No, WoW has a gear system and a separate artifact system.The catchup mechanic was included at launch, SWTOR keeps all of it locked down and has vague promises of doing something in the future.

And this isn't even really to complain as much as I just can't even fathom what BWA is thinking here. They're positioning SWTOR as an MMO that's roughly as hardcore as games like WoW and FFXIV that demand to be the only game you play - but they're choosing not to deliver any additional new content along with raised expectations of how much their player base will be playing to acquire gear. It's becoming a hardcore game without the large amount of content a hardcore game requires. Looking at SWTOR compared to its competitors on the market, there's so much less content but just as high or higher expectations of player time commitment. And that seems patently insane. I don't usually post here and I don't intend to start doing so, but this is just unfathomable game design for SWTOR going forward.

That's an absurd reduction. This isn't solo content. This isn't a solo system however; it's everyone's system. Solo players, group players, and Ops players alike.

We're not talking about endgame gear that's the equivalent of 220/224 right now. This is the basic GC stuff you're getting at Rank 8. The actual endgame gear will have a much longer grind. This is the short part of the grind (although mathematically it may be likely to not get a set of gear before exceeding the GC rank where you start getting higher gear).

Evidence from the recent livestream suggests that GC is going to be a substantial grind. At the very low GC level of 8, it takes 3 Uprisings (or about 90 minutes of group content) to finish a GC level. The end reward is a box that contains gear, but not necessarily set gear. Remember that these boxes are still much too low rank at level 8 to be endgame gear; we'll be expected to have better gear than this to complete content like Veteran Uprisings (which of course reward more GC points). It's really looking like the pace of gearing is slowing substantially for no good reason in KOTET, on top of all the other reasons that the GC system is dissatisfying (like removing gear drops from everything in the game).

it died while I was procrastinating studying. I think it was the will of the Force.

He's gone, and can't be accessed in any way. No convos, no crew skills, no combat. I've had this problem since KOTFE came out (mid/late October). This prevents story progression, etc etc. Ex of bug: http://i.imgur.com/AjBJ7LK.jpg?1 I don't really care about this bug anymore since I'm quitting the game, but optimistic me figures someone at Bioware could see this post and realize they haven't squashed the bug.

I completed BH soon after 4.0 came out, and it's been a complete mess. I still don't have the Chapter 3 achievement. Torian disappeared immediately after I recruited him and hasn't been seen since. My conversations with Torian, Blizz, and Skadge are impossible to progress. It's been bugged for well over a month. Now I just finished Smuggler. And it also has a bugged achievement that won't reward after completing Chapter 3. What gives Bioware?

Like many people have suggested, double Influence would be a whole lot more useful than double XP for most players.

No, that would be a fraud, which is illegal. I'm not saying Bioware should be investigated by the federal government. Deceptive marketing is entirely legal: your content now comes out 2 days later, but as a reward we'll let you access it two days earlier!

Boarding Party cannot be completed on Solo mode as of 4.0.2a. The quest breaks halfway through because a comm terminal can't be used.

Still not fixed.

Subbed with the Amazon bundle (90 day game card) right before KOTFE came out. Currently working through class stories, and if I get bored (likely) I'll leave pretty soon after that sub runs out.

But just about every other major content patch would have dropped on a Tuesday anyway. All they really did was push it back two days for the "suckers."

If consumers don't call out nonsense from the game industry when we see it, they'll keep repeating it.