The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part I: The game experience and environment

First, a little bit of context. I was already a big fan of Knights of the Old Republic, which I still have for my old Xbox system (even though the system's dead; I got a Steam replacement). I'd also played some of the other early BioWare RPGs, like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, both of which I played around with, and Jade Empire, which I played more extensively. But of all of these franchises, it was Knights of the Old Republic that was by far my favorite. It also came out at a time when the Star Wars franchise was at a bit of a nadir (little were we expecting the lows of The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker or The High Republic which were yet to come.) The prequel trilogies were out, and while visually lavish and beautiful, and chock full of some really cool ideas (like Darth Maul) they were ultimately mostly frustrating and disappointing because of what they could and should have been and yet weren't. Knights of the Old Republic was part of a wave of Star Wars rehabilitation, that also includes some other great video games, like The Force Unleashed, as well as the well-received (and mostly deservedly so) animated Clone Wars show. Perhaps because of this context, I like Knights of the Old Republic better than it deserves, but even so, it's considered a classic for a reason. I don't know that the recently announced remake is going to be any better, in spite of obviously going to be prettier; I suspect that they'll have to ruin it with some kind of new diversity mandates, or something. Carth Onasi will have to be black, have dreadlocks and be the main character's gay lover, or something. 

Knights of the Old Republic II was also a good game, although because of developmental rushedness, the ending is a little bit confused and it almost takes some reading offline to understand exactly what was supposed to have happened. As a quick aside, and then I'll try to stop mentioning this so much, it's clear that the original concept of the main character was that he was a guy. Have you not seen the promotional art for the game? They decided in retrospect that the "canonical" interpretation was that he was a she, and they've written up all kinds of details about who The Exile is. She even makes an appearance as a force ghost in The Old Republic. This is fine, though. Ultimately, we can accept at least some degree of space wizardry is magical anyway, so why not have action-grrls here and there who can do it too?

Knights came out in 2003, and Knights II in 2004. Seven years later, The Old Republic came out, after a fairly long lead-up; it was announced in late 2008 and came out almost at the very end of the year 2011. Of course, while fans were excited, there was a sense of "uh... what?" to the announcement as well. The Old Republic was announced as an MMO, which is not the kind of game that BioWare had ever done before, not the kind of game that Knights or Knights II had been, and arguably, not really the kind of game that the fans were interested in. Certainly I wasn't; grouping up with randos on the internet to have to play didn't sound fun to me at all, and going on boss-fight dungeon raids didn't either. I also had no interest in a subscription payment method. 

I think in retrospect, the skeptics were proven sorta right. The majority of the consumers wanted RPG-like content, and were content to dabble in grouping on occasion. A relatively small yet healthy community of groupers and raiders has developed, and some content specifically for them has been developed in the years since. But BioWare also, belatedly, but not too terribly so, I suppose, decided to make the solo content more accessible for those who really didn't want to do any grouping at all. (Like me.)

Today, if you sit down to play this game fresh, you'll find that your first choice is to pick a character class. This isn't just a mechanical choice, as each character class has a fully realized separate story from the other seven classes. You can play a huge class story where you travel to a total of twelve level-gated planets (although there is level-synching, so those gates aren't as hard and fast as they used to be once upon a time). In addition, each of those planets has a faction story; each of the eight classes belongs to either the Republic or Empire faction, and you have a faction quest string that's as big (sometimes bigger) than the class story, also on each planet. There's not quite as much variety here; rather than eight, there's obviously only two, and sometimes the class and faction stories mesh quite well. Sometimes they don't, even though most likely you'll be doing them mixed together as you wander around on the planet.

In addition to these story quest strings, there are also a ton of unstringed exploration quests; characters standing around in the environment with a quest icon over their head. If you go talk to them, you can pick up one-off quests. Some of them are even repeatable, although most are not. Many of the repeatable ones are Heroic quests. Once called Heroic 2+, they were designed for a group of 2 or more characters. As part of their focus on solo players, they were rejiggered to be more challenging than normal exploration quests, but certainly doable by yourself. These exploration quests and Heroics often have a similar theme to what's going on in the faction quests especially, but they are just asides that have no impact on the story. If you do them, it's great; a little extra credits and XP and some modest gear rewards, but hardly required or necessary.

Although each character class story is substantially different, the progression of planets, due to their original level range design, is not. This leads to a pretty predictable arc as you're playing. However, because of the well-done level synching, you never feel like there's a difference between operating on an end game planet vs a beginning planet, other than that higher level characters will have more options and abilities unlocked, and will probably be cosmetically superior, having acquired more gear. Anyway, I'll talk more about this progression and the stories, planets, NPCs, etc. in a future post. 

Although BioWare have played around with subscription costs, the need for subscriptions at all, what you get for a subscription, etc. we're at a point now where you don't need one to have a good experience in the game. However, if you're going to be pretty serious about playing through it, like I was, then a subscription is probably worth it. I bought it in the two-month at a time chunks. It's cheaper if you buy it for a year, but since I didn't play for a year straight, I think what I did worked out well. It gave me some conveniences and advantages that were worth it to me, and when I wasn't playing, I let it lapse automatically without having to go remember to cancel or anything like that. I suspect a fair bit of the money that BioWare still makes from the game isn't from subscriptions, but rather from micro-transactions. They create a lot of cosmetic options, many of them can be bought for "real money". While I like a lot of the stuff that the game drops naturally, I also have to admit that some of the cosmetics are really cool and are super tempting.

One of the other changes made was that some of the group content that was important to the story now has solo options. These are Flashpoints, and they were the original idea for how to do raids. About half of the flashpoints are now soloable, and they are all the ones that have some tie to the story. The ones that are not are completely side stories that have no impact on the main thrust of the game, but are interesting if you're into that kind of thing. Nowadays, story progression that is added is often in the form of new solo flashpoints, which you can then go back and play as a group in a harder mode if you like. Different types of content is also now available for the groupers; Uprisings are kind of like mini-flashpoints; shorter and faster to do, but require a group. They are quick and dirty raids for people who don't have tons of time. Operations, on the other hand, are very complex dungeon raids that require eight or even sixteen players to complete. Sadly, when BioWare were still experimenting with this stuff, they didn't always hit the right beats, and sometimes legacy things are left in that are kind of a pain. For example, there's a long questline for both the seeker droids and macrobinoculars missions that you can do solo. There's actually some really cool stuff in those, but when you get to the end, you find that you're gated behind Heroic 4s, which you can't do solo. So, you can spend several hours on the questline, only to be left with a cliffhanger at the very end that you can't complete without a group. And good luck finding anyone that still even wants to group up for that anymore, even if you're willing to try. The whole Dread Masters storyline is another one that you get loads of info on, and you can even do quite a bit of it, before you're gated because the end of it is a pair of operations.

I think those three in particular are jarring and disappointing because of the time you can put into them solo only to be left hanging. Also, because they are now quite old, and the devs and most of the players have moved on, they linger and no solution has ever been given for them. Sigh.

Another interesting aspect of it being a kinda sorta wannabe MMO instead of an RPG is that in the online environment, stuff doesn't "stick" like it did in Knights and Knights II. You'll have to learn to deal with terms like "trash mobs" and "drawing aggro", even if you don't pick up on the jargon, you still have to deal with the reality of them. You can kill all of the troops in an aggravating and tedious "trash mob" on your way to an objective, only to have to deal with them all over again on your way back, because they reset fairly quickly. Of course, this can also work the other way; you can expect to fight hordes of trash mobs only to find that someone just ahead of you on the same path has killed them all and they haven't reset yet, giving you free and easy passage. Sometimes you find yourself leapfrogging with another player between trash mobs; if he draws the aggro on a mob, you can walk right by unharmed, but then you pick up the next one. This reset thing also has other interesting side effects. Sometimes you have a quest to "sabotage five communication towers" or something like that. You only need to find one, though, and after you sabotage it, you can just sit and wait for it to reset and sabotage the same one over and over again five times. Sometimes the reset time is too long, and there's even a group of players all hanging around the same area waiting to jump on the first reset.

Not everything works like this, of course. In the online gaming jargon, there's a thing called "instancing" in which you go into a little "room" where you don't and can't interact with other players. This performs very much like a little mini-offline section of the game, and most story quests end with a private instance, so the behavior of the instance can be more predictable than it would be in a purely online environment.

After the main stories are all complete, there's (now) quite a bit more story to do. Loads of story flashpoints and new planets have been added. There's also a very long string of quests called "chapters" that function like strung together story flashpoints, kind of. This new content is pretty cool, and there is a faction division of sorts between it, but there isn't anything really that continues the class specific stories. In fact, this new content doesn't even fit all character concepts equally well. It was clearly meant to be played primarily by the Jedi Knight, or possibly the Sith Warrior, and it makes considerably less sense for the non-Force-using classes. Although you can do it anyway. It's just clear that from the writer's perspective, they're mostly expecting you to do it with a Jedi Knight.

