As I was looking at the cartel market last night it really hit me that F2P really is going to ruin this game. At first, I didn't think it would, but I see it differently now.
Now, F2P might be successful, but that doesn't mean it won't ruin the game. It feels like even subscribers are getting the short end of the stick. Since I started this has happened...
1) Server Merge from 100 to around 25 - Performance was decent, little lag.
2) Server Merge from 25 to 8 - Performance was horrible. The game literally 'stutters' on the server side.
3) F2P launches - Performance is even worse. I can't through a LI, HM-EC, or what not without massive stutters at certain points of the mechanic switches. Basically it feels like someone is hitting pause for a few seconds at times. Of course, we are all over my TS server and everyone is like 'Did the game just pause for you guys?' - a resounding yes. Not packet loss, not network traffic congestion - Their servers just cannot handle the load and I highly doubt any hardware upgrades will be made.
So, I now play a laggy game with a bunch of tools who use general chat as their spam channel. Every week the cartel market puts some crap cosmetic armor to buy. The thing is, I welcome this except that the crap released has been available the entire time, depending on what side you are. Granted, it was not 'adaptive' but it does show that basically no effort is being put into 'new' things, just rebranded and reskinned stuff that already exists.
I am pretty much done with the game. The only reason I even play now is because my son still loves it...