The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part IV: The Non-Jedi Classes (Republic)

The Jedi classes are obviously tied together, being the Jedi classes, but the other two are just grouped together by convenience, not otherwise really having anything in common. The smuggler and trooper classes both start together on the planet of Ord Mantell. In addition to their starting place, they are notable of course in that they are not force-using classes, and instead of lightsabers, they have guns. I played my smuggler as a gunslinger, with twin pistols, and I played my trooper as a commando with the big cannon-thing that he slings around like Jesse Ventura from Predator. I also had my smuggler become my armstech crafter, so he makes the craftable guns. For what that's worth. My trooper, on the other hand, used a progression of crafted cannons most of his "career" that the smuggler had made and mailed to him. One of the small yet significant upgrades I'm looking forward to in the new expansion that's coming out in about three weeks is the ability to have "cosmetic" weapons in the outfit designer, so the stats and the appearance aren't necessarily tied together anymore.

Anyway, let's go over again briefly the elements that I think contribute to the story playthrough experience: 1) the character himself and his portrayal through the written dialog and its delivery, 2) the plot and villains that you face off against, 3) the companion characters, and the romance options among them, and 4) how well the mechanics of the class contribute to the feel of the character.

SMUGGLER

The premise of the smuggler, of course, is to play as an Old Republic analog to Han Solo. The iconic look for the smuggler is usually even very similar to the classic Han Solo vest or jacket kind of outfit. (Although there's a commonly appearing odd one where you've got one of those neck pillows like you're about to go on a cross-Atlantic flight and want to sleep in your seat.) You even get a wookie companion, although its not the first or most prominent one in your lineup.

In general, I'd say that the smuggler class story is one of the middle of the road experiences. I was excited to play this one, as the concept is one that I really like, but the reality wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be. There's a couple of different reasons for this, and I'll get to them below. First off, how is the character itself? I actually think that he's kind of charming most of the time, in a hapless kind of way. The voice actor, Maury Sterling, is perfect for the role, and there's a lot of wit and light-heartedness to the writing. That's the good. The bad is a bit more complicated. See, the smuggler is portrayed as this alpha ladies man. On almost every single planet, there's an opportunity for a romantic fling, for instance. However, what you start to notice after a while is that the smuggler himself is kind of reactionary, passive and even beta. It's like someone tried to write a ladies man character without having the first idea of what a real ladies man is actually like. His flirty options are often kind of cringy and begging-sounding, almost, from girls that a real ladies man wouldn't give a second chance to once she showed her unlikable first front. This problem carries forward more than normal with the actual plot of the story too; the character is somehow unable to make another NPC character give him the information that he needs. There's a poorly conceived fig-leaf for why he'd go along with being strung along like this, but I gotta be honest with you; it never felt very convincing to me.

I know some of that was probably inevitable because of the medium. You can't make characters too proactive with this kind of writing, because otherwise it would be too open ended for a writer to actually write it. But you can and should do a better job of concealing that, by making the character himself feel like he's in the driver's seat even so, and not following along like a puppy dog after some other NPC who holds all of the cards. Even though, as it happens, she held only a couple of the cards and for reasons that I can't divine, we treat her like she holds all of them. I couldn't help but imagine all kinds of ways that I would have gotten around that situation if it were a table-top roleplaying experience as opposed to pre-scripted computer roleplaying experience. Ultimately, that's just not what you're expecting. The Han Solo experience is that he's a capable fellow, independent, and used to making things happen, not a hapless tagalong on his own adventure. I haven't heard a lot of people complain about this in reviews, so maybe it's not a universal problem, but it just wasn't the experience I was expecting for the smuggler, and it ended up being really kind of disappointing.

Similarly, I think the two halves of the story are not created equal. All of the stories have basically two halves; the first one makes up the introduction and Chapter 1, a total of 6 planets, and  the second makes up chapters 2 and 3, so 6 more planets. For each of the stories, you have a rival in the first half and then you graduate to a new rival/enemy and situation. With the exception of being led around too passively, which is the only thing that I don't like about the first half, I thought the treasure hunt stuff and race against Skavak was pretty good. When you go on to become a privateer for the Republic, it kind of loses focus. I don't think the second half of the story is nearly as compelling until you get to nearly the end where it tries to surprise you. I also kind of thought that dragging out an off-hand reference to Rogun the Butcher from Ord Mantell all the way to the end wasn't really credible. I was saying "Bring Rogun on!" from nearly the beginning, and yet I'm supposed to be running scared from him the entire game? The Republic privateer half promised a kind of Errol Flynn in space, but it felt like treading water until they could get to the plot point down the line that they were excited to show at nearly the very end. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure that I loved the idea of being a Republic privateer anyway. I liked the more independent feel of the first half of the story. I know that since everyone converges on the battle of Corellia at the end of their class stories that you can't be too independent, but that was always really the promise of the smuggler and bounty hunter classes in particular, and they didn't do enough to give them some space from the faction, in my opinion. Now, I'm sure it wasn't ever their intention to either, but I think that that independent feel is part of what makes both of those classes appealing as a concept, so they probably should have.

