In the scenario you set up, absolutely nothing happens. Those who have it will have it and those who want it may need to hunt for it and probably pay a steep premium. But even if the armor becomes completely impossible to acquire in game, nothing happens. There are plenty of non cm sets that can not be attained anymore * I do not own the armor set in question.

Your best bet for getting the kills these days is to keep an eye out for some guild on your server organizing an event to get the achievements. If you are on on Darth Malgus, SWM does these quite regularly there.

This isn't the first time they do that discounted price for an item that has never been available for the regular price thing. It makes some sense to have a predetermined "regular" price and then discount it even if you can never buy the item at the full price. This practice is against marketing regulations of some European countries at least but I suppose it is legal where EA operates. Actually I'm pretty sure of it, EA undoubtedly is good with legal stuff. Personally I don't really understand why they do it I'm interested in what I'm paying for the item, not what imaginary price it has been discounted from. There probably is some marketing research showing that it still works or something though.

Can I ask here why would I leave either of the small guilds I play with to join a big one if the member cap is removed? I mean, I can join a large guild now if I want to. Why would I want it more after such a change? One account being able to join only one guild per side I dislike though. One guild speaks my native language, I like that but they are not very active. Another one is very but operates in a different laguage. What good would it be for the game if I had to choose?

So in what operation would that be mentioned then? Karagga's has a very tiny nod in Kotfe but any references are few and far between. Genrally the ops contain almost no story at all. Oricon being the exception with the final cut scene of the planetary story arc (not class) being gated behind the operations. In my mind that was a poor design choice, esp. in retrospect. I'm sure it looked more reasonable to the designers at the time.

It's also not that uncommon to see people looking for group for vet Lost Island or Kaon on fleet.

I still have couple of ops drop gear tokens from 4.x since I was away for a bit just before 5.0 dropped (sub ofc did not lapse ). Pvp token thingies you could buy from a vendor to transfer the comms over to another toon now give you money instead when you use them. Crystal currency "boxes" just vanish when used.

The problem with old flashpoint loot was that it was useless vendor trash if you ran ops (decos were fine ofc ) I hate the cxp rng boxes as much as everyone else but would like to see there being some sense in running flashpoints when replacing them with new loot.

I don't disagree with any of that and particularly the lag has been untolerable as of late. Must say though that sub level 70 characters "queuing" for vet ops might be issue best resolved by the ops lead rather than bioware

Good for you Go talk with someone from your marketing department and they'll tell you how your company does it :D Rather obviously there is nothing uncommon with having exclusive items as part of a promotional campaign. Nor is this wrong in my mind* That however was not the issue being discussed here rather than under what terms, how detailed knowledge and how much oversight are these items handed over to be used as part of a promotional campaign and if it's ok to call the company out on this if it was lacking. *some people on these forums do disagree with the latter point.

Working in that kind of industry but I'm sure your local university will also provide some courses that go through how this stuff is usually done. Probably under sc. econ.

I would agree with you if bioware indeed just sold the armor etc to nvidia. That would be exceptionally unusual though. Usually promotional deals do not resemble at all the purchase of a product, like a laptop, from a shop but are a very different and a much more complex set of contracts. If indeed bioware just sold the assets to nvidia "as is" for a lump sum of money, then I would say your interpretation is correct. That behaviour would be completely out of the norm for the industry though to the degree of being utterly unheard of. In this case to me the promotional campaign does look like the common kind similar to any number of others, and in my mind was not particularly bad. I would encourage bioware though to pay attention that when they make deals like this that every country that their product is available in is also eligible for the promotional campaign.

I'm not moaning of not getting something I did not in any way try to get, although I did not get from your tone that you meant that I specifically was moaning about this one Bioware was however the one who handed nvidia these prices to give away and are therefore responsible to their own customers,. ie. swtor players, of what kind of deal they made with nvidia. Biowareis the one who made a deal about a promotion with nvidia, Bioware is responsible for conditions of said promotion by approving it. If bioware did not aprrove it, then there would be no rewards for nvidia to hand out because bioware would not have relinquished them to nvidia. From bioware's point of view this may have been a decent success though with not more than expected complaints and hopefully plenty of new customers for bioware. None of us have any data on that and they are not telling.

And apparently hacked swtor then. Or did the reward content perhaps after all come from BW who approved the terms of the competition by providing the rewards and therefore are responsible of their conduct to their own customers. My country was on list, did not take part.

Less than couple of weeks of ranked and probably* no more time than that of ops running and you have your augs with zero credits spent. That is with one toon, obviously if you alt it's faster than that but. * I'm not exactly sure of nim drop rates as I don't actively nim If you want to buy, the prices are going down all the time though and it does not take years and years of playtime for most normal endgame players to amass a wealth of couple hundred million.

Yet the new new augs and mats and you trading with them on the gtn is actually slowing down the inflation in the game. That being credits created out of thin air and is what this very bug did. What's happening with the new augs is taking credits away from the game in a form of tax on gtn and with every bought aug that is bound to a character for actual use.

The mats are currently expensive but they are doing absolutely nothing to screw the game economy. The credits people buy them with already existed in the game. It may have some temporary effect if a lot of credits that were not in circulation (saved on peoples accounts) now get into the hands of people more willing to spend them on other stuff but that's just normal workings of an economy. Things on former TRE's gtn cost pretty much exactly the same as before the patch but since I have no more statistics on it than anyone else that observation is as scewed as anyone elses.

Signed

At the moment these augments are ridiculously expensive on the GTN. That is not a price hike, it is simply their starting price. I do not get why one would think they would cause a wider general price hike either, please provide some arguments for that. These augments or their mats are not causing inflation, they are in fact reducing it a tiny bit in the form of GTN tax. Trading crafted items or mats is a zero sum game barring that tax. No new credits are introduced into the system, on the contrary some are taken away. I'm not buying now, I expect the prices to drop over time. There is no need to have these immediately (or at all for easier content). Over time one will likely be frowned upon if going to ranked without a set but that time is yet to come. Those who run the most difficult content in the game or have the most money can get theirs in the 1st wave. Generally I do not like how much they restricted where the mats drop. That's because I'm a lazy git.

lol this reminds me that the server merge has made it more difficult as general chat is spammed full of rp guild adverts now.

You must recognise though that at the same time you will be disincentifying people from participating in events as they can then skip everything they don't like. That effect may well prove to be far stronger than any incentive this change would bring. Good, bad, I don't know. Just a point to consider

I did not say you did but you do seem to think such action is acceptable. Holding someone accountable for their words is not flaming. I do agree that it will do nothing though and Bw will resolve this in time.

Erm. I can't get any items back because I have not lost any. Nice to know you think it's ok to publicly give ***** advice without any responsibility for it. Some people just don't have any backbone. In this case he was explicitly telling people to forgo sensible precautions they were taking, that's not ok.

Feel like taking responsibility for your advice? You have caused harm to people if anyone took your recommendation. Hope you will appropriately compensate anyone that has lost temporarily access to their stuff because of you. Of course you won't

Well we won't convince you but actually it is the opposite of what you say. Every alt I play is in a guild. In my mind getting involved in a guild does not need any more incentives than it already has and I do not want to leave people who do not wish to be in a guild without this bonus.