Drop In: Tatooine

Being on holiday doesn't mean that I was going to skip writing about week eight's tour of Tatooine strongholds I did for seasons.

Like Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine was among the first batch of strongholds added to the game, and I have a particular fondness for it because out of that first set of four, it was originally my favourite. Unfortunately, it being old and from a time when strongholds served a slightly different purpose than they do now, I also saw some more evidence of old-fashioned deco spam, though not as much as I did on Nar Shaddaa.

I visited a Tatooine stronghold on all six servers this time, starting with Tlaocetl's Vacation Retreat on Darth Malgus. The first thing that struck me about this stronghold was that the decos were a pretty contradictory mix in terms of themes, with the room where you load in containing a bar, a serene fountain and an altar covered with skulls all in close proximity of each other.

As I looked around the other rooms, I initially got the impression that it was all a collection of personal trophies, but then I also found a room that was completely empty and a couple more that had obviously just been "spammed" to get to 100% completion.

On Leviathan, I visited Karen Himeki's Syndicate Nerver Center, hoping that perhaps the name was hinting at an underworld theme, but in practice this stronghold was probably one of the most competently done yet unexciting strongholds I've ever seen. Imperial flags and guardsmen indicated a clear faction preference, and several rooms contained setups with tables and comfy-looking couches that looked like nice places to hang out, but I didn't get much of a sense of purpose from the place. Unless the purpose was really just to make a comfortable place for Imps to spend their free time, in which case the owner succeeded at that.

My favourite stronghold of this lot was the one I visited on Tulak Hord, called Vermächtnishändler's Black Market (the character name is German for "legacy trader" by the way, implying that it's a bank/GTN alt, which somehow made it sound even more fitting).

What I liked about this one was that a lot of the rooms were very strongly themed and at least loosely fit the overall theme as well, starting with this very striking view when you first load in:

There were also multiple cantinas.

A detail I particularly loved was this outdoor bantha enclosure consisting of fencing and sun roofs and which used last season's depository of dark wisdom to create what looks like a sort of feeding trough for the animals.

The owner was also clearly proud of their PvP prowess, as they had a whole room dedicated to their various trophies.

Then there was what I could only call a "droid room"...

... and a Hutt room, though I'm not entirely sure what's going in the little scene that's set up in it. It looks like one guy is threatening the Hutt and the other one is defending him? Maybe?

On Star Forge, I visited Monsieur Fancypants' Hideout at 99% completion, which amused me with its name. I was surprised that this was the only Tat stronghold I visited that actually featured the Sarlacc pit deco (from what I saw).

 

 

Other rooms once again revealed a strong Imperial focus, with dark side relics and Sithy NPCs front and centre.

The room that really surprised me in here though was an unassuming hallway. You don't expect hallways to be interesting, as they're usually just connectors between different rooms, but this one was absolutely stuffed with carbonite trophies and flashing red lights, which just made me go "WTF", haha.

On Satele Shan, Kaómi's Republic Sanctuary finally offered a bit of reprieve from all the Imp lovers, with a stronghold filled with Republic guardsmen and featuring a briefing room that I liked.

The thing that really stood out to me in this stronghold though was its use of desert flora. You don't often see these cactus plants from Ruhnuk used for example, but this player really selected the right plant decorations to create scenery that looked appropriate for Tatooine, instead of simply assuming that an endless water supply could create an oasis where everything and anything can grow anyway.

Finally, on Shae Vizla I was once again somewhat limited in terms of choice and ended up visiting Ralyne's Marketplace Cantina at only 39% completion. One funny thing here was that I soon realised that it belonged to a guildie and they were actually inside while I was roaming around, browsing the GTN or something.

The owner once again did what they could with a limited number of decos, with a pretty "standard" selection of items as well as a dedicated relic room and med bay.

The funniest and most interesting thing to me was a small room containing only two decos: an animated metal/rubbish conveyor belt and a floor tile that's meant to look like there's a beast pit underneath, and they had been positioned in such a way that it looked like the conveyor belt's contents were being spilled into the pit. I don't know why, but that just tickled me.

Do you have any thoughts on these Tatooine strongholds or the ones you visited yourself for last week's season objective?

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 8

Week eight was a surprise in terms of Galactic Seasons weeklies as the devs took their recent experiments with doubling up on certain objectives to a new level, with all three of the companion kill achievements being active in the same week. Here's the full list of everything that was on offer and my thoughts on each objective:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Naturally.
• Earn the seasonal currency: Would also get done automatically.
  
