Let's Go To Dantooine

Two more weeks and Dantooine will be added to the game! We've actually known about this planned addition (minus its exact release date) since early April, but to be honest back then I didn't know what to write about it. This blog isn't a news site, and the main reactions to the announcement seemed to follow what I tend to think of as the "KOTOR rule": add anything that was in the original Knights of the Old Republic games and watch people go nuts with excitement just because of the association.

As someone who doesn't have the same nostalgic connection to the original games, I never quite know what to think or feel during such times. I mean, I did play through the original KOTOR on my tablet two and a half years ago, and the game was still entertaining, but it wasn't really a life-changing experience. My main impression of Dantooine back then was that it had a few interesting quests, but visually I found it pretty meh, so to be honest the thought of having it in SWTOR didn't particularly excite me.

Now that it's closer to release though, I'm increasingly looking forward to it.

While it may have looked rather meh with graphics from 2003, early screenshots of its implementation in SWTOR look like it may have a certain pastoral charm to it.

Getting a whole new planet before the expansion is pretty neat as well, something that I'm only now starting to really appreciate. I guess they did have to give us something else to pass the next five months until Onslaught, but a whole new planet was far from a given. In fact, the last time we got a new planet or moon between expansions was with the release of Oricon back in November 2013.

Getting a new content-based world event is also really nice. Again, I think the last time one of these was added to the game was with Nar Shaddaa Nightlife in 2014, and even that was fairly thin on actual content. The last really meaty addition would then have been the introduction of the recurring Rakghoul Resurgence in January of the same year. And that was over five years ago! Since then the only new "events" have consisted of things like temporary XP gain increases.

I also appreciate that it must be quite hard to come up with themes for these in a Star Wars MMO. Life Day aside, you can't just take a real life holiday like Easter and slap a bow on it, like most fantasy MMOs seem to enjoy doing. So I'm happy enough to see what this "Pirate Incursion" entails.

The proposed feature list looks promising enough, and the minimum level requirement of 20 means that new players and alts will be able to jump right in too. New daily missions don't exactly sound revolutionary, but I'm happy to get more of the familiar, and I like that they are once again including heroics. I also like the idea of the place including a set of separate missions during peace time. Even if they will probably be less rewarding (otherwise what would be the point of having the event), they should make for an interesting change of pace.

I've stayed away from the PTS and people talking too much about it, but I couldn't help picking up that there'll also be some random pointless bits of fun for explorer types, which I can't wait to see. Definitely something to look forward to!