Around the SWTOR-sphere: January 2025

How are we already one month into 2025? Time gets weird as you get older. Anyway, here are some links to interesting, useful and/or fun SWTOR-related content that I came across over the past thirty days.

• Intisar decided to pass on making silly predictions this year (even though that has kind of become a tradition for him) and instead gave some more serious thought to what the new year might bring for SWTOR. I'm not going to say much more than that, just go and read for yourself!
• Roger from Contains Moderate Peril, whom I also gave a shout-out last month, continued documenting his journeys in SWTOR with Revisiting Star Wars: The Old Republic Part 4, in which he hits legendary status among other things. While he expressed some interest in endgame, I'm really curious whether there's going to be a part five or not, as I suspect that the transition into endgame is a point where many players fall off.
• Kal from Today in TOR decided to ring in the new year with a guide called "How to Make Credits in SWTOR 2025". I tend to find credit-making guides interesting in the sense that the very idea of playing the game specifically to make credits has always been quite foreign to me, as I find that just looting everything and playing in ways that I enjoy tends to provide for all my needs and then some, but I guess I also don't spend a lot of credits (besides the repair bills during operations) and there'll always be players looking for shortcuts to have more money available while playing less. I do like that Kal tried to label and sort everything very clearly, so everyone can find something whether they are subscribed or not, and whether they play with friends or by themselves. He's also intending to keep the guide updated on a regular basis (since a lot of it is based on selling items on the GTN, where prices might vary).
• Swtorista maintained her recent focus on fashion by fully mapping all the rewards you get for playing through the KotFE/KotET chapters, including the different weapons and outfits for every combat style. I was kind of in awe of that simply because chapters are among my least favourite content in the game and I can't imagine replaying them so many times just for a project, but she told me it made for good content to do on stream, where she can't necessarily focus much on the gameplay anyway while chatting with viewers. Anyway, some of those Outlander armours don't look half bad!
• My favourite post from the SWTOR subreddit this month was a short one called "Smuggler bad ending" by user Lomakys. It's not long so I don't want to spoil it, but in short they experienced something unexpected during the end of chapter one of their class story and the whole description of the event and their response to it made me smile.
• As I was putting this together, a comment I saw on reddit reminded me of a YouTuber I've been meaning to give a shout-out for a while: TakesCooosh. He's made some guides I think, but the primary content on his channel are videos of him doing group content in pugs, usually master mode flashpoints. You might have seen him in your recommendations before if you've ever come across a thumbnail with a short title and a cute pink cartoon twi'lek making a face. The thing is, I'm a little bit conflicted about him to be totally honest - he seems like a nice guy in all the vids I've seen and can be pretty funny, but his mannerisms are also very... "stereotypical streamer" with the YELLING and the EXAGGERATED REACTIONS to everything; it honestly makes me feel very, very old just to watch (and even hurts my ears sometimes). That said, I realise the latter is more of a me problem than anything else, so I still wanted to give that shout-out, because I do think he definitely deserves more viewers than he's got. Here's an example video from last month, hand-picked by me, called "WE GOT SOME NEW GAMERS", in which he tanks a Czerka Core Meltdown and things go kind of wrong, because we all know that's more interesting to watch than a super smooth run, right?
  
• Finally, in news not directly related to SWTOR (anymore), Bioware announced another round of massive lay-offs the other day. There's been a fair amount of talk about it online, but here's the IGN article for reference. While this is sad news for all the affected devs, it does kind of strike me as ironic that after literally over a decade of people predicting SWTOR's imminent doom, it currently looks likely to outlive the studio that originally created it. In 2023, most voices seemed to view the game's move to Broadsword as a bad sign for The Old Republic, but it really does look like it was bad news for Bioware more than anyone else. Ask a Game Developer has a bit of commentary on the lay-offs and also mentions that 2024 was Bioware's first year without SWTOR and that this likely hurt their financial situation significantly.

Darth Malgus Conquest News - Jan 28th 2025

Another Total Galactic War came to an end today and Twin Suns Squadron was able to continue its streak of successfully conquering a planet during this event by claiming first place on Onderon this time. After a heated battle against Ace of Saints in December, we got away with coasting this past week, as we achieved victory with a mere 33 million points, the second lowest score of all first place winners, only "outdone" by Looking for Drama claiming Makeb with a bit over 31 million points. (I took it relatively easy myself, only scoring 100-400k on all 22 of my currently guilded characters...)

The rest of the scoreboard revealed some interesting stories as well this time. Ace of Saints were not discouraged by how horribly things went wrong for them last time and successfully managed to claim victory on Section X by beating Remnants of the Eternal Empire. Both of the "Remnants" guilds, who are long-standing competitors in Total Galactic War, had a rather disappointing week as Remnants of the Eternal Alliance was also beaten by Czech Alliance on Tatooine.

The Czechs (with whom TSS had its own run-in last year) could also happily lay claim to Ruhnuk, which appeared to be quite hotly contested this week, with both Jade Empire and Some Like it Hoth seemingly also making a push for first place but ultimately not quite cutting it.

