Happy Life Day etc.

I hope everyone's having a good holiday season, whether you've been celebrating anything or not. I don't know if it's inevitable to get disenchanted with Christmas as you get older or whether it's simply dependent on your personal circumstances, but let's just say that I'm mostly glad to have it over with, and relieved that it went as well as it did.

In game it's Life Day again of course. I realised that I haven't written about that event in quite some time, but to be honest there simply hasn't been much to talk about. I first wrote about Life Day when it was introduced to SWTOR back in December 2013. In December 2014 I commented on the addition of the Overheated Gift Droids. And ever since then... there hasn't really been much to say since the event didn't change (other than some rotation among the offerings on the Cartel Market - I mentioned buying a red-nosed tauntaun in 2016).

This year Bioware finally decided to inject some new life into Life Day (yes, I went there)... with the addition of wookiee hugging! There is now a quest and several achievements for hugging wookiee revellers, not by using the /hug emote but by utilising a special temporary ability that appears if you stand in just the right spot and which results in you and the wookiee having a proper cuddle.

It's cute, though I think the top achievement requiring one thousand such hugs is a bit insane (and yes, I know people who've already got it). I did run around hugging some wookiees on several characters, but ultimately it's a bit fiddly to find the right spot to be able to perform the hug and I got bored.

It did make me give the other activities another look though. I rediscovered snowball-throwing as a nice way to pass the time while waiting for PvP pops and between boss attempts in operations for example - I'd forgotten just how chill and relaxing that can be. I even invested into the Life Day Snowball Cannon at last, an item that I'd been eyeing for a few years but every time I finally resolved to buy it, it had already disappeared from the Cartel Market again.

I was also surprised to discover that Nar Shaddaa is a veritable hotbed of Life Day celebrations. Not only does the promenade have lots of wookiees to hug, there are also oodles of gift droids around, a feature that I had thought was still limited to Coruscant and Dromund Kaas. Unfortunately I only had limited success coaxing gifts out of the droids simply because they require a crowd to function optimally, and there weren't any organised groups hunting them on Nar Shaddaa like I had seen on Coruscant in the past.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my renewed appreciation for this event and how it's different from many other world events in the way it has no real organised activities, just seasonal hugging and snowflakes. And I'm down with that. Now if only Bioware hadn't decided to also launch the Total Galactic War conquest event on Christmas Eve of all days... no season for peace in a galaxy far, far away!