A final note on this part of the review; the game is ten years old here in the next few weeks. Although it's not very well optimized, its age means that any computer from the last five years or so can probably play it pretty well. When my brother was assembling my computer from (mostly used) components, we were having trouble getting the graphics card to work without causing issues, so we punted and didn't put it in. Yes, I'm running the game without any graphics card at all. Very occasionally when a lot is going on on the screen at once, like in a big flashpoint boss fight, or a super detailed environment like Mek-Sha, I do notice a little bit of lag and then I remind myself that even without a graphics card at all, I have the graphics settings turned pretty much all the way up and I forget that. On Mek-Sha I turned them down temporarily so it would run a bit better. Other than that, I've had no problem running the game at all. It's not a graphical tour de force, of course. My son played Ghosts of Tsushima on the PS4, so I know what a really pretty game looks like. But it's certainly attractive enough most of the time. Most of my complaints about the graphics aren't really about the technical quality of them. Rather, the stylized nature of the graphics and the relatively few elements that are repeated a lot are what mostly drags them down. Sure, sure... the action cut scenes aren't going to be winning any cinematographic awards anytime soon, but you don't really think about that much when you're playing. You do think about how every other NPC seems to have the same face just with a different facial hair overlay or something like that, and the strange spikey bits that look insane on the armor. I'd say the graphics are comparable to another one of my favorite games to play: Street Fighter IV. In general, I'd say that SF4 actually looks a little better in terms of character modeling, although technically there are obvious similarities. The clunkier animation, repeated elements, and worse clipping of Old Republic are notable, but the fact that there is so much more content is worth pointing out. (As is the fact that Street Fighter IV was almost four years older than Old Republic. It's a PS3 vintage game.) Certainly it looks wonderful compared to Knights or Knights II.

Long story short on the graphics and tech specs; they mostly do the job. It's not amazing, but it's also not so bad that you are constantly reminded of them either; mostly when playing, you don't think about it much at all. I don't think I've ever really heard many players have serious complaints about the graphics from a technical standpoint, although there could be some complaints about decisions that were deliberately made (like all of the fatso tubby nearly Jabba-sized characters out there, for instance, or gigantic shoulder pads that are the size of trash can lids and tipped with sword-points.)

But that's starting to inch into the next category, so we'll end Part I here, I think.

Finished it all

Well, I finished the Old Republic stuff faster than I thought. I blazed through the last bit of the bounty hunter class story and got the legendary player status. I then did the last story flashpoint, Secrets of the Enclave, with my Jedi Knight, as well as the short conversation menus that follow. For the first time ever, there are no story quests left for him to do.

Ideally, I've go through the whole expansion series with my Sith Warrior, choosing Imperial options instead of Republic ones this time, but that's still a ways off, assuming I do it at all. For the time being, I have no story content left to do that's pressing, only optional stuff, and events, and dailies, and stuff like that. It's nice to have a bit of a break from feeling like there's anything looming over me. I can get around to my Sith Warrior's playthrough of the expansion material much more leisurely. Sure, there'll be a few differences between the Imperial and Republic sides of some of those flashpoints, but still. I don't want to wait.

Starting sometime tomorrow, I'm going to embark on the Mother of All Reviews of this game, which will span multiple posts. I'll talk about the game itself, the mechanics, the graphics, and most of all the story. I'll review the stories of each class as well as the expansion stories. I'm actually kind of excited to talk all about it now that I'm done. Not that I haven't been talking about it plenty anyway, but it's different, when I'm not just sitting back and reviewing the whole thing, but just kind of chatting randomly.

In any case, my only concern is that some of my memories of some of the class stories are a bit hazy. I played most of them over six months ago. Two of them I had started but not finished until recently, so that big gap probably also introduced a discontinuity of sorts. But, what can you do? There's so much content that it's inevitable that you can't look back on it and remember every detail.

Endgame for legendary status

Well, I've been kind of sick this weekend, and still today. I've played some, but not as much as I might otherwise, as I've taken some Tylenol, gone back to bed, and slept off low-grade fevers a lot. I'd like to say that it's nice to get so much sleep, but that's only true when you don't need the sleep because you feel like crap.

In any case, it wasn't hard to get everyone up  to 75 by grinding a few heroics. I did the penultimate flashpoint with my Jedi, so I've only got one thing left to do there too. And now that both of my last two characters are maxed out level, I can jump into chapter 3 with both. Actually, I already have; I've done Belsavis and Voss, plus the transitions between them, with the trooper. I decided to finish the whole chapter with one before going to the other, since it moves pretty fast when you don't have to do anything except the class stories.

Although I'm not quite done with the trooper, I'll admit that I've been pretty impressed with the writing, especially as it's not generally considered one of the stronger stories by most. Or so it seems. I do like the attitude of the bounty hunter more; an independent operator who doesn't have to listen to anyone for the most part (although the Sith Lord that I just dealt with in the transition into chapter 3 is someone I'd love to kill soon) whereas the trooper is often engaged in errands for frivolous people with questionable judgement. While I admit that that's not always where you want to be in a story, at the same time, it comes across as very realistic; the top brass and the politicians are always sending you on some dumb errand, or covering up their own stupid mistakes. The situation with Jaxo was interesting too. I chose to save her rather than the other prisoners. I knew her, and I don't know them. Most likely, the game would never actually have shown me them anyway. I know, I know, sacrificing your friend for "the greater good" is considered the light side option, but personally, I just value loyalty a bit more than that. And that's one of the few moral dilemmas that I didn't think was hoaky and stupid, to be honest. And Jaxo dealing with survivor's guilt and having to take a psych break from service was pretty well written. One of the best "emails" I've gotten from an NPC in game. It stands out in stark contrast to the gushing little girls that I've been dealing with in the endgame with my Jedi. Oof, those are bad. Anyway, even if I'm exceptionally slow, I'll finish all of the story content that I'm actually involved with in the next few days. Then I'll probably do the expansions with my Sith warrior and see the Imperial side of things. And the rakghoul event is supposed to start tomorrow after some server maintenance, so I'll have that to do as well.

I'll be offline the entire week of Thanksgiving, so I'll miss the tail end of the rakghoul event, but I'll be back again just in time for the Gree event to get started. I've never really done that one; I guess the PvP stuff turned me off and I never really found enough of the PvE dailies. I'll need to, though... I'd actually really like to have Gree reputation. Plus, I think Ilum is a fascinating place to run around in. I've got more reputation things to max out; I still am a tad shy on Voss, for instance, and my quick run-through just now of the trooper class story gave me very little. A few Voss heroics, and I'll probably be done. Something to do after the class stories are all finished.

Level 75

Last night I did Hoth; world and class story, with the trooper. I didn't do any exploration mission, but I did everything else. I started the planet at level 70, but with enough XP to be almost at 71. I finished about halfway or maybe a little more through level 73. I admit that I'd hoped to be further along. I went and did the transition stuff at the end of chapter 2, which in the case of the trooper, is quite long. I also talked to all my companions, etc. Anything I could do to squeeze some XP out. I'm still not at level 75. So, I think before I go to Belsavis and start chapter 3, I'm going to grind some heroics and force myself to level 75. Sigh. I really didn't think that I'd need to do that, but it looks like I do. (That way I can do Belsavis with the Concentrated Fire chestplate on my outfit; which requires max level to do.)

My bounty hunter is straggling just a little compared to him. He's also level 70 starting Hoth (and he's next to do, I suppose) but he just crossed the level 70 line, so he's almost a whole level behind. He'll have to grind heroics too for that last level, I presume. But then he'll also need to do it for two or three days instead of (presumably) only one, or I'll have to do more heroics.

See, I've gotten to mostly grinding the same Heroics on the same planets, because I know that they are relatively quick and dirty to do. Some heroics are really tedious and time consuming relative to others. This makes the grinding of heroics much less interesting, of course. But there's a reason that you call it grinding. Or sometimes farming. It's not the most interesting thing to do in game. It does, however, get you the XP and credits that you need if you want more before going on to more interesting things.

When I go on and attempt my recording, I want to actually document all of the missions that are available, but certainly not with every single character. It'd be nice if I can do some of the characters during a double XP event (wouldn't it be nice if one of the 10th anniversary rewards is a year-long double XP starting ~Christmastime this year until ~Christmastime 2022?) so I don't feel obligated to do any of those missions, even in the background, unrecorded, just to keep up my level. But I'll need to document every exploration mission available on every planet, and decide who's going to do them. There's no reason to record those more than once (per faction) because they'll be identical anyway. 

And, of course, there's more content than just the class stories, the planet stories and the exploration missions, but that's the majority of what's available to single solo players, and that's what I'm trying to document. I'm still mulling over whether it makes any sense to do some of the stuff that you can do solo, but then requires a grouping finale, like the shroud's Heroic 4, etc. Or is there any point showing GSI digging? I haven't really gotten involved in that much, but it hardly seems worth recording. Yet, it is part of the game. There are some actually pretty cool speeders you can unlock, and I'm tempted to spend some time digging just to get them. What about the HK-51 quest? I like the kick-off on the Theoretika, but the running around digging is tedious enough to do, much less watch.

I dunno yet. Still mulling over some of this as I do the last section of chapter 2 with my bounty hunter, and then chapter 3 with both the trooper and the bounty hunter, reaching legendary status, and then doing the last two flashpointy missions with my Jedi Guardian, getting him completely up to date. Once I do that, I'm kinda... done, except waiting to start over.

I wonder if I should wait until the new interface and outfitter come out with 7.0 before even starting? I very well might. That leaves me... what to do? Well, I can run my Sith Warrior through the story elements of the expansions and catch him up doing the Empire side too. Only a few of the stories have a faction side; most of the expansions just have "the" story which is the same Empire or Republic. But when you have to actually join one or the other on Iokath, you start to get a little bit variation between the two again.

