Swoop Bike Event First Impressions

Fun fact: I fully downloaded the PTS when this event was being tested, with every intention to have a look at it in advance, but then never did. Clearly I'm just way too lazy and prefer to wait for stuff to hit live, so once again kudos to those of you who actually did play on the PTS and whose feedback surely made this new event better than it would have been otherwise. That said, here are my own early impressions after the first day on live:

The terminal announcing this event on the fleet is huge, noticeably bigger than the usual ones. That said, if you don't have the introductory quest, it's not really obvious that an event is going on when you first land on any of the three featured planets - they could do with some sort of announcement or event NPC at the spaceport to create additional awareness in my opinion.

Arriving at the event area on Dantooine, I was pleased by how extremely atmospheric it was. The decorations were loud and colourful, and the area was bustling with both NPCs and players. In typical Star Wars fashion, the swoop track was only delineated quite roughly and very open, meaning that players were crossing it everywhere, and in some places you could even aggro mobs onto it if you were sufficiently bad at navigating. It felt exciting and messy and fun.

On my own first round of the track, I accidentally left the emergency brake on for the entire run and was confused why this "race" was slower than walking speed. This is why it's a good thing that I don't have a driver's licence in real life...

Once I got the hang of things though, my rides got better and much smoother. The bikes don't exactly go at breakneck speed (I think without the speed boost it's quite close to that of normal speeders actually) but if like me you're not really good at twitch gaming that's a good thing anyway. Some of my guildies were already bragging to each other about getting the "perfection" achievements, but I was just glad whenever I was able to complete a race without failing one of the mandatory objectives. At its base, the whole thing is not dissimilar to that one daily quest on Ziost where you repair the broken speeder.

The three planets offer tracks with very different vibes to them - for example the jungle on Onderon makes for a very tight experience as you race through tunnels and narrow ravines, while Tatooine is extremely open.

To mix things up further, you got the three different swoop gangs, who all make you race the track in slightly different ways. My favourites so far are the Horizon's Razors who focus on speed and are simply about going fast and collecting some power-ups along the way. Next we have the Pit Screamers who love to show off and ask you to do things like go through hoops and make big jumps as you go along. The Blatant Beks are my least favourite so far as they require you to blow up some barrels while driving past them, and I'm finding it challenging to keep steering my swoop while also throwing explosives. I should probably keybind that ability properly to make things a bit easier, but even so it's an extra thing to do besides just making sure you're driving the right way.

I was actually slightly disappointed when I realised that you couldn't go again without having the daily quest, because it was sufficiently fun that I wanted to keep going. Good thing I have lots of alts...

For once I'm actually intrigued by some of the reputation rewards as well, because besides the "usual" decorations and armour sets, there are also "fun" Tacticals you can buy that make you do things like jump off your vehicle with a flair when you dismount. (I haven't seen a preview of this or anything, I only have the item description to go by.) That sounds like it would be quite a fun thing to have when you're cruising around and not actually in combat with anything.