Jumping into PvP Season 5

I've grumbled in the past when I felt that seasons were too close together and that there wasn't enough of a break between them to "recover" from the intense investment they spark in me, but right now it's been one and a half months since the end of Galactic Season 5 and PvP season 4, and I've got to admit I'm feeling more than ready for something new.

As a result, I hurled myself into PvP season 5 with previously unknown enthusiasm when it started a week ago. It's really quite interesting, considering that I was decidedly "whelmed" when the new PvP seasons were first introduced and continued to feel that way for the next two seasons after that. It was only last season that everything changed all of a sudden, and I found myself craving more of that feeling.

Darth Malgus

My focus was obviously going to be on my home server Darth Malgus again, where I set myself the goal of completing all the seasonal achievements like in season 4. The only thing I wasn't too fond of last season was that due to how late I pivoted towards completionism, I found myself having to grind more arenas than I was really comfortable with towards the end of the season, and for extra medals as well. Obviously the way to avoid that this season was to start strong so that I'll be able to slack off closer to the end instead (and also keeping in mind that there'll be overlap with Galactic Season 6 again). I'm happy to say that I've been very pleased with my week one efforts, as I already earned more than 400 medals and completed six PvP weeklies. I know I won't have the energy to keep going like that as the season progresses, so I'm trying to build as much of a buffer as I can.

Shae Vizla

I knew I wasn't going to repeat the absolute mayhem of last season, but I was hopeful that the launch of the new season would reinvigorate the PvP queues on Shae Vizla - alas, this has not been the case. The waiting for transfers continues. However, some people who do want to achieve seasonal progress over there have started taking things into their own hands, which I was happy to see. Someone in my guild specifically invited people to queue for lowbie PvP at what was close to midnight on Saturday for me, and since I missed the PvP vibes on Shae Vizla, I thought I'd check it out. There were only five or six of us from the guild, but that was enough to at least get arenas popping, and after some advertising on the server Discord a few more people from other guilds joined in, and we were able to alternate between warzones and arenas almost non-stop for three hours. The power of community! I'll try to join them again this week, even if it means staying up late for me. I just appreciate these kinds of community efforts.

Star Forge

Wait, since when do I care about PvP on Star Forge? Well, it was my first "secondary" server and several of my American friends and acquaintances play there. Still, I wasn't really planning to give it special attention between seasons, but then luck would have it that I ended up joining Swtorista's raid team for a few of their runs, and I started to feel a bit embarrassed about my lack of gear over there. It didn't really matter, and it was still better than the 324 gear with which we all had to start raiding when Legacy of the Sith first came out, but it just bugged me a bit, so I vouched to work on upgrading my gear via a bit of casual PvP at least, while seeing where this gets me on the seasonal PvP track as well.

You can tell how huge Star Forge is because even though I'm in a different time zone, pops are always really quick, regardless of what time of day I queue up. It's such a contrast to the situation on Shae Vizla in particular... I've never minded the lack of cross-server functionality in SWTOR, but I've got to admit that seeing the stark differences between these three PvP ecosystems has definitely made me think.