Too Many Alts or Not Enough Variety?

I've always loved rolling alts. Back in World of Warcraft, I had created a whole bunch of alts before my first character even hit the level cap... and over time, my stable only grew. I like to roll different classes and species to view the (virtual) world through different eyes. It's a way of playing that offers variety both in terms of gameplay as well as in terms of immersion. ("What does it mean to be a fighter in this world as opposed to be a healer? Or to belong to one faction instead of another?")

With its promise of eight unique class stories, SWTOR was always going to be an altoholic's dream. On the whole, I feel that it has indeed lived up to that promise. It took me nearly two years to complete all the game's class stories, and each of them offered a unique piece to the puzzle that is The Old Republic as a whole. You may even find it questionable how much content is hidden away in some class stories - for example the role and whereabouts of the Sith emperor are quite opaque until you've played a Jedi knight and a Sith warrior. Or how about the fact that the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic just changes from one person to another one day - for which the only explanation is found in the bounty hunter story? I've levelled a multitude of alts to explore all these different aspects of the in-game universe and have loved every minute of it.

Lately though... I've been feeling a bit burnt out on my alts, and I've been wondering why that is.

It started with a joking throwaway comment in my post about making an alt on the Progenitor, how I would feel guilty if I just made another character on the Red Eclipse that I then wouldn't find the time to play anyway. But it's definitely been remarkable how refreshing and freeing it feels to play on the Progenitor. When I log in there, Agent Shintar is all I have to worry about. It's limiting in some ways to not have a huge legacy of characters that can provide assistance in the form of resources, but it also makes life a lot simpler and carefree. But why should alts feel like a burden?

I remembered an old post of Syl's (or two), in which she talked about why she personally dislikes alts and why they are not for her. She makes some interesting points about how alts can negatively affect gameplay, but the most interesting thing to me was actually my own comment to that post back in 2011. I always think it's a bit conceited and possibly absurd to quote yourself, but just this once I'll bite the bullet. I was still playing WoW back then and this is what I had to say about it:

"I’ve definitely noticed a certain “alt burnout” in myself that started in WOTLK, due to the accessibility changes. In BC all my alts eventually hit some sort of progression ceiling, and that was good because it kept them alts. While my main was raiding Black Temple, my alts became Champions of the Naaru and I could be proud of it. But in WOTLK, it all became kind of samey. Every time the badges got updated, all my alts could upgrade their entire gear. They could all raid Trial of the Crusader. It actually felt kind of tiring, and I’m still struggling a bit with where to draw the line in Cataclysm."

The thing that made me tire of alts a bit back then was that they were all doing the same content at the same time. There was no distinction anymore between the main that you were always trying to keep on the cutting edge and say, the alt that was only ever doing the lower tier content but had a reason to actually keep doing it. And if I look at it, I think this is kind of the problem that I currently have in SWTOR as well. In fact, in some ways it's surprising that I haven't noticed it being an issue any earlier, even if gear gating is less of a "thing" in SWTOR than it is in WoW. The story matters a lot though.

If eight different class stories were an altoholic's dream, then the revelation that the class stories weren't going to be continued after launch should have shattered that dream long ago. But I suppose it didn't really matter at first, because it was always going to take me some time to actually see all the content that the game launched with. With Makeb, I guess the first cracks started to show, but at the same time, it wasn't too bad. I completed that planetary quest chain on some characters but not on others, and while I felt vaguely guilty about it since the loading screen summaries kept reminding me that it was supposed to be chapter four of my class story, it wasn't too big a deal. It was just one more story. There was little reason to go to Makeb outside of it because its dailies sucked anyway, and Toborro's Courtyard wasn't an operation you wanted to keep running on a regular basis. Completing Makeb wasn't a requirement to move on to CZ-198 or Oricon.