Another planet that was actually fought over this past week was Corellia, where Bogan ultimately triumphed over Eternal Hunger, though according to one member of the former, "nobody in Bogan cares" and they simply may have succeeded by sheer strength of numbers.

Over on Imperial Taris, Sith went up against Sith as Sith Ascendancy fought Sith Dominion for first place, with the former coming out ahead by less than three million points. Meanwhile on Imperial Balmorra, Primordial Flame came in first place with over 64 million points, their highest score on record yet.

The highest score of all guilds was, somewhat surprisingly, achieved by Looking For Group on CZ-198, where nobody was even competing with them and yet they nearly achieved 168 million points. Is this a sign that the "Looking For" conglomerate may be gearing up to take on Ashla and Beyond Madness during regular Conquest weeks as well? We'll see!

Newcomers this week were Dynasty of Choas, whom I'd never noticed on the board before but who conquered Ilum with a strong showing of 80 million points without being driven by any direct competition. Out of Control, who first appeared on the scene in December, also managed to win a planet again, this time on Manaan (Invasion Zone).

Finally, in a somewhat random move, Beyond Sanity went to conquer Quesh - the exact same planet they conquered in the last Total Galactic War less than two months ago. They must really like those toxic fumes.

Meanwhile, abroad...

Congratulations to the Imperial branch of New Outriders (Intisar's guild) for conquering a planet for the first time in ten years and securing first place on Ossus over on Star Forge! Even though I was quite busy on Darth Malgus, I managed to squeeze in about 1.5 million points for them over the weekend so I could say I'd at least done my part. It's been great to see how excited everyone got over the whole thing. You know you'll want to do that again some time, right? (wink wink)

The Best And Worst Dynamic Encounters on Tatooine

Today I hit 100% achievement completion for dynamic encounters on Tatooine, so I thought it would be fun to write a post about which encounters I liked the best and least, just like I did for Hoth.

In general I'll say that Tatooine has been a bit less exciting to revisit repeatedly because none of the encounters there offer unique rewards like the pet, mount and decoration you can earn on Hoth, and in my opinion there were also more encounters that felt perhaps a bit too similar to each other. Or maybe I only got that impression because there are literally three encounters with the objective "kill 20+ womp rats".

The Top 10 Best Dynamic Encounters on Tatooine 

1. In Search of a Problem

My favourite encounter on Tatooine is this Imperial-only one just outside Mos Ila. Imperial scientists want you to test their newest concoctions on the local banthas to make them healthier, larger and more docile, but Imperial science being what it is, the medicine sometimes does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to. I just really enjoy the funny effects it sometimes has on the banthas, such as when the growth serum goes wrong and shrinks one of them to absolutely miniscule size. The event also doesn't take very long to complete and is quite convenient to reach for Imperial players.

2. Weary Travellers

Sort of the equivalent of the above for Republic players just outside Anchorhead, this encounter asks you to provide food, water and medicine to the refugees of a sand people raid. Again, it's very convenient and quick to do, but I also feel it conveys the planet's inhospitability very well.

3. Spaceport Chaos

This is an encounter you run into as a Republic player immediately upon landing (if it's up) and it'll be hard to miss as the entire spaceport is overrun with batha calves that need to be wrangled back into their cages. Another fun little romp that reminded me a bit of my ship's gizka infestation in KOTOR.

4. A Worse Exchange

Here, too, the other faction has a sort of equivalent, with the difference being that as an Imperial, you're being asked upon landing on Tatooine to use a mouse droid to scan and tag cargo containers containing contraband as well as disable Exchange surveillance devices. This encounter is part of a group of three Exchange-themed encounters, but to be honest I didn't want to call out the entire trilogy in this case since I personally thought the other two parts were pretty mid.

5. Imperial/Republic Attack

Yeah I know, I already called these out as great on Hoth, but they work on Tatooine too, you know! Due to Tatooine's layout it feels like you're a little less likely to run into these randomly compared to Hoth, but I still enjoy jumping into the fray to help defend my base, regardless of which side I'm on.

6. Sarlacc Snacktime

This hilarious encounter in the Dune Sea asks you to pick up a repulsor gun near the sarlacc pit and punt Gamorreans into it to feed the monster. The punting power of the temporary ability you gain is absolutely insane and makes for some extremely funny results. Just the other day I was there with another person who was also trying to get it done at the same time, and we were almost on top of each other for a bit and competing for mobs, but our aim also wasn't great so some of those Gamorreans were getting punted back and forth across the sarlacc pit multiple times. That just made me giggle.

7. The "Road Gig" Trilogy: The Debut, The Sophomore Album, The Comeback

This Republic-only trilogy of encounters in Anchorhead offers something slightly different as it has you helping out the band "The Double Sunburns". First you help them fix their broken speeders, then you assist with advertising their gig, and finally you get to go to the cantina to listen to them and join the party. The first part is a bit meh as it's another encounter asking you to kill womp rats with a side of RNG for quest drops, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I figured the other two parts were enjoyable enough to warrant including the whole set on this list. The second part is probably my favourite, as it has you controlling a cute gonk droid to play adverts for the residents of Anchorhead.

