They removed the talent trees. Shame. Now you get the same abilities at the same level as every other member of your class. The sole customisation is picking 5 "utilities" from a short list where half of the picks are obviously traps. The new space combat is OK, but nothing to write home about. And because us free players have a limited number of space combats every day, queues are long and players are bad. It's a huge step up from the rail shooter we used to have though.
I haven't had to pay a merchant to wear gear yet. My operative is wearing raid gear from back when the game was new, and it has better stats than what I've found so far. It also feels like they changed energy regen because I never ran below 60%, even when I was spamming everything. Even fighting elites. My companion died a couple of times because my targeting hotkeys weren't as I thought and I didn't keep nanobots up on her. But on the whole the game seems a lot easier than I remembered it. They also seem to have rolled the planet-specific ommendations into all-purpose commendations. So I imagine i'll be getting my gear from vendors rather than quest rewards in the long run.
Oh yeah, the new storeh content isn't free. But I grabbed the thingie anyway. You pay 20 bux for the revan thingie, and it includes the hutt stuffie for free. And the new emprah expansion is free, but requires lvl 60. So basically it's part of the revan bundle too. So far the hutt storyline is 'k for what it is I guess. I didn't get very far because I spent ages remembering how to do basic shit and I had to respec my operative into one of the new banality builds.
The legacy system seems ok I guess. But also a huge money sink. Basically, xp you earn goes towards your "legacy" which is essentially buffs shared across all characters on your account. You can unlock passive XP/rep boosts for your alts, you get some minor abilities for reaching certain points in the story with different classes. And any race you take to level 50 becomes unlocked for all classes, even if the race/class combo isn't usually allowed. So you can have a sith jedi if that floats your boat. The idea seems 'k on paper, but no idea how it plays out in practice.