The smuggler has a decent set of companions, I suppose. Corso is the first one you pick up, and he's kind of a dumb bro type of guy. I think he's romanceable if you play a woman smuggler, but he feels a little too dumb for that to make sense to me. There's nothing wrong with him, he's just kind of always focused on some weird small picture item, like his favorite blaster, or something like that. His white-knighting personality starts to get old after a while too. The Chewie equivalent, curiously, is also kind of boring; he's just got the typical wookie former slave kind of thing going on, that we've now seen over and over again, as if it's the only thing any writer knows how to do with wookies. Gus is the last companion you pick up, and he quickly became one of my favorites. He's kind of a hapless Admiral Ackbar-looking failed Jedi swindler who's eager to please. They should have had more of him in the game, in my opinion. The two girls are the romance options, and you can do either, actually. One of them is Risha. Although you interact with her for a long time, on your ship no less, she doesn't officially become a companion until after chapter 1. Given that it was my intention to "recast" her, i.e., apply a customization to a prettier version, I found this kind of annoying. She's the more obvious romance option, but she plays so hard to get that I almost got tired of trying before it was done. I think the writers were going for the witty banter, Hepburn/Tracy kind of thing, but they didn't really do it very well because she was too bossy and ultimately started to veer into unlikableness, and the main character was too helpless against her banter, which I found really strange. It's almost like the writers don't actually have any idea what the relationship between a successful alpha-type man and a pretty girl actually looks like. Nothing about it rang very true to me. The other romanceable option is Akaavi Spar, the big, burly, Darth Maul looking warrior grrl, who is the least feminine "woman" I could ever have imagined. The very idea that anyone would want to romance her jars my suspension of disbelief.

I think the gunslinger option is supposed to represent a kind of Western gunfighter in space. I'm not sure that I ever felt entirely like that, though. The whole notion of needing to get into cover to use some of your abilities didn't feel very gunfighterish to me either, although maybe it makes sense in a more realistic sense. It's probably not really fair to harp on this, but I felt like I was bored with the combat mechanics of the class by the time I was done with it. I never got bored with the Jedi Knight. I will admit, though—for the first several planets, I thought his abilities were pretty cool and fun to use.

TROOPER

I admit that I expected the trooper to be one of my least favorites, and it ended up being better than I expected. The very reasons that I expected not to like it do keep it down, but they ended up not being as bad as I feared. Notably, the fact that you're constantly running around doing errands for some CO who's judgement and motivation you couldn't really trust, but because you're a soldier you don't really have a choice. This is definitely a thing. But there's a lot more going on than just that, which is what I was afraid that there wouldn't be. 

In terms of character, there's not a lot going on with the trooper either. The voice actor turns out a credible job, but I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be seeing. You can kind of pick his attitude; cocky and bragging, dutiful, etc. with the dialog wheel, but since it makes little difference I'm not sure what that accomplishes. Whereas the smuggler has a built in personality, the trooper doesn't really. His playthrough is much more based on plot than on personality.

However, I felt like the moral dilemmas that the trooper was faced with were kind of the only ones that weren't dumb and hoaky. There was actually some decent writing as the trooper had to deal with things like a squad of pilots who'd been thrown under the bus and made the scapegoats for top brass's lack of intelligence, how to deal with entitled, meddling politicians when you didn't necessarily trust the motivations or judgement of your own superiors either, what to do about a senior intelligence officer who seemed to be botching a mission and making the wrong call with some friends of one of your companions, an intelligence officer that you knew and liked but who you had to decide to save vs a whole boatload of other prisoners, etc. In general, I don't appreciate the BioWare moral dilemmas, because they don't usually represent real morality or realistic consequences of much of anything. They just feel preachy and dumb. The trooper, on the other hand, really kind of made them more real. 