• Visit another player's Tatooine stronghold: Another one for my "drop-in" series of posts, so sure!
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a healer companion: I mean, as previously established, this is really easy to do, so I was probably going to do it on all servers.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a dps companion: ... even if I needed to kill 200 mobs.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a tank companion: ... or 300, for that matter.
  
• Kill the Quesh and Nar Shaddaa world bosses: I'd had decent luck getting these done on several servers in week one, so I was up for doing that again.
  
• Earn 40 medals in warzones: I'd actually finished my last PvP season achievment on Darth Malgus the previous week, but this was going to be easy enough to do. I just wasn't sure whether I would feel like investing the time on other servers or whether I would even be able to get pops.
  
• Heroic space missions:  As mentioned previously, I'm not good enough to do these as I never even finished all the normal space missions.
  
• Play 5-10 arenas (wins count double): Since I no longer needed any PvP season objectives, I thought it was unlikely that I was going to bother with arenas.
  
• KotFE chapter 13 on veteran mode or higher: Once again, a chapter I wasn't going to bother to repeat.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

After a day in the office I had limited play time in the evening, though ops was cancelled so that awarded me a couple of hours extra. I did the world boss objective on Leviathan, Tulak Hord, Star Forge and Satele Shan. On Tulak Hord I also did the Coruscant world boss since I initially replied to the wrong group request in general chat (lol). On Star Forge I also got lured into healing a master mode Dash'roode/Nefra pug while waiting for more people to show interest in the world bosses. On Shae Vizla and Darth Malgus I just focused on getting my daily objective done with a bit of questing/clicking.

Day 2 - Wednesday

In the morning I logged into Shae Vizla to check for world boss groups and tried to queue for some warzones, but had no luck on either front. 

I then didn't log in again until relatively late in the evening, when I did the daily Conquest round on all servers, mostly by continuing my class story on different characters. This always made at least a little bit of progress towards one of the companion kill achievements as well.

Day 3 - Thursday

Thursday was another office day, and when I came home I didn't feel like doing much more than what I'd done the night before. It was kind of funny to me that I ended up working on my class story on Alderaan on no fewer than three different characters/servers. I'm not trying to keep them in sync - rather the opposite to be honest, to avoid repetition - but for some reason I have a lot of characters on the secondary servers that are more or less at exactly the same stage in the story. Might be related to me always playing them for seasons at the same time...

Day 4 - Friday

Another similar day seasons-wise, as I did ops with my guildies in the evening and then did the rounds on the other servers doing various quests. The "kill things with your companion" achievements were slowly starting to get ticked off as well, though it was interesting to me how few mobs you actually have to kill on some of the earlier planets and how much it ratchets up later on. Taking a more progressed character for a spin for this definitely worked better than doing it on a lower level if you were just following the class story.

Day 5 - Saturday

In the morning I logged into Darth Malgus to do a few warzones and a bit more questing. I also did a quick check on Shae Vizla to see whether any world boss groups were forming or level 80 warzones were popping, but there was no sign of either.

I played again in the evening, first killing the two world bosses with my guild on Darth Malgus, followed by some PvP which got me the warzone medals objective. On the other servers I did another round of questing once again, with most of them ticking off one or more of the companion objectives by this point. Again I had some weird parallels as my trooper on Tulak Hord and my knight on Leviathan were on literally the exact same planetary story quest on Balmorra.

Day 6 - Sunday

I didn't play until the evening, when I did some PvP and questing on Darth Malgus, getting me to 5/7 there, with just some more mob killing left to go. On Leviathan, Tulak Hord and Star Forge, I visited a Tatooine stronghold and also did some more questing. As it was late by that point, I decided to save the daily objectives on Satele Shan and Shae Vizla for the next day.

Day 7 - Monday

It was a holiday in the UK, so I had all day to devote to non-work activities. I logged into Satele Shan and Shae Vizla in the morning, visiting a Tatooine stronghold on each and knocking out the daily objective with a bit of questing.

In the evening I returned to do the rounds on all servers again, once again completing story missions on characters everywhere to get the last few companion kill objectives and finish various personal Conquest targets. This left me with 7/7 weeklies completed everywhere except on Shae Vizla, where I'd failed to get a world boss group or any warzone pops for the PvP objective.

