My 13th Year of SWTOR Blogging

With SWTOR's birthday comes this blog's 13th birthday! And it's been a good year for the blog as well - I think I might actually manage to hit 100 posts by the end of the year, which would be a feat I haven't achieved since 2019. And yes, nobody is setting me any targets, but it does feel nice to know that it's not simply a matter of my activity always going downhill over time. 

In fact, I thought it would be fun to create a little table showing the number of posts I've made across both this and my other gaming blogs over the years. If you just count SWTOR and WoW, 2024 was actually my third most prolific year since I started posting! Then I remembered that I also maintained a blog about Neverwinter Online for a few years, and while those posts tended to be very short (and I'm not sure they should be given the same weight to be honest), it skewed the numbers into a whole different direction. Apparently my busiest year altogether was 2016, for some reason...? 2020 coming in second at least makes some sense, what with the pandemic and all that.

Year	Total Blog Posts	about SWTOR	about WoW	about NWO
2009	87		87
2010	181		181
2011	115	5	110
2012	155	149	6
2013	116	109	7
2014	163	115	20	28
2015	190	107	17	66
2016	229	146	32	51
2017	164	113	12	39
2018	185	103	9	73
2019	156	103	39	14
2020	213	96	64	53
2021	154	76	57	21
2022	139	75	62	2
2023	159	94	65
2024 (so far)	168	98	70

Anyway, coming back to this blog in specific, it feels to me like it's been a good year. I felt like I was engaged with the game pretty consistently, which was reflected in an urge to write about it pretty consistently as well.

In January I was still busy dissecting some of the content that had come with December's 7.4 patch, such as graphics updates made to the starter planets, the new GTN or our continued research into Basilisk droids. I was also still heavily into playing on the Shae Vizla server, which had launched only two months prior. In an effort to do better by my fellow content creators, I started my "Around the SWTOR-sphere" column at the end of the month, which I've been able to keep up with pretty consistently over the course of the year and which was (to me) surprisingly well-received.

In February, I still wrote about some adventures on Shae Vizla, such as me replaying the Sith warrior class story for the first time in ages and musing about the server's decreasing activity levels. I also wrote about more evergreen topics such as missing Kuat Drive Yards or being very impressed by the Republic saboteur choices on Dantooine and Manaan. A dev stream gave us a preview of patch 7.4.1 and beyond, and I gave my opinions on it.

The patch actually arrived in March, which saw me checking out two of the new date nights and going all in with Galactic Season 6. I started a series where I documented my various visits of public strongholds for the weekly seasons objective, which ended up being unexpectedly popular with a a certain segment of my readership, and I decided to revive the weekly Galactic Seasons diary I'd kept in Season 1.

The next two months were pretty much entirely consumed by these diary entries plus more stronghold drop-ins, with the only deviations being a tale of a crazy Conquest adventure in April, and thoughts on the 7.5 dev livestream in May as well as the situation on the Shae Vizla server after six months.

In June, my Galactic Seasons activities slowly wound down (though not before hitting legacy level 50 on Star Forge, which was a notable milestone to me) and patch 7.5 launched. I had fun with the new Spring Abundance Festival and really enjoyed the latest story update, though I also expressed some concerns about the state of PvP.

July was a wild grab bag including another dev livestream, me quitting Twitter, mount sale shopping tips and my first impressions of the new venture system. I also put a bit more thought into pieces about my favourite post-launch story updates and my strange relationship with playing male characters.

August brought with it the return of the Nar Shaddaa Nightlife event, and I mused on some evergreen topics such as achievements I would add to old content and how flashpoints could become a bigger part of SWTOR's endgame again. At the end of the month, Galactic 7 started. And that's still going on until February! That's one long season.

In September I was already hit my the mid-season doldrums, so I instead spent time on game-adjacent things like Twitch drops, going on a podcast, or musing about the next expansion.

October got me more excited again with the return of the Best View in SWTOR contest and a surprise teaser video for 7.6 generating hype. I also had fun revisiting the Feast of Prosperity and grinding currency for flower pots (no, really).

November saw another dev stream about 7.6 as well as me visiting and commenting on content on the PTS several times. I also raised my glass to the Shae Vizla server's first birthday.

And this month of course we got patch 7.6 as well as all that entails, and I'll have more posts about different aspects of it to come. Also, I had another crazy Conquest adventure with my guild...

Thanks for another year of reading along, whether you're currently playing SWTOR yourself or not, whether you're an old-timer or someone who only just found the blog recently, whether you just read along quietly or leave comments sometimes. My interactions with other players through this blog are definitely an important part of what keeps the game fun for me.