Tracking down a collection of traitors makes up the first half of the plot, and as is sadly all too often the case, the first half of the story was well-focused, and the second half lacks focus until you zero in on the ending. I felt like that was true here again for the trooper, as it was for the smuggler, and frankly, for many of the classes. The second half of the story is recruiting your team, and it not only felt unfocused and kind of weird and contrived, but frustrating, as several of the companions aren't really ones that I'd have picked myself, if I could. But I couldn't; I was simply told that this was going to be my team. For most of the companion recruitment for most classes, it's a bit more subtle; here you're just told that you're going to go recruit this companion just because and the whole planetary class story is about recruiting them. When you head to Corellia to confront your second half of the story nemesis, it's actually kind of weird, because you've only just heard of him, and don't really think of him as much of a nemesis. He was unfortunately not sufficiently built up to work.

I really only liked two of the companions, to be honest with you. The one you pick up on Ord Mantell is too grumpy to enjoy; his constant "On your feet!" because he's healing you when you just quick traveled (why does that always prompt the companions to heal you, anyway?) got really annoying, and I put him in the ship after that. Elara Dorne, the Imperial defector, is probably the most likable one. I like taking her also because even in the story she's supposed to be a medic. It made sense for her to run around with heal spec turned on. She's the romanceable option, and she's a relatively cute romanceable companion. A little stuffier than I'd like in real life (OK, a lot stuffier than I'd like in real life) but it works in the context of this character. M1-4X is a kind of walking "buy war bonds!" ad, but I actually didn't mind him from a roleplaying perspective. However, I did find that because he's a bigger companion than most that he often actually got in the way visually, so I didn't end up using him very often either. The two that you recruit in the later stages, the dishonorably discharged demolitions criminal that you are told to bring back "because he's the best!" regardless of his completely unacceptable behavior, just really bugged me, and the strange alien anthropology class is dumb too. There are several characters in the game that exist only to showcase their weird alien culture, and in almost all cases I really don't care for what they bring to the table. 

The mechanics of the commando were really nice. I loved the explosive rounds, which tended to knock people down, and then you'd laser gun them right to the crotch while they were laying there on their backs on the ground. I did start to feel like some of the "trick ammo" variations weren't really all that different from each other, but for the most part, I thought combat with the commando worked really well and felt like what I'd have expected it to feel like. Because I was leapfrogging my commando and my powertech at the same time, going back and forth between them, I often felt like when I was playing one I missed some combat mechanic of the other really badly and vice versa. Because the powertech plays like the vanguard, albeit with different animation, I guess I know what to expect from both the mercenary and vanguard now too. Even though these are the two that I most recently just finished, they're also the ones that I'm in some ways most excited to play again from a mechanics perspective. And I wouldn't even mind seeing the stories again, even though I literally just did. I suppose that's a positive note to end on, even though I'd otherwise say that the somewhat bland personality, more forgettable or even unlikeable companion characters, and unfocused second act of the story make the trooper another middle of the road experience; not the worst one by far, but also not the best one.

The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part III: The Jedi Classes

Because, as I've hopefully made clear in my earlier parts of this review, the RPG class stories are the heart and soul of the Old Republic's success and are really the main attraction of the game, I'm going to spend the rest of of the parts of the "mother of all SWTOR reviews" talking about them, two at a time. Today we'll tackle the two Jedi class stories which start on the planet Tython. Reviewing class stories and how they play means that there are a few common things that I need to cover, because they are the main inputs that determine how well the class experience plays. I'll reiterate very briefly in each subsequent post what these are, but here I'll explain why I think these inputs are the ones that need to be discussed.

1) The character itself and his portrayal, voice acting, etc. I can't comment on this entirely; I've only played through each story as a male character, so I don't know much about the female voice acting. Obviously, which options on the dialog wheel you pick will make this somewhat different, but mostly you'll find that those options often have little real impact, and you kind of get funneled by inertia into a certain portrayal of the character for the most part anyway. While it's possible to try and play a dark side Jedi, I suppose, the reality is that surveys by BioWare have shown that on the contrary, most people play their characters—regardless of faction—as more or less good guys, doing what they themselves would like to think that they'd do, or as close as they can approximate with the choices on option. That said, the writing makes certain characters all kind of have a certain temperament and personality, regardless of what choices you make or try to make for your character. The smuggler is a flippant wit and the Jedi are fairly serene, bland sticks in the mud, for instance.

2) That last phrase may have been a bit of a spoiler; the character of both of the Jedi classes is not their strongest element. It's almost like they went out of their way to make them as uninteresting as possible. But the main character is only one input; the plot of the story for the class is the one of the next big ones. In this, I'm also including the villains or rivals that you face, since they are so integral to the plot. A really good villain can raise a mediocre story, and if there's a good villain with a good plot, even a bland main character won't hold the story back.

