Ranking the 7.7 Dynamic Encounter Planets

I've been meaning to write more about the dynamic encounters that were added with patch 7.7 for a while, but I struggled to make up my mind about what format I was going to use for the post. I had fun with the top ten lists I made for Hoth and Tatooine, but that format doesn't work so well when you're dealing with a larger number of planets, each of which has a much smaller number of dynamic encounters than those two.

I ultimately decided that I'm just going to rank the planets against each other instead, talking about each planet in more general terms instead of discussing too many individual encounters in detail.

Going from best to worst, I would start with: 

1. Dromund Kaas

If you split the seven planets that had dynamic encounters added in 7.7 into three groups - capital worlds, starter planets and Ilum - I think both of the capital worlds definitely came out on top. With more than twenty unique encounters per planet they offer the most variety of the bunch, as well as offering an easy way to grind Conquest points.

The encounters on Dromund Kaas are thematically very varied, mostly leaning into the different regional "themes" previously established in side missions, such as the spaceport being somewhat in disarray or the lightning spires being under attack. They mostly seem to be set in the same time period as those original exploration missions, though I noticed while dispersing unruly Imperial citizens in Kaas City that one of them yelled "What is Xarion hiding?", which I thought was an interesting detail that would place that one after Onslaught in the timeline.

In general, most of the encounters are quick and fun, and strategically placed in locations where people are bound to come through on their way to some other mission objective, making it very temping to allow yourself to be distracted for a moment to complete an encounter. Prime examples of this are doing "Bad Monkey" just after arriving at the spaceport, or hunting down the rogue bounty hunter while passing through Kaas City.

If I had to cite anything negative, I'd say that there are a couple of encounters with flaws. The Apex Predator in "Shock and Awe" feels way overtuned for levelling players (trying to solo it on a level thirty-something with a healer companion I was chunked to death within only a couple of hits), and the final boss for "Kubaz Incursion" can be a bit annoyingly hard to find. "Powder Keg" actually being possible to fail is a neat idea but the fact that it's the only encounter of this kind and that it's not obvious at all what is going on unless you're already in the know makes it a bit unpleasant in that regard.

Also, I wish they'd fix encounter voice lines sometimes playing when the encounter isn't even up, because every time my speeder rides past the lightning spires I get spammed with yells about multiple encounters that may not actually all be active.

Anyway, all in all it's still a fun romp, and the reason it's edging out Coruscant for first place in my opinion is that the map makes it both cheap and easy to get around if you want to do multiple encounters. Which brings us to...

2. Coruscant 

In general, Coruscant is one of my top three planets in the entire game, and most positive things I said about the dynamic encounters on Dromund Kaas above also apply to Coruscant. The reason I put it in second place is simply the fact that it's a bit of a pain to travel between dynamic encounters due to the planetary layout with the different sectors, which all count as being really far apart, which in turn means that moving between them always requires either a looong taxi ride or paying the maximum price for quick travel. Even if you do opt for quick travel though, the sectors are still laid out in such a way that it can be a pain to just travel from one dynamic encounter within the same sector to the next one.

The said, I adore most of the encounters in the Senate Plaza, which is where I'm always passing through when I exit my stronghold, and I basically never pass on an opportunity to set off some fireworks or to help clean up the party's aftermath.

Negatives are that some of the Black Sun and Justicar encounters don't have nearly enough clickies if there's even more than one person trying to do the encounter at the same time, the way Ugnaught Engineering was horrifically bugged when it first came out and made people get into fights about who was supposedly causing it to bug, stealing kills or whatever (regardless of whether it was true or not), and the one encounter on the Senate Plaza that I don't like, "Understaffed". Like with "Powder Keg", you can tell someone just wanted to try something different there, but the final result is just too undercooked, with a tutorial mode that teaches you to do things the wrong way, and people being able to ruin the encounter for each other - both intentionally and unintentionally - which is never a good thing.

3. Tython 

Next we have the starter planets, which I think are all pretty similar in quality, and I don't feel particularly strongly about the order in which I've ranked them against each other. The main reason I consider them worse than the capital planets it that there are very few encounters, so you'll run out of things to do pretty quickly if you're just trying to grind on a single planet, and that none of the DEs on the starter planets give Conquest points. I can see why the devs decided to have that limitation, but it still means that for someone who's very Conquest-focused like me, they tend to have a lot less replay value.

With that general preamble out of the way, Tython is definitely my favourite of the bunch, since it's my favourite of all the starter planets and I think all its dynamic encounters are very on point, whether you're doing simple chores at the Jedi Temple or beating back the flesh raiders.

The only thing I'll say is that I do wonder a little how having a dynamic encounter pop up the moment you leave your intro phase is going to affect new players' perception of the planet and the game as a whole, and whether it might make things come off as a bit "loud" and overwhelming to less experienced gamers. I would love to have insight into the devs' behavioural metrics on the starter planets for that one... 

4. Hutta

Hutta is actually one of my least favourite planets, generally speaking, but I think in terms of dynamic encounters it works well enough. Again, the themes of the encounters go very well with what's also conveyed via the existing side missions, from dangerous wildlife to rebellious evocii.

The only thing I'm not so sure about is having an encounter that is basically a vehicle quest right outside the spawn phase, because it makes me wonder whether that isn't a bit confusing/overwhelming for new players. Even if seeing a bunch of droids enter the gang wars right outside the Poison Pit does serve to drive home the point that the town is a bit of a mess. 

5. Ord Mantell

Ord Mantell is one of two planets where I actually feel like some of the encounters are slightly off in tone. This may very well be my personal bias speaking, as someone who mains a trooper and was instantly scarred by being blamed for the death of Bellis the informant at the hands of the separatists by multiple people, but I always perceived the whole setting with the separatists as very dark and desperate. Even the smuggler story with all its goofiness has a pretty dark turn here with Corso's parents being dead because of the separatists and him having that one moment where he wants to execute that random sep in cold blood.

With that said, I just feel like some of the encounters involving separatists feel a bit too silly. Like that mad scientist type sending you out to shoot separatists with one of his droids? It's one thing if there's a specific NPC that's bit ridiculous when you talk to them, that's clearly just that one character, but the fact that you hear the dynamic encounter yells repeated endlessly even when you're just driving by gives them a much stronger impact on the mood in my opinion. Might just be me.