This sounds pretty terrible in some way, doesn't it? "I didn't mind that all my characters were prompted to go to Makeb because I didn't have to and didn't miss much if I didn't." But there is value in not feeling too tied down. Currently, any of my alts that are level 55 or higher feel very tied down. (The lower level ones are fine, honestly. It's not like I've done all the class stories multiple times, and stuff like "jumping into lowbie PvP" provides alternate gameplay that I can't experience on my main.)

But for those alts near the level cap, it feels like the path to progression that's open to them is all the same, and it's only getting same-ier. Shadow of Revan has brought with it an increased amount of linearity. Do the four Forged Alliances flashpoints in the correct order. Do Rishi. Do Yavin 4. Do Ziost. It's all got to be done in that order or not at all. I actually enjoyed repeating the main Shadow of Revan story arc multiple times because it was well done, not to mention the massive carrot that awaited on Rishi in the form of the new class missions. But then we got the next part of the story and... you can't even do it unless you completed what came before. It makes complete sense from a narrative point of view, but it also feels so limiting. I can't take my Scoundrel or my Marauder to Ziost just for fun (not without a guild ship summon anyway) because neither of them has completed the SoR storyline.

Ziost itself, while a great piece of content in some way, feels like it has limited replayability as well. It feels like it was mainly added to drive the story forward and doesn't have much purpose beyond that. I have to confess that as much as I've gushed about it, I've only actually completed the Ziost storyline on Shintar and one of my Imperial alts - that's it. I keep thinking that I probably "should" go and move more characters forward through it (because I do like their play style and their back stories), but the thought that all of them will just be going through the exact same motions as my first two characters is honestly quite a downer.

I thought I'd accepted the class stories ending on Corellia. I figured if Bioware kept adding more planets like Makeb or Oricon, they would eventually build a levelling path with enough content that you could mix things up on alts. But with Shadow of Revan it looks increasingly like we're all going to be playing the same linear story on all of our alts, and that chafes. I suppose that whatever ends up happening with the Emperor will only be playable after you've completed Ziost or it won't make any sense, but I hope that after this, Bioware will reconsider this highly limited and linear approach to storytelling. I'm actually okay with linear stories in MMOs... as long as you can either choose out of a selection of several different stories, or the game still gives you enough options on the side to mix it up and make alt play interesting. Right now, it seems that those options are rapidly diminishing as all our characters are being funnelled into a single storyline, leaving them with nowhere else to go (unless you want to do nothing but PvP I guess).

Hearing from the Devs

I often see SWTOR's devs and community team get accused of not communicating very much with the player base or not doing a very good job at it. I honestly can't tell how true that is because I find it hard enough to keep up with everything going on on the forums and on fan sites as it is - I never feel like nothing is happening in this community, and I'm more likely to miss out on important information than to sit there going: "You're not telling me enough!"

Also, and I know many people may find this weird, but I actually kind of like it when MMO devs keep certain things close to their chests and refuse to talk about them. For example, I love a good surprise. I really enjoyed the way Bioware tried to build up suspense via the Forged Alliances story arc when it was first released and I loved seeing people speculate about which villain might be behind it all. The big reveal in Legacy of Rakata felt very satisfying, even if it wasn't completely unexpected. But of course you can only achieve that by withholding information from the player base until they can see the content for themselves (and if the data miners respect that stance and don't go around spoiling things for everyone else). Those of us who've played since launch may also remember how completely out of the blue the first Rakghoul event came - and it was great! Compare this to Blizzard for example, who posted all the in-game cinematics for Warlords of Draenor on their front page, spoiling the entire storyline two months before the expansion even released. (That sure saved me some money.)

There is also the saying that it's better to stay silent and be considered a fool than to open your mouth and prove it without a doubt. How does this apply to MMO devs? When they introduce something that I consider awesome, I'd like to think that it was all planned that way and that the devs are really good at their job. I'd rather not hear that this feature was slapped together within a month and with no resources, and that my favourite part of it is actually an unintended bug. Conversely, if I don't like a change, I'd rather imagine that the devs only had the best of intentions and simply made a mistake. If they come out saying that they love the change and that they are sure players will consider it the most fun thing ever, that's probably going to contribute more to losing me as a player than the change itself. Basically, it's easier to enjoy a good meal if you don't spend too much time talking about how the sausage gets made.

