Any of the new content worth it to reinstall / possibly purchase? I haven't played since pretty much the very beginning and I'm getting an itch to continue the story.
I just recently started back as well, and the game seems to run better. There's actually a dungeon finder and things that make the game "modern".
The cartel packs are the scratch off lottery tickets of free to play. Some of the shit you can get is cool, but it seems like you're better off buying shit from the GTN and unlocking it with the cartel coins you get from subscribing. Basically the way it works is if you get something from the cartel market, you have the option to unlock it for all your characters for more cartel coins. They don't make this obvious (at least to me) until you go digging around in the collections, which is a button you hit on the cartel market front page. From there you can browse anything you've gotten from the cartel market (even if it's an item you purchased off of the GTN, but originated from the Cartel Market) and unlock it for all your characters for a fee. This is very helpful because I got a +41 endurance Crystal from a cartel pack and I can use it on a level 10 character. lol
Also, when you click on legacy, there's an option to purchase XP boosts, which act like the boosts you get from Heirlooms in wow. The only difference is you have to choose what form you want the XP boost to come in. For instance, there's 5 levels of XP boost unlocks for flash points. There's five levels of xp boost unlocks for Space combat, class quests, exploring, and warzones. Each unlock is a 6% boost, and I BELIEVE those boosts stack with guild bonus xp. The highest guild bonus xp is 10%, and you can get it by being in an active guild. Sort of similar to how WoW works.
The new F2P mechanics aren't really noticable if you subscribe. I'm a subscriber currently so I'm not sure how playable the game is if you don't subscribe. With that said, Amazon has 60 day game time cards for like 22 bucks.
I'd like to get a cartel crystal with +41 power but I don't want to play the cartel lottery to get it, and I only have about 50k on my characters so far. Cheapest I've seen them go for is about 350-400k, but again, I'm only recently back. I'm not sure how plentiful money is in this game. I hope it comes naturally cause there's a lot of shit I'd like to get off the GTN. lol