What is being held hostage here? It's all fluff and vanity items.

There's no way in hell I'll ever max out this reputation, but I'm just saying the idea doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm not going to spend $200 on packs, but if someone wants to then more power to them. I've gone through periods where I've spent $200 a month on CDs and Blurays. What people do with their money is their own business. Before I saw the huge thread in the forums I thought it was a great idea when I first opened my packs. I didn't know anything about but I thought it was nice I was guaranteed to get something from every pack, whereas before I might get a pack where the "rare" was the covert torso armor or something equally worth nothing. So I'm currently almost Hero status. I was able to get an eye patch. That was cool. If I wasn't able to get an eye patch I would be fine with that too. No, it's like the grocer giving a free lobster to people who buy $200 worth of shellfish and then there are the people who don't buy shellfish complaining that they don't get a lobster. As I said before, the CE has exclusive items you can't get anywhere else. To get them you had to pay extra money for the CE. Also, you can buy packs on the GTN and get the reputation when you open them.

No, they making it so that people who like to buy packs get something extra for their money. It's a faction created specifically for people who were already buying packs. Why would you want to level this faction if you don't buy packs?

The mount was just an example The point is, spending more REAL DOLLARS and getting extra stuff is not a new concept in MMOs.

Not really, my guildmate bought 48 packs and is almost if not already legend status.

That's a good idea. Not that I'll ever buy enough packs to get 10 certificates. I bought a 24 pack of the new pack because I liked the items inside, I got 3 certificates. There is no way I buy another 48 packs, especially if they're changing the rep for each collections of packs. Hopefully those certificates can be traded in for new kinds in the future.

Honest question. Why do you need that little line that says "Cartel Reputation" filled? How is it impacting your game by not filling that little bar?

Hey, you know those exclusive items you got for buying that collectors edition? No one else can get those, ever. So you paid more for the game and got stuff that us poor people who just bought the standard edition didn't get. That's paying to win. Now I'll never be able to collect all the mounts in the game without spending extra money beyond my sub on a collectors box somewhere.

How can I get the holo-dancer or STAP mount? Those items were only for people who spent extra money on the game. The Collector's Edition is therefore pay2win.

Then I must be extremely lucky because I got 24 out of 24 packs.

It's not random, you get rep in every pack, although the amount is random, either small, medium or large. Right now it's just this new pack but I'm sure it will be in all packs going forward.

False. All the new packs give reputation. Either small, medium or large rep boost. I bought a 24 pack and got 24 rep tokens. What they DON'T all drop is the certificates you need for some of the items. Out of 24 packs I got 3.

Looks great! Very excited.

I didn't sidestep it exactly, I addressed it at the end of my post, but frankly I don't have a good answer or entirely disagree with what you're saying. Obviously, as illustrated in this thread, the perception is that doing this is a bad thing and it causes some people to panic and rage. The question becomes how much damage is this negativity really going to cause? I don't have any kind of data on that or have any clue what the real world costs for them to implement new logins for everyone is. My guess though is that people will complain at first but then forget about it when they realize there isn't any rampant account hijacking going on after the change. Until then all they can do is try to educate people.

It increases security because the number one way people's accounts get compromised it due to email/password combos stolen from other, less secure, sites. This is basically what happens: Hacker breaks into Company A server. Finds their email/password log in information for all their users. This list is distributed/sold in underground channels where it is added to a master list. The master list is used to go to a game website, like SWTOR, and try every email/password combination. This isn't brute forcing a single account, it's trying all of them once. Because many people use the same password for multiple websites, they go through thousands of combinations until they get hits. So now they have someone's password. Of course they still can't log in, but since people are also dumb enough to use the same passwords for their email, they now have access to that too and they can do more malicious stuff. By eliminating email as a login, you eliminate this entire method of account hijacking. Additionally it now allows them to add extra security measures which may require you accessing your email. This is how Guild Wars 2 does it. "Hey, someone from China was trying to access your account. If this is you, click this link to unlock your account at this location". Now since a hacker no longer has any way of knowing which email is associated with your account, they have a MUCH harder time circumventing this security provision.\ As far as costs go, since they don't consider your username at all when designing their security, there is no reason to waste time and resources to implement a separate login name for everyone. Better to try to do what they're doing an explain why this is happening and correct people's misconceptions about your login name being know as being a bad thing. Yes, having an understanding of the situation before posting is a wise idea, otherwise you look foolish. You may have at least wanted to read the dev posts in the thread where everything is explained clearly.

The joke is that there are 43 pages of replies to this thread, along with 4 detailed dev posts, and you read none of them beyond the first one. It has been explained many times.

You've been able to log in with your display name for months now. Yet you're not hearing about rampant account hacking in SWTOR are you?

I'm sorry, what are your qualifications again?

Because it IP bans them. You will still be able to log in from your IP address. You can put anything you like in those answers. You don't have to answer truthfully As long as you remember what your answers are. What is your favorite color? Broomticket

Your log in name is not actually meant to protect anything at all, it's simply an identifier. Therefore no protection is being removed in that regard. I fail to understand why people are ignoring the fact that the first security check is actually your IP address. So what if someone knows your user ID? If their IP address is different than yours they have multiple security conditions to run through before having access to your account. Even WITH the correct password they STILL won't be able to access your account.

I think you are overdue on taking your meds.

No they don't, your email address is hidden. Go look at your account right now.

Likely what he means is they will implement something like Guild Wars 2 where if they detect someone trying to log into your account from an IP that isn't yours they will send you an email to confirm that it is you. So if someone was trying to hack your account they still wouldn't be able to log in unless they also had your email account password. Even then they would STILL need the answers to your secret questions. This is a lot of hoops for gold farmers to jump through. The most common form of getting your account hacked is having another site you use hacked and their email/password database stolen. Philip mentioned this, they cannot account for poor security on other sites. Considering MANY people use the same combination on other sites the hackers use these lists and try them on gaming sites until they get a match. By removing email from the equation they eliminate this threat. Targeting specific people and trying to brute force through passwords, emails and secret questions is uncommon and too much work for typical gold farmers.

No, they have thought beyond the need for the 5 hour queue. If someone attempts to log in to your account the first thing the website does is compare their location to the last location YOU logged in from. If it's not the same it assumes it's NOT YOU who is logging in. That person then has 4 or 5 attempts to guess your password. If he fails then the account is locked for HIS IP, not YOURS. You will still be able to log in just fine If somehow the attacker guesses your password before it's locked they STILL can't log in. They would need to know the answer to the one of the security questions you filled in when you made the account. I know most forum posters think they're smarter than the devs but as Phillip said they've already considered all these scenarios and have systems in place to prevent them.

What about the IP checks and secret answers they will need to log in to the account?