8. The Scavengers' Tale, Another Scavengers' Tale, The Last Scavengers' Tale

This trilogy of encounters in the Dune Sea centers around helping out a band of Jawas. In the first part you help them repair some droids, in the second part the droids go haywire and you need to defend against them (naturally), and in the third part you fight off one big droid. The last encounter has an interesting mechanic where the droid will cast a massive damage reduction shield on itself and you need to use an exploding barrel to get rid of said shield. It's unfortunately quite unintuitive to figure out how to do this the first time around, but once you know what to do it makes for a decent change of pace from all the more mindless fights.

9. The Renegade Dewback

The dynamic encounters that have you fight a single mob are usually neither particularly great nor bad in my opinion - some are faster than others, but many are located in kind of awkward places where it feels like too much effort to travel there just to kill one mob. The Renegade Dewback is fairly conveniently located for both factions however, doesn't have too much health, and just oozes personality. I mean, "Mister Grumbletail"? I don't know about you, but the moment I saw that name I wanted to make up a backstory for him.

10. Tread Lightly

This simple encounter asks you to disarm some mines in a canyon, no combat required. Not bad, but also not that exciting, is it? Well no, but stepping on the mines and setting them off also counts as "disarming" for this one, and players have been having fun with that.

The Top 5 Worst Dynamic Encounters on Tatooine

It may be somewhat less exciting than Hoth, but Tatooine is also less buggy and annoying, and I actually struggled to even fill this list.

1. Maintaining Order

This is the one encounter that I found that was bugged out in an annoying way, which is why it's number one on this list for me right now. You're supposed to intimidate outlaws in Mos Ila with a special temporary ability, but for some reason the button likes to vanish before you actually get in range of the NPCs you're supposed to use it on. It doesn't do this 100% of the time, so you can eventually finish the encounter with some patience and repeated careful approaches towards different outlaws, but it's annoying. Add to the fact that the event area is very small and doesn't actually have that many outlaws in it, so any sort of competition makes things worse.

2. Twin Suns Brutalizer

So remember how I said a few paragraphs ago that the single-mob encounters can be so-so? Well this is the prime negative example in my opinion, as the guy is located at the back of the toughest heroic area on Tatooine and quite out of the way for both factions, so if you don't have stealth you have quite a lot of travelling and fighting to do just to get to this one guy. Not worth it unless you just want to do it once for the achievement or already happen to be in the area for another reason.

3. Breezepunks

I remember when I read the PTS feedback thread about dynamic encounters, there was this one person who posted a fair bit of detailed feedback about things they liked, but then they also had several mentions of how they thought "Breezepunks" was the worst thing ever. This was before I'd ever done it myself, but once I got to it on the PTS, I actually had no problems with it that I can recall. I don't know if my memory is just faulty or if this encounter actually got worse from the PTS to live, but the initial instructions now seem buggy/misleading, so you kind of need to google how to even start it, and then there simply aren't a lot of the quest clickies around considering the number of them you need, so if more than one person is in the area, things quickly get tedious.

4. Sand People Warband

This would be a single-mob encounter except it consists of three champion mobs that take a while to die and... well, that's kind of annoying if you arrive while the encounter is already in progress, because odds are that at least one mob has already been killed and completion requires you to tag all three. So you help with killing what's left, and then you stand around to wait for that one guy to respawn - however, since they respawn as a group, you'll probably have to kill all three again. Not the worst thing in the world but definitely a little annoying.

5. Militant Jawa

I was initially hopeful that this fight would be a bit like the droid in The Last Scavengers' Tale, something with interesting mechanics, but actually, you can continue damaging this guy through his shield and he just summons a bunch of droid adds that are more annoying than anything (one of them has a really long stun). Again, not a fan.

Skeleton Crew Is a Hidden Gem

Skeleton Crew, the latest and newest Star Wars show on Disney+, wrapped up its first season this week, and it was unexpectedly wholesome and delightful.

I've repeatedly preached about how I want Star Wars to be more than the same old callbacks to the Skywalkers and the Force, but even with that in mind I've got to admit that I wasn't immediately sold on the concept of this show. The trailer looked kind of weird to me: Goonies in space? Not off-putting exactly, but I didn't quite know what to make of it (I know it's considered a cult movie, but I wasn't actually a big fan of the Goonies myself).

That impression was largely confirmed throughout the first episode, where I couldn't have pointed out anything as objectively bad, but kind of got the impression that it was perhaps more squarely aimed at younger audiences than I had expected. (To be clear, there's nothing wrong with that; it's just not what I'm looking for in my TV nowadays.) However, once the kids in the show got out of their comfort zone in episode two, my interest increased exponentially, and I was soon actively looking forward to the newest episode every week. The child characters are both well-written and well-acted, which is to say they behave appropriately childlike without being dull or annoying, and Jude Law's Jod makes a great foil for them throughout. SM-33 is also easily the best droid sidekick Star Wars has had in ages (and droid sidekicks are pretty much always fun), a bit like K-2SO from Rogue One except more whimsical and pirate-flavoured.

