anything related to gearing up. If you are looking at gearing up you are Level 53-55 in which case there is no reason that you should not be at 450 on your crew skills. That makes it pretty easy to craft the things that you need - because you don't really need Mk-9 Augments to statr running the 55 content. I have played my JK to 55, I run 3-4 FPs a week, do Toborro's Courtyard, some of the dailies (max 5 each day) and the weeklies on Makeb. Since hitting 55 the Friday after early access started I have made about 1.5 million credits (bought some augments, sent some to an alt and bought some crystals and cosmetics for alts). I am in a mix of 69 and 66 gear, all augmented. If I wanted to I could certainly start running SM 55 Ops. I don't log in every day and I never play for more than 4 hours. Cool rare loot drops require you to put in the hundreds of hours you complain about above (either finding them or raising the credits to buy them). Gearing up in SWTOR is easy and not time consuming.

Pay2Win is anything that provides an in game advantage that can ONLY be gained by paying real money. With 2.0 BiS Gear can only be got by playing content, anyone can do that. Augments could be bought using credits generated by using CC but they can also be crafted by the player or bought using credits earned by using the GTN or by grinding. Your argument that you could offer your guild 15 million credits to run you through Ops to gear up can be countered by someone crafting a load of augments and offering those as payment for running Ops to gear up. There is nothing in the game yet that is P2W. The only thing that is close to the line are the crystals and that is due to the way crystals work in the game by having set stats. If BW added different versions at different levels with "correct" stats people would complain that they out level their cash purchase, if they set them all at level 47+ people would complain they were getting crystals they could not use and if BW just made them level 10 and +7 to a stat people would complain that they were useless at high level. And of course they are available on the GTN for credits so they really are not P2W just rather unbalanced. There is no P2W yet.

Some yes some no, some dyes are available from CE and Security Vendors, some are crafted using Artifice (yay something useful) while others are via the CM (but will be sold on the GTN I'm sure).

Only a problem for people with poor impulse control. If you only want to use the complimentary coins then decide which you want first, Cathar unlock or cosmetic surgery on your existing toons. Because while we are waiting for 2.2 we will get at least another months worth of coins.

They said that 2.1 was a QoL update, we have not had one for a while so expect the next few to be more focused on playable content.

Why would you have thought you would get a new race without paying some extra money? In almost every single MMO new races arrive in paid expansions. Before F2P my expectation was that when a new race arrived it would be gated behind the purchase of an expansion. After F2P my expectation was that it would be in a paid expansion or a separate paid unlock.

Well you do get a nice race emote that most of us use once and then never put on the toolbar again In SWTOR species is cosmetic, in other games it is less so.

Every single thing that's added? You mean every single cosmetic item added to the CM (which is exactly what BW said was going to happen).

Its not bad artwork, its just in a style that you personally do not like. /thread

If no cartel armour can be dyed there would be no need to specifcially state that the Lore armours will be excluded. They probably mean any level 15 or lower drops or rewards, there is a lot of that and its probably not worth the effort involved to rework it when compared to how many people ever use it.

AION. Even if you buy the Gold packs to remove the general restrictions you still have to buy the tokens to use re-customisation.

Why would you think that the Ilum bolster tell us anything about bug fixing? The Ilum bolster was already something they could turn on and off, they turned it on for the Gree event and turned it off when it ended. There was no coding bug to be fixed there, they just changed the Gree event so that it no longer turned Ilum bolstering on.

No we don't lose c, we keep c as it has always been for subs we just don't get g (which is new) for free.

And BW are continually updating content and guess what, its FREE to subscribers (just as they said it would be before F2P happened).