6. Korriban

That's also the reason why I rate Korriban last of this batch, because again, several of the encounters just feel a bit too goofy to me personally. Don't get me wrong, both the Sith warrior and inquisitor stories have plenty of humorous moments even on Korriban, but I still always got the vibe that as a setting, the planet is clearly meant to be very grim, with all the racial purity nonsense and dog-eat-dog behaviour encouraged in the acolytes. Stuff like k'lor'slugs running wild around the academy feels more like the kind of hijinx you'd find in a young adult book series about a magic school. (That said, looking at how busy each planet is, this one actually seems to be very popular with people, so again, this might just be me.)

7. Ilum 

Finally, in last place - alas, poor Ilum. I really wanted the addition of dynamic encounters to this planet to feel like a revival for it. I have some fond memories of Ilum from the game's early days, even though it felt somewhat unfinished even then, but over time it's only ever declined in relevance. Sadly I can't say that I feel like dynamic encounters have put it back on people's radar, and based on the small number of other people I see doing encounters there, I get the impression that it didn't really land for the majority of the population either.

Good things first: the theming is once again spot-on on this one. They really leaned into the Republic vs. Empire conflict from the original storyline and even added some encounter achievements that are meant to encourage world PvP. (I'm 99% sure that almost nobody will bother with those, but I appreciate the effort.) On the Western Ice Shelf, they've expanded on the lore of the Tonvarr Pirates that were previously only really relevant during the Gree event. It all works.

The problem is simply that too many of the encounters are just not very fun. Too many of them have multiple stages and feature a large number of mobs - when sometimes mob-killing isn't even part of the main objective, which makes it feel like you're just endlessly wading back and forth through constantly respawning mobs to actually get to the next clicky you need. It just feels tedious to the point that my brain keeps trying to forget that Ilum is another planet that has dynamic encounters now and I very rarely even remember to go there.

All that said, I wanted to also give a shout-out to a change to dynamic encounters in general that came with 7.7 but that I didn't see in the patch notes: When they released these new encounters, they changed it so that on staged DEs, you no longer need to complete every single stage by yourself to get credit, but rather you can join in at any time and still get completion. I feel that this has been a great change and has been most noticeable for me during encounters such as the base attacks on Tatooine and Hoth. It used to be that I felt that there was no point in joining in if people were already fighting the stage two walker, as it wouldn't give me anything and I'd just have to restart the encounter from scratch afterwards anyway. Now I'll gleefully jump in and help out because I'll actually be rewarded for it too, which I think has been a great change.

How many of the new encounters have you done at this point? And do you agree with my ranking of the planets or not? Let me know in the comments. 

Some Rambly First Impressions of 7.7

Patch 7.7 dropped this week! MassivelyOP's post about this fact started with the line "A big Star Wars: The Old Republic game update without a story is kind of like Christmas without the presents", which I found surprisingly poignant... but of course there were still interesting things to discover and look forward to.

First there were the new alien skin colours, which seemed to be thing that had people the most excited on social media from what I could tell, based on the number of screenshots and clips from the very first cut scene that I scrolled past and that were meant to show off the poster's newest character in a brand-new hue.

I myself ultimately didn't end up creating a new character, because I realised I still had a bunch of lowbies that I hadn't actually played that much yet. Also, am I the only one who doesn't necessarily create and start new characters at the same time? Sometimes I'll just feel like playing with the character creator and come up with a new concept that I then end up not actually playing until weeks or months later.

Anyway, this week did not feel right for creation, so I just changed the shade of yellow on my newest already existing Twi'lek. After using the character customisation station, he got teleported onto the roof of my Coruscant stronghold... the last time that happened I thought it was just a one-time glitch, but I might have to upgrade it to bug - then again, it might just get filed away under "weird stuff that happens inside player housing" anyway.

The new dynamic encounters were very fun. I took some lowbies to the starter planets to check them out as I would've felt a bit weird razing all those level 5 mobs on a max-level character in raid gear, though other people clearly had no such reservations. The new events brought a lot of existing players back to the starter worlds to check out the the new content and earn some new achievements, and the experience felt like absolute mayhem. Anyone who just so happens to start playing SWTOR for the first time this week must be wondering what the holy hell is going on once they leave their first story phase. Now, this particular level of craziness obviously won't last, but I do think that in the long run these new encounters will still serve to make things a lot more lively on the starter planets going forward, and I can't help but wonder how that will affect players' first impressions of the game in the future. 

Unlike when the first dynamic encounters were added to Tatooine and Hoth, I didn't check these newest ones out on the PTS this time, so it was all fresh and exciting to me. Even having only checked out the starter planets so far, I thought it was very charming how the new encounters were used to enhance the mood and setting of each area. For example the Jedi training grounds on Tython were always meant to be under attack by flesh raiders when you first arrive there, but it was all fairly tame, with the same couple of NPCs shooting at each other without anything really happening. Now there's an actual dynamic encounter about a flesh raider attack on top of that, during which you'll see way more mobs spawn, as well as a proper flurry of activity from players joining the fight or otherwise defending the area. It's quite cool. Jiguuna on Hutta was another good example, as there's always meant to be a gang war going on there when you arrive, but now that is dialled up to eleven when the associated dynamic encounter is going on.

I have yet to dip my toes into the encounters on the capital worlds and on Ilum, but I don't want to rush to "the end" and reach a point where I've seen it all too quickly. My ops team also wants to check out XR-53 on master mode, and while I'm personally not hopeful that we'll make much progress on it, it's at least another new thing to check out. 

Looking for Good Views

The Best View in SWTOR contest has returned once again! I noted last year that we were at risk of running out of planets to feature, and that has indeed resulted in a rather strange selection this time around. Instead of the usual ten planets, there are only five eligible locations this year, namely:

• Ziost
• CZ-198
• Section X
• Minboosa District
• The Black Hole

Aside from the fact that none of these are among the most picturesque of places, some of the choices struck me as a bit odd. CZ-198 and Ziost make sense as these were indeed among the last few planets/moons yet to be featured, but for some reason Darvannis was still left out. I know it's not the most exciting place to look at, but neither are most of these!

The Minboosa District is technically part of Hutta, which was featured before, but it's a new area, so including it made a certain kind of sense. What's surprising is that the Interpreter's Retreat and Kessan's Landing weren't included using the same kind logic.