 

Skeleton Crew teaser poster from the official Star Wars website

Narratively the show doesn't do anything revolutionary, in the sense that the plot is fairly straightforward with no major twists and turns, with each episode slowly laying the groundwork for what's going to come next while exposing the child protagonists to different situations for character development. However, all of this is well executed, with a good mix of action, emotional moments and humour, and simply having the story set in the Star Wars universe (while also infusing it with a pirate theme and a certain 80s aesthetic) provides enough novelty to keep things interesting.

Ultimately it did end up being a fun-for-the-whole-family kind of show, though I've read that younger viewers in particular loved it a lot, even if they weren't into Star Wars before - I could easily see Skeleton Crew end up being the next generation's Clone Wars, in the sense of being many children's entry point into the wider Star Wars universe.

As it stands though, reports seem to indicate that Skeleton Crew has been the least successful of the Star Wars live action shows so far in terms of viewership, and I think that's a shame, as its quality definitely deserves better. Even if it doesn't seem likely at this point, I'd love to see a season two. (I wasn't sure how well that would work initially, but after seeing the last episode of season one I could immediately imagine some interesting angles for a follow-up arc, even though it does wrap things up nicely.)

One can only hope that good word of mouth might eventually lead to the show finding a wider audience, after perhaps being a bit of a hard sell and difficult to market initially. (Jude Law is great for example, but I thought the choice of thumbnail for the show being a mugshot of him staring vaguely menacingly wasn't exactly very representative. Should've tried putting Neel or SM-33 on there!)

SWTOR Classic - an Attempt at a Realistic Assessment

The idea of a classic version of Star Wars: The Old Republic is something I talked about on Ivano's podcast last year, and ever since then I've been thinking about writing about it in more detail on the blog too. There are mainly two reasons for this: One is that I honestly thought I'd already written something about the subject ages ago but when I dug through my archives to check, all I found was a post called "Would You Want To Go Back?" from 2017, when SWTOR was only five years old - so not quite the same thing. The other reason is that I'm a big fan of World of Warcraft Classic - I was hugely excited by its initial announcement, followed its development with interest, and it eventually got me to resubscribe to World of Warcraft again in 2019, years after I'd written the game off as no longer interesting to me.

So, SWTOR Classic: Would it be a good idea? How could it work?

Let me start off by saying that in a world of unlimited time and resources, I think a classic version of SWTOR, presumably based on one of the later patches before the first expansion, would be a fun thing to explore. The thing I'd personally be the most curious about would be how hard the levelling content and heroics would turn out to be, since people often complain about how faceroll easy the game is these days and how things were sooo much harder back in the day.

As someone who was around back then, I have no doubt that this is at least partially true, but looking at WoW's example, a lot of those memories may also be coloured by the fact that we were all new to the game back then and didn't know how to play (yet). When WoW Classic came out, people who had played on private servers beforehand were all very shocked by how easy the "real" classic version of the game was, as private server owners had massively overtuned some of the content to align with their memories of how tough they remembered the game to be. This turned out to not match reality at all, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was true for SWTOR as well.

That said, I'm kind of afraid that's where the appeal would already end. With WoW Classic, a big draw for players was that Blizzard had decided to literally destroy the original version of the world and all its quests in the Cataclysm expansion, only six years after the game's release, meaning that content and whole zones that millions of people remembered fondly from the game's early years were no longer accessible. SWTOR never underwent anything like that - there are some side missions that were shortened or culled in 2015's Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, but that's not even remotely close in scope. This game has always been about its fully voiced storylines; both devs and players recognised that as its greatest asset, and accordingly these things have been looked after and maintained faithfully over the years, which means that they can be played in the live game just as well in 2025 as you they could in 2011 (arguably better, because the game launched with its fair share of bugs even in the class stories, and there were a lot fewer quality of life features back then, especially in regards to travel).

"But the gameplay was so different," some of you will say, in response to which I would press X to doubt. Yes, we had old-school talent trees and no level scaling, but again, all things considered I would still argue that even the gameplay hasn't changed that dramatically over the last decade. I would again make the comparison to World of Warcraft, where I loaded up my max-level holy paladin in both Classic and retail (the modern version of the game). Ignoring things like spell ranks, passives, and the fact that spells may have retained the same name but work very differently twenty years later, I counted their abilities and while the Classic pally had 39, the retail character had 35. Only 15 of those were shared between the two game modes. The Classic character had 24 spells that no longer existed in retail, and the retail character had 20 new ones. For comparison, if I look at the screenshot I took of Shintar the trooper in SWTOR when she first hit the level cap in February 2012 and look at her action bars now, there's remarkably little difference. Yes, a few abilities were removed and a few new ones added with expansions, but comparatively, the Commando's core toolkit has changed remarkably little over the course of over a decade.