3) Given that this is a BioWare game, another important aspect is the supporting cast, i.e., your companion characters. An interesting ensemble of sidekicks can also really help bring a mediocre main character to life. Given that this is a BioWare game, this also includes the romance options available, since romancing companion characters is such an on-brand trait for a BioWare game. If you've got a cute, plucky sidekick that you can make into your girlfriend in a reasonably charming romance, then that goes a long way towards adding charisma and likeableness to the main character too. Again, I've only played male characters so far, so I'm only familiar with the girl romance options (the weird gay and alien options only are applicable in the expansions; the main story had fairly "normal" romance options.)

4) How well do the class mechanics play and how fun is the class? Obviously, I can't comment fully on this. There are two advanced classes for each class story, and each advanced class as three "specs" although these changes are a bit more on the subtle side compared to the differences between the advanced classes. But they're not immaterial. For the most part, all of the specs are fine, but some aren't really as suitable for solo play. Mostly, I'd recommend picking a DPS (damage dealing) spec rather than a tank or healer, and keeping your companion on its default heal setting. The other settings are probably best explored by people who are actually using the character for grouping content. However, I didn't always do this correctly, and I did find that, for instance, using a tank spec Jedi Shadow was sometimes kind of suboptimal; I got a bunch of abilities that in hindsight I didn't really end up wanting to use very much. It's possible, to be honest, that I simply don't really like the Jedi Shadow advanced class (or its Sith equivalent) as those are the two I had the least fun playing from a mechanical perspective. I think that the other alternative is now considered the more "classic" take on the class, so I probably just made a mistake there in picking an advanced class that I didn't like as much, and picking the same mirrored one on the Sith side at the same time. 

JEDI KNIGHT

It took me a while to actually get going on this game. I played a demo of it way back in the very early days, and I played a female smuggler up to 20th level or so. I also played bounty hunter for a bit on another account. When I really started playing for real, I played a bounty hunter again, but because I didn't realize that you could lock out your story if you jumped into an expansion, I messed it up after spending many hours on it, doing all of chapter 1, including all planetary and exploration missions. This guy is level 75, and I need to keep him because he's my armormech character (Crafting. I haven't even mentioned that, have I?) Anyway, I decided finally to quit messing around, and made a chart of everything that I'm supposed to do and when I'm supposed to do it so that I don't accidentally kick off something that locks me out, and then started over with the Jedi Knight class as the first organized and well managed character I played. (ed. aside: This game isn't quite as open world as it may seem. Just because a guy is standing around with a quest icon over his head doesn't necessarily mean you should always go talk to him.) I kind of leapfrogged my Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior, chapter by chapter, and played them concurrently. 

It's clear that the Jedi Knight is the canon class of the game. It's kind of the one that the devs consider the most iconic. It's got most of the stuff that leads into the expansion stories integrated into it too. I feel like the most effort was put into it in some ways. It's the one that has the most "Knights of the Old Republic III" feel to it. If for some reason you only ever play one class, this is the one that I'd recommend the most. Not necessarily because I think it's the best story, but it's just the most iconically Star Warsian of them all.

Let's go through the numbers then, shall we? First, the portrayal of the character itself is probably one of the weakest aspects of this story. The voice actor that they cast has a very relaxed, "serene" delivery, no doubt at the director's insistence, that accentuates the fact that he's really kind of written as a boring stick in the mud. Ask him anything, and you get an out of context fortune cookie quote as an answer. I don't want to call him a goodie-two-shoes, although that's really how he comes across. This is also accentuated by the fact that right off the bat you're treated to an inane "moral dilemma"; the Jedi council on Tython sits around hand-wringing about an illegal settlement of twi'lek trespassers. These entitled, bratty little princesses complain that the Jedi don't help them more—when they're the ones trespassing on the Jedi's planet in defiance of the legality of their settlement—and then ultimately (and this is a minor spoiler) they stab the Jedi in the back and betray your character specifically. 

In spite of this, if you advocate with the council for telling them that the party's over, and the crashers have to go back home and leave, you get a bunch of smug lectures delivered in a hall monitor tone from the useless Jedi masters of the council.  I actually thought that the start of this story was fairly inauspicious and frustrating. Luckily, once you leave the rest of the Jedi behind, for the most part, it improves tremendously. This has almost always been a problem with the portrayal of the Jedi Order across all mediums in Star Wars; they're supposed to be these paragons of virtue and wisdom, but in reality they more often than not come across as the villains of the story. Not in the comic book swirling dark capes around and laughing menacingly kind of villains; those are the Sith, of course—but in the sense that they are a fifth column chewing away at social order and cohesion, destroying the Republic from within with their smug, self-righteous craziness. I think the problem is that all too often the writers are SJWs, women and betas, including all too obviously George Lucas himself, so they have a poor idea of what good and evil actually is. Their attempt to portray good sometimes is just flat-out evil. In any case, I was actually kind of annoyed with the story during Tython, but it improved significantly once I left. 

In fact, it's probably best that we turn to that now; the plot of the Jedi Knight is the most "high fantasy"; the biggest, swashbucklingest, high stakes craziness space opera plot of the whole game, and it is certainly one of the stronger portions of a Jedi Knight playthrough. While the Empire and the Republic are technically in a state of peace, a rogue element of Sith are waging open warfare against the Jedi and Republic and this character in particular for personal reasons, using illegal superweapons that the Republic developed (but shouldn't have) which have been stolen. After rushing around desperately stopping all of these at the last second, the war starts for real. The Hero is caught up in a strike team to go assassinate the Emperor himself (because I guess that's now a legitimate way to wage war. SJWs.) This goes disastrously wrong, the entire strike team is brainwashed and turned to the dark side, but our Hero manages to escape thanks to the ghost of his old master and an unexpected ally close to the Emperor himself, who now admits that he's known for centuries that the Emperor wanted to consume all life in the entire galaxy and had a vision that this guy, our Hero, would be the one to stop him. The story ends on a final, epic second confrontation with the Emperor himself. Again; once you get past the fart-sniffing, hand-wringing of Tython, this story is fantastic, and it hits all of the right notes for what a truly epic Star Wars story should have. It's on par with other equally well-regarded Star Wars stories, like Knights of the Old Republic itself, in my opinion. The classic well-rounded villains as well as the gripping plot alleviate the blandness of the main character, who gradually grew on me over time once he didn't have to spend time sweating contrived, hoaky "moral dilemmas" clumsily constructed by writers who wouldn't know morality if it beat them up in a back alley.

The Jedi Knight also has probably the best collection of companion characters too. T7, your first one, has most of the charm of R2-D2 himself. Kira, your second, is probably the best, or at least tied for the best, romantic option in the game. She's a great girlfriend and a charming NPC. Doc is a little try-hard, but he's good for some laughs, and Scourge, when you get him, is one of the more unexpected and interesting characters you can get. He's also probably the best "last character" you pick up in the game; most of those last companions you pick up just don't have the time to develop properly, so they feel kinda meh. The only exception to the great companions is Sergeant Rusk; a character that I never really figured out what his role was other than that they needed one more character. He's kind of a cipher filling space like goods in a package, and I could do without him and never really notice the loss.

Did I mention that Kira is probably the best, or at least among the very best romance options in the game? (I know, I did.) Laura Bailey, now of Critical Role fame, does the voice acting. She's one of the best developed and best written and best portrayed of all of the romanceable characters, and because you have access to her as a companion for almost the entire game (you pick her up officially on Coruscant, the second planet) you have plenty of time to develop the romance. She's also actually got an interesting story of her own to explore where she had been an Imperial asset as a child and has to deal with the fallout from that past. The plot, villains and companions of the Jedi Knight are really top notch; probably the absolute best in the game, and go a long way towards alleviating the plank of wood personality that the main character himself is kind of saddled with by the writers. 

I played the game with the Guardian advanced class. This one uses a single lightsaber, and has a variety of very classic Jedi moves. In fact, I think it does a really good job of making you feel like you're playing a Jedi as they're portrayed in the movies, with similar abilities and combat styles. Some of the classes don't really feel quite as much like the moves in game match what you'd expect from the source material, but in this case, it very much does. Again, I suspect that the devs put their greatest effort here, making the Jedi Knight feel like the most iconic class to play in the entire game. It's a shame that they didn't see a more dynamic and human protagonist as consistent with being a paragon of the Jedi Order. If they had, they'd have managed to do literally everything right with this story. In spite of a little bit of a rough couple of hours of play at the beginning, I think this is the one that I ended up having the most fun with overall. It's the most Star Warsy of them all too.

JEDI CONSULAR

There is another Jedi class, though. It also starts on Tython. Like the Knight, the Consular is also, unfortunately, a plank of wood, who's voice actor was coached into portraying him as if he's trying to put everyone he talks to to sleep. In fact, this character is probably a good order of magnitude more boring and bland than the other Jedi. And unfortunately, the rest of the elements that make up his experience aren't good enough to ameliorate it as they are in the knight. To wit:

The plot is a little bit all over the place. It tends to focus on hidden, mystical, mind-controlling corruption type things. A Dark Plague is turning Jedi masters to the dark side and controlling them. Our Hero finds some kind of mystical ritual that removes the plague and restores their personalities, so for the first chapter, you have to run around rescuing Jedi masters who've been taken by this plague. At this point, he gets an extremely precocious honor, and he's called the Barsen'thor. Of course, nobody knows what a Barsen'thor is, but supposedly it's an incredible honor that hardly anyone has ever been given, you being only the third in the entire Jedi history. And this is at the end of chapter 1. Following this, you're sent on a kind of run-of-the mill diplomatic mission to deal with some entitled and bratty politicians who are skeptical that the Republic has their planets' best interests in mind. The third act involves dealing with sleeper personalities loyal to the Emperor embedded within unknowing people throughout the Republic. This is an interesting callback to Kira Carsen of the other Jedi class, because she was supposedly one such who had that sleeper personality rooted out of her. The same was not the case of many others, who had no idea that they were secretly pawns of the Emperor until he "turned on" their Child of the Emperor subroutine and they became agents for evil. 

Sadly, this space opera Manchurian Candidate idea sounds cooler than the actual execution of it ended up being. I felt like the reality was kind of jumbled and confused rather than a tense standoff where you never know who to trust. Overall, I'd give the plot of the Consular story as mediocre; it has some good ideas, and sometimes its reasonably well executed, but it's never as good as it sounds like it would be, sadly.

Some of this could be salvaged with interesting characters, but again, I felt like the companion characters that this character gets sound better on paper than they are in reality. For quite a long time, you only get the weird Trandoshan as a companion, and they tried too hard to really explore this strange Trandoshan culture and religion, which feels too much like a boring anthropology lecture and too little like a swashbuckling space opera story most of the time. Next you get Tharan Cedrax, the eccentric inventor with a holographic AI girlfriend, who comes across as all high concept and no thoughtful development. His whole story is trying to compete with fellow scientists to develop the coolest invention. He's kind of weird and creepy, in my opinion. Zenith, the unlikeable revolutionary political figure from Balmorra is what left wing weirdos think of as a hero, but everyone sees correctly for a villain. He didn't interest me in the least either. In fact, quite the opposite; I'd have ditched him right away if I'd been able to choose to do so. Felix Iresso is a slightly more interesting character, who's had his mind tampered with and discovers that Sith secrets are buried in his head somewhere. But again, this is a more interesting concept than a reality; you never actually even dig into what the secrets are or find them! Given that we're discovering all of this at the same time that the Manchurian Candidate Children of the Empire plot is running amok in the story, it seems odd that it's a weird parallel to that but which goes nowhere. Finally, Nadia Grell is the only romance interest. She shows up extremely late and isn't really all that cute. The relationship feels rushed, forced, contrived and just-so. 

I played the character as a Shadow, a double (Darth Maul style) lightsaber wielding guy. In combat, I actually found him kind of boring; and I was mostly just button mashing a few basic moves. It didn't feel very Star Warsy. I will say, though, that the stealth ability was gold. When I played this class, I'd already played four classes in a row, and being able to just waltz right past loads of trash mobs was such a relief, because I was imagining having to stop and fight them with any other class. Ugh, tedious. 

Overall, while I'd say that the Consular class experience isn't a complete wash, it was probably my least favorite of the eight. It's a shame because there's good ideas buried there, they just never were able to rise to their potential due to poor execution. The Consular is like the prequel trilogy of the Old Republic. While the Jedi Knight can be savored in all its glory, (minus the very first part on Tython) the Jedi Consular is best saved for a time when the double XP event is active and you can blow through just the class story as quickly as possible without lingering on the disappointing aspects that otherwise make up the experience of playing this class.

The Mother of All SWTOR Reviews: Part II: Characters and companions

As I said last time, there are eight class stories. Originally there were eight classes. This is kind of changed now. The classes originally split into two advanced classes as ability trees partway through, which offered some different visuals and mechanics, but which still followed the exact same class story. Now you have to pick your advanced class at character creation. Rather than "advanced class" it's more like just a different interpretation of the archetype altogether. For example, for the bounty hunter, the Powertech is the heavily armored, flame-throwing Mandalorian-type guy, while the Mercenary is more like a Cad Bane cowboy in space gunfighter type. But regardless of which you pick, you'll have the same class story, companion NPCs, voice actor, etc. These classes are mirrored (from a mechanical, if not graphical) perspective across the factions too, so where the bounty hunter as the powertech and mercenary archetypes, the trooper has the vanguard and commando archetypes that are mechanically the same. They are graphically quite different, though, so they don't really feel like the same thing exactly.

This will change even further in the upcoming update in the next few weeks or so; you'll now be able to decouple your class story from your mechanical class altogether. All non-Force classes can be used to play any non-Force class story, for instance. We don't know exactly how this will work until it launches, and some changes to the class mechanics themselves are also expected. Even though this is "the mother of all SWTOR reviews" I can't actually comment on every single mechanical class, because I've only played one iteration of each class story so far, and in half of the cases, I did the mirrored Imperial and Republic versions. This means that I didn't see the other mechanics at all, sadly. 

Compared to the earlier Knights of the Old Republic games, the stories are really all out. They are fully voice-acted, rather than you simply selecting from a dialogue wheel. I mean, you still select from a dialog wheel, but then your avatar will recite lines with a professional voice actor that represents a "bigger" take on what you selected in the dialog wheel. Sometimes the dialog wheel summaries aren't very good and you don't get exactly the response you thought you were getting, but if it bugs you that much, you can hit escape and start the conversation over to make different selections. For the most part, these choices aren't really choices, they're just an expression of your attitude and mood as a character, and the story will progress the exact same no matter which you pick. Occasionally a more substantial choice will pop up, like to kill or spare a character, that may reappear if spared, for example. Mostly, though, the choices that have some but not a ton of meaning are about companion influence, i.e., do they like or dislike the choice, and light or dark side allegiance. There aren't a lot of mechanical implications to light vs dark side (although we're to understand that the new system described above will be dependent, at least on force-using class mechanics, on your light vs dark side balance.) In fact, the game's morality is sometimes seriously out of whack and gives you light or dark side movement in situations that make little sense. The companion influence makes more sense, because it's based on the character of the companion, but the reality is that the choices you make that they dislike have little real impact, and you can make up for it easily by giving a companion gift or two anyway.

This is the BioWare trademark stuff here, though—companion characters, interactions, soap operas, romances and hoaky moral dilemmas that feel forced and dumb most of the time, but which occasionally work surprisingly well. Knights of the Old Republic did this quite well, although with only one story and only two directions to potentially take it, and only one romanceable option, it was obviously a bit less varied.

I say that every class story is different, and that's true, they are quite different in many ways, not least of which is tone. Some are pretty serious, some are light-hearted, some of them are mostly serious but with flashes of dry wit. However, they all follow a very similar pattern, which makes them more similar than they otherwise could be. 

First, a little bit of context. Knights of the Old Republic takes place some ~3,000 years before Star Wars, and Knights of the Old Republic II takes place only about five years after that. This game takes place over 300 years later, so still long before the original movies, but also significantly after Knights and Knights II that the galactic setting is quite a bit different. The Sith Empire has emerged out of the depths of Wild Space, or wherever it was hiding, it attacked and sacked Coruscant a few years ago, but then gave it back as part of a treaty. Now, a good chunk of former Republic worlds are under the sway of the Empire and the two powers are in a state of Cold War, itching to get back to hot war in many ways. Much of what was taken for granted in the Knights games is different. In Knights, there was a healthy Jedi Order based at an Enclave on Dantooine. The opponent is Revan's Sith Empire (well, Malak's now) and is unconnected to the Sith Empire here, other than the fact that Revan and Malak were corrupted by the Sith Emperor. Anyway, that backstory is a bit complicated, so I won't get too much into it here. Revan's Sith Order and the "True Sith Empire" are two completely different polities, though, so the Sith Empire of Knights and of this game are not the same. In Knights II, the Jedi Order is almost extinct, and the Sith Triumvirate is kind of a spin-off of what happened with Revan, a bunch of crazy kooks that bear a closer resemblance to villains in a horror movie than a Star Wars movie in some ways. By the time this game starts, the Jedi Order has been rebuilt, but it is kinda sorta in self-imposed exile on Tython after the surprise attack of the Sith on Coruscant and the sacking of their temple there.

All characters start off on a starting planet. There are four of them, two class stories per planet. The smuggler and trooper start off on war-torn Ord Mantell, where Republic troops battle Imperial sponsored Separatists. The agent and bounty hunter start on Hutta (called Nal Hutta in the Clone Wars) where both, unsurprisingly, deal in the organized crime environment of the Hutts. Both Jedi classes start on Tython, and both Sith classes start on Korriban (called Moraband in the Clone Wars.) This is where you pick up your first companion, and when you're done you head to the faction fleet, before heading to the faction capital planet; Coruscant for the Republic and Dromund Kaas for the Imperials. At the end of this second planet, you get your ship, and the Introduction is officially over.

