Day 7: Team #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the seventh of ten screenshot posts I'm making as part of a series for this, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is "team", which is about the people I play with.

A lot of my enjoyment of the game revolves around operations with my guild. I don't think I would do them much if I wasn't in a guild, but as it is they just provide this social activity for us to do multiple times a week, and it doesn't matter if the content stays basically the same, the people always make it a little different. Pictured here is my Scoundrel dancing up close with one of the other officers during a break on one of our "social" (read: easy mode) nights in TfB.

When it comes to harder content we have to be a bit more selective in terms of who to bring and when, but that only forges closer bonds. Here's my ops team sitting in front of Izax before we were getting ready to pull.

Operations aren't the only thing that my guild makes more fun though, running flashpoints with guildies is great too. This shows me healing Kaon Under Siege on my Operative on Imp side, standing on a bunch of pipes where a guildie had shown me that you could get away with not getting pounced on by the mobs as much.

There's also a small but dedicated group of us that really loves doing the Shroud and Dread Seed heroics at the end of their respective quest chains. We've all done them on so many alts by now but are always happy to do them again! Here's a shot of one such run (I'm the second one from the right, the Zabrak Sorceror in the red and black robe).

Finally, we also do casual PvP together sometimes, though I personally partake in that less often than the other activities. To be honest I sometimes prefer to fully pug my PvP because I don't want to feel angry at my guildies if they mess up. Here my lowbie Merc was teamed up with a guildie's Powertech though, waiting for a Corellia Square arena to start.

Finally, here I am with the same guildie on different characters, and my poor Squid Sorc ended up being the only non-stealther on her team. As if I needed even more of a target painted on my head... (I thought it was amusing though.)

IntPiPoMo count: 51

It's obvious at this point that I won't finish my "ten days" series by the end of November - I could have pushed harder but I had other things on my mind throughout the month and didn't want to force it. After all, the whole "ten days" theme is something of my own making, so there's no need to fret about completing it within a certain timeframe. I still managed to squeeze enough posts in to hit my IntPiPo count, and I'll simply post the remaining days throughout early December.

Day 6: Environments #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the sixth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is environments, which is honestly always the easiest one to find images for (though it can be hard to choose my favourites) as pretty environments are something I love taking screenshots of!

First off some more views from the original set of planets... I've said before that I don't tend to think of Taris as pretty, but look at it in the right light and from the right angle and it absolutely can be!

My Mercenary speeding across the dunes on Tatooine looking snazzy.

Another shot of a speeder ride, though this one is my Marauder on Ossus. Being one of the newer planets, it's perhaps somewhat less iconic, but I do like the increased graphical detail.

Alderaan is one of those classically beautiful places, but I hadn't really taken many screenshots of just the scenery until recently, when Swtorista asked for some submissions for a screenshot contest, which is when I took this (though it wasn't my submission).

Swtorista's contest was inspired by the official Best View in SWTOR screenshot contest, whose winners were announced today. Some amazing shots there! I did not win anything myself, but I did go around taking some pictures to submit at the time that made me appreciate the landscape in whole new ways, like the above two shots of Mek-Sha, a planet of which I don't traditionally think as good-looking. Loved those bizzare container building towers and the reflections on the tepid pool!

On the subject of strangely mesmerising environments, here we have the lair of the Mountain Queen on Ossus, a place not many people visit with any regularity or have seen at all I reckon, and yet the artists worked hard on nailing that alien feel of a giant insect hive.

Another indoor location, a simple Ilum crystal cave... but what's ever simple if you've got crystals that are glowing like lightbulbs spicing up the scenery?

IntPiPoMo count: 45

Legacy of the Sith Expansion to Launch December 14th

Last night it was time for an important livestream once again, and I did my usual thing of missing it and then catching up on all the info the next day.

In general, the stream was nice but not particularly meaty in terms of information. There was an interview with Enuka Okuma, the voice actress of Tau Idair, which I enjoyed just like all the previous interviews of this type that they've done before, but the rest was mostly a bit of chat about different NPCs, most of which we were already familiar with. Which is fine, I'm just saying "hey, Lana will be there too" isn't exactly some ground-breaking revelation and that's okay. We like Bioware to keep the big stuff under wraps until it actually comes out. I suppose this was the first time they officially confirmed that the Legacy of the Sith launch storyline will be different for Republic and Empire again, like Onslaught's was, though I think most of us already suspected that.

