Around the SWTOR-sphere: January 2024

I've had several reasons to think about what it means to be part of a community of content creators over the past two months. (Long story short: Interacting with other creators should always be a positive and inspiring thing; be wary of anyone who acts like they're the only one creating anything of worth and is cagey about giving credit to others.) Bhagpuss was also musing on how there used to be more exchanging of links and ideas between blogs, and one thing that stood out to me in that post was his mention of how there used to be more sites that did regular round-ups of what other blogs were writing about. Anyone else remember MMO Melting Pot? Or SWTOR Network?

I'm always happy to link to other creators where it's relevant, and I do have the blog's sidebar to promote a whole number of other SWTOR sites, but it's only visible on desktop and I don't know how often anyone even looks at it, so I could definitely do more on that front. So I thought... why not try being the round-up person myself for a bit? I look at a lot of SWTOR content over the course of the month that I rarely bother to share, even when I enjoyed it, so maybe I should do that more often?

So consider this new series an experiment. I don't know if I'll bother to make a post every single month, but we'll see how it goes. Without further ado, some SWTOR-related things I saw in January and that I thought were worth sharing.

• The year was off to a good start with the State of the Old Republic podcast releasing its first episode in over six months, looking back at the last two patches. Ted is a great guy who even had me on as a guest once! I left an encouraging comment on the new episode but it seems to have been eaten by a spam filter or something.
• I don't need to tell anyone who Swtorista is and she always has something or other going on, but it's worth noting that she started 2024 by unveiling a big project that had been in the works for a while: interactive maps for all the base planets. These are great for newcomers and veteran players alike who are interested in ticking some specific item off their personal to-do list, whether it's that last pesky lore object that's eluding you or a mission NPC that you could swear used to be in a different place last time and now you can't find it (that would be me). I used to have a site called SWTOR Ultras on my bar that used to provide something similar, but since it went down it's nice to see someone else provide this feature now.
• NoblePlays is a YouTuber that's been around for a long time but who never quite took off (at least as far as I can tell) due to his (public) interest in the game being very on and off (being down on the game and stepping away from it, then coming back, then stopping again a few months later etc.) I suppose he could be on another one of those roller-coasters right now, but that didn't stop me from enjoying his recent video "SWTOR Is Actually Amazing For 2024". It was technically released in December but I didn't come across it until a couple of weeks ago.
• "Is [MMO] worth playing in [year]?" is almost a YouTube video genre of its own at this point, but they are popular for a reason! The first one I came across for SWTOR this year was "Should You Play Star Wars: The Old Republic in 2024" by Renfail. He's not someone I usually watch, but when this popped up it seemed familiar enough that I might have seen one or more of his videos before. I was kind of surprised that he's been playing since launch and is clearly very knowledgeable about the game, but apparently he's only completed three of the original class stories (at least according to the character selection screen that he identified as his main server) and pronounces Revan as "reh-VAHN"? Just goes to show again that there are very different ways to love this game.
• Fellow blogger Intisar always likes to ring in the new year with some predictions for what's to come, some of which turn out to be wrong and some of which are just plain silly, but they are always 100% enjoyable to read. Go check out his Five Predictions for 2024 right now.
• XamXam is also an old hand when it comes to SWTOR content creation, but I particularly enjoyed her sharing her experience on the Shae Vizla server as an actual APAC player this month. I've done a fair bit of writing about my own experiences there, but as a European I'm obviously not the main target audience for the server, so it's interesting to hear the thoughts of someone who actually lives in the right part of the world for it to make a difference to their experience.
  
• I have a complicated relationship with reddit and the SWTOR subreddit in particular, but I do like to check in on it every now and then, and every now and then it definitely contains some interesting, funny or insightful posts. My favourite in January was one called "Thanks for everything, SWTOR", which may sound like a goodbye but isn't. Rather, the OP muses on just how much time they've spent in the game, how many memories they've made and how much they've learned and changed over time. I thought it was particularly interesting that they still felt bad years later about some occasions where they'd been unnecessarily mean to people, I guess because most of the time you only expect the one being insulted to carry that memory with them.
• Another thread I really enjoyed was called "What's the most genuinely emotional moment in the story?" in which people shared some of their favourite funny, sad or generally epic story experiences. While the original post is just a question, there are some great memories to be stirred in the comments. (Beware of spoilers though if you haven't played many of the stories yet!)
• Just in time for the deadline! As I was getting ready to post this, I saw some people on Twitter share this article on Games Radar called "If you like Baldur's Gate 3, you should play one of Bioware's best-ever choice-driven sci-fi RPGs" (quite a mouthful, that title). Anyone who's been a fan of SWTOR for any length of time won't really find anything in there that they didn't already know, but it's always nice to hear about people (re-)discovering everything that makes SWTOR great even in its 13th year.