Chapter 1 is the next four planets. The order is slightly different by faction; The Republic go to Taris, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine and Alderaan, while the Imperials swap out Taris for Balmorra. Taris is the same planet as in Knights, but it's now an overgrown jungle ruin, swarmed by rakghouls, and there's a reconstruction/recolonization effort underway. Its vibe is very, very different than in the earlier game. Chapter 1 is also, along with the Introduction, the end of the first story arc. You finish things off with your main rival and accomplish the goals that you've been chasing down. Yes, at the end of Chapter 1. This is true for all class stories, although obviously it's just set-up for bigger and badder adventures in chapters 2 and 3. All class stories converge at the end on Corellia, which is supposed to resemble Dresden in the process of the fire-bombing during World War II, I think. The Empire is invading the planet, and you either support the invasion, defend against it, or pursue your own goals with the war in the background.

Each character has a little finale after Coruscant after which the official class story is over, but more material came out shortly, including faction stories for Ilum, Makeb, Oricon, Rishi, Yavin IV, and more. Eventually you enter the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, where a third party has smacked down both the Sith Empire and the Republic, and has them both at heel. The story here gets pretty epic, but it's also basically exactly the same no matter which class you play. Fallen Empire is followed by Knights of the Eternal Throne. After this, the next expansion was Onslaught, and it introduced more faction-based separation. The announced expansion coming in the next few weeks is to be called Legacy of the Sith. Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne has you forming a Galactic Alliance to fight the Eternal Empire, so your a mixture of Imperial, Republic and even criminal elements all to take out the greater evil. But as you start to see success, the old Sith and Republic rivalries reopen, and the game settles back down again into Sith vs Republic, basically, although your team is a bit more eclectic now.

Because the class-style stories with your regular class-style companion relationships ends at the end of the main storyline, but rest of the game feels a bit different. You actually lose your original companions and run around with a whole different crew, eventually reuniting everyone. You have all new romance options, for instance, too, which BioWare thinks is really on brand for them and their type of storytelling. While in the main game, the romance options are more or less "normal" in the expansions, they're all over the map. When the game started giving me options to flirt with other men, weird alien gay lizard men, and who knows what else, the virtue-signaling noise drives out the signal; it materially takes away from the options to have better dialogue and character building options built in instead. While a few new options might be nice, especially considering that the "default" options for some of the characters isn't a really attractive romance choice, the reality is that most of these follow-up new options are even worse.

The game has also steadily added more levels over time. It initially went from levels 1 to 50. It currently goes up to 75, after some more creeping over time as new expansions added a few more levels, and we expect it to max out at level 80 in the Legacy of the Sith expansion. I'm not quite sure what these new levels will add exactly, though. More abilities? The level synching means that this is mostly a transparent thing anyway; I don't really feel like there's any difference playing a level 3 character vs a level 30 character vs a level 75 character except for the fact that fewer abilities are unlocked at the lower levels. If anything, it almost seems easier at the lower levels sometimes. You can also pick ability trees that customize your advanced class. For example, my powertech is on the pyrotech ability tree, which unsurprisingly focuses on all kinds of flamethrower options.

In typical MMO fashion, some players come up with "rotations", by which they mean the order in which abilities are used in combat. Personally, I think any game that has rotations is a game that takes itself too seriously as a tactical piece. I like that The Old Republic doesn't require this. It doesn't require 1337 gear to play. Old Republic, at least in the solo experience, is a pretty relaxed game that is much more about the story and exploration than it is about anything else. I know it has its raiders and fans of the MMO stuff, but I don't know how well it really stands up to "pure" MMOs in that regard, and I don't really care. Ohlen's comments, mentioned in the last post, that players really wanted something much more like Knights of the Old Republic with some online stuff here and there rather than full on World of Warcraft, but that the studio decided (for some reason) to try and chase after the perceived WoW money was off-brand for BioWare. He kind of admits regretting that a little, but I think he's dissemblin just a bit; I think that was a major problem and that they saw fairly quickly that they'd made a pretty serious miscalculation of where their fanbase was. It took them a while to sort it out, but right now, the game is pretty good for the people like me who really wanted a very different experience than what BioWare hoped to sell us.

Next, I'll start deep-diving into the specific stories and where they work and don't work.

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.