O. M. G.

Occasionally the Acklay will drop a “carapace”. If you use the radial on this “carapace”, much like the items granted at level 14 and 26, you will be granted a quest to find an engineer who can make this item into armor. Once you find this armorsmith/engineer, he will give you a choice of the armor piece you want crafted. When you have made your choice, he will send you out for the other components he will need.

I touched on this a little in my catharsis piece, but … holy hell Batman. Just patch out the damn traders now, you know? Just rip them the hell out and put in Trader NPCs that you can buy shit from.
Here’s the bottom line: I tried to keep my cool while writing my catharsis piece, because I wanted it to be as much about the good times I had in SWG as it was a discussion of why I was leaving. This really is beyond the pale, though. This was the exact line that they very specifically did not cross back in the day. Stuff similar to this was brought up time after time during the pre-CU days and every time the devs made a point of backing down from taking power away from the crafters.

It’s fine that they’ve made the decision to dump any of the elements of SWG that attracted me to the game in the first place. Just as long as they’re comfortable with me saying not-nice things about them in public, everyone’s going to be just fine.