Being a Noob on the Progenitor

I've been wondering whether to do anything with this whole 12x Epic Story XP boost that's going on right now. I've said a hundred times that I'm not a fan of things like double XP weekends, but I think I've made my peace with the fact that they exist and that there is a clear demand for them. At least they are preferable to changing XP requirements across the board and thereby forcing fast levelling on people. This time Bioware also remembered to give people an option to turn the whole thing off, so all is well from my point of view.

Personally I have little incentive to level another alt as quickly as possible. I enjoy levelling in general so I don't really want to rush it, and I've seen all the class stories. There's a certain draw to repeating some of them to see a slightly different outcome, but then I ask myself: "Do I really want add another max-level alt to my stable on The Red Eclipse?" For some reason having too many unplayed alts makes me feel vaguely guilty. No, I don't think that makes sense either - it is what it is.

But then I saw someone make a suggestion for an alternative use of this XP boost (sorry, I forgot who exactly it was): use it to level a character on another server. This has been one of those goals that has been at the back of my mind for ages, wanting to have the ability to visit friends on other servers and play with them, but somehow I've never been very good at this. I've tried in the past, but usually I just faff around on the starter planet for a little while and soon end up logging off and never coming back. I figured that giving myself a bit of a push, so I would quickly get to the point where I could actually found a new legacy, would help me to maintain momentum, and it has.

I started my experiment by creating Agent Shintar the Cathar on the Progenitor, where some old friends reside on Imperial side apparently. (If you're my friend and playing on another server, don't think that I've forgotten you! But this is where I felt like making a start.)

Oddly, I was immediately struck by just how long it's been since I started a character on a new server with zero support. I was kind of surprised when an achievement popped up for killing people in the starting area on Hutta, because on the Red Eclipse I have so many achievements that I rarely see one these days outside of new boss kills in ops. I also realised that I'm terribly ignorant about which features are actually account-wide and which ones only legacy-wide. For example I immediately had three bank tabs unlocked, but barely any inventory space. While my mailbox was full of crap the usual "gifts", I had no stronghold to admire my furniture in, or legacy perks that would have allowed me to fly a speeder early. Bhagpuss wrote about the joy of starting fresh on a new server the other day (in the context of Everquest), and I can definitely recognise myself in that a little. I've become too spoiled by my big, fat legacy. There is fun in being a scrappy noob.

Of course even a scrappy noob feels a bit overpowered in SWTOR these days. I had forgotten that training new skills is now free for subscribers forever, and it feels like cheating. Don't I have to spend money on anything while levelling up? And the XP gains from my class quests on Hutta were utterly ridiculous of course. Sometimes I even gained two levels at once from a single quest hand-in. I feel like levels really start to lose their meaning at that point. I did all the quests anyway and was level fifteen (going on sixteen) by the time I left Hutta. I was too high level to queue for the Black Talon before I even got to it! I decided to solo it for fun, even if it granted me little XP. I was hoping to be able to scavenge some metal, but I forgot that unlike during its Republic equivalent, the Esseles, you hardly fight any droids in this flashpoint. I think I counted a total of five. It was also noticeable that my companion wasn't beefed up by tons of presence bonuses, as things actually took a bit of time to kill.

I also did a lowbie warzone, which seemed pretty flooded with lowbie agents of some flavour or another, and got eleven achievements in a single match. Operative healing feels extremely powerful in lowbie PvP now that they get Kolto Probe so early. Oh yeah, did I mention that I chose Operative over Sniper (again)? Being able to just choose my advanced class from the UI certainly made things more convenient at the end of Hutta, but I did the little "choose your advanced class" quest on the fleet anyway once I got there. I wonder if new players find that confusing.

I remember when ships in flashpoints going into Hyperspace used to crash my game. Good times.

We'll see whether I'll actually be able to progress, get distracted by side activities while ignoring the XP boost, or lose interest if my character levels too quickly (seemingly without me actually doing much of anything).