Instead we got the Black Hole and Section X, which are separate maps, sure, but since they are old they were technically already included as part of Corellia and Belsavis last year. I recall that at least one of the finalists for Corellia was in fact a shot taken in the Black Hole, and my own submission for Belsavis was a shot of Section X. I guess I can simply submit the exact same image again? Just seems a little odd.

Anyway, last year I used the occasion of the contest returning as an opportunity to showcase my own submissions from the year before, but this year I'd like to talk about my observations about three of this year's locations instead.

Ziost is of course a unique planet in the sense that it has a "before" state that only exists during the storyline and which is very different from the permanent "after" state in which we get to do dailies. I had several alts with the Ziost storyline active and thought I'd be clever by taking screenshots on these otherwise impossible to access maps, but I've got to admit I liked none of them enough to submit in the end. Looking out at the skyline in front of the People's Tower certainly made me rethink the impact of Vitiate's actions that day, but the buildings honestly looked a bit basic and like the designers intentionally didn't put that much work into them, knowing that they would live in a phase only used for a single storyline where nobody would spend a lot of time marvelling at the scenery (and who would blame them).

Somewhat basic-looking Ziost skyline

I can see why CZ-198 was saved until the end because while it's an extremely popular daily location, it basically just consists of a landing platform and some indoor spaces. I look forward to seeing whether someone actually manages to come up with a good shot of the place, because I certainly didn't.

The Minboosa District mostly consists of a lot of swamp and pipelines (and I learned that the annoying Xuvva spawns that can see through stealth are not limited to the storyline but just always there it seems), but while scouting the area for good shot locations I was surprised to realise that there's actually a whole sub-zone that we never go to during the storyline. I didn't think it was particularly pretty so I didn't take a picture of it, but it did make me wonder what was up with that. With Broadsword's more limited resources nowadays, it seems odd to have such a large chunk of an already relatively small map not serve any purpose.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this year's contest. It's worth noting that the devs have acknowledged that they're basically out of planets now and that they're thinking about what other topics future screenshot contests could be about, such as strongholds or outfits. I'm not sure how that would work because surely then it'd more about building a good-looking outfit/stronghold rather than about being able to take good screenshots of the world we all share? Personally I think something like flashpoints might work better, but we'll see. If you want to enter the current competition while the going is still hot, you have until the 20th of October.

Desperate Defiance - NOW We're Getting Somewhere!

Alongside opportunities to dance around the holo pole and fish, Patch 7.5 also included the latest update to SWTOR's ongoing storyline. And it was GOOD. That's it, review done!

I jest, of course. You know I can't write one of these without using a few thousand words.

Before I get into the story itself though, we have to talk about cut scenes, which is to say that yes, the KOTOR-style scenes in which the player character is unvoiced are back once again. In 7.3 they surprised me, but I was ultimately okay with the way they were integrated into the story. In 7.4 I was somewhat dismayed to see them make a return in the continuation of the main storyline while also being inserted in what felt like somewhat random places to me. At this point I'm kind of resigning myself to silent protagonist cut scenes simply being "a thing" in the new story updates from now on. I can only guess that it really is just a cost-cutting measure and that the devs therefore can't really comment on it in any way without it sounding bad.

This bothers me because I want to see this game at its best, and considering how pivotal the voice-acted characters have always been to its value proposition, unvoiced cut scenes just aren't on the same level. On the other hand though, I can't pretend that it totally ruins my own enjoyment of the story. It is what it is, and I think after this I will no longer comment on the mere presence of KOTOR-style cut scenes in new story updates. It just seems to be the new normal, unfortunately.

I will say though that the way these were inserted in 7.4 bothered me more than in this update. Here, they felt at least well-used to me in the sense that the black bars usually came up when we entered a quiet moment during which people were just standing around and talking to my character, and the devs at least made the most of it by also giving us more conversation options in those situations.

On a related matter, in the first half of the story on Hutta, I actually found myself missing even the KOTOR-style cut scenes, because several steps of story progression happen without any cut scenes at all - there are just some voice-over lines while you click on stuff, the same way you get when handing in dailies on Rishi and Yavin IV. This just stood out to me because the whole bit in the warehouse for example struck me as something that easily could have had at least two cut scenes in my opinion, even if they had just been KOTOR-style. As it was, all the dialogue with Virta just happened in quick voice-overs, and as a result I couldn't even remember her name or what she looked like after several playthroughs and had to check back just for writing this post. It's interesting to see how much of a difference the more cinematic editing makes to how memorable I find the characters. But anyway, what "bit in the warehouse" am I talking about anyway? Let's get into the actual plot. Full spoilers ahead as usual!

We start with a shot of one of Heta Kol's ships, surrounded by wreckage with a Republic logo on it. On board, we see a Hidden Chain soldier execute a prisoner while Ri'kan looks on. The latter then receives a report about a missing strike team, which Sa'har - who's standing just around the corner - overhears.

We switch to a shot of our characters honing their skills on Odessen which actually seems to be class-specific, something I really liked. My trooper and agent were shooting target dummies, my warrior was working on her lightsaber technique, and my consular was mediating with rocks floating around her head, which I thought was neat.

Lana (and Theron, if he's alive for you) show up to tell you that the Republic or Empire (depending on faction, obviously) wants to have a chat about the whole Mandalorian situation. They are not best pleased with this whole civil war causing chaos all over the place while you're supposed to be allied with the leader of the Mandalorians. You do chat with them for a bit but end up cutting the conversation short as you receive a call from Sa'har, who wants to meet you on Mek-Sha.

In a hideout there (I never realised before this conversation that she came from the orphanage on Mek-Sha), she tells you that she's got a plan to get Darth Nul's holocron away from Heta. It's being used to power a machine that awakens the Force in people, and Heta has been kidnapping people to use these new Force users as soldiers for her cause, which sounds like such a badly thought-out plan, it immediately made me think that Heta's clearly not as clever as she thinks she is. Anyway, this machine is being kept on a well-guarded ship that can only be reached via special shuttles, and after what Sa'har overheard earlier, she knows that one such strike team shuttle has gone missing on Hutta. She proposes to steal it from there and to use it to infiltrate the ship.

