SWTOR definitely has purchasable power, since you can sell cosmetics from the real money store on the ingame auction house for ingame currency. With that, you’ll be able to buy gear enhancements on the auction house, that are required for endgame (VM operations, etc.)

ARR’s story really is a slog for the most part, it has its moments but they are far and between. You probably already heard this, but the story does pick up a lot from the start of Heavensward. The end of Shadowbringer remains one of my most cherished RPG memories to this day.

Personally, with a background in software/programming, but little to no knowledge about how ActivityPub and the interactions between federated instances work, I really appreciate this post and the discussions. Learned a lot today!