My Sith Warrior wasn't played up particularly dark, in part because I wanted the light-side Jaesa ending someday, which I guess I can now go pursue. I don't think that will take too long to do if it's the majority of what I'm doing when I finish the stories with the other three characters. There'll still be the rakghoul and Gree events to do, and whatever there is in the first half of December. And there's always dailies and reputation to work on. The lull in between finished one group of stories and starting another is a good time to do that, I suppose.

SWTOR update

Well, I had to grind a few heroics on both characters, but I ended up getting to level 70 after finishing Quesh but before going to Hoth. I'll still do the world story on Hoth too, both Imperial and Republic side, but after that I'm done with world stories for the rest of this run. The end is in sight and legendary player status is in view!

Some fan art of Kira Carson

I've also finished up through Echoes of Oblivion with my Jedi Knight, as well as doing a few companion Alliance Alerts, notably to restart my romance with Kira Carson, my first true Jedi love. Sadly, that meant that I had to have a heartbreaking break up scene with Lana Beniko. I had thought, and then forgotten that I'd done this, that I'd better romance Lana now with this character, because who knows if I'd ever play through the expansions again with anyone else. Realistically, there's no reason why I couldn't; it probably wasn't really as long as I thought that it was, it's just that I was often intimidated by the apparent size of it, so I took my time moving in. If you skip through the daily area stuff, you can do the DLC stuff fairly quickly, I'd imagine. It doesn't really make much sense with any character other than the Jedi Knight, I don't think, although I do still intend to eventually do it with my Sith Warrior too, and play through a more Imperial sided approach. Plus, I want the payoff of my light-side Jaesa romance to actually... y'know... pay off. One of my big disappointments in the main story is that you can't actually romance Jaesa per se in the main story, because she's too goody-two-shoes and straight-laced. You can only have this strange "academic" romance.

Or you can romance Mission Vao... err... whatever her name is. The twi-lek girl who looks just like Mission Vao and has the same voice actress so she sounds just like her too. Personally, I just don't really like romancing alien girls, although maybe when I do a second playthrough I'll play alien characters when the chance of romancing alien girls comes up (it doesn't matter; there's no way I'm romancing Kaliyo Djannis no matter what.) Curiously, the "Diversity Inc." Republic only gives you one alien romance option out of the four main characters; that is, assuming the first, default romance option. (The smuggler has a secondary alien romance option, but she is neither feminine nor attractive, so I don't get it myself.) And that's assuming that Nadia Grell isn't just a regular human with weird cultural make-up, which I'm not entirely sure of. Given this, I'm almost guaranteed to want to play a human protagonist (I'm talking about male characters romancing the girls, obviously. I've never played any female characters at all yet.) Meanwhile, on the Imperial side, only the bounty hunter romances a human (technically cyborg, but c'mon) girl, at least in  their default run. My agent, because I hate Kaliyo Djannis so much, waited until he got Raina Temple, then I immediately stuck a customization on her so that she's a pretty white girl, and did a hurried romance with her in chapter 3. And My Sith Warrior studiously ignored Vette's romance attempts and stuck to Jaesa (also stuck a customization on her to turn her into a pretty white girl. Come to think of it, I did the same thing for Risha. It ticked me off that she had such a big part to play in the story before she was your actual companion, so you get a weird casting discontinuity halfway through the smuggler run.)

Anyway, my point is that the end of all of my first run through initiatives (with the exception of my Imperial Expansion Packs; the Sith Warrior is still stuck on Yavin IV) are looking to be done within the next few weeks. I can do the last two flashpoints with my Jedi quickly enough, and then I've just got four planets each; only one of which I intend to do the planetary story with. for my bounty hunter and trooper, and then BAM! I'm ready to... I dunno. Start something new?

I'm having second thoughts about the recording. For various reasons, when I went to have my brother add a graphics card when he built my PC for me, he was having trouble getting it to work. He ended up not putting one in, but I figured that with older games being the only ones I play, I'd be fine just off the processor. And mostly that's true. The only games that I play that aren't emulated from way back in the 90s or earlier are Street Fighter IV, which runs perfectly fine, and The Old Republic, which runs perfectly fine... most of the time.

I've had a little bit of lag here and there during the expansions to the game, and I found that Mek-Sha in particular is super laggy. I think its because the environment is so detailed and has so much more going on than most of the others. I actually remembered that I had my graphics settings turned up really high, so I reduced the shading quality and the frame-rate. I don't know that the frame-rate is noticeable at all, and I remember now that when I picked between low and high shading quality that it was not immediately obviously which actually looked better (very low, on the other hand, looks terrible.) That helped a bit. But my understanding is that with OBS, it consumes a lot of graphical resources to record. I'd have to record in small bits; fifteen minutes or so or less, before stopping, saving, and starting a new file. Maybe this is better anyway; it'll make editing much easier if I do my recordings based on missions rather than open wandering of the gigantic planets. But it makes the recording feel like it's like to be more of a chore than I expected too. So I'm not so such that I'm excited about it anymore.

Finally... some quick commentary on Echoes of Oblivion. The first half of the flashpoint was really cool. Creepy, atmosphere, reasonably well done, even a bit of fun humor with the banter between Kira and Scourge. The second half felt like an incredibly tedious and irritating acid trip, and the final battle was so chaotic that I really had no idea what was going on; I ended up just basically button mashing until I'd beat the three versions of the Sith Empire and could see the story cut scene again. Blegh.

Balmorra and Taris and world stories

My trooper is ahead of my bounty hunter by a planet or two. I've done Balmorra, the two Flashpoints, and then Quesh. For both, I did all of the class story and world story missions, a handful of exploration missions here and there, and a few heroics (although some of those were going back to the console on the Fleet and doing them on Ord Mantell and Coruscant.) The Trooper is level 70 right now, so I've still got five levels to go. I think that I'm going to not do anything particularly clever with these. I've got to go to Hoth next, and I'll probably do the world story again in addition to the class story, but probably... that's it. After that, I expect to be at (or just about at) level 75. Once that happens, I'll drop off of doing anything but the class stories and the events. 

The Bounty Hunter is about halfway through doing the same thing for Taris, after which he's got the two Imperial side flashpoints and Quesh to get up to level 70. He's at... 65, I think? Or just about to be. He should be where he needs to be when I finish Quesh too, i.e. at level 70 or even a tiny bit higher.

I don't have a lot of extra going on. The swoop bikes event just ended (early this morning, actually) and nothing starts again until a week from today, when the rakghoul event will start. The events aren't a huge XP source, but you can get some XP if you grind it. It's mostly for the reputation more than anything else. Although if I really grind the rakghoul event while it's live, I'll probably get a level or two out of it for the characters that aren't fully levelled yet. (I should take my Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular into the rakghoul tunnels while I'm at it too, and see if I don't get a level or two into them as well.)

In general, I've been fairly pleased with the trooper. For whatever reason, I've heard bad things about the trooper story, that its one of the weaker ones (although to be fair, what I've heard is that that is especially egregious at the very end, Corellia or even post-Corellia finale). So far, I've found the trooper considerably better as a story than the Jedi Consular or Sith Inquisitor, both of which I found to be the weakest so far. Of course, there's still time to screw it up. And I don't really love the subservience aspect of it, but given that he's a low (-ish) level military officer, he's got to play nice with his superior officers, so that's not surprising. I just don't like it personally, because I'm a very independent person. That's part of what eventually got me a bit tired of Galaxy's Edge by Anspach and Cole. I really like the more swashbuckling independent operators part of the storyline, but the focus was much more on the military special forces stuff. I just didn't like it quite as much. I don't have a military background, nor do I have a military personality. That said, it's a similar problem with all of the classes, because that's a limitation of the medium, a little bit. But it feels just a bit more acute on this class, because of the expectation of deference to superior officers. The trooper isn't mouthing off to the General who "handles" him, or argues with her too much. Even if my natural inclination would be to do exactly that.

I had earlier gotten a bit tired of the slog. I think taking a break for several months was exactly what I needed. I came back, finished up two stories that I kind of thought were among the weaker ones anyway, and then I've been going strong on advancing my Jedi Knight into the most up-to-date DLCs, and getting my last two class stories finished. I'm excited, again, at least for the time being!

Conquests is not where it's at (in 7.0)

I've been reading some news, and while I was just about to think about migrating from grinding heroics to grinding conquest for gold and XP, it was announced that conquests in 7.0 will give neither. You'll still have to grind them for gear updates, but they won't give you anything else.

Sigh. It seems like that's only going to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the game to me. I'm not sure what'll be the appropriate grinding avenue in the future. And it's not just that I need the credits to spend on the GTN, although reasonably priced GTN items would be great. I'm grinding credits to unlock all of the species on the legacy menu right now. 1,500,000 a pop, and there's; what eight of them to do?

There's always something.

Anyway, Alderaan went very fast when I was just doing the class story with no world story and no exploration, but I think my XP gain is too slow. I'm still not quite level 65 with either character, and if I want to spend the majority of both characters end game planets (and by end-game, I mean the last whole half or more of the normal story) at level 75, then I'm going to have to step it up when it comes to getting XP. I'm going to have to either do the world stories for the next few worlds, go back and do world stories that I didn't do on past planets, or grind heroics or something. The latter has some additional advantages; in addition to XP, I'll get more gold, and I'll get more crates so I can get that one piece of remnant armor that I've still been trying to get for the last several months. Plus, those crates give me loads of companion gifts to spend, so I can rank up my companion ratings, which I'm woefully behind on too. Both my trooper and my bounty hunter have more companions still to acquire and every single one of my characters could use some improved companion affection on all of their companions. I don't think I have a single companion into the 30s when it comes to companion level, of a max of 50.