One way or another, you go along with the plan, and find yourself in the Minboosa District on Hutta, where - naturally - a slave rebellion is going on and causing chaos. Turns out the Mandos got held up because the local Hutt impounded their ship in the mayhem. For some reason I found the mental image of battle-hardened Mandalorians getting their ship towed by a Hutt incredibly amusing.

As you investigate the area, you run into some of the rebellious slaves and help them out in order to get to the Mandalorian shuttle. The new area on Hutta is pretty small, but I've got to admit I still wondered whether it wasn't meant to be a daily zone at one point, based on the various tasks we're being asked to complete for the slaves. I mean, you could argue that it wouldn't make sense for a group of escaped slaves to be a daily hub, but then dailies rarely make a lot of sense and the tasks they give by themselves definitely gave me daily or at least repeatable mission vibes (à la Interpreter's Retreat).

At one point you run into Yusinduu the Hutt himself and a big fight breaks out. In the aftermath, you find yourself teaming up with two of the leaders of the slave rebellion, a Rodian called Adi and an Evocii called Rakit. Adi seems like a fairly gentle soul - is it me or was it hinted that he might be at least a little Force-sensitive? I'm basing this on what he says about Sa'har's thoughts when she's out of the room. Rakit serves as a bit of a foil for him by being more fierce and wanting to inflict as much damage as possible to Yusinduu during the escape.

When you're ready to storm the place where all the spaceships are stored, both Adi and Rakit run into trouble with their respective tasks and you can only help one of them. Adi wants to slice the elevators to help more people escape, while Rakit is trying to disable the defensive turrets. Interestingly, helping Adi results in more people getting away, but Adi himself gets mortally wounded and dies, much to Rakit's despair. If you help with the turrets, Rakit and Adi both make it out, but Adi is dismayed to see that many of his fellow slaves didn't make it in turn. (I also saw someone mention that helping Adi and saving more "random" slaves means that you get NPC support for the fight mentioned below, but I can't say I noticed that myself.)

You also run into Yusinduu again, piloting a walker like Karagga at the end of Karagga's Palace, and putting up a surprisingly tough fight for modern story content. I've not actually died to it or anything, but on one try I lost my companion, and more than once it actually made me think of popping my heroic moment for safety. Otherwise he was a bit of a disappointment though, as I thought based on the preview that he might have a bigger role than showing up in that one scene and then going straight into boss fight mode the next time you run into him.

Either way you get your shuttle and you arrive at Heta's ship. Sa'har disables various alarms, though this doesn't prevent you from having to fight your way through wave after wave of Mandos. You free a group of slaves on the way, featuring a nice touch: if you didn't save Mina Nehrum in the last update, she's among the freed prisoners here. You can escort the prisoners to your shuttle, leave them to look after themselves, or even encourage them to join the fighting. Here I have to say that choosing the escort option is extremely annoying, because it will cause new Mandos to spawn in the corridors you just cleared, twice. They're not too hard to dispatch, but having to clear the same corridor three times in quick succession is not my idea of fun gameplay. Eventually you get to the machine, though Ri'kan is also there and intercepts you. A fight ensues, during which the machine gets destroyed and the ship is damaged to the point that it will blow up soon (because isn't that how it always goes).

While Sa'har stands up to Ri'kan, she panics when he appears to be sliding off the platform and wants to save him, crying for you to help her pull him back up. Here you get three options: to help her, to dive for Darth Nul's holocron first, or to just grab the holocron and walk off. The latter made me feel like a right bastard. The second one isn't too bad because your character says something like "hang on", clearly intending to help, but then gets cut off from the two of them by falling debris. If you do help to pull Ri'kan to safety, Sa'har will grab the holocron for you and give it a meaningful look before handing it over... but then Ri'kan wakes and attacks her again just as you're running to leave, and she pushes the door shut behind you.

The ship blows up behind you, with the clear implication being that the Twi'lek siblings probably died in the blast. You talk to either Arn or Krovos about what happened, how you got the holocron, and about what to do with the freed prisoners. I found it ironic that considering they're Force sensitive, Krovos is okay with sending them to Korriban, but Arn says there's no way the Jedi will accept them. Interesting case of the Empire actually being the more pragmatic ones.

It seems like you actually achieved a major victory for once by getting the holocron back and striking a major blow against Heta Kol... but we're not quite done yet. We pivot to a cut scene that shows Jekaiah Ordo receiving a message from Shae at last that basically says "sorry, but I gotta do what I gotta do", followed by a cut to Shae and four extremely badass-looking mercenaries breaking into Malgus' fleet prison and cutting him loose. Maybe that's just my interpretation, but he actually looks slightly uncertain when she frees him, as if he's not entirely certain just WTF she's doing either and why (though he does manage to hide it well). And that's the cut.

Obviously, the first thought I had after this story was: Hallelujah, we're finally getting somewhere! The criticism I see people level against the current storyline the most often is that it's just been going on for too long in real time, and while I don't entirely agree, it's definitely a criticism I understand. It's been more than three years since we were introduced to Heta Kol's rebellion, and Malgus has been sitting in his fleet prison for more than two years of real time. Several patches seemed to be more focused on establishing background lore than making anything actually happen. It's definitely been a bit frustrating at times.

And yet, here we have a single patch in which we finally see Sa'har turn on the Hidden Chain for real, you steal Darth Nul's holocron back and foil Heta's plans, Sa'har dies (?!), Shae comes back and breaks Malgus out. That's seemingly a lot of finality, and suddenly we really have no clue what's going to happen next. I love it!

However, main plot progression aside, there were also a lot of fun little details that I enjoyed, like the aforementioned class-specific intro. In the call with the Republic, I was happy to see Arn having our back, while the Imperial call amused me with the way Acina, Xarion and Krovos presented a surprisingly unified front of annoyance. If your continuity has Emperor Vowrawn instead of Empress Acina, he's so smarmy during the whole conversation, I absolutely loved it.

There were also some fun bits of gameplay - when you meet up with Sa'har on Mek-Sha, you have to follow a trail of light to find her, and one of the tasks for the slaves involves playing as a gonk droid. Yusinduu being a tough fight actually kind of impressed me, though I was less keen on the encounter with Ri'kan, which just kind of stops at one point with him becoming immune to damage, apparently because an RP dialogue between him and Sa'har needs to play out, but fire keeps spawning under your feet the entire time, which I thought was a bit confusing and annoying.