Week 8 Thoughts

The triple companion objective resulted in a pretty wild week as you could basically get to 5/7 without doing anything truly season-specific - as long as you did any kind of non-instanced content that involved your companion and rotated through all the different roles. I used this mostly to advance my class story on different characters on all servers (and didn't feel the need to go into a lot more detail about which character was on exactly which step). With the stronghold visit and the world bosses I could then get to an easy 7/7 everywhere except Shae Vizla, where I ended on 6/7 as I couldn't find a world boss group this time around (though I'll confess that I didn't try all that hard either).

I'm not really sure how I feel about this particular experiment in having all the companion objectives active at once. On the one hand, easy season progress, yay! On the other hand though... it almost felt like it wasn't really a season since I could get points for just questing, which is usually not the way this works.

There won't be a Week 9 Diary by the way as I'm travelling, and while I have my laptop with me, I don't really feel like spending much time on gaming. I'm not too worried about missing a week as I'm seasons level 90 on Darth Malgus and around 80 everywhere else at this point, so I'll be able to ease up on the other servers soon anyway.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 7

This is being published a bit late since I wanted to get my April round-up and the dev stream highlights out on time, but I didn't forget! To clarify, this is about the period from 23rd to 30th of April.

I'd been pretty excited about doing Galactic Seasons objectives for the first six weeks, but week 7 was the first one where I looked at the weekly objectives and kind of thought "meh". I think this was mainly due to the fact that repetition was starting to become noticeable to me for the first time. Here's what I thought about each weekly objective:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, I'd do that one.
  
• Complete the GSI weekly mission: Somewhat time-consuming so I definitely wasn't going to do this everywhere, but I do like me a bit of GSI action every now and then, so I figured I was going to do this on some servers as least.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: Will get done automatically, so yes.
  
• Blow up enemies with destructible barrels and the like: I was probably going to do this one one way or another because of how easy it is to complete.
  
• Do the Black Hole weekly twice or the Onderon weekly once: This was the first objective that made me sigh a little. Didn't we just have this one? Oh, apparently that was five weeks ago. Didn't feel that long ago, somehow.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Hutt Space planets Nar Shaddaa, Quesh, Voss, Makeb, Darvannis or Ossus: This one also felt like I'd done it before, but I triple-checked and it hadn't been featured yet this season. I can only guess it felt that way since I'd done a fair bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa while working on other objectives in previous weeks. Still, this wasn't too bad and I was definitely going to do it.
  
• Craft invasion forces and dark projects: As usual, yay for crafting on Darth Malgus but nowhere else.
  
• Complete four uprisings on veteran or master mode: Still not a huge fan of uprisings and I could still feel the after-effects of spamming them for Total Galactic War. I figured maybe I'd do this on Darth Malgus, but surely nowhere else.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Battle of Ilum, False Emperor, Legacy of the Rakata, Shrine of Silence): Now this one was definitely repetitive because these exact same flashpoints were featured only two weeks ago. I appreciated them then, but going through the exact same routine only two weeks later was definitely going to be a no from me.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: And the more annoying one of the two GSF objectives again... I figured I probably wasn't going to bother with this one, except maybe on Darth Malgus.
  
• Karagga's Palace on story mode: Now this was one objective that made me happy, as I was pleased to see that like the vet mode ops objective in week two, it had been reduced to requiring only one run - instead of previously four! I was hopeful that I'd be able to get this done on multiple servers since I figured it shouldn't be too hard to find pugs for it.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I got home very late that day as I attended a memorial for the recently deceased co-worker after my shift at the office. I didn't really feel like playing games after getting home, so I just logged into each server briefly to collect my daily login reward and achieve my daily allotment of Conquest point via various clicky objectives.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I had a lot more free time that day but still didn't really feel much like playing SWTOR for most of the day. I did eventually log in late in the evening to do the rounds again. On Darth Malgus I just did some crafting, followed by some GSI dailies on Leviathan.

I've settled into a routine when it comes to doing the GSI weekly, which involves doing Buried in Time on Tatooine, followed by two of the missions on Alderaan, digging up ancient weapons near House Teral and toxic waste barrels near Outpost Luurdes just a short ride over. This is very quick and easy, and I just do it several days in a row. This time, I also did the heroic on Tatooine (since you need to do one for the weekly) and blew up the womp rats near the barrel in Anchorhead a couple of times while I was there.

I then logged over to Star Forge to see whether any ops pugs were advertising for KP story mode in general chat. It took a little while, but eventually I saw a group form on Imp side. It was a nice and smooth run that also got me some achievements, as I'd never done KP SM on Star Forge before.

On Shae Vizla, I did a bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa until I'd earned enough Conquest for the daily objective. By that point it was late though and I was tired, so I decided to leave the remaining two servers for the next day.