Keith made a brief appearance and I went "aww" when he told the little anecdote about his wife. Also something about wanting real life Community Cantinas to come back once the pandemic allows... but those aren't really very relevant to me over in the UK anyway.

We did finally get a launch date for the expansion however! It's going to be Tuesday the 14th of December, so just a little less than four weeks away. Swtorista had previously run a little game to have people guess the date, and the 14th had been one of the most popular guesses (it was mine too). That is somewhat dangerously close to Christmas, but I suppose the devs have given themselves a bit of insurance by delaying the launch of the new operation until later this time, so they should only really have to deal with story bugs and the like during that brief period before they go on their holidays, without any risk of major exploits for ops gear causing chaos over the Christmas period or anything like that.

Somewhat unexpectedly from my point of view, the two most intriguing reveals came in the form of the new expansion loading screen and a short celebratory video with a surprise at the end.

The Legacy of the Sith loading screen, or "key art" as they call it, isn't one of their better ones in my opinion. I find it hard to put my finger on it, but all the faces look ever so slightly off - stylised in a way that's different from the way they usually do these, and I'm not a fan. However, what's interesting is the small but central figure of a green Twi'lek with a lightsaber, who was conspicuously absent from the summary of important NPCs that we're going to meet - so who could she be?

This ties into the little anniversary video to promote Legacy of the Sith that they also revealed, most of which is a fairly generic happy clip show of previous cinematic trailers... until the very end, when we see an extreme close-up of a CGI-quality pair of eyes in a green face that made every fan sit up and go: "Hang on... that's not from any existing trailer!"

It seems fair to guess that this might be the same Twi'lek we see on the key art, but more importantly, does this mean that we'll be getting a new cinematic trailer for the first time since Knights of the Eternal Throne? And they are not pushing it yet, perhaps to not actually release it until the expansion is about to launch, so that anyone who's captivated by whatever it shows can then jump right in? If so, that's some pretty clever marketing - respect! I'm intrigued and curious to find out more.

Day 5: NPCs #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the fifth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is NPCs.

Let's start with Attros Finn, a character that features early in the Jedi consular story and who - to me - embodies a lot of a consular's good qualities. He's a healer, and I've always liked the humble Jedi outfit he wears - plus Mirialan is a great species for Jedi in general.

From the series "Twi'leks I really like", we first have Juda from the bounty hunter story and of course, one of the game's more recent but no less fabulous additions, Major Anri. I have this short clip of her on my YouTube channel (warning: Onslaught spoilers) and it gets a lot of love.

The fact that Shadow of Revan's side missions didn't include cut scenes made the NPCs in them somewhat less memorable I think, but I still loved "The Slayers Three" and their odd love for hunting. I always thought those three siblings in intimidating outfits could have an interesting story behind their adventures!

I've mentioned previously how the little detail of which character appears as an extra antagonist at the end of the Nathema Conspiracy based on your character's class and alignment has a fascinating amount of permutations, though I avoided spoiling myself for the full list. Pictured above, we see my light-side loyalist agent being addressed by Marcus Trant, formerly head of the SIS and Theron Shan's boss, and below we have Master Sumalee hating on my poor smuggler. Why, Master Sumalee? I was light side all the way!

A shout-out to various nameless Sith and Jedi NPCs that go out looking cool in various cut scenes. (This is from some Imperial class story on Alderaan... Sith warrior I think?)

This guy on Balmorra might have had a name, but if so I didn't note it down. I do remember that he's one of those characters where the dialogue teases the option of getting him to back down without a fight but regardless of your choices you can never succeed.

IntPiPoMo count: 38

Day 4: Missions & Conversations #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the fourth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... missions and conversations, which means everything surrounding story content and the sorts of cut scenes we get to experience while playing through it.

I think I've said it before, but the Makeb storyline is one of those pieces of content that I've come to appreciate more and more over time. When it came out it seemed like a downgrade from the unique class stories, but from where we are now I see it as a good example of a planetary story that is unique for both factions, with both halves coming together to form something greater.

One thing I like about the Imperial storyline in particular is that the Imps are effectively doing good for selfish reasons, like in this scene where they end up rescuing some civilian scientists from evil mercenaries... because they need them for their own ends of course.

Another thing I've mentioned before is that thanks to the quick travel between planets I don't see the "planetary ship approach" cut scenes very often anymore, so when I do come across a shot like this one of the Jedi knight ship landing on Voss it honestly takes my breath away.