Sa'har as your companion for this story worked really well in my eyes. I would say that based on past storylines, there's a certain balance to be struck between making a companion sufficiently interesting and giving them goals of their own, and making sure that they don't end up usurping the story, causing your character to just tag along and gape while the actually interesting decisions get made by other people (*cough*FallenEmpire*cough*).

Sa'har straddles this line really well in my opinion because we know a lot about her and can understand her motivations, plus she's played a meaningful part in the story leading up to all this, yet at the same time she's also extremely insecure and lost, meaning you can build her up or tear her down, the story still makes sense either way because you're in charge. In the dev stream, it was also hinted that our interactions with Sa'har would affect her behaviour going forward, but to be honest I didn't really notice her responding noticeably differently in multiple playthroughs depending on whether I was nice or mean to her. That said, there's always a chance that I simply wasn't consistent enough in my responses to reach the right trigger point, which is something that has been a problem for me in this and other Bioware games in the past. If you noticed any changes in Sa'har's behaviour based on your conversation choices yourself, please share in the comments. Either way, there doesn't seem to be room for further follow-up to see how Sa'har has been affected by all this, because she's dead now, right? (Insert meaningful eyebrow wiggle here. No character in the Star Wars universe - or many an action movie to be honest - is dead until we see the body.)

There were several points in the story where you did get to make quite interesting story decisions with visible impacts though: where to send the slaves, whether to help Adi or Rakit when they are struggling during the escape, how to treat the freed prisoners on Heta's ship, and of course whether you try to help Sa'har during the final encounter. During the conversation with Arn/Krovos you also get to decide what to do with the holocron and the prisoners. Just interesting stuff all around.

And oh, that ending! I think it's well done in the sense that it's not surprising that Shae has gone off the deep end after how she acted when we last saw her in 7.3, but there's also a certain sense of "how the hell could she possibly think this was going to be a good idea". I'm sure that some players will have felt an immediate urge to kill her for her betrayal, while others will still want to reconcile, and I'm very interested in seeing where the devs will take us after this.

The cut scene of the prison break was also extremely cool. The moment we first see the mercs helping Shae, you can tell that these aren't random mercs but characters. I wasn't sure who it was for example, but it looked like one of them was using the Force to throw a droid against the wall? And what was up with that ninja stabbing droids with knives?! I need to know more.

What stood out to you the most in this update? Did you encounter anything interesting that I didn't mention here? And which member of Shae's prison break gang is your favourite? Feel free to share opinions in the comments.

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!

Day 2: Class Stories #IntPiPoMo

Wondering what the hashtag in the title is all about? Click here. Want to know all the themes that I have used and will be using for my 10 Days of SWTOR Screenshots? You can find the full list here.

Let's start with a picture of my Cathar agent getting zapped by what I consider to be the most annoying Sith in the game - and that's saying something, considering how many of them there are: Darth Zhorrid. It's no coincidence that this lady has "horrid" in her name because every single thing she says or does is super annoying. The best thing about going dark side at the end of chapter one is that you then get to kill her at the start of chapter two. Oh yeah, really need to go back and finish this character's class story soon...

I couldn't find any sort of official lore statement about it, but apparently the Voss are meant to be freakishly tall. I can't say I ever noticed while out and about on Voss (maybe because I'm used to NPC sizes being a bit incongruous sometimes, see raid bosses) but apparently people have brought it up on Reddit and on the official forums many times. It certainly struck me during this trooper mission though, where it's strongly emphasised by the camera angle. WTF, when did this Commando grow to be three metres tall? Apparently I just never noticed.

I've written about the class stories on Rishi before, and the bounty hunter one was definitely my favourite of the Imperial ones. I absolutely didn't like what happened in it, but it was told well and actually managed to make me feel upset about the death of an NPC.

When it comes to getting your first lightsaber, the Jedi definitely have the lead in terms of epic moments, because crafting it yourself while using the Force is immeasurably more satisfying than fetching someone else's from an old tomb. Still, that doesn't mean that getting your first lightsaber as a Sith warrior isn't a cool moment. I like how your character inspects and weighs it in her hands.

Speaking of cool moments with lightsabers, the Sith warrior's chapter one end fight is pretty neat as well. Unfortunately it has suffered a bit from the introduction of level scaling, as it takes place on Hutta, meaning the boss is like... level eight or something now and a massive pushover.

Do you know where these two lovely Sith ladies feature? It's the smuggler story! I had completely forgotten about them until I played through it again with my Dark vs. Light smuggler. This is why content is definitely worth repeating after a while.

I just love this shot from the early bounty hunter story. I can almost hear my character sigh in exasperation at being thrown into a beast pit.

IntPiPoMo count: 13

Day 1: Bugs #IntPiPoMo

Wondering what the hashtag in the title is all about? Click here. Want to know all the themes that I have used and will be using for my 10 Days of SWTOR Screenshots? You can find the full list here.

I don't know how I feel about the fact that finding screenshots for the "bugs" category is still so easy nearly five years in... I guess it's a positive that at least most of them are very minor and many are actually kind of amusing.

First off, we have a simple display bug that took them quite a bit of time to fix as far as I remember. When you move from the Rishi "spaceport" into Raider's Cove proper, there was a bit where the floor would suddenly become invisible under you, making it look like you were floating in mid-air. Not particularly annoying, just silly and a bit immersion-breaking the first time.

Now this one requires a bit of explanation because at first glance it just looks like a case of me "standing in the bad", right? Wrong! This was taken during a brief period when operations bosses suffered from a sudden case of displaying their floor markers and animations incorrectly. Considering how important these are to avoid dying, I'm sure you can imagine what a barrel of laughs that was. It didn't deter my guild from raiding, but it certainly felt very wrong and nerve-racking to just stand there while the giant tentacle appeared to be hitting me, just because it wasn't really targeting me...

When I created my Mercenary Tessal (the one who levelled through flashpoints), there was a bug going on that prevented mob corpses from despawning correctly for a time. It was both amusing and slightly disturbing to see the streets of Jiguuna absolutely littered with bodies (much more so than usual anyway).

