Around the SWTOR-sphere: March 2024

It's hard to believe we're already a quarter through 2024! That means it's time for another round-up of SWTOR content I enjoyed throughout the month.

(On a side note, I've been kind of surprised by how well-received these posts have been, because from a creative perspective, they're quite... well, lazy. I just paste links into a draft post throughout the month and then add some context and formatting at the end, but there's little research or creative energy required. Still, it's nice to know that people still appreciate some manual curation in this age of algorithmic recommendations everywhere.)

• Chash Larol of the Old Republic Era blog has been levelling alts, and one of their newest projects is to level a character while ignoring the main quests. Certainly a different take on a game that is so focused on its main storyline above all else! I enjoyed the first installment, and as a fan of unconventional levelling methods, I'm looking forward to reading more.
• Intisar from This Week in Aurebesh always has interesting insights into the world of graphic design when he translates Aurebesh signs and posters, and I really liked this month's post about how the design of the HK poster from KotFE was inspired by real life World War II-era propaganda.
• One of patch 7.4.1's biggest surprises was the introduction of "ancient armaments" or "fitted" gear, which has no stats and is only meant to be used for outfit creation, while making a bunch of old looks from the game's early days widely accessible again. I think this has been great and I've enjoyed throwing them on the GTN for cheap in hopes of expanding the cosmetic options for newer players in particular. However, there are hundreds of them, so there's little documentation of what's what at the moment. Swtorista has compiled (what we hope is) a complete list of all fitted armour pieces and weapons with the help of Jedipedia, which does show you the in-game icon for each item and should give you at least a vague idea of what it looks like, though this is of course far from ideal for casual browsing or finding specific looks.
  
  Meanwhile Kal from Today in TOR has created a page with screenshots of all the fitted weapons (of which there are fewer than armour pieces), which certainly helps with getting a better look at them, even if the alphabetical sorting is still not great if you just want to see what e.g. all the fitted blaster rifles look like. It's early days and I'm hopeful that the documentation on this subject will improve over time.
• I wasn't sure whether to include this next video in here. You see, every once in a while I'll come across a video with a stupid, clickbaity title like, say, "The Shocking State of SWTOR in 2024", which obviously makes me want to avoid it, but I've also learned from experience that such videos don't always live up to their dumb titles and can actually be quite interesting sometimes... I decided to take a chance since I'd never heard of the creator sawmanUK before (so he wasn't known to me as someone with an axe to grind), and the video did indeed turn out to be more of a general review of the new/returning player experience, with nothing purporting to be "shocking" at all.
  
  There were still some things in there that made me roll my eyes a bit, especially at the beginning, such as repeated use of some of the worst, most worn-out jokes under the sun (I made a fat character, isn't that hilarious! Let's mention diabetes!) and the fact that he complains about having a voice-acted character... why would you pick an MMO that's famous for having that as its main feature then as opposed to literally any other MMO on the market?! All that said, he did clearly enjoy his time in the game overall and does make some more fair points further in. For example, I thought it was interesting that he wanted to buy access to more species unlocks at character creation but couldn't figure out a way to do it. And his first PvP experience being abysmal due to half-empty teams and lack of/bad backfilling is something I've experienced in the lowbie bracket as well, so while I know how much fun it can be when it works properly, I thought his account highlighted how easy it is to ruin someone's interest in this mode by providing them with a bad experience early on.
• You may be starting to get an idea of what kind of topics I find the most interesting on the SWTOR subreddit by now... my favourites are the ones that spark conversation and encourage people to talk about their different experiences with the game. With that in mind, two threads I quite enjoyed in March were "What are some light side choices and some dark side choices you would never make on any playthrough regardless of character alignment?" and "Which of the eight characters is 'literally me' for you?" The first one was an interesting look into just how differently people respond to various in-game choices, as a lot of the responses were things that didn't feel like a big deal to me personally, yet when I commented that I personally hate the dark side choice at the end of Directive 7, someone else replied with "it's just a droid". Different strokes! I'm not sure what exactly I expected the responses to the second thread to be, I just know that what I got was absolutely not it. It was good for a chuckle though.
  
• I know I said these posts are mostly here to highlight content that was actually released throughout the last month, but ultimately it's my blog so I can break my own rules! Someone linked this video to me the other day, and while it's four years old, I had somehow never seen it before (and it's currently sitting on 3.3k views, while I think it deserves more): "Let Madness Release You: The Dread Master Raptus Rap" by Aravail. As one of my guildies commented when I shared it with them, it's not really a rap but more of an electro remix, but still... all the Dread Masters have such iconic lines and great voice acting, I'm surprised there isn't more of this kind of stuff around.