Okay, so we've established that there wouldn't be a lot of actually different content to revisit in a potential SWTOR Classic other than certain details, but let's consider effort vs. reward. Surely simply rolling the game back to an older version wouldn't take that much effort compared to something like building a whole new patch worth of new story? Ehhh... it's not that simple!

I'm no developer myself, but from what experience I do have dealing with these kinds of things, it's not that straightforward. While developers always take backups of things before changing the game in a major way, they won't necessarily keep absolutely everything forever. When the idea of WoW Classic was first being seriously considered, even Blizzard admitted that it wasn't as simple as pulling an old copy of the game out of a hat and that a fair bit of actual rebuilding would be required. When they eventually committed to the project, it actually required a fair bit of work, some of which they explained in this interesting dev blog from the time. And even with a dedicated team working on that project, it still took almost two years for WoW Classic to actually be released.

Aside from the potential difficulties involved in untangling SWTOR's old spaghetti code, there's also the matter of resources. We don't know the exact numbers, but the WoW dev team is supposedly made up of several hundred developers, with something like thirty dedicated to Classic in specific. Comparatively the SWTOR dev team has a number presumed to be a little larger than that of the WoW Classic team to take care of the entirety of SWTOR as it is. Even assuming that it could be done, would you really want them to stop work on the live game for two years to build a SWTOR Classic client? I know I wouldn't!

The final argument I can think of at this point is that some people might point at classic modes in other MMOs and say that Blizzard were kind of being perfectionists in building Classic, and that it's quite possible to cobble together something less perfect and accurate with less time and fewer resources, akin to Everquest's progression servers or the way Rift had its "prime" server. Neither of these aim(ed) to faithfully reproduce the experience of the game's early days, but count(ed) on evoking nostalgia by simply restricting the content people have access to as well as applying some other old-school limitations. The problem when applying this notion to SWTOR is that as per what I wrote earlier in this post, the game's old key content is still all there and relevant, and the only things that would make the idea of a classic server worthwhile at all are precisely the little details like gameplay differences, so this approach just seems like a dead end to me.

To summarise, I don't think we'll ever see see a SWTOR classic mode as there's comparatively little content and gameplay that would really be different to the current live game. This means that to make it an experience that's actually noticeably different and truly "classic", a lot of dev work would be required to faithfully rebuild old systems (assuming they have all the required backups to begin with), all for something that would probably be appreciated by only a very small minority of players (such as PvPers that want to relive their glory days with a particularly powerful build from 2012).

I understand the appeal of nostalgia, but I think Broadsword is better off having the devs continue to make the live game the best it can be.

Also, a tip for any readers who might miss the levelling content being harder: Try re-rolling on a server on which you don't have a legacy and be surprised by how much weaker you are without all those stat bonuses from your legacy built up over the course of a decade. And if your healer companion still makes you feel too OP, try challenging yourself by questing without your companion for a bit. You'll find that past the starter planets, it's not all quite as easy as you might think.

On the Comlink

One of patch 7.6's more minor features was the addition of the new comlink interface. To be honest, when the devs announced this on the stream in November, part of me wondered how something like that was considered important enough to be included on a stream... but in hindsight I think it's good that they showed it off in advance, as otherwise I'm pretty sure my reaction would've been a big WTF on first encountering it in game.

Musco also said on the stream that this new interface wasn't meant to replace cinematics and proper conversations, so naturally in the first place I encountered it... it felt like it was replacing a proper conversation, namely the short intro mission for the new ops boss.

The story wrapper missions for operations have been in KOTOR style for almost a decade, so suddenly seeing this purely text interface pop up, with not even an NPC talking to me in Huttese or anything, was certainly surprising. To be honest, the dialogue also felt a bit like it had originally been written for a traditional conversation, as the NPC - after indicating that they don't know who they're addressing on first contact - replies to your first comment with "Oh! It's YOU!". This is the kind of response that would make sense in an in-person interaction, as many a quest giver in the game starts by muttering something or other just to suddenly recognise our character the moment they look more closely. But in a texting interface, where it's already been established that the NPC doesn't know whose number this is... what are they recognising without seeing my face or hearing my voice? Does my character have a super obvious profile picture in her chat app? It just felt like a bit of a stretch is all I'm saying.

Anyway, I may poke fun, but ultimately I didn't mind this change to an ops intro mission of all things. As an operations player, I was just happy to have a new boss to fight, and one that's well-tuned and fun too. I would've gone and done the new ops even with zero story attached to it, and so would many others I'm sure, so the fact that they trimmed down the intro and post-ops debrief to a simple text exchange is no skin off my back.

I will say though that I liked the other two situations in which I encountered the new interface better. One is the little story that comes with the new Remote Outpost decoration bundle from the Cartel Market (about which I'm planning to write another post) and the other was one of the new dynamic encounters on Tatooine, where you're simply interacting with some terminals. In the latter, having this new interface instead of a KOTOR-style cut scene felt very organic, and the Remote Outpost missions felt like something that simply wouldn't have existed without this feature - the devs wouldn't have made a voiced storyline to go along with a bunch of decos at this stage of the game, but using the comlink interface they could add a little something extra that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, so that was nice.

