Less than Two Weeks! Are We Hyped Yet?

It's been quiet on here, because as I hinted at the end of my post about the expansion delay, I've been taking this additional time without any meaningful updates to the live game as an opportunity to focus on other things, such as playing more WoW Classic. But of course I haven't forgotten about SWTOR...

What have I been up to?

My streak of claiming my daily login reward every single day since the introduction of the feature at the end of 2020 remains unbroken, and of course my guild always demands some degree of attention.

I've continued to flog items from my massive stash of crafting materials on the GTN, though having seen comments about Jawa Junk becoming less common in Legacy of the Sith, I stopped trading it for things to sell as aggressively as I did before. Still, the money's kept rolling in, especially as inflation has been going nuts in some areas! I know that's been a topic for a while, but guild flagship plans have about doubled in value in the last few weeks alone... is everyone trying to open up a ship for their own private guild nowadays or what's going on?!

The other thing that had me more involved were the three Total Galactic War Conquest events that Bioware crammed into the holiday period. They know that this is something that draws people in, and it worked on me as well. My guild came out of it pretty well too, conquering Voss for the first time, which was one of three large yield planets we still needed, and also re-conquering Ziost for some members who didn't have that achievement yet (though the guild as an entity had already done it once before). I did consider writing about those events at some point while they were going on, but ultimately decided that I didn't really have anything new and sufficiently interesting to say on the subject.

Story Teaser

About a week ago, Bioware posted a one-minute "story teaser" for Legacy of the Sith on YouTube, which I really liked. I'm always a bit wary of previews of anything related to story, as I don't want to be spoiled and prefer to be surprised, but Bioware know not to accidentally give away their best bits, so it's "just" a series of cut scene clips without a clear narrative connection, overlaid with a voice-over by Darth Malgus that goes on to confirm that aside from looking down on the Republic (obviously), he also still holds the same general disdain for the Empire that he's been struggling with since his younger years as described in Deceived, as he still despises the Sith's lack of honour and their endless politicking and treachery. We'll see just what kind of alternative model he's dreamt up this time, and whether he ends up doing any better than on Ilum...

Looking forward!

As I said back in December, I've been feeling kind of "mentally ready" for the expansion for a while, even if I didn't finish every last pre-expansion goal that I'd come up with previously.

I'm looking forward to the new story, which I'm sure will be enjoyable and fun to replay on multiple characters.

I'm also looking forward to the start of Galactic Season Two! For as unimpressed as I was with the original announcement of Galactic Seasons, I can't deny that the first one made me play more while it was going on, and I generally had a good time with it. Plus the changes they've announced for this next one should address a lot of the previously existing "pain points" as it were.

Combat styles I'm largely neutral about at this point. I still think the concept of decoupling class story from play style is neat, but I don't actually have any personal desire to change any of my existing characters in that regard... I'm not saying it's impossible that I'll feel inspired later on, but at the moment I just draw a complete blank whenever I even try to think about it. The related class changes didn't seem as big a deal on the PTS as some people made them out to be, though we'll see whether my opinion changes upon longer exposure on live.

The new gearing system sounds overly complicated to me to be honest from everything I've read, but as long as it doesn't turn out to be another Galactic Command (which seems unlikely), I'm sure I'll be fine. Anything that creates a bit of friction will at least make for good blog fodder.

To be honest the thing that fills me with the biggest trepidation is the change to dailies and weeklies and how they'll be forcefully reset if you don't complete them that same day/week. I did a bit of an "audit" of my alt stable this past week and I've currently got 25 characters with partially completed PvP weeklies for example. I'll likely try to finish off the ones that are close to completion, and I won't cry about having a quest that was on 1 out of 10 reset to zero, but it illustrates the unfocused way in which I usually play, and which under the new rules would mean that I'll get very little done anymore. Though who knows, maybe knowing that I can't keep progress forever will actually encourage me to play in a more focused manner? I'll get to find out soon.