Speaking of bodies, what's up with this guy? Not only is he dead and floating in the air, what's up with that weird pose? That's certainly not a death pose. There was a Gamorrean floating nearby that had exactly the same thing going on. Happened to encounter this on Tatooine while doing heroics.

The Vanguard ability Transpose, which was introduced in 4.0, allows you to swap places with a friendly target. However, it has a cast time and it's possible to run out of range before the cast completes. What happens then? The transposition fails and you both become temporarily invisible. Fun! Here's my pet tank and me living life as floating guns after one such failed transposition.

IntPiPoMo count: 5

500 Posts!

Can you believe that this is my 500th post on this blog? I can! I never quite get when people say that they have nothing to post about - if I can write 500 posts about Star Wars: The Old Republic alone, there is always something to say.

Traditionally I like to use these milestones as an excuse to look at the search terms through which people found this blog and see if there's anything funny in there. Here are the links to the previous posts in that vein:

100 Posts! (August 2012)
200 Posts! (May 2013)
300 Posts! (April 2014)
400 Posts! (March 2015)

Now, let's dive into what Google Analytics showed me this time:

why you should not be a soldier swtor - I'm guessing this was a German speaker, because troopers are called Soldaten (soldiers) in the German version. Anyway, there is no reason not to be a trooper! They are awesome! (Though I'll concede that their class story isn't the best.)

blakhol jnawa - There are no jawas in the Black Hole. If that is what you were asking about...

darth revan face swtor german - After thinking about it for a bit, I'm guessing this person was looking for the cut scene at the end of Yavin IV in German or something? The idea of people finding something particularly German about Revan's face amuses me though.

dirty-flirty swtor - /blinks in confusion

everyday i'm tanking - I don't know what this person was really looking for, but my first thought was that they were searching for an MMO parody version of LFMAO's Party Rock Anthem. Searching YouTube for "Everyday I'm tanking" just led me to this bizarre clip of part of the music video overlaid with the intro music to Thomas the Tank Engine. If the title isn't that important though and you would just enjoy a parody song about tanking, you might enjoy this song... or this one.

find me the meaning progenitor - Does playing on the Progenitor really need to provide special meaning? If you've ever wondered where the server got its name, click here.

glaciers in lack saperen lowlands - I put this one into Google myself and what do you know, my The Art of Achieving Map Completion post is the first result. What the heck? This is why spelling is important, kids! Best I can tell this was actually meant to be about this area in Wisconsin.

how do i get into the counselor phase next to the cantina in tython in swtor - Time to get out this image again:

To actually answer the question though, if I recall correctly you get to go there at the end of chapter one. Why not just play through the whole story and find out?

i want you to be a sith inquisitor - But I don't wanna!

lurfg - This search term invokes the mental image of someone trying to say "LFG" and then throwing up halfway through because the thought of having to pug makes them sick.

makeb kill it with fire - Aw, come on, Makeb's not that bad! Of course then I remembered that there's this achievement: Kill It With Fire. I haven't got it myself, but I seem to remember that it's either bugged or kind of awkward to get in that the kill won't count if your companion gets the killing blow, the fire doesn't actually cause the killing blow, or something like that.

new different golu decoration - My Sage is intrigued.

sith individualism - Yes. It's definitely a thing.

swtor jedi knight major hardon - I want to believe that this person thought that there's a character called Major Hardon in the Jedi knight story. The alternative is too awful and confusing to contemplate.

swtor whats a gf - While general chat requests like "need more for DP in GF" might give you the wrong idea if you have a dirty mind, it generally stands for "group finder".

tell me the meaning of foot commando. - What is it with people looking for meaning today? Surely feet are useful to have either way?!

warp speed from the earth to the moon in 4 minutes - warp speed - Sorry, wrong franchise. Though I do like Star Trek too.

From the good old "I don't know why Google thought I'm writing about that game" pile:

eq2 keeps crashing to deskop like i wasn't even playing
fallout 4 max companion affection
ff14 3.02
mwo keeps crashing why?

If I'm being honest though, the most fascinating part of going through the search terms for me aren't even the funny ones anymore, but simply the oddly specific searches some people go for. It actually makes me want to write a couple of guides - not about generic stuff like how to execute the perfect dps rotation (not that I know anything about that anyway), but... well... to answer oddly specific questions like these:

old republic dromund kaas entire map - Dromund Kaas is one planet I didn't mention in my Art to Achieving Map Completion guide, but I bet I still know which bit of the map this person was missing, because it's the same one I always forget about. You know that body of water located between Lord Grathan's Estate and The Unfinished Colossus? The Dromund Kaas world boss spawns in it, which is why it has its own name and needs to be uncovered separately even though it's a very small area.

swtor 4.0 heroic 2+ false history - I know it doesn't say so, but I'm pretty sure what they actually want to know is whether you can still solo this. I remember having to look this up pre-4.0 myself because I was struggling at the time. I just tried it again and it still works fine. I even recorded it, just for you you, anonymous Googler!



all interactions with juda (hutta) swtor - I don't have a list of all interactions with her, but I thought this one was interesting to highlight since you get the option to talk to her a couple of times even when it isn't highlighted by a quest icon, you just have to be curious enough to click on her without prompting. Republic has a similar thing going on with the planetary quest line on Belsavis, where you can spare a Sith Lord from death and work with him for a bit, and you can talk to him afterwards even though it's not required for or even pointed out by the quest.

can the revan quest line be continued without completing the torch flashpoint - Nope! It has a solo mode though, so you can just do it solo any time.

flashpoint kaon under siege solo swtor - I'm afraid they haven't given this one a solo mode yet. It's also not in the group finder as a tactical, but you can always queue for hardmode. Or you can try to solo the normal version at 65 - it hasn't been scaled up, so all the mobs are still level 50.

heroic moment abilities not in legacy since patch 4.0 - Don't worry, they are not gone, but they show up on a temporary quickbar instead whenever you activate your heroic moment.

i can't get out of kuat drive yard - Never fear! The "exit area" button above your mini map shall come to your rescue.

swtor what happend to the side quest? - I'm afraid they didn't make any for KotFE; it makes me sad too. If you are wondering about the old ones, those are (mostly) still there but hidden by default. To see the quest markers, you have to open your map and toggle the "show exploration missions" option in the top right corner.

what is a monsoon baffle - I was really surprised how often this one came up! Google defines a baffle as "a device used to restrain the flow of a fluid, gas, etc." so I guess the monsoon baffles on Rishi are supposed to protect Raider's Cove from the rain. Though I'm guessing what you really wanted to ask was: "Where the hell do I find those things?" Here's a screenshot of what they look like. There's a whole bunch on ground level right under the market near where you land.

which flashpoints have solo mode - So many questions about solo modes! Bioware actually posted the full list back in September last year, but I understand that this can be a bit hard to find nowadays.

