Now, I’m totally opposed to spending $15 on my subscription and THEN having to turn around and buy crap off the cartel market.  That is terribad.

However, I am not opposed to having the choice to buy something in-game or buying that same thing on the cartel market.  For someone who has a full-time job and a full-time kid and as much raiding schedule as I can possibly squeeze in, I don’t have a ton of time to be grinding crap.

For example, let’s talk cargo bays.  I am a crafter at heart.  Both my 50’s have all 3 cargo bays, the third costing 400k (barf).  But, when the cartel market arrives, I can buy an account-wide cargo bay expansion for – well I’m not sure what it is going to cost.  Dulfy says 1050 cartel coins, which should be about $10.50?

Dscount: If I purchase an “Account Wide” Cargo bay does it incrementally add one to each existing character and future characters I create? So my 50 with 3 bays would get a 4th, but my new character would get a complete 2nd bay and my other toon with 2 would get a 3rd bay. 

Blaine: Yes, you have it exactly right if you are a Subscriber. The main difference for a Free-to-Play Player is that you must purchase the ability to access the Cargo Hold before you can purchase additional bays, so you could be in a position where you have purchased the access on a character basis, but not an account basis, then if you purchase account wide expansion bays, they would only apply to characters that had purchased the Cargo Hold access first. And last, but not least, remember that Preferred Status players automatically get Cargo Hold access. *whew*

From the SWTOR dev interview.

For a crazy crafter like me, imagine the implications of an account-wide bay expansion.  Suppose I have 6 toons at level 20+ (I do), and I buy them all a 2nd cargo hold (for not too much, it’s 40k)  Instead of buying that third cargo bay for 400k EACH, I spend (whatever the hell it will cost), and bam!  It is 6x400k = 2.4 million credits saved.  Well, I don’t know about you, but I would take a long time to grind all those credits.  Going back a bit, notice how I wouldn’t use the account-wide unlock until I had used in-game credits to buy the first, cheaper, extra cargo bay.

The key to remember here is that when you buy cargo bays/inventory in the game, the price goes up with each subsequent bay/slot.  Whereas on the cartel market, the price is fixed, and does not depend on how many previous ones you’ve purchased.  Not to be captain obvious, but it is strategically efficient for busy subscribers to pay in-game cash for the early slots and cartel stuff for the really pricey later bays/slots.

And that’s all the math I can handle.