Day 3 - Thursday

In the morning, I logged into Satele Shan and did a round of GSI dailies mirroring what I'd done on Leviathan the night before.

After that, I logged into Tulak Hord and did the Nar Shaddaa bonus series, since I couldn't remember whether I'd completed it on that server before, just that I had all these issues with false starts and bugs. It's a shame that you pretty much have to do them in a single day now to make sure they don't bug out, and with that in mind I've found it best to be laser-focused on only the missions actually part of the chain, while making a note to come back for any heroics or unrelated exploration missions in the area another time. Either way, this completed my Hutt Space missions weekly.

In the evening, I spent some time on Darth Malgus doing stuff not strictly related to seasons, such as PvP, ops with my guild and a bit of questing (though this did also get my daily objective done).

When I visited the other servers afterwards, I did another "round" of GSI dailies (meaning the eggs on Tatooine and the two dailies on Alderaan) on both Leviathan and Tulak Hord, followed by a round of the Black Hole on Satele Shan (since that's the only server where my main's a stealther) and a round of Ossus on Star Forge (the only secondary server where I have access to that planet). Finally, I continued doing non-class missions on Nar Shaddaa on Shae Vizla until my daily was done there as well.

Day 4 - Friday

I didn't log in until the evening again. Starting on Darth Malgus, I did a variety of activities there, including a GSF weekly. I'd originally planned to skip that particular objective, but our Imperial alt guild was a bit low on Conquest points, so doing the GSF weekly a couple of times seemed like a good way to boost our score. Winning two matches only got me to 7/25 medals however.

On Leviathan, I went out to Nar Shaddaa - I knew that I'd completed the bonus series before, but I could've sworn I had some other side missions left to do in the area. This turned out to be wrong as I couldn't find a single one - clearly my spreadsheets to track progression across different alts aren't detailed enough for this. I instead started questing on Quesh until I hit my daily Conquest.

On Tulak Hord, I did some more GSI dailies, after which I logged over to Shae Vizla since I thought a KP guild run might be about to start. However, when I double-checked the time it turned out that I was wrong and the actual start time was something like 2.30 am my time, so I went and did some more quests on Nar Shaddaa instead. (I was clearly not having the best day in terms of knowing WTF was going on.) It didn't take long for me to complete my Hutt Space objective, so I went and started another GSI weekly mission. The Imperial version of the heroic on Tatooine has a bugged spot so you always need to check there first to make sure RNG hasn't assigned it to you, else you need to come back the next day (some say resetting the mission can also work but I've had no success with that personally). Fortunately I was lucky that day and the bugged spawn was not included in my objectives. On Alderaan, I realised I'd forgotten how much more of a pain the Killik weapons are to dig up on Imp side, as the nearest location for Imperials requires going up a long and winding mountain path with lots of bugs in your way. I eventually got there, but I vaguely seemed to remember actually preferring a more distant location with less of a hassle to get there...

On Satele Shan I did another round of Black Hole, and on Star Forge a round of Onderon for the daily area objective.

Day 5 - Saturday

I only played for a couple of hours in the evening, and only on Darth Malgus. Not everything I did was about seasons either, though I did do Karagga's Palace on story mode with my guild, and another GSF weekly. I got it in two wins again, though this time they yielded ten medals, getting me to 17/25.

Day 6 - Sunday

I got up late but with enough time left before the reset to do the rounds on the other servers. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, I completed my GSI weeklies, and on Star Forge I figured I had it in me to do one more of these this week, so I started it on my trooper (including the heroic on Tatooine and blowing up some womp rats). On Satele Shan, I did some side questing on Nar Shaddaa.

When it came to Shae Vizla, I only had twenty minutes left before reset, but I figured that should be enough for a quick round of the Black Hole, right? Even on a character that is a healer (my level 75 consular)? Even if their highest-level companion is only influence level 12? (I hope you can tell where this is going...) I started but quickly realised that things weren't going fast enough. I decided to skip ahead to the heroic, since I figured I could at least finish that, but it was going so. Slow. Just as I was starting to wonder what would happen to someone inside a mission phase if the reset happened while you were doing the quest, I actually managed to die on a pull and just gave up. I quickly relogged my warrior to get my last few Conquest points for the daily objective before reset, but even that took too long and reset arrived with me being only 150 Conquest points off the daily objective. I was so annoyed I just logged off.