To the next 500 posts!

Levelling by Questing in 4.0

Every time an MMO makes changes to its low-level experience I'm really curious about what the devs think turned players away from their game at the early levels and how they have therefore decided to change the game... and every time I'm surprised how little I see people talk about it. I can only guess that this is because any new players that are lured in by the revamp will have no point of comparison, while the most loyal and hardcore players tend to fixate on whatever new content was added at the level cap. And the players who enjoy quietly rolling alt after alt for the fun of it and are probably most likely to have a nuanced opinion on the changes? They tend to stick to themselves and not interact with the community as much. This was very much the impression I got during WoW's Cataclysm expansion at least, which was literally all about revamping the 1-60 experience, yet everyone just complained about how much they hated Vashj'ir (one of the five new max-level zones). I wrote a whole series of posts about all the re-done levelling zones, but very few people seemed to be interested in things like discussing the pros and cons of old Tanaris vs. new Tanaris.

I'm reminded of this because while we're all busy gushing about Knights of the Fallen Empire's story (and it is totally worth gushing about), a lot of other changes have been made to the game that haven't received much publicity (yet). One of them was supposed to be a "more streamlined" levelling experience, something that immediately caught my attention, since I enjoy levelling alts and have become very wary of MMOs "streamlining" anything these days. It was eventually revealed that XP gains were being adjusted so that you only had to do your class missions and the main planetary storyline to have a smooth levelling curve, while side quests would be hidden by default. However, as pretty much always with these things, there is so much more to it than has officially been explained.

My pet tank and I decided to get our first taste of "levelling 4.0" by jumping back onto our pair of Sith warrior alts, still on Tatooine at level 32. This has pretty much always been our way of levelling together - being completionists when it comes to questing and therefore levelling really, really slowly. Once our quests turned grey, they pretty much stopped giving XP entirely (I still think that SWTOR has always been oddly harsh in its treatment of experience gains for quests that you've outlevelled) and we'd only level very, very slowly from the small trickle of XP that we received from mob kills. Since our progress was so slow compared to the amount of content we were actually completing, we'd eventually get back to the point where some quests were green again... just to be pushed back into grey territory after a couple of hand-ins that actually levelled us, starting the cycle of virtually no XP gain all over again. I'll be honest: it was annoying sometimes. I did want to do all of the quests, but the constant drip-feed of experience points and gear that was several levels below me was certainly not a satisfying reward.

With that said, I was pretty psyched to see how level sync was going to work for us. I can already tell you: it worked beautifully. We were immediately downlevelled to 30, and both missions and kills rewarded a healthy amount of experience, even though they were still easy. It was awesome to receive level-appropriate relics as quest rewards instead of a crappy piece of companion gear. We drove around a bit and it was nice to see everything on the planet being "in sync" - no more getting one-shotted by high level guards or monsters. Even the mobs in the seeker droid area in the north-eastern corner of the Dune Sea are now only level 30.

I was initially confused why there seemed to be so few quests, until I remembered that we now have to enable the option to see exploration missions in the upper right corner of the map display. I'll say it again: I don't see why this is turned off by default, especially since the main missions are now clearly marked in bright purple, but whatever.

Next I had to fight a certain sense of déjà vu: I knew that we had stopped in the Dune Sea last time we played these characters (I had a screenshot of us riding the Jawa balloon), but I could have sworn that we'd already done some of the missions we were being given. Also, some of the quests in the earlier bases - which we had definitely done - were also showing up as available again. I looked at the patch notes a bit more closely and found a note saying that with so many changes, they had to reset quest progress on some missions, so that made sense at least.

While all the heroic missions can now be picked up at a terminal at the spaceport for easy access, they can also still be picked up from their original quest givers. However, beware: the hand-in is now automatic, with the quest giver just giving you a quick voice-over call at the end as soon as you complete your last objective. This is super convenient if you're a max-level grinding out all the heroics on the planet for weekly rewards, but less so if you're a lowbie doing them for the first time and actually wanted to do the associated bonus mission as well. Basically, you have to make sure to always complete the bonus before killing the last mob for the main mission.

We also ran into a Republic player who was flagged for PvP and immediately jumped him. I've always avoided attacking people on low-level planets, even if they are flagged (which is very much voluntary on a PvE server like the Red Eclipse), simply because the level differences tended to be large and made it feel unfair. With level sync I had no such reservations anymore. Sure, two vs. one was still unfair, but I don't care about that!

Our first truly strange experience occurred when we were doing The Thing Czerka Found. We remembered the abandoned Czerka base having a pretty sprawling interior, which you had to largely clear out if you wanted to do the associated multi-stage bonus quest. Well, said bonus quest was gone, and so was half the base! You basically go down, click an elevator button and are immediately at the entrance to the actual story phase. I consulted the patch notes again and found an explanation for this strangeness in the following point:

Changes have been made to a number of existing missions to improve quality and facilitate other changes where necessary including:

• Task completion count adjustments.
• Bonus mission addition, removal, or adjustment.
• Map updates/changes.
• Location changes.

So this was a bonus mission removal combined with a map change. I'm just a bit confused as to why. Was that extra level of the underground base really such a huge obstacle? And why remove the bonus? Bonus missions are by their very definition optional content, so I'm not sure why the devs felt the need to take that away from us. We weren't exactly heartbroken about this change, but it felt odd.

A brief note about companions: I kind of want to talk about the changes to companions in general in a separate post at some point, but one thing worth mentioning is that the way that affection influence gains are displayed in conversations has been changed. Instead of seeing a little portrait of your companion with a number like 20 or -1, you now just get a small line of text that says something like "Vette is amused". This (sometimes) gives you a bit more information about your companion's opinion other than whether they like or dislike what you just did, but without any numbers it's kind of hard to gauge just how much of an effect you're having. It is however important to note that unlike the old affection, influence can only go up (even disapproval earns you points, just fewer of them), and in general the numbers are much bigger. This is a relief in so far as it was quite a shock to log in on patch day and find that the old max affection only equals rank ten out of fifty in the new system. For max level characters, that means a lot of gift giving and affection grinding. I suspect however that it might not be quite as bad for lowbies that level under the new system from the start, as you gain some pretty big influence numbers just from normal questing with your companion.

