Exactly, If they gave me a choice to pay $5.00 to play this wekened, I'd pay it.... and so would I guess probably ~50,000 other subscribers so they could make around $250,000.00 in a single day or about 12,500 subs worth of income. It's definately leaving 'money on the table' so to speak.

Agreed! Most MMORPGs that work off 'Tuesday' as being server maintenance/patch update day choose to make early access 3-days in length so it starts on Tuesday and ends of Friday. That way players are able to enjoy the update over the weekend as opposed ot telling players to 'wait for no...no progression for you over these 2 day thats probably consist of the MAJORITY of your playtime in a week'. P.S. 'Our decision to arbitarirly choose 3 days comes out of a position of 'love'.... sincerely, bioware TM'

Ditto, I pre-ordered about five days after joining SW:ToR on January 28th. Would have pre-ordered prior to January 7th if I was playing this mmorpg at the time as I always pre-order expansion for the early-access. Albiet, when your not playing an mmorpg you don't read promotional advertisements for games you dont play. For the people saying, it was clearly written, that's fantastic except to a new player whom wasn't even looking into sw:tor at the time to see it written.

Ironically you can often go to a store manager and they'll give you the sale price for a flyer that starts on say 'Sunday' if you are headed out of town on Friday b/c they want to make the sale. Additionally, if you just miss a sale by a day, if you ask a manager they'll often give you that price as good-will gesture and to get another sale. So yes, sometimes I will ask a store manager -- albiet in this game, the equivilent would be starting a petition. Besides, if you got your pre-order early access, why aren't you playing enjoying the game rather than spending your time quickly and rapidly responding to posts on the forum?

Great analogy. Better than most people come up with. Only a few small minor issues. In your gym scenario, presumably that membership you are paying allows you to likely access a pretty standard range of cardio devices and weight-training machines. To update your analogy, all these cardio machines would require 3 additonal spotters to watch you while you exercise on any given machine (players needed to do a HM FP). In this case, you can't find 3 spotters without waiting a long time b/c everyone's taking part in the 'classes' as you called it. So you can't exercise on the equipment your membership pays for and even if you oculd, you've exercised on those machines for so long they no longer 'flex your muscles' or provide you with any 'gains'. Additonally, the difference between a gym and an online mmorpg is that the gym has a physical size limit/occupancy. You might only be able to fit 30 people into a 'gymnasium-style room' and thus the gym has to manage how many people are allowed into the class. It's not quite the same in this case as the swtor servers are already capable(the room is large enough) to fit the entire population -- more or less (see queues). If it weren't, you wouldn't be able to get online. Gym classes also need instructors whereas swtor closest thing to an instructor would be the customer service support staff that answers tickets to which I imagine there are lots of 'I ordered aroudn January 7th, plz give me access tickets xthxbye' which would be 'resolved' so they could get around to 'real issues' if they'd open up Makeb this weekend for subs. As opposed to encourage subscripters to try other games out of boredem and risking losing subscribers (ala their cash-cow).

It would be the exact same 'patch' or 'change to the system that they have already quality-tested. The patch would just be applied now as opposed to later. The no time for QA thing doesn't apply. You yourself said "I would expect, that they have a tested and released system". All they would need to do would be to release the tested and released system you described now as opposed to later. If its already been tested/bug-proofed/QA'd then when it goes live doesn't make a huge difference except in customer satisfaction.

It's not really about the level cap. Its more, I dont want to be bored to tears when logged into SWTOR this weekend due to incredibly long lvl 50 hm fp queues and no new gear to collect/progress to be made. I'd be tempted during this weekend to try another mmorpg to be honest like re-subscribing to lotro. Of course, if I re-subscribe to lotro and enjoy that games latest expansion more, then i'd probably cancel by swtor sub... I'm sure others if bored might try a '7 day free trial' or some such thing for another expansion. I'd hope a gaming company like EA/Bioware would realize encouraging your players to be bored, encourages them to try other games which in turn costs customers. They are about to have a lot of bored subs over this weekend.

Your referring to the same change that they supposibly would do in 48 hours right? . If the change were going to cuase any problems, its going to cause problems in just 48 hours for you like you use your access, it would happen regardless. So no real different if the painful experience happens tonight vs 2 nights from now. Besides, isn't it a bit selfish to say 'please don't do this because although it would make a large amount of people happy, it might affect me personally and my personal happiness far outweights the large amount of people'?

Hmm, "You didn't pay for it" .... the cost is the same to both pre-orders and people ordering today. I paid the same amount as you. Secondly, I discused the first point if you had bothered to read my post. Maybe read it again? Yes, you werep romised 5 days and if they lets subs + rothc into rothc, you'd still have 5 days over preffered players access-time and thus 5 days of early access. They didn't say whom you would have early access vs as to wehther it would be subs or preferred

