Is this intended? I'm currently on a preferred account, and the pink/magenta crystals I unlocked in collections are no longer authorized because I don't have artifact equipment authorization. Prior to 4.0, it was perfectly fine for Preferred players to use Cartel Market color crystals.
My Yavin Bulwark implants are also affected by this issue.
Wish I could give your post +1k xp - this is exactly my feeling on the subject!
Purple black striated color crystals I got as a reward for purchasing the prior game pack (Rise of the Hutt Cartel). They're in all my mod-able weapons on both main characters, and in order to play tonight I had to spend a ton of money to pull one out of my light saber just to play. Lost 1/4th of my "cash". I'm not spending $20 to upgrade my accounts for something I already paid for. I hope this gets fixed soon...sounds like it's been a bug for days, so I'm not sure why something so integral to the game hasn't been fixed more quickly. ☹️
Various crystals across 5 characters have all been locked due to this bug. All are cartel purple crystals purchased off the GTN, with a couple of them being account-wide unlocks. The only character not having this issue has the artifact equipment unlock purchased for her. This is honestly pretty game breaking, as it cuts me down to only one real usable character out of 6, while also being pretty annoying that while being preferred status even crystals I have paid to account unlock are being held back because I don't have the proper authorization to use them.
Yesterday when I was browsing GTN I noticed that it's not only the Cartel Market pre-made crystals that are having this issue but also some of the standard crafted colour crystals (most likely crafted prior to the patch). Which basically means that unless you're an artificer there is no way to get level-appropriate temporary crystals to play with.
I have also noticed that most barrel and hilt modifications have been flagged as artifacts as well.
Given that they've said they're investigating the issue, I honestly doubt it's an intended feature.
Just copying and pasting what I had posted earlier yesterday without seeing this thread.
After updating my game to 4.0 I went to look onto my character (and my companions) character sheet where you can see all equipped gear. Obviously because of the update all of my companions gear was sent to me via in-game mail. When wanting to re-equip some armor pieces my game would give me an error stating I cannot re-equip the items because I need equipment authorization. That should not be what it says, it should say, "previously authorized by subscription" like some of my other gear does, but all of my "artifact" gear that was equipped to my companions now says that.
On my personal character, I have a color crystal in my saber, that says "previously authorized by subscription". However, my Focus generator slot with the same color crystal stated that my stats would not count because I need equipment authorization to use it.