All in all, I think this is a positive addition to the game, assuming the devs do stick to using it in ways like these. Most people around me haven't minded it at all either, though I will say that there was one guildie who absolutely freaked out when he saw the new ops mission in writing, shouting something along the lines of: "What is this? They are going to make me read? I specifically play this game because I don't want to read things; if I wanted to read things I'd be playing WoW!"

The Best and Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

I've had a lot of fun running dynamic encounters over the Christmas holidays, and after reaching 100% achievement completion on Hoth, I thought it would be fun to rank the different encounters by best and worst (not all of them though, there are too many of them for that).

The Top 10 Best Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

1. The "Ice Kitten Trilogy": Wire You Doing That/Wire Consequences/Wire You So Cute

Could there have been any doubt about this coming in first place? Who'd have thought that Republic power relay in Whiterock Wastes would ever become such a popular destination?

These three encounters loosely tell a story, though you can do them in any order. In the first one, Wire You Doing That, local ice kittens have been chewing on generator wires, leaving you to make repairs and shoo them away. In part two, Wire Consequences, the kittens are still around but grumpy, so your job is to soothe them and put them inside cat carriers. Finally, in Wire You So Cute you assemble some pet supplies and try to get random cantina patrons to adopt the kittens. A noble sentiment, though I'm not sure we're really doing a good thing here considering these are still wild animals and likely to grow a lot bigger... I feel more like someone trying to sell tiger cubs out of a car boot rather than a kind soul taking care of lost pets. Still, as long as you don't think too hard about it, these are very cute missions with virtually no combat (the first one has a chance to summon an "upset momma cat" that needs subduing, but even then there's no killing involved), and of course each one has a chance to reward you with the rare freckled Loth-cat Kitten pet. What's not to love?

2. Imperial/Republic/Pirate Attack

I'm lumping all the different "attack on base" encounters together here, because even though there are slight differences in the tools you're given to help with the defense, the basic concept is the same. I can see why an example of these was how the devs first promoted the concept of dynamic encounters to us, because it does still feel cool to me every time I land at a base and there's an attack happening. Seeing the shared progress counter tick up as an indication that someone else is already working on defending is almost guaranteed to make me want to join in to get credit too and it always feels quite satisfying.

3. Ice Fishing 

After being initially somewhat confused by this encounter on the PTS, now that it makes sense to me I'm really loving it. It's basically the seeker droid mini game with a different name, but the area you have to work in is quite small so it's very quick and pleasant. The fish "death sounds" crack me up and there's no combat involved except for the occasional hungry ice cat making an appearance. The only downside is that it's a bit out of the way for Republic players.

4. Taun Fawn Fun

This one seems to be many people's favourite and I think I would have had a riot on my hands if it wasn't included on this list! (I imagine some players would argue it should be number one.) Another very cute encounter, this one has you carrying taun fawns up a slope so they can slide down. Very simple, and another creative example of a non-combat encounter. The reason I rank it a little lower than e.g. the ice kittens is that it's almost a bit too cutesy for me - with the ice cats, you at least still have the context of looking after Republic infrastructure, but with the taun fawns you're really just pausing to play with some cute animals for no real reason. Also, the fact that only one fawn can be on the slide at a time can cause some annoyance with queue-jumping when multiple people try to do this encounter at once.

5. Fur, Fur Away 

This was one of my favourite encounters on the PTS and I still love it on live because of how simple it is: get three fur samples from non-hostile ice trompers and done! If you're lucky, you can finish in literal seconds, though the animals have a chance to resist by knocking you away. This can get a little annoying if you're suffering from a string of particularly bad RNG and get knocked about for several minutes, but even then I don't mind too much because the animation for being knocked back always amuses me. It makes you fly so high that you'd think you would take fall damage on landing, but the devs were generous in that regard, so you don't take any and can immediately get back into the action to try again. 

6. Under Fire!

This Imperial-only encounter is one of the ones that has a chance of dropping the Everglade Zakkeg mount, and probably the best one at that, as unlike the Loth-cat Kitten, the mount isn't a reward for completing the encounter but a random drop from the Talz mobs you fight. This event has you jumping in to save a beleaguered team of Imperial soldiers from an ambush, so you get a whole bunch of Talz popping out of the snow in easily AoE-able groups, which makes for an encounter that doesn't take a lot of time and also gives you many chances at the mount drop.

7. Snipers!

Another Imperial encounter vs. the Talz, this one can be a bit confusing the first time you try it - and it can also kill you! Once you understand what's going on, it's not hard to avoid dying though, and I find it quite satisfying to flush the snipers out of their hiding spots. If only snipers in PvP were this easy to kill and didn't constantly self-heal and run away...

8. Snow Capped Delicacies

This encounter has you climbing a mountain to pick some flowers for an Ortolan hermit, another pretty creative idea for an encounter in my opinion. It also has a chance to reward a flower decoration (this one still eludes me personally). The slightly lower ranking mostly comes from the fact that the mountain being a "fake exhaustion zone" can be a bit confusing (and you can die if you accidentally cross over into the real exhaustion zone), plus the VFX for the snow storm on the mountain are not easy on the eyes.

