I'm usually not a big fan of posts like this...

... especially if the author doesn't post anything but the screenshot and it's their sixth alt anyway. But hey, you only hit the level cap in a new MMO for the first time once, so let's go for it! Ding!

As you can see, I was in the middle of Mortar Volley-ing a group of mobs on Corellia, and Elara was just butting in about some diplomatic mission. Later, please! For the curious, it took me a bit less than seven days of /played time, but to be fair that included quite a bit of "downtime" of me just idling at the fleet, levelling my crew skills and chatting with guildies. You can probably do it faster.

The minutes just before the ding were vaguely amusing, because while I wasn't in any particular rush to reach endgame, I still started to feel a certain suspense about my experience bar creeping closer and closer to the end. My boyfriend and I hadn't managed to stay perfectly in sync, but we were pretty close - only about 10k XP apart, which is more or less one quest hand-in at that level. We kept talking about hopefully dinging at the same time once we completed a certain amount of quests.

Eventually the Republic symbol flashed up over my fellow trooper's head just as we completed a bonus quest, but nothing happened for me. My bar looked as good as full, but upon closer inspection it turned out that I was just 1k experience points off. Killed another group of mobs - nope, still a hundred XP off! Talked to an NPC for a quest... nope, it was one of those that only counts as advancing the quest, not completing it, so no experience! When I finally dinged from killing mobs for the next mission we were on, I felt stupidly relieved - slowest 1k XP ever.

We "celebrated" our newly acquired max level by running Kaon Under Siege, the rakghoul / zombie flashpoint introduced in patch 1.1. It was very atmospheric, if very... different for Star Wars standards. I'm looking forward to the second part.

Though bloody hell, some of the trash was a nightmare. If you see any mobs called mercenaries, watch out! They have tow cables that stun you and the stun doesn't end until they get interrupted! I think during one of our most impressive wipes we pulled a bit too much and basically the entire group ended up caught in tow cable stuns and unable to do anything as we slowly died from the associated damage, since nobody remained free to break anyone else out.

It was all worth it though, as one of the bosses gifted me my very first level 50 purple. To be honest that's not something I expected to see in a normal mode flashpoint, but I'm certainly not complaining - especially considering how many more times I died than anyone else, what with nobody ever noticing the healer getting towed to death.

Up next: completing act three of my class story, doing all the flashpoints I haven't seen yet on normal mode and doing some gearing up for hard modes.