Enjoying Endgame

One thing that has taken me somewhat by surprise is just how much I'm enjoying the endgame in The Old Republic. I mean, I was really looking forward to the game, but even so I thought that I would spend most of my time levelling alts in order to enjoy the different class stories, the roleplaying and the voice acting. However, as it stands, my alts' progress keeps stalling because I'm having too much fun on my main, which is certainly not the worst problem in the world to have, but still... surprising.

Operations are ridiculously fun. And to think that I believed that I was burnt out on raiding for good... This week my guild managed to clear both raids on normal mode for the first time and it was simply a blast for everyone involved.

Getting Soa down felt like a true achievement and a great team effort all around, not to mention that there was something quite amusing about people shouting directions left and right in order to convey where to move the boss in the final phase. My favourite was probably: "No, it's coming down over there where Shintar's standing. In fact, Shintar, move!"

In Karagga's Palace my boyfriend and I were working like a well-oiled machine as our group's dedicated console operating team on the puzzle boss, and when Karagga himself died, he sent our smuggler into a bit of a frenzy by dropping his hat on him. Indeed, no raid group should be without one of these.

I liked this post by Calli on Dude, Where's My Bantha? on the subject of SWTOR operations. Even though he plays in a much more hardcore guild, I can't help but echo his feelings when he says: "About halfway through I felt something I’d not felt raiding since Karazhan and Ulduar in World of Warcraft. Is that… am I… yes I do believe that’s fun."

However, even on nights when we don't have any operations scheduled, I just keep getting sucked into things. It starts innocently enough as I just log onto my main to check my mail, send companions on missions and so on, and then I think: Hm, I could run a few warzones to try and get the PvP daily done - it's not that much effort, is it? This line of thinking rarely works out because I seem to end up losing a lot more games than I'm winning, but I'm still enjoying it because the gameplay is fun and people are generally in good spirits even when things aren't going in the Republic's favour.

Next thing I know a guildie is asking whether anyone wants to join for dailies. I rarely bother on my own because it tends to be a bit tedious, but in a group they are good fun. Pretty much as soon as we have four people online, someone will then ask whether anyone wants to do a hardmode flashpoint and off we go. There goes the rest of my evening and my alts remain unplayed once again.

I never quite understood Syl's frequently expressed dislike for alts, and I'm still convinced that I will get around to levelling more of them eventually, but I do have to admit that there's something very enjoyable about simply wanting to play your main all the time because there's so much to do and it's a lot of fun. For a game that's so heavily focused on offering replay value on different characters, SWTOR is certainly doing a good job at keeping me occupied with other things.