When “Star Wars: The Old Republic” released their free-to-play model, they also added a cash shop which was primarily geared toward providing aesthetic items to players with extra disposable income. The first random, gambling box pack - The Crime Lord pack - contained a variety of clothing items including the Trailblazer’s full set - chest, legs, hands, boots and headpiece - and was released on November 15, 2012. The second random, gambling box pack - The Blockade Runner pack - contained even more clothing, including the iconic Revan’s clothing - a chest and robe set - as well as a full phantom set and spymaster set. The Blockade Runner pack became available December 11, 2012.
Last night and today, on January 8, 2013, after three weeks of no server resets due to the holidays, Bioware ran their normal, scheduled maintenance. One of the changes mentioned in the patches notes was, “The appearance of the Phantom and Perceptor's armor now matches the appearance seen in the Cartel Market.” The way this is worded sounds all well and good, as armor should match its display icon, and the majority of players recognized that this would be happening even if they had purchased this piece of armor - though it probably should have been done sooner rather than waiting almost a month to do it.
The real problem is that the Phantom armor does not actually look like its Cartel Market logo anymore, and that changes were made to other pieces of armor without even mentioning them in the patch notes. People logged in after the patch to find armor they had paid real money to get were totally different pieces of armor! The Spymaster armor was changed, the Revan robe was changed and the Trailblazer headpiece was changed - none of which look like their ingame logos any longer.
So what changes were made?
The Phantom armor chest piece was originally a sleek black top that looked like a jacket. The logo for the item even looks like this as you can see in this picture. The top ingame now looks like a robe top (many of the Imperial side robe tops look like this as well as Revan’s chest piece) with puffy shoulders connected to the hood.
The Spymaster chest piece used to look like a mostly white shirt with some gray bits of armor on it and three belts across the midsection. The item icon still looks like this. The top underwent a texture change, making the armor piece at the top stick out quite a bit and making the gray piece expand further into the white armor. This change is probably the least alarming of the changes made.
The Spymaster helmet looks relatively similar, but a blue eye cover was added to the character’s right eye, which was not present when people began buying this helmet.
Revan’s lower robes were changed drastically. Previously the item looked like a dark gray-black skirt with two decorative lines, one on either side of the front. The logo, though hard to tell, still looks like this. The skirt underwent a huge change - the biggest of the changes today - and is now a dingy brown in the back with a panel in the front in a darker brown. Four straps cross from the back into the front of the skirt to hold a large, metal ring in place. This piece always had some matching issues, but now doesn’t match in the least, as you can see from this photo. To make matters worse, when you unify colors on the outfit, it creates a big red streak down the front of the robe, whereas the Revan’s chest piece has a distinctly orange color down the center, as you can see in this photo.
The Trailblazer’s headpiece, the oldest piece of armor to undergo changes - having been available, for real money, for almost two months now - also underwent a change. Originally it looked exactly like its logo. Bioware saw fit to add a bulky pair of goggles to the top of the helmet, which are not reflected in the ingame icon.
Users in the customer service forum have also reported changes to other pieces of armor, including the Trailblazer’s chest piece and Spymaster gloves.
It seems Bioware/EA have forgotten that they are no longer dealing with just ingame credits, but real money. People expect that when they buy an item that is not broken - clipping issues, bubble butts, etc. - that it will remain looking the way it currently looks, unless a developer’s statement is released immediately about the item needing to be fixed. And you hope that you won't be waiting almost two months - as is the case with some of these changes - to see them implemented while people who may not read dev notes continue to buy the armor.
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