I also breezed through Onderon pretty quickly, although I'll probably come back for more exploration and dailies. It seems like it was a short planet, though. I suspect Mek-Sha will be as well. I really am coming up on the final finale (so far) for at least one character. Finally. So that'll be nice. I'd like to take my Sith Warrior up to that point too at some point. And, of course, if I do my recording project, I'll probably take my recorded Jedi Knight through it too.

I'm really kind of bummed about some of the content that I can't seem to figure out how to do, though, because it requires grouping, and I'm either not having much luck with that, or don't want to do it because it's too much trouble and too stressful. Not everyone you can group with who's done this stuff before is friendly and helpful. The Dread Masters storyline is really kind of only hinted at if you don't do a bunch of dread masters operations, for instance. Really unfortunate.

Bounty hunting

If it seems like my blog has become little more than a daily Old Republic journal... well, it has. But that won't last forever. In any case, here's my daily update/rambling discussion.

I finished Chapter 1 with the Trooper. When I was done, I was level... 65, I think? It's clearly going much slower now that the double XP event is over (not surprising) but I should still be in good shape to play most of the next two chapters at max level, unless the expansion drops sooner than I think and the max level increases to 80 while I'm still going on with this. In fact, that's a good point; two of my classes that I've either finished the main story with, or at least aren't playing any more, aren't max level today; they're at level ~60. None of my characters are higher than 75, obviously, because that's the max right now. Do I have any interest in grinding the last few levels on those two characters that don't have it yet, and do I have any interest in grinding up to 80 with everyone once the expansion drops? Or will I just let them naturally and slowly level up doing events and Heroics and whatever else I do with them? It seems heroics will yield less credits, so I'll probably do them less often than I'm doing them now, where that's my main credit and XP grind, it's likely that I'll be migrating that grind to conquests and recurring events, even before the update. Except for the swoop bikes event; I have little interest in that one. The other four recurring events are all cool, though. Plus, I still want to finish leveling up my reputation for all of those. 

Anyway, chapter 1 always finishes with a coda after Alderaan. For some reason, I don't really like Alderaan. It's a big planet, and exploring new regions only seems to uncover a handful of hexes on the map. The mountain ridges gate it into smaller regions; it's not all that wide open. And honestly, I don't think the grassy meadow graphics look all that good. While it should be a planet that (graphically, at least) is right up my alley, I somehow don't really like it as much as I think that I should. Part of it may be that while it has a kind of space opera translation of typical Northern European fantasy feel, everyone looks really brown; either southern European or even Hispanic among most of the nobility and African among many others. This isn't really shocking given that they cast Jimmy Smits as the most iconic actual ethnic Alderaanian in the movies, but I find that I don't really relate as much as I'd like. Then they make most of them terribly unlikable in a cartoonish caricature of nobility and feudal systems. And finally, I think the killiks make the planet unlikable too. I don't like the collicoids either. I'm just not a fan of bug tunnels in general, and here they're spread all over the place. While the collicoids are more straightforward as hungry monster types, the killiks with their Joiner issue are actually much more monstrous, and the game often tries to paint them as somehow sympathetic, and gives you light side points all too often for being sympathetic to their cause.

Of course, I'm already "on record" plenty about the stupid, beta loser options being "light side" because being strong and decisive makes r-selected rabbits feel bad, or something. But it's a recurring issue that pops up here and there all through the game without ruining it exactly... just making it lesser than it could be if it had a more macho heroism vibe like the space opera on which George Lucas claims to have been originally inspired. It's occasionally irritating, but it's not a deal-breaker for the game.

In any case, I'm not particularly excited about going back to Alderaan after just finishing both the class story, the world story, and exploring the entire map with my Trooper, so I may fart around with my Powertech for a while before doing it. I've gone back to the Black Talon solo flashpoint twice, and although it drops me a gun that's better in stats than my current weapon, it looks like trash, and my normal gun will get upgraded as soon as I level up enough to install the next wave of mods, so I'll probably just hold off. I've also done the very first cut scene for the Nar Shadaa bonus story, and maybe I'll do Tatooine too before going to Alderaan. I've also got stuff to do with my OG Jedi Guardian; the Nathema conspiracy which wraps up the whole Theron Shan betrayal storyline, and paves the way for Ossus and more dailies. After that, there's all of the Onslaught expansion stuff to do; Onderon, Mek-Sha and a fairly big batch of story flashpoints. And after that...  on to the new Legacy of the Sith expansion. And it'd be nice to get my Sith Warrior up there too. My original intention was to do both of those two characters all the way to the top (for one thing, I didn't romance Vette, so I want my long-term Jaesa romance to pay off). But he's been stuck on Yavin 4 for months, without any progress other than using him for events and grinding here and there. And he's my lightsaber and dye module crafter too, I suppose. Anyway, after doing the bonus stories for Nar Shadaa and Tatooine, and going back to my Guardian and getting to (and doing) Ossus, I'll be ready to dive back into Alderaan with my bounty hunter.

Anyway, why don't I like Alderaan? I think I already discussed that, but let's assume for the sake of argument that you're chances of running into dangerous wildlife or violent bad guys wasn't standard for the Old Republic, but rather standard for our world, i.e., the vast majority of people go their whole lives without ever doing either, then which planet would I actually want to live on in the Old Republic? Which environment seems to be the most pleasant in terms of scenery as well as living accommodations?

Keeping in mind that there are planets utilized in many flashpoints, expansion chapters, and other settings other than simply open world planets on the galaxy map, I think that a contender has to be Copero, the chiss planet in the A Traitor Among the Chiss flashpoint. It's probably not terribly exotic as far as planets to, having a kind of Amalfi Coast and Lake Como, but slightly more tropical at the shore, given that there's palm trees. Rakata Prime and Rishi seem like pleasant planets to be on, although the lack of any kind of development might be a turn-off. Where are you supposed to live, in a ruined hut? Athiss is supposed to be a Sith world, so it's probably all dark, and melancholy and sinister, but the scenery is actually really pretty. Tython is supposed to be a Jedi world, but it was from a time where the Jedi hadn't yet crystalized as the "light side of the Force" faction, so it's got its dark spots too. I'm going to assume that these aren't really issues, however, and consider them as liveable places. Tython has a nice, fancy little "city" in the form of the Jedi enclave that you can live at too. Odessen is nice in a kind of "it's the PNW planet" kind of way, so not terribly exotic, but certainly nice, and as I said yesterday, I think Ossus is prettier than people give it credit for; the kind of black rocks, red sand and stunning waterfalls that overlook the ruined enclave are beautiful. I'm not really a fan of living in ruins, however. 

Finally, Voss is gorgeous. I haven't decided if the golden-amber light is because of the time of day, or because of the gigantic yellow gas giant in the sky, or something else, and I also haven't decided if it's supposed to be fall with fall colors, or if that's just the color of some trees on Voss. Either way, I absolutely love the look of it. And, other than weird, bald, colorful aliens with honeycomb eyes, which kind of freak me out, it seems like a reasonably nice place to live too.

Break

I've been online on the Old Republic off and on today, but I haven't really done any story missions at all. Rather, I've been exploring the Conquests systems, a system that I've otherwise kind of ignored, and it's given me a chance to explore Ossus a little bit (even though I haven't done the two Chiss/Nathema flashpoints with my Jedi Guardian, who's the farthest along. Once I do those two flashpoints, I'll "officially" be on Ossus with a character rather than just poking around with characters who I'm not interested in playing the expansions with.) Ossus is a pretty planet. In general, I often find that the planets that are supposed to be "wastelands" as the result of some kind of ecological catastrophe are the ones that I think have the prettiest scenery. But I'm a confirmed fan of the deserts of the Southwest, so that's maybe not terribly surprising. 

Anyway, I've enjoyed more than I expected "grinding" the conquests, in part, because the conquests are a little bit more varied than just grinding heroics or reputation, like I normally have done when I've gone on grinding sprees. I wish, however, that grinding wasn't a requirement. I feel like all of the MMO stuff that's grafted on the game is poorly done and poorly thought out. Then again, it's possible that I just don't really like MMOs very much. Open worlds where you can group up and stuff, like Red Dead Online and GTA Online, or something like that, is fine. I kind of enjoy the fact that I see other people running around while I'm playing, even if I'm not actually interested in playing with them for the most part. But even then, I'd probably rather than Old Republic was just an offline game that I could play by myself without being on a server at all.

What would have to be done to accomplish this, assuming BioWare were to make that a goal someday? Probably not a lot. A bunch of Flashpoints were converted into a single player mode by dialing down the difficulty just a tad and making it possible to get a robot extra companion to fight (fairly effectively) with you. The rest of the Flashpoints and other Flashpoint-like stuff, like Uprisings or Heroic 4s could probably be handled the same way. Operations are bigger, badder, and more complex, and are highly difficult Flashpoints for 4 or even 8 players. These would require a bit more reworking to be rejiggered as solo flashpoint-like experiences. A handful of other small areas are also for grouping; you can't fight world bosses solo, for instance, because your companion will just run away, leaving you to die fairly quickly. The times I've gotten the attention of a world boss by myself, it only took one or two hits before I was dead.

There's also a lot of assets in the game that you would need to be able to get somehow. The cartel market is for "real live" money microtransactions, usually for cosmetic things. and there is a resale market called the GTN. Presumably, what would need to happen is that these would be combined somehow, an economy that makes some sense using credits (not dollars) would be applied to all of these assets, and then they'd be purchasable through whatever offline market replaces the cartel market and GTN.