9. Trial by Fire

This is a fun little encounter that has you testing an experimental heat resistance suit in the local mini-volcanoes. I was rather amused that when I tried to look up a guide for what the different buttons do, both pages I found were basically like "I'm not really sure what you're supposed to do here, lol" and you can indeed "win" by just mashing random buttons. However, if you do it "right" for a given degree of right, you also complete a bonus mission and get credit for two dynamic encounters in one, which I think is cool. I also feel like there's definitely more to how the suit works that we just haven't quite figured out yet, which intrigues me.

10. Volcanic Rumblings

Speaking of volcanoes, another encounter in the area that I quite like is to take heat readings from volcanic fissures, which is a simple matter of running in circles for two minutes to find some clickies. Very simple and straightforward.

The Top 5 Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

Boring disclaimer: I don't actually think that any dynamic encounters we've seen so far are truly "bad". At worst they're not that creative and feel a little generic, but that's still not exactly a huge issue considering their intended purpose as filler content. The main reason some encounters stood out to me as unpleasant was mainly due to bugs, and I expect that these won't seem so bad once said bugs are addressed.

1. Unnecessary Repairs

The simple reason I rate this as the worst encounter on Hoth right now is that it's currently bugged in something like three different ways, with the most important one being that the things you need to click on don't respawn once someone has used them, which means that if you ever want to complete this encounter, you basically need to be there when it spawns so you can get it done before anyone else arrives. That one was quite a nuisance to get credit for.

2. Pirate Problem

This is another encounter that suffers from a very annoying bug. This encounter is a shared one with three stages: kill lots of mobs, click on some stuff, then kill two named mobs. The problem is that one of the named mobs doesn't respawn right now (it can be either of the two, it's like the game just can't allow more than one of them to be alive at any given point after the encounter spawns). This means once again that you can only complete this encounter if you're there to take part in stage one right after it spawns - if you arrive any later, the whole thing will inevitably get stuck on stage three, since that one can't be completed without the missing mob, and you'll feel like you just wasted your time.

3. Snow Grift

This encounter has no bugs that I'm aware of, but is just a bit annoying in my opinion. An NPC sells you a treasure finding device which you then use to find the treasure/complete the encounter. There's no rhyme or reason to the treasure finding, you just have to keep spending credits until you get lucky. Other players can also "steal" the snow mounds you spawned with the device you paid for, leaving you with nothing. Very quick to do if you're lucky and don't mind spending the credits, but very annoying if you're unlucky and/or other players keep sniping your snow mounds before you can loot them yourself.

4. Wampa Hunt

This should be an easy and fun enough encounter on the surface, as you just need to kill three wampas in the area. The annoyance comes from the fact that the area has both a top level and a bottom level, and for some reason the bottom level doesn't count as part of the encounter area, meaning you're limited to a very small number of wampas on the top level, which can be annoying when there are multiple people hunting.

5. Lost Inventory

This is another encounter that is relatively inoffensive on the surface, but it has three stages, which can be a bit of an unpleasant surprise if you don't know what's coming up and can cause you to kill a lot of unnecessary extra mobs if you're fighting your way in the wrong direction compared to where the later stages want you to go. Also, it takes place in what used to be a heroic area, and while that has been nerfed a lot compared to how it was at launch, it feels like you still end up with a higher density of strong and gold mobs than in most encounters.

My SWTOR Feature Wishlist Going Into 2025

The start of a new year is traditionally a time for plans, predictions, resolutions - or wishes, as it might be. So I figured this might be a good time to finally make this post about features I really wish the SWTOR devs would get around to updating or adding. I don't really expect any of these to happen in 2025 in specific to be honest, but I just want to throw them out there because this kind of thing isn't actually something I usually spend a lot of time talking about.

I originally drafted this post several months ago under the simple title "feature wishlist" but then I saw someone comment in a video (I forget which one it was exactly) that "devs hate nothing more than feature wishlists", which gave me pause at the time. I have no idea whether it's true, but it's the kind of statement that sounds like it could be? After all, MMO developers are always working on new things that they're hoping will excite players, and the last thing you'll want to hear while you're doing that is someone going "whatever, can you please work on all this other stuff instead".

Anyway, like I said, I decided that now's the time to go ahead anyway, so without further ado, my biggest wishes for SWTOR in the next year (and beyond):

1. A solution for queues

I wrote a post in June last year in which I talked about how I'm worried about steadily increasing queue times for PvP, but to some extent this problem applies to PvE as well, depending on what content you want to do and what server you play on. If you're on Star Forge or Darth Malgus, you're mostly fine, but on any of the other four servers your odds of signing up for an automated activity queue that never pops have slowly been growing over time. Simply put, the game has too many different queues for the number of players it actually has nowadays.

You might ask why that matters, especially if you're someone who primarily plays solo, and my answer is that it's simply not healthy for any multiplayer game. It's frustrating for people who just want to play the content (and who are being led to believe that they should be able to, why else is that "queue for PvP" button even there), but it can also leave a terrible impression on new players trying to get into the game for the first time.

