Fun with the New Outriders

I've mentioned previously that aside from being an officer in Twin Suns Squadron, the guild on Darth Malgus that I've been a part of for over a decade at this point, I also joined some guilds on the other servers on a more casual basis. The standout among these is probably New Outriders, a multi-gaming guild/community that has its SWTOR branch on Star Forge and in which Intisar is an officer.

I don't get to actually interact with the people there that often because of time zones, but when I do it's always cordial, and on the rare occasion when they have an event in the afternoon in their time zone, meaning that I can join in as well, I'm always excited.

Yesterday was one such occasion, and it started off in a way that was very flattering to me, as Intisar instructed me to come online a bit early, declaring that a few people would help me get the last three DvL boss kills I was still missing on Star Forge. So we did that, and it wasn't actually too painful, even on Hoth! The GS8 achievement for the boss kills by itself doesn't actually give anything worthwhile, but it turns out the original achievement to kill all the bosses from back in Knights of the Eternal Throne is also still active, so that triggered as well and I got lots of banner decos for it, which was nice.

This was also a good example of one of the things I do love about joining events on Star Forge - there I'm just another member and can rely on other people to carry me a bit. I don't mind being an officer in Twin Suns Squadron, but it is also work sometimes, and only the day before I'd been making lists and parking summon alts all over the place to help my guildies there tick off their last few achievements, so it was a nice change of pace to have someone do the same for me, you know?

Anyway, once the event got started properly, a lot more people came online, including a couple of the officers from the wider community that clearly hadn't played SWTOR in a while. I got quite wide-eyed inspecting them, with one of their characters being level 55 and the other one 75. It was like looking at a time capsule! I think I must have gasped lines like "OMG, he's got an Oriconian ear piece" out loud at my screen at one point.

The event itself was a very casual-friendly affair open to all levels that involved travelling across various planets, killing world bosses, collecting datacrons and just generally having a bit of fun. I was pretty impressed by how even though there was never a dull moment, I couldn't quite tell how much of it had been planned and how much was spontaneous. The characters that had been parked next to difficult-to-reach datacrons had obviously been prepared with intent, but other times we'd arrive on the scene of a dynamic encounter and Intisar would just go "oh, this one is fun" and we'd all do it together and I figure that can't possibly have been planned that way? I don't know.

The most whimsical detour was when we got to Tython and Intisar beckoned everyone to join him at the planet's 0,0 coordinate to marvel at the strange floating orb of light there. It's funny how something that's clearly just a random bug has developed into a kind of mysterious attraction and people like to make up their own lore about how the Uxibeast next to the flame must be Force-sensitive or something.

Since there were no level requirements for the event, I took part using my little Sage alt who had only just earned her own ship (that part was required to be able to accept summons) and she gained no fewer than five levels from gallivanting around the galaxy and trying to take part in killing world bosses. Plus she got a lot of random creature codexes from when people around her decided to kill all the wildlife in the vicinity.

It was just very wholesome and I'm always kind of impressed by the joyful energy everyone in the guild still displays while playing the game, even when they're off to kill the Coruscant world boss for what must be the 100th time. It probably helps that they have a seemingly endless supply of in-jokes that sometimes make my head spin, including every boss and their abilities having special made-up names. (I've got to admit, FR3-D0M being introduced as "the Hamburglar who does cheese and tomatoes" broke me a little.)

Either way, it's refreshing to me because even though I obviously love my guild on Darth Malgus, I think it's fair to say that we have... a considerable number of members who are a bit jaded about the game at this point and are much harder to excite. It may not be possible to go back to being a wide-eyed noob, but I for one am still capable of having a lot of fun with even the more basic aspects of the game and it's nice to hang out with others who feel the same sometimes.