I logged back in later in the evening, completed the partially done Black Hole weekly on my consular and then did some GSI dailies on my warrior again (opting to take a taxi to the more distant but less awkward location for Killik weapons this time), followed by some more of those on my trooper on Star Forge.

By then it was time for ops with my guild, which took up a good chunk of the evening. Afterwards I did another GSF weekly, which was done within two wins again, and yet I was still only on 23/25 medals after that. This is what makes this weekly so frustrating. It doesn't even matter if you play well/win, whether you get any medal credit feels like a complete roll of the dice. Like, how many weekly missions should a single seasons objective require? It's ridiculous. After that, it took two more matches to get those last two medals. Yes, two matches for just two more medals.

After a couple more warzones, I switched to the remaining servers where I hadn't done the daily yet and got my daily Conquest allocation done with some questing on all three.

Day 7 - Monday

In the morning I logged in on Darth Malgus and quickly knocked out two more weekly objectives by doing a round of Onderon dailies and blowing up some womp rats. I'd held off on my last two objectives until close to the end in case Mr Commando felt like doing flashpoints or uprisings over the weekend, but that didn't happen, so I had to get to 7/7 by myself.

I then logged in again in the evening to finish off my personal Conquest on a couple of alts and get my daily objective done that way. On Leviathan, I completed my bounty hunter's personal Conquest on Quesh (a good Hutt Space planet to jump ahead to, and I was kind Nar Shaddaa-ed out).

On Star Forge I did two heroics on Makeb to get some more Hutt Space kills - the Ossus dailies on Thursday had taken care of the mission part of that objective but I had barely killed any mobs. Makeb was good for achieving the opposite.

On Satele Shan, I'd left things off with several Conquest objectives partially completed so that I only had to do a single mission hand-in on my agent to be done for the day.

Finally, I finished my SWTOR week on Shae Vizla by doing one more round of Black Hole and completing my GSI weekly.

Week 7 Thoughts 

I started this season with a promise to myself that I wasn't going to burn myself out doing objectives I didn't enjoy, but then I was so excited that I did 7/7 weeklies on all servers for several weeks anyway. This week though, I could definitely feel my enthusiasm wane for the first time, with several days where I just didn't feel like playing much at all. I was still going to get 7/7 on Darth Malgus, but I quickly resigned myself to probably only getting three or four weeklies done on the other servers. In the end I still did a bit better than that, achieving 6/7 on Star Forge and Shae Vizla, and 5/7 on all the others.

I didn't even think that the objectives were particularly bad, but there was definitely little to no synergy, and the feeling of repetition got me more than anything else. This was the first time this season where I really felt the conflict between "wanting to do the thing because I want to have the thing completed" and just not feeling the actual gameplay in that moment. It's a pretty normal thing to feel, but also something I personally like to keep an eye on, as I'm quite capable of making things un-fun for myself by being too determined to get things done no matter what. With that in mind, I was glad that I was able to recognise that I was not really feeling it this week and say "oh well, not gonna go all out this week then" pretty easily and early on.

7.5 Dev Stream Highlights

Yesterday it was time for another SWTOR dev stream, hurrah! As usual, this is not the place to find all the details about everything that was said, but rather a summary of what I thought were the most important points, with my own opinions sprinkled on top. If you're looking for something more comprehensive and less editorial, let me point you towards one of the sites below instead:

• Swtorista
• Today in TOR
• Vulkk

Now, on to my own thoughts...

7.5 Story "Desperate Defiance" on Hutta

We got a little more detail about the next story update coming with 7.5, without really getting into spoilers. As previously established, it will take place on Hutta where we'll be interacting with a number of new characters. My favourite of these was a Hutt called Yusinduu with a cool new look.

Again, without really going into spoilers, they said that Sa'har will follow up on what was said at the end of the 7.4 story, and apparently how we respond to her will have an impact on her development going forward - curious to see what that means.

My only slight disappointment was hearing that the new area on Hutta won't contain a new daily area or anything. It's not so much that I'm particularly dying to have a daily area in every patch, but it kind of sounds like there's literally nothing there other than whatever you do for the main storyline, which sounds kind of wasteful to me if true. We'll see I guess.

Graphical Updates for Hutta

They'll use the addition of the new area on Hutta as an opportunity to also give the planet as a whole a graphical update, which sounded good to me. I mentioned it in the past when they made similar changes on a smaller scale on Tython and Korriban.