I find myself thinking back to SWTOR's first year, when it still had hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers, and yet people would regularly post screenshots about how it was supposedly stone dead, showing themselves standing on the fleet with not a single other person being there. You know why that was? Because when the population started dropping, the devs opened free transfers everywhere to consolidate players onto a smaller number of servers, but it took them months to actually close down the old/abandoned servers, and people were logging into them all the time with no idea what was going on, just to find that apparently "nobody" was playing the game anymore. Queues that never pop can have a similar effect, if perhaps not to the same degree.

Now, there are a number of ways to address this problem. Server merges are one, and you'll find a good number of people suggesting those, but I've got to admit I'm not the biggest fan of that particular solution myself. I like giving people the option to play in distinctly different environments that are busier or more quiet depending on their preference, and then we'd also have to deal with the issue of millions of characters all needing unique names again. However, I do think that this queue problem is bad enough that I would embrace even this radical solution.

Another option would be the introduction of cross-server queueing at last. Now, this is something that people actually asked for way back when the game first launched, and early dev communications hinted at the feature being just around the corner. However, at some point they changed their minds about this, and while I can't find the exact quote anymore (I just found a link to an old episode of the Bad Feeling Podcast that is no longer online), I seem to remember that the devs were basically saying that it turned out to be too complicated/too much effort and wasn't worth it. Please do correct me if you got an actual quote for what was said back then. Either way, this was a long time ago when the game still had a lot more servers, so I'm thinking there's a chance it might be more feasible now than it was back then?

Other options include things like simply reducing the number of available queues, for example by re-merging the warzone and arena queues, or merging the lowbie and midbie PvP brackets. And yes, I know that all of these would cause other issues in turn, which is why I'm not picking one option and claiming that this one would definitely be the best and solve everything. All I'm saying is that I think this is a serious problem and there are a number of ways the devs could go about addressing it. I'd just like them to do something.

2. A legacy- or account-wide friends list

Before the current number one on the list became top of mind for me, this used to be my number one feature request for SWTOR for over a decade. Think I'm exaggerating? Go and read me complaining about "my useless friends list" back in 2014. It's actually quite astounding to think just how many parts of the UI the devs have revamped and updated over the years, but that stupid window is still exactly the same as it was at launch.

This game is all about alts, so we need the option to (consensually!) become legacy- or account-wide friends with someone, maybe with an additional option to hide your online status even from your friends when you feel like laying low some days. As it is, we continue to make do by using external apps like Discord to stay in touch, but we shouldn't have to.

3. Support for manual group finding

This is another drum that I've been beating for at least half a decade - see here. Being able to queue up for automatically formed groups for flashpoints and PvP is fine and dandy, but sometimes you need players for something else and there are tools to support manual group formation for that in other games, but not in SWTOR. Why does forming an ops group with pugs still involve barking "LFM" in fleet general chat in 2025? Hell, we had more support for this back in 2012 when you could flag yourself as LFG in /who while providing more details in the comment field. Nowadays we don't even have that.

4. An updated companion UI

OK, so far everything I've listed has been about social features because those are near and dear to my heart, but I do have other interests as well. The "companions and contacts" window (bound to N by default) was added with Knights of the Fallen Empire and it does have some nice features, like the little text summaries that tell you more about your relationship with each companion as well as their likes and dislikes. The "travel to contact" button is also pretty neat when it works.

That said, after a decade of the devs constantly adding more companions and contacts... it's just a mess. Whenever I want to check my influence level with a companion, I always open the crew skill window instead because at least in there they are sorted from highest influence to lowest. I'm not convinced that splitting companions into different categories based on which part of the story you acquired them in was ever a good idea, but it's only gotten worse over time with inconsistent categorisation and weird duplication bugs, all of which can make it very hard to find the specific companion you're trying to summon at any given moment.

For all the sometimes seemingly random UI changes we've seen over the past couple of years, this is one window I really wish they'd get around to revamping. Mainly I think that the companions should just all be in one big list, but with the ability to sort and filter them different ways, including alphabetically and by influence level.

5. Where's that crafting update?

Remember when the devs said there'd be a crew skills update coming at some point? I think it was before Legacy of the Sith, wasn't it? Either way it's been so long since we've heard anything about that, I find it hard to remember the details.

As someone who enjoys crafting I'd love for it to finally get some love again. It's not completely useless now, and I don't think they need to fully overhaul how everything works, but some crafting skills are definitely less relevant than others and it's just been ages since they even added anything to it other than the latest set of new augments.

I'm not sure what exactly I'm wishing for with this one to be honest, other than that I hope there are no monkey paws involved, because in other MMOs I've looked forward to a crafting revamp more than once, and even thought that what the devs did in each instance looked pretty good at first... just to then still end up disappointed after a while, missing the old systems. I don't want that to happen to SWTOR... but I also feel like crew skills are definitely overdue for some love.

Do you agree with my priorities here or would yours be completely different? Feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments!