I get your point, but even one person driving a car needs a map.

I think they're shocked the free to play move worked as well as it did. I'm sure at some point the roadmap looked like a drive straight over a cliff.

Some people would count that a great blessing!

The Cartel Market could do a brisk business in *** crystals

Even if it's expensive to develop, I want to put in my vote for this. Long term they'd get more money out of the game with story updates.

Hopefully they're hiring more devs. 2013 showed how strong the franchise is, despite the terrible launch and post-launch dev cycle. This has to be one of the few MMOs that actually started bringing in more money last year. They actually pulled off the free to play transition without dying. Now they need to reinvest in more story content.

Sorcs paint with all the colors of the wind. Don't complain - you could be skipping pebbles.

Exactly, it really doesn't make any sense. I played the game near launch when there were no XP boosts - the level of XP is fine. Then they added some free XP boosts along with the cartel market, probably to hook people into buying XP boosts. But suddenly, they found that people were opting to sell those XP boosts in a huge flood, because XP boosts aren't really necessary for most players - so they made them one of the only un-saleable items in the game. I'm detecting something wrong with the reasoning in all of that - namely that it's all about the bottom line and trying to prop up the cartel market and doesn't have anything to do with what's best for the players.

You don't select need for companion gear. Companions are not real characters. Despite any fantasies some may have, you are not actually married to your companions. You don't owe them anything, green gear is fine for them (they're very environmentally-friendly that way, making do with green crap), and the most obnoxious thing you can ever do in the history of the world is roll "need" for your tank/healer companions as though their gear actually matters.

Internet tin-foil hat post is shiny.

They were free and saleable before - both for vendors and the GTN. Now they're free and not-saleable, either to vendors or the GTN, which is super weird because everything else in the game (even bound items) is at least vendorable. The "complimentary" crap is even assigned a vendor price - but you still can't sell it! Seriously, they somehow didn't even delete the old vendor price - presumably because everything in the game has some vendor price - but still randomly prohibit you even from vendoring the new "Complimentary" crap? And again, it's not like it's free. The "Complimentary" rewards are replacing a lot of previous rewards that were actually worth something.

When I first played this game - it was noticeable how difficult the regular content is compared to a game like WoW. Mobs were actually challenging in many cases, and you could die, both to bosses and even some elite-led mobs. Heck, there are even mobs with 2 mid-tier elites that could kill you. But then they made it where you'd get all the class buffs from other 50s you'd finished - adding 5-10% buffs x 4. They also nerfed many of the most challenging quests, added in augments for another +10% boost to players, heaped credits on players which you could use to buy any mods you wanted on the GTN, gave you super OP legacy buffs, and then added all kinds of XP boosts for free/or for sale that let you easily out-level the content. So the content stays the same or is nerfed, and players were buffed about 10 different ways. So... shockingly the content is ridiculously easy. They even handed you free Tionese raid gear before you even knocked off your final leveling quests. I had a char I beat the original game with that had 930 primary stat. It was super-challenging, and I had to use medpacs/keep stims up, etc. all the time. My last char is over 1500+ primary stat with free raid gear and still is a few quests away from beating the game. I dinged 50 immediately when I reached Corellia, mainly because of the legacy perks and the free XP boosts. The challenge on the leveling content should keep pace with all these other changes they made, especially in a game that focuses so much on the leveling aspect. I really wish the game were as challenging as it was at launch - I suppose you have to go nekkid or something to get any kind of challenge while leveling now

Because the game has gone totally "pay to win"? Having a market affecting gameplay destroys everything. I stand by that. The game now is only about milking cartel market customers.

Disney will absolutely jettison EA at the first opportunity (or pretext), have no doubt. And good.

What part of "Minor XP Boost" changed into "Complimentary Minor XP Boost" so that you can't sell them - even to a vendor, let alone GTN like you used to be able to - do you fail to understand?

No, I'm just putting it on the record that they went out of their way to make regular XP boosts - provided as in-game rewards for subs - into "Complimentary" XP boosts that can no longer be sold, so that they can sell more of their XP boosts in the Cartel market. Basically it's another example of how pay to win ultimately corrupts and destroys every aspect of a game no matter what.

...In place of the old regular Minor XP boosts you can sell? "Greed is good"

Unfortunately, one of the biggest flaws in the game is there is no "world" of SWTOR and the different worlds are far too disconnected (really no one will ever be able to justify anything as clunky as orbiting space stations).

Bah, apathy is death!

It's not so rosy - not at all. If you've ever run a business that's required to collect sales taxes, you'd know that the state does NOT directly reimburse you for the 2%+ lost in credit/debit processing fees, nor for the immense accounting and bookkeeping efforts to calculate what's owed. Most states only offer an extremely, ridiculously nominal - often capped - allowance for collection costs, which will never ever amount to the 2%+ charged by the banks, and often amounts to hundreds of dollars on millions of sales. And as for interest, worldwide interest rates are being artificially suppressed to levels below actual inflation, ie interest is negative in real terms. There's almost no money to be made in short-term interest - though your point might make some sense if this were 1998 instead of 2013. Trust me, given the choice, EA or any other business would infinitely prefer to not collect sales taxes at all - from their end, it's pure administrative expense and just raises the price of their product.

You might as well outright request for the game to die - MMOs live by raising level caps, adding new abilities and new gear. It's a treadmill - get on or get off it. And honestly, the best part of this game is the leveling content, so I'd rather they raised level cap and added leveling content rather than making a futile effort to chase other MMOs for end-game content.

SWTOR has so many stuns/knockbacks that the dedicated interrupts probably get a bit overshadowed, compared to how it is for other MMOs.

You can't collect sales tax for a state without the authority to do so, which the Supreme Court has ruled requires either a physical presence or an authorized agent in that jurisdiction. If BW is charging Alabama sales tax, it's because one of their corporate divisions has some presence in the state of Alabama. If Bioware literally had no offices, employees, or agents in Alabama, they couldn't collect Alabama sales tax. Alabama would have no jurisdiction over them, couldn't force Bioware to collect sales tax for the state, and the collection of such sales tax would be illegal. That being said, BW is part of EA, which doubtless has a vast corporate presence in many parts of North America - and lawyers well-aware of where/what taxes they're required to collect.

What are these space missions you speak of? People actually do those?

That's bold to say "when" not "if" they release a true expansion.