Or not your original faction - imagine having a choice to defect. Would be a writer's nightmare, so we'll never see it, but a girl can dream

+1 to pretty much everything said in this thread so far. tl;dr types, feel free to skip the rest of this post To me, it has always seemed that the player community has been divided into those who were primarily looking for KotOR 3 and those who were primarily looking for Star WoW, with relatively few people honestly attracted to the game for both facets from the outset. As a strictly solo player (exception: Valor 5 and FPs for DvL Eternal, and boy did I drag all those teams down), I've always been one of the KotOR 3 types, and have always been pleasantly surprised at just how well the devs managed to preserve that single-player feeling in an MMO, largely because of the class storylines and companion interaction. The more that complexity collapses, the more my enjoyment erodes, and the companion absences have broken an otherwise pleasant immersion, but that's on me. Though I've invested a significant amount of money in ~4 years of subscription (plus CM purchases), when the inevitable occurs and the enjoyment is no longer worth the expenditure, I doubt I'll be all fiery about it. Just quietly unsub, with enjoyable memories of the countless hours spent in these stories. Maybe re-sub later if the game is still there, as I also tend to revisit single-player RPGs. During the 5.0 RNG crisis, the most common argument seems to be that the mechanics introduced in 5.0 are blatantly designed to artificially extend existing content (and thus extend people's subscriptions), and that the developers should realize that the community is so opposed to the current direction that the changes will, in fact, have the opposite effect on subscriptions. The counter-arguments, when they occur, seem to be that the vocal unsubscribers do not reflect a silent majority of players who are perfectly content to adjust to the new changes. This has made me wonder how many KotOR 3 'casuals' are actually out there subscribing, and whether our consumer loyalty is also on the line. I mean, I've been steadily subbed for 4 years, investing significant time off and on, just enjoying solo content, and because of the intricacy of the vanilla storylines, the relative depth of NPC interaction, and my own penchant for enjoying the scenery (/datacrons), I still haven't even finished all of the class arcs! While I'm not in the business of crusading for changes, I do quietly wonder whether there are enough 'story' players that streamlining trend evident through the various expansions isn't going to have a similarly deleterious effect on their long-term subscriber base, just with a significant time delay. Unfortunately, short of the devs sending out a detailed survey, there is no way of gauging this, the theoretical *silent* majority of players being just that. Also, well-met, fellow Shadowlands slow-buffing altaholics

Would be really nice if they could just give us a few Stronghold-style hooks on our ships and let us repopulate them from the currently summonable companions.

Relevant comic:

Seconded!

Agreed, but at the same time, I think people at the consumer level feel that they are out of other options. The current producer-dominant system for AAA titles has some serious flaws, one of which is that production companies (ab)use game studios as gatekeepers for customer dissatisfaction which is often the direct result of something the producers handed down from on high. A community can be entirely civil and wholly cognizant of the fact that the devs are fellow human beings, and still have no other entity to whom to take legitimate complaints and requests. Given that there is literally no way to touch the people in power - a mass subscription exodus is more punitive to the devs than to EA as well - it looks to me like the current swtor community is being fairly reasonable in their verbal response to the problems. People complain about the *actions* of Charles Boyd or Eric Musco, but there are few ad-hominem arguments, and nobody is baying for blood and calling for leadership to be ousted. Feels tame in comparison to the invective hurled at Casey Hudson over the Mass Effect 3 ending (not that past bad behavior would justify more of the same, just saying I think the current complaints are mostly on-target and asking for things that are probably within BWA's power to grant.) As with most things, your mileage may vary

Yeah, this stuff is the primary reason I've only taken one toon through the Zakuul arc - got off on the wrong foot as a female SW who married Quinn. His KotFE message makes it pretty clear that he's not the type to give up, he's still an Imperial loyalist, and with one notable exception, the dude is disgustingly competent at pretty much everything he does. Given the Outlander's growing fame and resources, the fact that the Alliance's stated goals are generally aligned with Quinn's, etc, etc, the fact that he is not brought back killed my immersion dead. Given the full list of the missing, I'm just not in a hurry to have my other toons slog through a sea of skytroopers for the privilege of losing their best buddies without so much as a mention. (And yes, I've read about the fact that people newly starting KotFE don't seem to lose access to their old companions, but that is far from the same thing as having them all play a part in the new story. Seems odd to have excluded, for the most part, the old NPCs most important to our characters for this long without so much as a hopeful 'still searching' from Lana/Theron, or a hint that their absences are central to the next arc, while making sure folks like Skadge and Rusk were made available to everyone.)

It might also be nice to add stronghold deco hooks (specifically small floor hooks for NPCs) to our class ships post-SoR. Even if the companions have nothing further to say to you, they still add much needed life to the ship - as it stands, I bet I'm not the only one who uses alternate transport whenever possible.