Hey, I just wanted ot make a thread suggesting that for subscribers whom are paying for SWTOR, we should be allowed to access Makeb if we purchased Hutt Cartel. At the moment, my characters because I was fairly active pre-hutt cartel are all in (61)/(63) gear and I've completed my weekly dailies on all 4 of my lvl 50 characters. The only thing I can collect at the moment are classic-comms which buys the gear I ...already have. So this weekend, I would like to play the game I am paying for as a subscriber but ultimately can't progress till Sunday which seems like an arbitary restriction. I know, there are some early-access ppl that would complain 'but but, I want Makehb all to myself' and 'I I I was promised 5 days!!' which if subs get to access this weekend, early-access people would still receive over 'preferred' status players. Sw:tor is not longer really SW:TOR. Its now SW:ROTHC and I'm a subscriber to SW:ROTCH and have boughht the expansion but have no ability to acess SW:ROTCH. I can see why preferred players might have to wait since they are not paying a subscription, its not like 'wasted money' per-say. Whereas this weekend as a subscriber unable to get any new gear and left with extremely long lvl 50 queue-times for hm fps (even as a healer/tank) I am not sure what I'm paying for exactly. To play 'Sit around Imperial Fleet in Queues TM'?

Actually, I just dinged 50 on my maurder and was wodnering how to get geared for HM FPs.... so I went to the vendor someone in the imperial fleet told em about that sells 'rakata level mods' for planetary comms and I thought great! That sounds wonderful. ERROR: REQUIRES HUTT CARTEL TO PURCHASE. Son of a gun! You apparently, can't even gear for 50 content without buying Hutt Cartel which destorys the purpose/need/reason to do 50 content. Of course, in my case, I have purchased Hutt Cartel but can't access it to April 14th. So now, I have a lvl 50 maurader that I have to ...stop progressing completey with...until the 14th. Thanks Bioware! This expansions seems to be more well thoughout the more I encounter of it. Im not opposed at all to the 'idea' of what Bioware was trying to do with removing tionese set but at least make starter lvl 50 gear mods buyable without hutt cartel access. Otherwise, there's no real gearing method to go from 'Voss/Corellia-like' gear to 'HM FP' gear without ... you know... buying hutt cartel. Am I suppose to now queue at 10.5k hp into a HM FP as a dps and be like 'Hey guys, I know I suck right but carry me plz!"

I think it's coming 'Soon TM'. It's probably rolled into the same update as the character transfer feature. . In all honesty, I wouldn't expect it to come too soon... maybe a few months. Just because almost every other mmorpg has such a feature doesn't mean Bioware feels any urgency to bring it/add it. They could very well take their time like Paid Character Transfers that's constantly being requested on the forums but still doesn't seem anywhere to be found,

I think its also a bit of resentment and transference from 'other' issues people are experiencing being projected onto the server maintenance. Like general disappointment that this 'expansion' includes no 'new' HM FPs and only recycled content at the FP-level. Yes, there is '1' new op. Also, late-sub pre-orders are probably wondering what they are paying for this weekend with being unable to really 'progress' in any meaningful way. I mean, if you've done your weekly Group Finder quests and dailies in sec x // belsavis, there is literately no way to make progress before Sunday in terms of getting more 'basic comms' or xp or crew-skill lvling. So your just kind of ...sitting around. Waiting for those blues that will replace even (61) gear dropping at lvl 52. Your paying for a subscription....to wait...for Sunday...

and then the Cabana owner aplogizes about you getting all wet anyways b/c he feels bad and gives you a free corona coupon(50-100 cartel coins) for the local bar and it makes you the customer feel a lot better. The customer then thinks 'Aww, that was nice of the Cabana owner. I'm going to come back here again next year!' rather than the Cabana you see next door with a working roof that costs the exact same amount.

I agree about the subscribers are sitting ducks. I was a fairly active player in the 3 months I've been a member of the SWTor community and have leveled 4 50s and have a 5th on its way at 37. Unlocked all the class-buffs and that kind of 'stuff' if you will. In addition, I've joined an 'operations' guild that runs fairly regularly the NI versions of KP/EV and sm TFB and occasionally makes some attempts at HM Denova etc. That combined with fairly-profitable GTNing has left me with two of my characters at 50 in (61) gear and (63) gear in most of my slots. So running HM FPs at the moment, is kind of useless. I am getting classic commendations which contribute towards... (61) gear that's worse than the gear I have equipped and all the gear will be outdated by lvl 52-blues. I did my weekly hm fp quest for the few basic comms, did the sec x // belsalvis dailies and now.... I'm just kind of sitting around twiddling my thumbs for an entire weekend. I'm quite disappointed by this outcome. I'm paying to be a sub but have nothing to 'do' that benefits any of my characters. I can't even really roll an alt for additional class buffs as I have all the classes. Being stuck at 50.99 is rather annoying. I would have at least liked to train crewskills or lvl to 55 since I've bought the expansion. I dont mind being unable to go to Makebh. I mean, the pre-order ppl can go mine all the good slicing boxes, bioanalysis nodes and what-not to lvl their crew-skills faster, so its not like they aren't being given an advantage. Presumably too the quests in Makebh give more xp so they'd be lvling 'faster' than a non-pre order and even if we reach 55 which would take till ...what...sunday if your running a few characters, early access pre-orders would still have been able to run the hm fp first and have better-gear than us pre-ordered subs without early access. I just feel really... disappointed in Bioware's launch of this expansion. I would have pre-ordered before January 7th too since I pretty much pre-ordered 2-3 days after I started playing but as I said I've only been in the game for 3 months or so.