It's hard to see, but Vette disapproves.

Anyway, we wrapped up Tatooine's main storyline and I noticed a new quick travel point next to the Imperial Reclamation Service's base. I would later find more of these in locations to which you have to return repeatedly but which were always a bit annoying to get to precisely because they didn't have a quick travel point in the past. Now that's something that I consider a nice bit of streamlining, making it a fair bit easier to zoom around the map quickly even if you don't have any travel legacy perks unlocked.

Then, a shock: We wanted to pick up the Tatooine bonus series and it wasn't there! A quick search on the subject revealed that other people have been reporting this on the forums as well, not just for Tatooine, but for pretty much everywhere. Sadly no official comment has been made on the matter. I opened a ticket to ask whether it was a bug or an intended change and got the standard copy-and-paste "we didn't even read your message and only provide help for class missions" reply. We drove to the hub where the first half of the bonus series takes place and it looked like the actual individual missions for it were still there (as exploration missions), it's "just" the storyline that ties everything together that's gone missing. I'm still holding out hope that it's just a bug though, because these were actual stories! Heck, the Republic Alderaan bonus series was the only place in the game where you could meet Jace Malcolm pre-2.0!

For the time being, we decided to move on to Alderaan. Here we encountered more surprising and slightly confusing changes to the content we knew so well. Apparently all [Area] missions have been removed and instead been turned into regular missions that get picked up from a nearby datapad or something. It's not something that I have a problem with, but again I can't help but wonder why. It was just a little thing that added a bit of variety to the way you picked up quests. Were there actually people who were confused or annoyed by this? The former [Area 4] Assault on Fort Alde was also nerfed to be a regular solo mission, though the area is still wrongly designated as a heroic area. It just felt a bit awkward facerolling everything while remembering how tricky this mission used to be. We also found another mission that used to have a multi-stage bonus and had it completely removed. Sadness.

At Outpost Talarn, we were in for an even bigger surprise. The two NPCs that used to give the heroic mission "Insufficient Staff" were completely gone and so was the quest. Instead, the main storyline sent us into the same bunker where this heroic used to take place. Which was weird, because originally that quest used to send you to a cave a bit further away. The best theory I could come up with is that they removed the heroic in order to save people from a hundred meters of extra driving for the main storyline. Which is still dumb. Removing content is not cool, Bioware! I have a hard time believing that this slightly shorter drive to a slightly closer quest location is going to make a difference to anyone's enjoyment of the game.

I actually got angry when we made our way to the next outpost and found that another side quest by the roadside had disappeared: The Head That Wears the Crown, which has a dying Queen's Guard asking you to recover the crown of Panteer from a shuttle that crashed into the river. That was a nice bit of background lore, damn it! However, funnily enough, this one eventually resurfaced... on the other end of the map, where the dying guard had moved from his old place under a tree into a tent. Again I wondered why, but I could eventually come up with a reason: Since all speeder paths are unlocked by default since a recent patch and there are no other quests asking you to go into the area where this quest used to be, the mission would have been easy to miss in its old location - nobody but quaint, old-fashioned people like my pet tank and I are actually going to drive to the next quest hub on the ground anymore. So Bioware moved it closer to Castle Panteer, where people have a couple of other quests and are therefore more likely to find it. OK, that makes some sense.

In Castle Panteer we ran up the stairs to click on the datacron that's hidden away there and I was disappointed to find that we got absolutely nothing from it. I wasn't a fan of the legacy datacron announcement, but I thought that it might still be fun to re-do them on alts for the codex entries or something. Nope! The codex entries are legacy-wide too. If you enjoy hunting datacrons for any kind of reward and already have them all, you've got to create a new legacy on a new server or GTFO. The thought of never having a reason to ride the Jawa balloon or organise a fleet datacron guild event again makes me kind of sad.

We finished Alderaan at level 41 (though again without having done the bonus series). To wrap up the Sith warrior's chapter one we had to revisit Hutta. At the entrance to the phase stood a level 52 Marauder, so we were clearly not the only ones experiencing a wacky levelling speed thanks to the new level sync. I remembered this particular fight being somewhat challenging, but either it has since been nerfed or everything being synced down to level 12 (for Hutta) made things ridiculously easy. I mean, I was still wearing level 20 gear (at 41!) but I guess if you're officially level 12 even that's overpowered.

After completing chapter one, my Sith warrior's master gave me the usual speech about having done a good job and that I should take a break now. At this point the game used to send you to the fleet (somewhat annoyingly), just to pick up your quest reward. He also mentioned that he wanted to see me on Dromund Kaas later. However, this time I got my chapter one quest reward right away, and instead of having to go to Dromund Kaas, I got my next set of instructions directly via holocall. Now that seemed like a good quality of life change.

So what can be taken away from all this?

Questing has indeed been streamlined in several ways: level sync means that you never have to worry about outlevelling content and can level where you like for as long as you like. Added quick travel points and hand-ins via voice-over save you from having to do too much running back and forth. Increased amounts of XP for class missions and main planetary storylines allow you to progress through the story quickly and ignore other content if you like, while most of the side quests are still available as optional content as well.

Most of them... and that's the rub for me. Musco went on file in September to say that "we aren't going to take things away from you!" Except... they did. I'm still holding out hope that at least the issue with the planetary bonus series is a bug. But either way I'm miffed about those more fun multi-stage bonuses and that heroic being removed. I expect to find more instances of this as we continue levelling. I have no issue with giving people the option to skip this stuff, but I just don't understand why it had to be removed entirely. Surely its mere existence as an optional thing wasn't making anyone's experience any worse?

Of course, for the new and/or inexperienced player this will be pretty irrelevant. There's still tons of content to do and they won't miss what they never knew, as it's not like any of the removed, optional stuff leaves obvious gaps in the story. However, as a veteran with a completionist streak, it's hard not to cringe when content that you used to enjoy is unceremoniously relegated to the dust bin.