I dunno; it's all wishful thinking, I suppose. It'd be nice if this offline version of the game, if it existed, still allowed you to direct-link via the internet to someone else, without having to connect through a game server, but again, it's all wishful thinking anyway.

UPDATE: Well, I played Traitor Among the Chiss. Now, I need to blast through the Nathema Conspiracy and I'm on to the Ossus material. I also got the tech fragments I needed and bought the Concentrated Fire chestplate with my older bounty hunter where I accidentally locked off the story by flying to Onderon after finishing chapter 1. Of course, I was already at level 75 and had maxed out the Armormech skill, so I kind of had to keep him. I'm not sure what I'll do with him, but he's nice to use for dailies for reputation, events, and of course crafting and credit farming. And because I'm basically level 60 while starting Alderaan with both my trooper and new bounty hunter, and I'm doing more exploration and planetary story missions than I initially intended to, I'll have a goo run of being level 75 with both of those two. They'll be able to use that (cosmetically) eventually too. (I continue, despite significant farming efforts, to be completely unable to find a Remnant Underworld Trooper chestplate, which is a color swap of it. It's the only crate piece of armor that I don't have that I actually care about getting.) I was a little bit surprised to find that my old bounty hunter was somehow max lightside. He didn't have a ton of light side tokens, but my Jedi Guardian went and bought him the light side blaster pistol, so he's got a much cooler looking weapon now. With the lightside pistol and the Concentrated Fire chest-plate, he's a cool looking dude.

It's been interesting using him after organically playing almost 60 levels of my new bounty hunter. I don't recall how or why I did my key mapping and toolbar set-up on the old one, but I'm slowly moving him into having the same set-up as my new one (both of these characters are Powertechs, neither is a Mercenary. I'll still have that to play at some point later.)

In any case, I'm curious what rewards there will be for the upcoming 10th anniversary for subscribers and active accounts. Presumably some pets—every May the 4th we get a little pet R2 droid; maybe a companion and some other cosmetics. I presume they're going to step it up compared to what they normally do and offer something a bit bigger. We'll see, though, won't we?

I'm also feeling like because of my timing I missed out on some pretty cool cosmetics and rewards for Galactic Seasons 1; I'm likely to be interested in pursuing the grind a little for season 2. 

UPDATE 2: Although I've never taken advantage of the big money exploits, and so I never have big money, I do have decent money after I've grinded Heroics or something for a couple of hours. I had a three or more characters sitting around with about a million credits, and nothing really important to spend them on (other than the million I just spend on the chest piece mentioned above.) I noticed (or was reminded) that you can spend credits (as opposed to cartel coins, which more or less translate to "real money") on race unlocks. I hadn't ever done this before, because 1) it was my intention to eventually play all of the races up to level 50 on some class, which would have unlocked them for free, albeit after a major investment in many, many, many man-hours of playing, and 2) and I tend to prefer American heroes for my characters, i.e., human, white and male. But, there's a chance that I'll want to mix it up with my next wave of recorded play-throughs, and have at least some characters that aren't human, white or male. I'm even thinking of live-streaming my character creation with my oldest son, who lives out of state, but who loves the two Knights of the Old Republic games and will appreciate and like watching the playthroughs, I think. If I give him some feedback on the character choices, I may well want to pick different races. I also am thinking back to the idea that I've mentioned briefly in other posts that I get a little squicked out by guys making out with alien girls; when the romance partner is an alien, maybe I'll make the main character an alien too. They don't have to be the same race; I don't mind a zabrak or a chiss making out with a twi-lek, or whatever. But I don't like handsome, white guys who've got better options making out with weird aliens, because... they've got better options.

Double XP

As our double XP event comes to an end (tomorrow) I have to marvel at what it means for my characters. I finished two characters and started two characters on it. The ones that I finished were pretty far along, so it was just a case of blasting through a couple of planets of story missions. For the two that I've started, I've done the two planets of the introduction and two planets of the first chapter respectively, i.e., I've just finished Nar Shadaa and the brief follow-up interlude for both of them, and I'm ready to go to Tatooine. I deliberately didn't do much (if any) of the Heroic missions for either character, but I did do a fair number of of the regular exploration and daily non-heroic repeatables. I also didn't do the world story, but for the Imperial side, Nar Shadaa's world story comes in chunks that are not unlike exploration missions, in many ways, so I ended up doing a couple of them. In any case, I'm about to start Tatooine, I'm still in the first chapter—only half way through it, even—and my trooper is level 49 and my bounty hunter is level 50. Which, I'll remind you, is the original level cap and, in theory, where you are when you are wrapping up the missions on Corellia in the end game. Even when double XP goes away tomorrow and my leveling slows down, I shouldn't have any trouble reaching level 75 with both of these characters before finishing the story, unless I completely and totally forego exploration missions. Which, honestly, was my original intention. But it's been long enough ago since I played them that they're feeling (mostly) kind of fresh. And I may want to go back and do some daily heroics on the lower level planets for the money. It'll end up being both a credit and XP (and gear) grind at my level, just because that's how that works. The "big" savings that I had had when I restarted have been significantly depleted both in outfitting and perking out these new characters and also in buying the few things that are affordable on the GTN that I wanted to archive for future use, like the black crystals in all normal colors, etc. I've now got two of the black core reds, purples, blues and oranges. The "charred" orange I have in my collections, and the black core green can be bought at the rakghoul Jawa. I've got two of those archived for use when I play a Jedi Sentinel, in fact.

Anyway, I've been a bit more relaxed rather than focused with both of these characters in terms of doing exploration and some other stuff that my original plan was to skip altogether. I've always liked the bounty hunter, even though I screwed up my last one and locked out chapters two and three before playing them last time. This is actually my third time going through that character. I've also liked the trooper much more than I thought I would, although if it sticks true to the pattern, we'll completely switch to a different focus in chapter two with a different antagonist/villain/rival. I think even the people who like the trooper story say that it starts stronger than it maintains. 

When I played the Jedi Knight, I was a guardian, and I was alternating with a Sith Warrior who was a Marauder. That was the last time that I went back and forth between the two unmirrored versions; I did the Gunfighter/Sniper, which are mirrored, and I did Shadow/Assassin which are also mirrored. Playing the unmirrored Commando vs Powertech I believe gives me an interesting view on the alternate that I haven't yet played. Sure, sure... the animations will be a bit different. I didn't really feel exactly the same playing the Gunslinger vs the Sniper, or the Shadow vs the Assassin. But the mechanics were obviously the same once you paid attention.

To be honest with you, it's nice that you don't have to pay too close attention. I like that Old Republic is a fairly casual, relaxed game.

Stars' End

I'd like to be playing Old Republic right now, but for various reasons I'm not, while my computer is cycling through some processes that take up probably too much power for me to feel like it's a good idea (namely, backing up my wife's old hard drive, and transferring it to a solid state drive so I can put it on the new desktop that I got for her.) I've also got my dumb sporadic internet issues worked out, but it required changing our "box" which also made my wife very sad, because she had a good 100+ hours of stuff saved on the DVR that's now lost. It's pretty much all hers, too. She's the only one who watches any TV. I was trying to start two shows with her this season: La Brea and Ghosts, but at most we missed an episode or two, so we'll probably just keep going with those two.

Anyway, while waiting for all the gigs of files to transfer, I started up the Mandolorian soundtrack in the background, and finished reading Han Solo at Stars' End. I have it in the Han Solo Adventures omnibus, but it was first published in early '79. I think, other than Splinter of the Mind's Eye, that it's the very first Star Wars expansion project; the very second novel published, and the first prequel (since it takes place earlier than Star Wars the movie.) I've actually had this for some time, but after reading only a couple of chapters, I got distracted and set it aside for months. I finally—belatedly, I admit—blasted through it fairly quickly.

It's an interesting piece. Along with Splinter, it's a small view into what the Star Wars galaxy might have looked like had it remained truer to its roots in "traditional" space opera rather than becoming more ponderous and "mythic" as the critics like to say, mostly so that they can sound like they're saying something important at all. I think the direction that ultimately Empire went with the whole vs. Darth Vader stuff was the right direction for the franchise, in the end, but sometimes I miss the lighter, breezier, swashbuckling Star Wars, and in my opinion, the franchise needs to do frequent roots checks to make sure that it hasn't deviated too far in its diversity from its roots. 

The other interesting thing about the Han Solo novels is that they are a view into a galaxy that has more going on in it than just the Empire and the Rebellion. Han Solo as a scoundrel, rascal and pseudo-privateer against the Corporate Authority has a very different vibe then the fight against the Empire. It also has a very different vibe than the Jedi as Superheroes vibe that ended up becoming especially prominent in the prequel and sequel trilogy eras. 

While there are many things I could complain about with regards to the execution of a lot of things in The Old Republic, I also have to give them credit for remembering this most crucial of details about the franchise, and digging into a lot of classic space opera vibes and recreate or emulate them in the game, when possible. The entire Old Republic franchise; all three games (although the third is, of course, an order of magnitude bigger than any of the stuff that preceded it) are really among the best Star Wars content that the franchise has done in decades. Along with The Clone Wars, The Mandalorian, and a few other video games and novels, it's the only thing that even comes close to being as good as the original trilogy was. 

And as I've pointed out before, although we didn't know it because it's fantastic visual presentation was so much better than novels written in the 30s, 40s 50s and 60s, the reality is that Star Wars from a plot and characterization standpoint, is really a fairly pale imitation of those classic space operas. Oh, sure... it was always cooler looking, because it was a movie with good special effects, even in the 70s. But that's not everything. To be honest, the Old Republic doesn't really look that great for a video game. I mean, it certainly does the job, but I've played Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Ghost of Tsushima, fer cryin' out loud. Compared to those, Old Republic looks positively primitive. And honestly, even though you've obviously got to give it a handicap, if you will, considering that it's ten years old now, the reality is that even at the time the Old Republic wasn't necessarily the best looking game that ever came out.

Now, that said, it does have some great visual design. It's just that technically, it's not a super graphically sophisticated game. Which, I think, is actually fine, because by being less graphically sophisticated, it manages to be a lot more instead. The game is absolutely freakin' huge, for instance, and offers more content than any ten games of its predecessors' caliber. Given that, it can be forgiven, in my opinion, its occasional awkward steps.

Outfitter 7.0

An interesting tidbit of news just dropped for the 7.0 update of Old Republic; the devs have finally modified the outfit designer (which is now Outfitter) to include not just clothing but also weapons. Now; I have a fair number of cool moddable weapons lined up, but if I'd had this, I just might well have used more of my crafted weapons as cosmetics. I might yet, depending on how much of this I play....

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9975594#edit9975594

UPDATE: Apropos of very little, I put two tickets in to the subscriber helpdesk today. Both were, ultimately, closed without any resolution. The first one was for my original Jedi Knight character. I'd been working on the HK-51 unlock quest, which is a very tedious and time-consuming thing to do with the exception of the spooky abandoned space-ship part, which is very atmospheric and kind of cool. However, when I let my subscription lapse, I somehow lost the components that I already had. But the mission log shows that those missions are done, so I can't do them over. Of course, I can reset the entire thing and restart it, which is looks like I'll have to do. But I put a bunch of hours already into that and was looking forward to not doing it again. Sigh.

I also noticed that the Ashfall Tauntaun and Thermal Retention armor set were a reward given to people who entered a code because they had bought a physical copy of Star Wars Battlefront, back when it was new. Hey, I bought a copy of that! (Technically, my in-laws did, and for my sons. But the point is, we have a physical copy.) I asked how I could get that redeemed. Turns out the promotion is over, and they can't manually give me credit for it. It also turns out that it was supposed to be the PC version (of course, we have the PS4 version.) I had thought that this one was a bit more of a long-shot than the first one, although I also thought that the second one would have been a very easy one for them to just push a simple button, or send me a code where I could push it, and be done with it. The mount and the outfit would appear in the mailbox for every character I had on the account, the same way the two pilot outfits do. No such luck. They shut me down on both of them.

To be fair, the thermal retention outfit is kind of silly. It's like Han Solo's Hoth coat, but with skin-tight leggings. I don't know that I'd have used it for anything, except maybe a female character, or a companion. But I do really like the goggles that it comes with, and I'd use them for an alternate outfit on most of my characters, if I could. And for some reason, I love the tauntaun mounts. Not the geared up ones wearing some kind of armor or padding, but the regular ones. I've got my old Imperial sniper, who's story I finished and who is already at level 75, sitting on Hoth running around luring tauntauns so I can buy more and more copies of the mountain and tundra tauntauns to give to my characters so that they can have them early on, instead of waiting until Hoth to get them. The tundra tauntaun is the "basic" one who's main color is light gray, and who looks the most like the movie version. The mountain tauntaun is a brownish color swap. The ashfall tauntaun, which I wanted, is a much darker gray color swap. I would have loved to have all of my characters running around with all three. You can't even get them on the cartel market for cartel coins (i.e., microtransaction currency.) And you can't even get them on the GTN either, and even if you could, the economy there has gotten ridiculously inflated into insane levels in the last few months. Everything is way over-priced.

In any case, while I admit that I certainly a not entitled to have had them give me that, I kind of hoped that they would as a consolation prize for the other issue that they couldn't fix. Blegh. I'd love to sit here and tell you that customer service for BioWare is top notch, that I highly recommend them, that they are above average, that they took care of me, etc. But they didn't. They just were... eh, sorry, mate. You're on your own. In other words; they're customer service for EA now.

Another one goes down

Finished the Sith Assassin last night, kind of early even. Some of the lines of dialogue and other things that this most sarcastic of characters does was pretty funny, and some of the plot points were genuinely sorta clever. That said, the story never managed to rise above average. I think that there are three reasons for this:

• In spite of what the game is telling you, the character isn't very clever. He runs along from one thing that he's told to do by someone else to another, blundering into obvious traps, because the plot demands that he does. He rarely feels "in charge" or active, rather he comes across as very reactive and almost passive even. To be fair, this is very difficult to avoid given the medium in which it's told. Players themselves can't have so much control over the game environment that they really make their own decisions and drive the game, like in a table-top roleplaying game. All computer RPGs have this issue to some extent. But in this case, it's a little bit more obviously executed. The smuggler has this problem too.
• Most of the companion characters were only OK in terms of interest, and few had any real chemistry with the main character. This is especially egregious when the obvious (in fact only, in his case) romanceable option is one where you kind of think... meh. I thought of my playthrough of the Jedi Guardian that that character was really, really bland, but he's kind of saved, if you will, by very interesting companion characters, particularly his love interest Kyra. Of course, I also admit that I'm not hugely interesting in making love to weird alien girls with strange things other than hair on their heads. Which... if you think about it... is true for every single female romanceable non-human character in the main game. I'm not going to get into the weird woketarded romance options of the DLCs, or the one-off flirtation options, because I don't remember them, but of your main story companions, every single time there's an alien girl to romance, she's either bald, or has weird, fleshy tentacles on her head instead of hair. No wonder I can't get into them. In any case, the personality that they wrote for her was only OK, and as with most of the pushier girls in the game, your behavior towards her that is supposed to be successful at romancing is sometimes a bit cringey and beta.
• (Curiously, an exception to the chemistry with the characters is Darth Vash after she gets trapped in the body of your "morose monster." Too bad that wasn't explored more. There was some genuine chemistry there... not romance-like chemistry, but friendzone chemistry... and the whole question of whether she actually wanted you to succeed against her or not was referred to but never developed. Somewhat disappointing missed opportunity there.)
• Another problem with some of these stories is that they are only as interesting as the villain you're chasing for much of the arc. What's going on in the first few planets is actually kind of interesting, but after you're just Darth Thanaton's rival, but where he really comes from or why he cares is never really established to anyone's satisfaction, making him a kind of by-the-numbers villain who never has any charisma or impact. That's another aspect of the Jedi Guardian playthrough that saved it from its boring main character; between his companions and his rivals/antagonists/villains, they make up for it. It would probably be even better if he were a somewhat more interesting character, but it actually works OK with him being the "straight" man in a collection of weirdos who are all more interesting than he is to some degree. In the case of the Inquisitor, he's arguably more interesting than most of the characters around him, but not necessarily, and all of those around him feel like they were thought up by the writers from pretty bland central casting tropes that have little real emotional connection to the main character or the events going on around them. Again, with the exception of Darth Vash, who sadly doesn't feature enough. 

Anyway, because I finished it earlier than I thought I would, I jumped into my Republic commando. I'm pleasantly surprised so far; for some reason, I'd expected that storyline to not be all that great. To be fair, all I've done is Ord Mantell (and even then, I've got a handful of exploration missions to clean up before I leave). But so far, the story has been better than I expected. You don't have to play the cringey "sir yessir!" recruit very much at all, and the whole "the Republic is corrupt and useless and the Separatists are kind of sympathetic" vibe isn't really as bad as I feared. In fact, there's some real interesting twists and irony there. It was done more maturely and less overtly politically than I definitely feared it to be.

There were two moments when I got dark side points for reasons that should not have given them, though. When you decide that you need to bring the stolen medicine back to the base to treat wounded troops, as you're asked, instead of letting the thieving refugees run off with it, that's not dark side. Why should the soldiers be less worthy of being saved than thieves? When you tell the middle school aged kid that he should go back home to his parents who miss him instead of giving him money to run away and leave the planet, that's not dark side either. Both of those boggled my mind. What the devil is wrong with the writers? They have some serious emotional issues. However, those moments stood out because they were so strange, not because that's normal. Plus, both were exploration missions that you can simply ignore, and probably should, quite honestly. I always thought that the lady that wanted you to go back out in to the battlefield to find her grandmothers necklace that she lost was dumb too. Lady, it's a battlefield. Be glad you are alive, not entitled to send someone out to go find some trinket that you took a fancy too for sentimental reasons. But again; an exploration mission, not part of the story per se.

r-selection is a real thing with the Old Republic writers, as I've written about before. Sometimes it's almost painfully obvious, though. Some of the exploration missions on Ord Mantell are among those sometimes.

I'm also surprised how far I've gotten in terms of level. I still have a few local missions to wrap up even though I've finished the class story, but I'm almost level 20, and will probably be 21 or maybe even 22 by the time I leave the planet. Insane. The game (originally) only went up to level 50, and even now it only goes up to level 75! The double XP event that we're in right now is surely a big part of it. I wasn't going to do it this way, but I have less than a week until double XP ends. Maybe I should do the same thing in the next day or two that I just did with the trooper to my bounty hunter. Play both of them through their starting planet, including all exploration, heroic, etc. missions, using the double XP and the XP boosts that they give you, the flashpoint voyage, and get them to the capital planet before the double XP wears off. That way they'll be starting their second planet at level ~25 or so. A nice kick-off. 

As I get a bit further in, I won't be interested in doing exploration missions, or planet story missions (the starting planets don't really differentiate between class and planet stories) but I like to give starting characters a bit of a good start so I never feel like I'm worried about bumping up. Speaking of which, I've sent quite a bit of money and gear to these guys to start with too. Starting the game off with two alternative outfits of good-looking gear, as well as more weapons than I can shake a stick at has been kind of fun (I crafted every single cannon that you can craft with my smuggler and sent them to this character. Plus, I have a cartel market cannon and sent modifications to him. Every couple of levels I feel like I'm changing out my gun.) I've got some money to burn, so I can have modifications ready to go when I meet the level requirements while on Coruscant, and I'll want to dive into my legacy bank to create a third outfit. I'm going to try to be a little less of a clothes horse this time around; some of my characters I go a little crazy trying out different outfits to try and make the character have the right look. In the end, I almost always seem to settle on two or three that are my favorites, and then use them. I may yet decide that I don't think the ones I have right now are quite as cool as I think that they are now, but I've been playing around with elements long enough now that I'm a bit more settled down. Sure, sure... I haven't actually played a trooper before. But I've played enough other classes that I'm pretty sure I have an idea what kinds of suits will look good on one without having try dozens of options before settling down. Sadly, of all of the Alliance crate armors that I most wanted for the trooper, I still can't seem to manage to get the Remnant Underworld trooper pieces that I want. The helmet and chest piece are gold. 

And although I actually like the color variant of those pieces that you can get as the "concentrated fire" armor set, those pieces cost a million each, I think, and you can't buy or wear them until you're level 75. Isn't that just the thing, though? You trash a dozen copies of something that you already have and don't even want, and can't seem to get the pieces you most want no matter how many Heroics you play with your high level character. I really struggled to get the Remnant Underworld Warrior pieces I wanted too; the gloves and the helmet. And the alternatives are the set-bonus armors that you can't afford and can't wear anyway, unless your character is already maxed out.

Bounty Hunter Week

As an aside, Bounty Hunter week ends today (or tomorrow morning, I think, to be technically correct.) I'd been a bit late getting into that particular track, but I'm doing quite a bit of it now. It's a pretty fun one in terms of the rotating events. Probably my favorite of them, in fact. Almost anyone can turn rogue and hunt bounties, usually for a good cause, as it happens. (Even on Imperial worlds.) I like particularly doing the Tatooine ones, because Tatooine seems like such a bounty hunter world. I'm at Heroic on the reputation tier now, but tomorrow I'll be able to cash in cached reputation chips that I've earned this week too. I also had enough of the BBA currency to buy the really awesome looking bounty hunter pistol for my .... well, for my bounty hunter, who's story I actually haven't started yet anyway. There's more bounty hunter gear that I'm really interested in too. Guess I need to keep earning.

Other than that, I've kind of already bought the rakghoul week stuff that I want, there's maybe a little bit here and there on the Dantooine pirates event that I'd like to earn, and I've found the Gree week and swoop bike weeks kind of frustrating. Bounty has so many items that I'd love to buy; weapons, costumes, companion skins (the HK-51 skin is the best looking droid in the entire game, especially as a companion), pets, mounts, etc. Plus, like I said, of the various weekly events, I think it's actually my favorite to do, now. For now, at least.

Many of the other reputation tracks don't rotate; you can do them anytime (assuming you're high enough level to, of course) and some are very difficult to do at all (gambling at someone's legacy casino in their stronghold was tough, for instance, to even find one you could do) Bounty Hunter, Gree, the two Dantooine events and the rakghouls are the ones to be sure and check out when the come around. But bounty hunter is the one that I've been anticipating the most.

To be fair, I was really anticipating some rakghoul gear, which I have now bought, so I don't care as much anymore. Those black core green crystals on lightsaber blades are sick.

Old Republic new again

Six or seven months or so ago, I was blogging quite a bit about the Old Republic, which I was actively playing at the time. (Curiously, I never made a tag specifically for it. I just made one now for this post.) Then I stopped, because I stopped actively playing and let my subscription lapse. I've recently re-upped my subscription for another two months (which will conveniently end when I'm away and unable to play for the holidays) and then will probably re-up again early next year when I'm back from Christmas and New Years out of state. I've started playing again, blasted through Voss and Corellia (thus finishing his class story) with my Jedi Shadow and went back to my Sith Assassin, where I've recently landed on Belsavis. Five of eight class stories done, and a sixth within easy striking distance, almost certainly this week. 

I had earlier played a Bounty Hunter, but I screwed it up by not knowing how the expansions worked, and locked myself out of two thirds of my class story. Because he was a maxed out level character with Armormech crew skills also at a high level, I didn't want to delete him, but I need to do a whole new bounty hunter, and I've still never done the trooper either. If I finish the Inquisitor this week, then I should be good to go to blast through the class stories, ignoring most of the world story stuff, heroics, and other optionals without too much problem. Especially if I can get the first couple of planets done while the double XP event is still going on. Which may be a bit tight, but we'll see. In any case, by the time Christmas rolls around and my subscription lapses again, I should have finished all eight class stories. Coincidentally, Old Republic will be celebrating its 10th anniversary at about that same time, and will be rolling out a significant upgrade. From a systems perspective and how the game actually plays, it's probably among the most significant upgrades that they've done, on par with launching free-to-play and launching the single-player friendly modes with 4.0. Seems like a good time for a retrospective and brief discussion of my personal experience and future with The Old Republic.

First off, I started playing right away the demo, even though I didn't subscribe until... I dunno, less than a year ago. At the time, you couldn't play more than the first two planets and about twenty levels without a subscription; it really was just a demo, so I didn't play it a lot. I was frustrated, quite honestly, with the fact that it was trying to be an MMO because of management directives when what I wanted as a Knights of the Old Republic customer was an RPG (which I also think is what the developers wanted it to be; the MMO features felt very grafted on.) Whether this was a universal desire among the customers is debatable, but clearly the developers have come out and said that an overwhelming majority of all players play the game as a single player RPG with only occasional MMO-like features being used by them. The percentage that is hardcore into the MMO stuff is relatively tiny; less than 20%, certainly, and maybe closer to 10%.

When free to play launched, I played a bit more, but I had a technical issue where one update no longer worked on my older computer that I had at the time, so I wasn't able to finish. I finally started playing "for real" after getting a new computer early this year and reinstalling. I found that a number of other things had changed with the game too. I was enjoying it enough after a little while that I bought the time-bound (rather than open-ended) subscription, and re-upped it a couple of times. I think I probably had about a six month subscription starting very early in the year (or maybe late last year) and then I've let it sit for about five months since too. I'm back again now. I'll finish all of my class stories, finish my expansion stuff that I still haven't done with my Jedi Guardian (and maybe my Sith Marauder) and then... I'd like to still do my recordings of all of the class and expansion stories, to archive them for the inevitable day when the servers go down and you can't play anymore. Sure, sure... I don't think that that's imminent or anything. The release of a major expansion at the end of the year is certainly the sign of a healthy game, or at least one that plans on being around for a while. But by its nature, it simply can't be forever. Someday the servers will turn off the lights and that'll be that. I'd love to think that they'd make a few changes (really just continuations of what they've already done) to make it capable of being a non-server, closed game that you could just play offline by yourself and continue to sell even after the servers are gone on Steam or GOG or something, but they probably won't. At some point, the game will be gone for good, and when it is, it's gone. So I want to have my archived playthroughs available for me to watch when I'm old(er) and gray(er) and feel like reliving the Old Republic stories again.

A few other things have changed. When I started playing, there were eight classes. Each class had it's own story. Each class also had two advanced classes; alternative ways of building the character. This didn't impact the story at all, but it did impact class abilities, combat, and what weapons (and possibly armor) your character would wear. Cosmetic changes that included buying modifications for your weapons and gear rather than constantly actually buying new level-appropriate weapons and gear did away with a little bit of that. They also changed the game so that you pick your advanced class right away. While there are still eight stories, each story has effectively two classes that, while similar, also offer marked differences in playstyle. However, there are not sixteen classes, in a manner of speaking. Each class has a mirror on the other faction. Some of the ability names and animations will be different, but effectively, each "advanced" class for each faction has a mirror on the other faction that plays mechanically exactly the same. So there are eight class stories and eight mechanical classes, but they don't line up. The gunfighter and the sniper, for instance, have the same mechanical class (albeit cosmetically different, and with different weapons) but one has the smuggler class story and the other has the agent class story. The scoundrel and the gunfighter are two mechanically different classes, but both have the same class story, on the other hand, the smuggler class story. 

So, I've played (or will have played) one of each class story when I'm done. My initial thought was that I'd play the other mechanical variation on each class story. That way, I'd have played all variations available, at least in terms of story and mechanics (although I've only done male characters, so I've never heard the female voice actor performances for any class.) However, I wasn't completely sure of this. Some classes, I feel, have a more iconic option than the other. Plus, just the way I did it, I may have left off some diversity of cosmetics because of the mechanical choices I made. If I played (and I did) a Jedi Shadow and a Sith Assassin, then I already played all of the characters that have double-bladed Darth Maul style lightsabers, and none of my recorded versions would have that. I also think that the weapons that only one variant ever can use, like the sniper rifle on the sniper and the assault cannon on the commando, are more iconic and unique than using the variables that only use a blaster rifle for both. Yet, I've already played a sniper and will have already played a commando. Should I do those again for my recordings just so I can have the other weapon choices that I otherwise wouldn't have, though? I'll make the characters look really unique to have the sniper and assault cannon respectively rather than just blaster rifles for both, which—less face it—is relatively generic in comparison.

My thoughts about how best to serve those interests have been thrown for an even farther loop by the announcement that the 10th anniversary upgrade, called Legacy of the Sith, will feature an even more significant shake-up to the class structure than making advanced classes something you start at character creation. Now, the class story and class mechanics are going to be somewhat decoupled in a significant way. Advanced classes are now going to be called combat styles, and can be used—with the caveat and force-users and non force-users are still completely split from each other—regardless of which class story you're playing. So I could, for instance, play the Imperial agent storyline, but use the Republic commando mechanics, including the autocannon weapon and all other commando class abilities. This creates a wide diversity of how things can be done. I could decide that if I loved the sniper class, I could play the smuggler, trooper, bounty hunter and agent class all with the sniper class, using the sniper rifle and sniper abilities. Given that this will be launching right about the time I'm finishing up my initial playthrough with every class and will be talking about getting my recordings going, does that impact how I will want to select characters for my recordings? Probably. 

I also, as I said, have no female character. I think the male characters—as human—is the most iconic way to play. So, I played all of my classes as white, human males. And, I'll almost certainly do so again for my recordings, because I would want those recordings to look iconic, I think. Maybe I could introduce a few aliens in there; the agent as a chiss, or the Sith warrior as an ethnic sith, or something (and maybe one or two on the Republic side as well—mirialin or zabrak. And I consider cyborgs to jus be variations on humans too.) I might well do this when the romanceable partner is an alien; I prefer alien to alien match-ups rather than human to alien ones.

Maybe what I'm saying is that I'd almost like more than one recording. But do I really think I'm going to record more than one playthrough with each class? It might well be dubious to think that I'll actually conclude all of this with even the more modest plans that I already have. 

Anyway, lots of thoughts. Not a lot of answers yet, except that in the short term, I'll finish my Sith Inquisitor and then play my trooper and bounty hunter after that. I might start them both at more or less the same time and leapfrog, like I was originally doing, or I might just play one and then the other sequentially. Haven't decided yet.

Anyway, here's the loading screen for the current update, which is new since I played it six months or so ago. Sadly, the big ugly sheboon is still one of the iconic NPCs that they're trying to push on us and they feature her prominently again... in the loading screen. On the other hand, that redesign for Darth Malgus is pretty sweet, and that's now a cartel market purchasable outfit.

Grimdark to superhero with the lights on dim

I've mentioned this before of course, but the biggest disappointment in the change of the Warhammer setting isn't that they replaced it with something bigger and more difficult to get your arms around; it's that they replaced it with something that has a totally different tone.

Curiously (or maybe not), Warhammer's biggest competitor, Warmachine, seems to have undergone a similar trend. I picked up the first Iron Kingdoms modules for Third Edition D&D when they were new. I've been following the setting for a long time. It had the same kind of grimdark feel to it that Warhammer did, at least at first. It later became quite obviously just superheroes in a vaguely fantasy-like setting. The exact same thing that happened to Warhammer, of course. To top it all off, it developed a suspicious grrl-power vibe, which Warhammer is now also emulating; the fantasy space marines faction of Warhammer has a sorta female.... female-ish... character on the main cover and some miniatures here and there show that they think that physically there's no difference between men and women. 

Anyway, this is a pretty cool movie. But it would have made no sense whatsoever in the original tone of the setting. And while I don't think the fantasy Justice League vibe is a problem per se, I do admit that I don't like it as much. And I especially don't like it hijacking settings that I kinda liked specifically because they had a different tone than that.

Movies

I've been very down on Hollywood. Almost happy to see it burn down. But, I've occasionally gotten carried away there, and I've also gotten caught up with other people who are also carried away, like Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, Geeks & Gamers, etc. about how bad movies are. The truth is, most of the movies that I've seen this year so far haven't been terrible. They also haven't been great; I doubt there are many at all that I'll care to ever even see again much less buy on blu-ray, but there's been few that I really actively hated too. My wife loves movies, and refuses to see the truth that Hollywood hates her because she's the mother of three boys who are as white as she is and that's her identity instead of some kind of Fake Man identity. So, to indulge her, I often go see movies that I'd much rather not go and see. But I find that sometimes they aren't nearly as bad as I expect them to be.

No Time To Die, the newest James Bond is one such. The marketing, the trailers, the comments from the writers, and even the cast, all pointed to a terrible movie. The reality was... not that bad. Actually, most of what they hinted that the movie would be, it isn't. There's a few jarring things, probably the scenes written by Phoebe... whatever her hyphenated name is, that come across as both gratuitous grrl-power petty fantasies and oddly out of place screwball comedy moments at the same time. 

I wonder if the delays that the movie had—over a year, by my count—allowed them to correct for the fan backlash that they were getting with some reshoots or at least some re-edits... although if they re-edited the film and it's still nearly three hours long, that's kind of crazy, honestly. I'd like to think that Hollywood is able to be a little bit responsive to their disastrous and hate-filled binge of whatever the heck it is that they're doing, but I'm kind of skeptical, honestly. They seem to do little other than double down. After all, we saw two trailers for the 355, a terrible looking movie about girls pretending to be men, banding together from their diverse backgrounds to save the world from a new threat—white masculinity, from the looks of it. No, thanks, I think I'll be giving that one a hard pass. It has new Charlie's Angels written all over it, except with more middle-aged women that are even more diverse than the new Angels were.

The African sheboon that gets the 007 designation isn't nearly as abrasive and obnoxious as she appeared she was going to be, and while I still don't like her, I didn't find her to be even half as unlikable as they made her out to be, her role was seriously downplayed and she didn't appear on screen nearly as much as they made her out to in the trailers, and she didn't really ever get around to upstaging Bond after all. There's a brief hinted implication that Q is gay, although I didn't even catch it until I saw someone mention it after the fact. On the other hand, given that he's a completely beta-looking British guy who probably was molested in boarding school as a kid, that isn't even shocking, to be honest. And they already race-swapped Moneypenny. I'm actually more or less gratified that they corrected the sex-swapping of M in the Craig series. The fact that the brought Voldemort on to be a more traditional M actually makes Judi Dench's earlier M seem more likeable and interesting in retrospect than had they simply sex-swapped the role and never acknowledged that they'd done so. All in all, anything bad in this movie is mostly (mostly, mind you) a continuation of other woke moves already done in the Craig run of movies. And ultimately, it was designed so as to get Craig out of the way to they can reboot and do something else. Presumably with LaFhonda Lynch, or whatever other caricaturish black name she actually has. That wasn't strictly speaking necessary; they've changed the actor many times in the past. But because they want to do a much harder reboot, where "James" Bond comes back as a black woman, or whatever the devil they think that they're going to do next, they wanted to kill off the past more authoritatively. 

Narratively, this is fine. The idea that both James Bond and his enemies just continue to exist completely as is, static and unchanging, is kind of absurd. If there are going to be enemies and conflicts, there should be resolution to those enemies and conflicts. Not sure why some see that as a controversial statement. If they're going to be killed off or ended, doing it in a respectful way, utilizing good storytelling, is certainly preferable to the Rian Johnson-style alternative. And disliking this movie because of things that were already done a decade ago, or which are likely to happen in the next few years hardly seems fair. Sure, sure... this movie is probably only as good as it is because they had time in between the original release date and the actual release date to react to the fan backlash against the direction that they were telegraphing. And yes, the franchise will probably be unwatchable going forward. But does that really have anything to do with this movie? I'm not sure. Nerdrotic made the tongue-in-cheek yet interestingly telling comment that "No women were harmed in the making of this movie." He seemed to be more put out that Bond didn't hook up with any hot chicks in bikinis than anything else. (Again, maybe he never watched The Living Daylights, one of my favorite of the pre-Craig movies in the series.)

Maybe my expectations for a Bond film are a little different than most, too. Kinda sounds like it given some of the things that I've heard youtube talking heads complain about.

After James Bond, we had a small break to refill our drinks and take a leak, and then we walked over to a different screen and watched Teen Suicide: The Musical. My wife is very sympathetic to such things as depression and anxiety disorder, so I knew what she'd want to see the movie for and what she'd think about it even before we saw it or I knew much about it, to be honest with you. And it was very much as I expected; except that the emotional manipulation was even more over-the-top than I thought it would be. 

I couldn't help, on looking at the most stereotypically Jewish looking kid that they could get to play Evan whatshisface, the main character, reading about how the twin genetic signatures for psychopathy and neuroticism are more common in the Ashkenazi population than in any other population group on earth. And I remember reading about how most of Freud's theories are based on projection of the ills that he found in his primarily Swiss Jewish clientele on to the Gentile population that surrounded him, whether it applied or not (it didn't.)

Check out the list of staff on the movie; the writers, the director, etc. 

Anyway, it wasn't a terrible movie either, and maybe there's a decent message buried in it, if you can get past the aggressive unlikableness of most of the main characters. And I know; that's kind of the point; the characters aren't likeable because they're all struggling with mental or emotional issues. Unfortunately, they did it in such a way that it's hard to feel too much sympathy for them, because they're too unlikeable. Anyway, it was hardly the kind of movie that I expected to like, and I didn't really, but it also wasn't terrible. And the main guy actually growing up enough to face his issues, as well as his own behavior, was kind of admirable in a way.