Beautiful scenery and framing are another thing I loved about the Ossus storyline, such as this series of shots of Darth Malgus and the player character coming out of the Jedi library.

Speaking of framing, I like this shot of my group coming up to Lord Tagriss to claim the last Dread Seed. I've done this infamous group quest more than a dozen times, but I hadn't really taken in the sights of the corrupted Jedi temple properly until this time.

Another thing I enjoy taking screenshots of: good action scenes! Above we first have a Sith warrior facing off against Nomen Karr during their chapter one finale, and below we have Senator Nebet fighting Beast Lord Akoru on Onderon.

Of Akoru I also have this fun shot of my bounty hunter whispering to him... I think it's to blackmail him? But the gestures and expressions make it look more like she's making a pass at him or something, hehe.

IntPiPoMo count: 30

Day 3: Companions & Pets #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the third of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... companions and pets!

This first shot is of me doing the hidden achievement to get the nerf calf pets... I recall that I didn't do this when it first came out and the spawns were quite contested but rather much later when I could go through the whole process in relative in peace and quiet. I also seem to remember that at the time I thought about writing a blog post about the whole experience, but as these things go, I got distracted writing about other things and then forgot about it. All that remains is a brief reference to it in this post.

When I came across this screenshot from the Jedi knight class story, I went: Oh yeah, remember when Doc also had character traits like being a kind guy who took his oath seriously and was happy to take care of wounded Imperials? Somehow all anyone ever thinks about when he's brought up is his boundless horniness...

I really liked the way Bioware handled companion returns on Ossus and beyond. Here my Marauder is shown getting rid of dark side Jaesa, a moment I rather enjoyed.

The reunion with Khem Val was pretty cool too. Though I had to quickly abort the mission on my first Sith inquisitor to reach Ossus, as she had sided with Zash and thus the Khem return showing was a bug... I did later go through without encountering Khem once it was fixed, and my boosted Assassin was the one who got to see the return dialogue instead, as siding with Khem is assumed to be the default choice for boosted characters.

While it was a bit disappointing that we didn't get to see Holiday again when Tharan returned, I did find the idea that he got... this guy as his new assistant quite amusing. Plus if he really does love Holiday, it does make sense that he'd get someone else to run his more basic errands after a while.

I really appreciated that Bioware added these little pieces of dialogue on Odessen that troopers get with Elara and agents with Vector respectively, just because someone thought it would be nice/make sense to have them.

IntPiPoMo count: 23

Limitless

I'm making good progress on my pre-expansion goals: My pacifist character hit level 75 a couple of weeks ago, and on Halloween night, a full month ahead of my original schedule, my main hit Renown rank 999 and earned the Limitless achievement. It was pretty well timed as well, as it happened in the middle of a Dread Guards 16-man master mode kill (you get Renown each time one of the bosses dies), which made it extra memorable.

Also, I'm very glad now that I made it a personal goal for myself to get this done before the expansion, as another one of last week's bombshell announcements included the bit of news that Renown will be completely removed in Legacy of the Sith. Several of my guildies have been scrambling to also quickly get the achievement now before it goes away forever, but depending on their current progress there might not be enough time left to grind out the remaining ranks on a sane schedule. I think most people expected that Renown ranks would be reset with the expansion, but not a complete removal of the system.

I can't claim to be hugely upset by this move - Galactic Command as the sole source of endgame gear was a nightmare, but once Bioware rebalanced it to be more supplementary than anything else, getting reward boxes for a sort of infinite levelling was kind of nice. When GC turned into Renown with Onslaught, it was nerfed so heavily though that the reward crates became only another piece of junk to deconstruct every so often; I don't recall getting a single interesting thing from them all expansion. If anything, I'll miss the concept of endless levelling more than anything else. I first saw and learned to appreciate it in Neverwinter, but they eventually got rid of it too...

Other systems on the chopping block are social points in their current form and the dark vs. light system as introduced in Knights of the Eternal Throne (not to be confused with the original character alignment system).

There's still going to be a social system of sorts, but instead it's going to count how many runs you've done in the group finder, similar to World of Warcraft, which is... meh. I always liked the idea of social points being awarded for more than just taking part in group conversations (and you did use to also get them for things like handing in quests as a group), but tying the system to the group finder leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, as it just limits it in a different way. Now you'll be able to level up doing quests with a friend without being considered social, and I'm not sure that's an improvement!

I don't mind the group finder and I understand Bioware wanting to incentivise it, but from what I remember in WoW, the people who were flaunting their group finder achievements were usually the most impatient and obnoxious players of all to get in a pug because they were only after the achievement and nothing else. Let's hope that SWTOR's community is different enough to withstand that kind of pressure.

Finally, the galaxy-wide dark vs. light system... I guess it had a good run. I did kind of like the way I could use the state of the galaxy as the tie-breaker for which alt to play when I was unsure, and I had my fun hunting down all the dark vs. light world bosses with my guild last year, but I never liked the forced personal toggle and how it made it impossible to have a neutral/grey character anymore unless you constantly flip-flopped between both sides. Still, it doesn't sit quite right with me to see something like that just get removed with no replacement. The forum post said they're planning to reintroduce the world bosses at some point, but who knows when that will be...

I do feel Bioware has been holding out on us a bit, waiting until so shortly before the expansion launch to tell us all this stuff. I mean, I guess it's still better than not finding out until it actually goes live, but still. I wouldn't go so far as to call something like the removal of Renown "bad news", but it's not really good news either, and at least to me it just feels like an unnecessary dampener on everyone's expansion hype.

Day 2: Class Stories #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the second of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... class stories!

The last time I made a post on this theme three years ago I noted that I have a very haphazard way of playing through the original stories nowadays. Many still consider them SWTOR's most compelling content ten years later, and while I don't exactly disagree, I'm clearly not as compelled to stick with them as most! Where others might start a new character and play through their story from beginning to end, I regularly hop between different characters while only progressing them by one or two missions at a time, meaning that without my spreadsheet I'd be hopelessly lost when it comes to remembering where each of my alts sits in terms of story.

Accordingly, when I gathered screenshots for this post, I ended up with an eclectic mix of images from different classes at very random points in their personal narrative.

This may well be the earliest moment I screenshotted in any class story ever, as this happens when your bounty hunter is like... level two? Historically I don't tend to take a lot of pictures on the starter planets except maybe on Tython due to how pretty it is.

This is Zilek, my Jedi Shadow on the Satele Shan server, solving his primary task on Taris the violent way. He's actually an absolutely ancient character - I think I first created him around the time free-to-play came out, but I don't actually tend to spend much time on servers other than Darth Malgus. One thing that makes him interesting though is that he's the only male character in my giant stable of alts - for some reason I've always struggled to bond with characters of the opposite sex in MMOs. I still dream of actually making some progress with him one day though.

Here we have another one of my consulars, my dps Sage, meeting with a child of the Emperor called Stark, like the ill-fated family from Game of Thrones. I always kind of liked this guy in the sense that despite of his very brief appearance, the voice actor manages to imbue him with a lot of character and he comes across as quite a tortured soul.

And one more shot of yet another consular, this one my DvL Shadow. It's a bit hard to make out in this static image, but the giant statue on the right was being smashed dramatically at the moment I took this. I've always liked these rare, more wide-angled scenes from the early game, considering that a lot of the earliest cut scenes were just basic shot/reverse shots.

Another nice wide-angled shot, this time from the Sith inquisitor's class story, when Darth Andru's Force ghost tries to kill you on Dromund Kaas, just before old Lord Kallig steps in to intervene. Who says Sith can't make great parents? Having a ghostly ancestor come in to save your hide on more than one occasion is definitely a perk.

Another shot of another inquisitor of mine, this time taking part in the iconic activity of shooting lightning! On second thought, I'm not 100% sure this was actually from a class story mission and not just a planetary quest, but there are enough similar moments of this type either way.

What else is iconic for Force users? Flinging/smashing things with the Force! Modelled here by my DvL Juggernaut.

And finally, here's the same character striking another one of my favourite iconic poses, lightsaber raised with determined expression on her face.

IntPiPoMo count: 15

LotS (of) Gear

It seems that Bioware decided to open the floodgates in regards to information about what else is coming with 7.0, which makes me glad that I'm not a news site and therefore not compelled to repost everything they say asap, but there's been a lot of food for thought and I'd definitely like to talk about at least some of it.

Today I'd like to discuss the news post called "Itemization in 7.0", which basically revealed that set bonuses being replaced by legendary items is only the beginning... and um, wow. My overall impression of that blog is best summed up as this new system being a sidegrade from Onslaught's, getting rid of some issues while introducing others, and I'm not sure whether I'll like it.

As I said in my review of Onslaught, I honestly thought the gearing this expansion has generally been great. I won't deny that it's had some issues, but at least to me, they were so minor that they barely affected my enjoyment, if at all. I guess I can't blame Bioware for aiming to address them anyway and trying for perfection, but I do worry a little that they'll just end up causing other issues that'll ultimately bother me more. I guess we'll see.

Less randomness, less gear needed

The way things worked in Onslaught, there was a lot of randomness (and bad drop rates for certain sets and Tacticals was definitely one of the criticisms I had), but this was somewhat compensated for by the game absolutely showering you with loot at every opportunity, so odds were good that you were going to get at least something interesting reasonably often. In terms of sheer quantity of drops, this system was very over the top, and having to pause after every other flashpoint or ops boss to deconstruct all the random gear filling up your inventory wasn't great, but I didn't consider it a massive bother either.

In the linked blog post, Bioware basically states that players hate RNG so they want to do away with most of it. In LotS, every time you complete (a weekly mission for) a certain type of content, you'll either get a piece of gear that's guaranteed to be useful to you, or some sort of currency to improve it. Very utilitarian and deterministic.

Some people will love that I'm sure. However, I've always liked a bit of RNG to be honest, that feeling of being surprised by what drops. To me, it's only bad if there's an expectation that you'll get a certain item within a decent amount of time but bad drop rates keep holding you back, or if it takes a lot of effort to even spin the metaphorical wheel and the results tend to feel unrewarding for the effort required. Overly deterministic loot systems can feel somewhat work-like in comparison, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I guess we'll see how this one ends up feeling.

Not all things are equal anymore

The second big ticket item in the news post is the announcement that they want to bring back tying item level rewards to specific pieces of content (read: you can only get the best gear by doing the hardest raids). More than anything, this is just one of those cans of worms I'm kind of tired of dealing with because I honestly don't care either way at this point in my life.

I do think it's fine to incentivise certain bits of content with more powerful rewards, especially if this content depends on a minimum number of participants to function or has high skill requirements. I'm perfectly fine with not having the best gear in the game myself, as long as what I've got serves me for doing the content I want to do. In a casual theme park game like SWTOR it really doesn't matter and I think people who get up into a huff because someone gets to do their dailies with a few more item levels than they have are drama queens.

But at the same time, I also don't care if it's not that way. Onslaught's gearing system made SWTOR the most egalitarian it has ever been, as everyone could work their way up to item level 306 by doing any activity they wanted. I continued to do operations anyway because I enjoy them, and it didn't hurt me that someone else could grind their way to the same gear by doing things that would be boring to me. Live and let live, I say.

So I don't really mind either way, though I do sort of wonder what prompted this change on Bioware's end. Not enough people doing the latest operation this expansion, I guess? I will say that Nature of Progress was terribly incentivised initially, but that didn't have anything to do with item levels, but rather with the fact that it initially dropped less loot than the old operations while also having worse drop rates for its coveted special gear sets somehow, even though the new ops was "supposed" to be the best way to farm them.

Different gearing paths

A catchphrase that Bioware has been using to describe their design philosophy for several years now is to "play your own way", yet somehow this can apparently be used to justify totally opposing design decisions, which I find fascinating. In Onslaught the "play your own way" concept was supposed to be supported by the fact that you could get your gear drops - with the exception of a select few sets - from any source. The implementation was just a bit wonky because in practice rewards from PvP were absolutely anaemic while flashpoints were the way to go, but I guess I was willing to forgive that because I really like running flashpoints with my friends anyway.

In LotS on the other hand, playing your own way will apparently mean largely separate gearing paths for every activity, though the details of just how separate they are going to be are still a bit fuzzy to me. The basic idea is that veteran flashpoints will drop different items from master mode flashpoints, which will drop different items from PvP and so on, with each one having its own upgrade currency as well, though my understanding is that their stats should be comparable except for the different item level caps for some activities as per the previous point.

At the same time they're apparently not totally separate, as the example they cite is that you'll be able to upgrade flashpoint gear with "flashpoint upgrade currency, daily/heroic currency, conquest currency" - but not PvP currency? Which does bring me to my main gripe with this announcement, which is that as someone who likes to regularly take part in different types of content, it sounds confusing as hell and as if gathering pieces of gear from different sources might end up being a proper nightmare. Maybe they just didn't explain it very well and it won't be as bad as it sounds, but I really don't miss having umpteen different vendors to trade in different tiers of stuff like we had at the end of Knights of the Eternal Throne.

Some simplifications 

While the above sounds like potentially unnecessary complication to me, there are some things they are planning to simplify. Amplifiers will be gone, and nobody will miss them except for the handful of crafters who actually bothered to optimise them for a special crew skill crit set, and these players do have my sympathy.

Augments are still somewhat in the air and it sounds like Bioware don't plan to add a new tier of them, but the old ones will keep being useful.

Most importantly though, the default way of gearing at level 80 will simply be unmoddable items, with purchasable modifications becoming something that still becomes accessible at max level if you do want to change things around for some reason. As someone who's never enjoyed the number-crunching associated with min-maxing, I'm happy with this, especially as it sounds like this should e.g. result in damage dealers being automatically accuracy capped with a few pieces of "default" gear without having to maths out the perfect way to mix and match their mods. Leaving in the option to do this if you're hardcore while making things more straightforward for the more casually inclined strikes me as a good compromise.

All in all, it sounds like a lot of change to address what were mostly non-issues to me anyway, so I can't say I'm hugely excited about anything I've read here. I'm not massively worried either... just a little disappointed that they feel the need to mess with gearing this much when Onslaught already had it mostly right in my opinion.

Day 1: Bugs #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the first of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... bugs!

One thing I noticed while compiling these was that the vast majority of them fell into one of two categories: issues with terrain or character display oddities. I don't know if it's a sign of a mature MMO that its bugs tend to be less random or whether it's just that those two types of bugs are most likely to be visually striking enough for me to bother screenshotting them.

From the first category, we have the classic "stuck in falling pose". This one was kind of impressive to me because there wasn't even any obviously problematic terrain around, my character's foot just touched a nearby holo sign or something?

Fortunately SWTOR's /stuck command is good at helping you extract yourself from most situations of this kind, though it does have a cooldown and I've definitely been in positions where it took me several minutes to escape my predicament. I suppose this is the kind of thing no MMO can ever be 100% foolproof against, but it does seem to me that I get stuck in SWTOR's terrain a lot more often than in other games.

Here a guildie appeared to have sunk into the floor visually, though I don't remember whether he was actually stuck too or our game clients were just confused about his position.

Something that has only happened to me very rarely but always amused me to no end is falling through the terrain. Here a leap by my Guardian during a Novare Coast match had somehow resulted in her crashing straight through the ground and disappearing into the aether... hang on, I even have an animated gif of this one somewhere for the full effect:

The final item from the terrain category is visually broken ground:

Here we found a very noticeable gap in the floor of the Huntmaster's room in Nature of Progress. I only saw it on that one day though, I submitted a bug report form for it and the next time I checked it was already gone again.

For the character display oddities category, we have this shot of us fighting the last boss in the Divided We Fall uprising. The issue may not be immediately obvious, but if you look at the enemy targeting window, you can see that Commander Kallin was the invisible man and had no face! And it wasn't just in that window either, we did look at him up close over the course of the fight and he was invisible "in person" too, so to speak.

This one on the other hand may have been an issue with just the targeting window, but I still thought it was funny. Was this Sage too short to reach all the way up to the camera? I'm not sure where exactly this was, but I'm thinking it was probably the Boarding Party flashpoint.

Finally, one bug that was slightly unusual but for which I like the story associated with it: Basically, at the end of the Kaon Under Siege flashpoint you need to have a group conversation with an NPC called Melarra, and as per the way group conversations work, everyone needs to stand within a green circle around the NPC. The problem was that people didn't always see Melarra in the same place - she was supposed to be on a raised platform as visible in the screenshot, but for some players she would appear on ground level, making it impossible to initiate the conversation properly. It wasn't a huge deal as there was a simple workaround that worked almost all the time, which was to have the player who saw her in the wrong place leave the instance and come back in, but considering that you spawn back in quite far away from the conversation location, it always wasted a lot of time.

Well, my guildies once set themselves the target to figure out just what was causing this bug and were soon able to reproduce it reliably: Melarra starts running up to her spot once you reach a certain checkpoint yourself, and if anyone was still on the ground floor at that time, that's when Melarra would spawn on the ground floor for that person too. Basically, it was a lesson in not running ahead and leaving people behind! This bug was fixed in patch 6.3.

IntPiPoMo count: 7