The only thing that threw me for a bit of a loop was how utterly different the skybox looked in the footage with the updated graphics. Hutta's sky is currently dominated by yellow clouds that cause the whole planet to be basked in a yellow-ish hue, while the updated version seems to feature a uniform grey cloud cover that looked like it strongly changes the vibe. I don't know how I feel about that yet. If you like the yellow, go and take some screenshots while it lasts I guess!

Below you can see before and after shots of the sky over Jiguuna that I took in the live game and on the PTS. I'll admit the change didn't feel as drastic in game as it looks in the screenshots and the new version is definitely much crisper and more detailed.

I'm curious whether this update will also affect the Karagga's Palace operation, since it is also set on Hutta so might be sharing some assets (but I can't be bothered to check that out on the PTS).

Dantooine Spring Event 

We currently have Nar Shaddaa Night Life in summer (which will start on the 9th of July this year by the way), the Feast of Prosperity in autumn and Life Day in winter, so there was a gap in the calendar that the SWTOR team wanted to fill with this new event. It's going to be full of chill activities like growing crops, dancing around the Star Wars equivalent of a May pole, hunting for eggs (random Easter vibes?), looking after animals, baking and eating pies, and finally... fishing. Yes, after more than twelve years, SWTOR finally gets its own version of fishing!

I don't know, I can't claim to think that this was something that was desperately needed, but I've enjoyed it in other MMOs that have it as an activity, even when it worked in very different ways. The appropriately Star Wars twist on it is that you basically make a little probe droid do the work for you, the notion of which amuses me greatly.

Yes, I actually logged into the PTS to check this out.

I think this sounds like a lot of wholesome fun and I look forward to experiencing it in full once the event goes live.

Our Own Little Basilisk Companion

Another thing that will happen in 7.5 is that Lane Vizla finally manages to fix that little basilisk from Ruhnuk and it will become our companion - a proper one that fights and everything, not just a non-combat pet. It'll be called B3-S1 or "Bessie" for short. However, there'll be a twist, as we'll have to train the little bugger to truly make it ours, which will involve something called "ventures" and will require you to take Bessie out to do dailies over the course of a longer period of time. I have to admit my initial reaction to this were somewhat mixed feelings.

On the one hand: new companion that we actually have to work for and build a relationship with! Yes! I'm 100% on board with that concept, and we haven't really seen anything like this since the release of HK-51.

However, from the way it was described, I'm not sure why we need a new "feature" with a new UI just for this instead of it simply being a quest chain or tied to an achievement, because it doesn't sound that dramatically different from anything already in the game. In fact, it sounds a lot like yet another way of making us go back to old daily areas, which makes me somewhat less happy. Also, I'm waiting for clarification on whether there's going to be an option to just unlock Bessie for your alts via the legacy system after you've jumped through all the required hoops the first time.

PvP Season 6

This was a bit of a weird one. First off, they announced that they'll be changing the launch timing of PvP seasons and have them more regularly start alongside the big patches. I'm in favour of that in so far as it should avoid some of the weird overlap issues that have been occurring with Galactic Seasons sometimes, assuming that those will continue to go live on the x.1 patches between the major ones.

However, then the devs also said that they wanted to make PvP seasons longer to give people more time to complete them, which sounded fine enough to me, but then they also want to add extra levels and make each level require more points... someone on the forums immediately did the maths and it sounds like you will still need to play pretty much just as many matches each week as before, only for more weeks, which doesn't really sound like an improvement.

Also, they talked about adding warzone medpacks and adrenals as rewards for the extra levels, which made every PvPer go "what?" - you already get more of these through normal gameplay than you could possibly use (because of their internal cooldown, you literally earn them faster than you can click them), and every character that does PvP already has hundreds if not thousands of these. That just seemed... odd. I hope they'll review that particular plan based on people's feedback.

What Now?

There isn't an official launch date for 7.5 yet, but we're probably looking at a late May/early June release.

The Public Test Server is up and you can check out the graphics updates, the spring event and some of the "venture" stuff there if you like (no story content though).

The reward code they gave out during the stream this time was "MalgusWhen", which grants a Darth Malgus in-game poster decoration - if you don't already have it, because unfortunately this one's a repeat of a reward they handed out previously. If, like me, you already had it, you can still enter the code and it will say that you successfully claimed it, but you'll get nothing. It's valid until May 16th.

Speaking of things that are valid until May 16th - in order to celebrate Star Wars Day, there's also some other goodies available. Logging in between now and then will grant you another floating cube droid non-combat pet, there's double XP going on, a Cartel Market sale, and a 50% off Collections sale. Enjoy!