That said, every now and then I can appreciate a good, non-spoilery look behind the scenes, especially if it doesn't include anything that I consider bad news. And there's been quite a few of those over the past week or so!

First off, Chuck and Brian from the Bad Feeling Podcast interviewed PvP developer Alex Modny and Eric Musco about upcoming PvP changes. Now, the Bad Feeling Podcast is always fun to listen to and you shouldn't miss an episode anyway, but this one is particularly informative as some pretty juicy bits of info were dropped. If you just want a summary of the important parts, Xam Xam has one here. Basically, it's a lot of good news for casual PvPers, with warzones becoming more rewarding in terms of XP and credit gains, PvP gear having its cost reduced by a huge amount, and warzone comms becoming easily transferrable between alts. There was some stuff about ranked too, but that doesn't really affect me. They were also discussing adjusting the way AoE works in warzones so it doesn't interrupt node caps anymore, which could be a pretty big game changer in a good or bad way, but we'll have to see.

On the same day this interview was released, Olib from SWTOR Network posted a (written) interview with Alex Tremblay, Bioware's Manager of Analytics. I think this interview hasn't got nearly enough publicty, even though it's really interesting and includes some well thought-out questions. There weren't any huge and shocking relevations, but for those of us who love hearing about statistics and such, there are still some interesting tidbits (such as which colour crystal is the most popular at the level cap right now).

Finally, on Wednesday Bioware held a developer stream to show off the upcoming new stronghold on Yavin 4 and the new Togruta species. You can watch most of it here. Personally I watched about five minutes of the recording and then stopped, because unlike an obviously large number of people, I actually find it pretty boring to watch others play a game that I'd rather play myself. Fortunately there are parts of the community that are willing to provide summaries for people like me, so you can find a breakdown of all the facts that were revealed on Dulfy as usual. If you want some more opinions on what the stream was like, Mae and Xam Xam are happy to provide.

I'm quite excited about the Togruta, even though I'm not a huge fan of the species - I just like having new character creation options to play around with, so I'll probably create a Togruta alt at some point just because I can.

As far the new stronghold goes, I have mixed feelings. From an emotional standpoint I'd have no issue with dumping my Nar Shaddaa stronghold for it as I never liked it very much anyway, however I've been using it to boost my conquest point gains (basically I filled it with random trophies, pets and speeders) and losing that would be a bit annoying. Not that my guild has been doing much with conquest lately.

Also, apparently they kept emphasising that we can look forward to an exciting announcement on the 15th of June. I'm fine with that as that's my birthday and I already happened to book the day off work anyway. This better be good!

What are your thoughts on the newest bits of information to come out of Bioware? And is it enough or are you one of those always craving more?

Continued Adventures on the Progenitor

In the comments on my last post, reader DualBlastersGuy expressed some concern that rushing through the levels on a new server would result in me becoming destitute quite quickly. Fear not, gentle readers: Even if I'm going to make use of the epic story XP boost, playing in the described manner is absolutely out of the question for me. I'm simply incapable of focusing exclusively on my class story. I always get distracted, whether it's by gathering nodes, datacrons, unexplored pieces of the map or what have you. With that said, let me tell you about how Agent Shintar continued her adventures on the Progenitor by going to Dromund Kaas:

First off, I bought the stronghold there. I was actually positively surprised that I was able to afford it so easily (without any expansions of course), using just the quest money I had earned on Hutta. For some reason I always think of strongholds as this massive credit sink, so the idea that a newly rolled character fresh off the starter planet and with no support whatsoever would be able to actually afford a stronghold as soon as she hit level fifteen seemed kind of preposterous. But it's true! The ones on the capital worlds are really that cheap. I'm definitely grateful for the additional travel option, and I also plopped down the free level one slicing node that you get from the introduction to strongholds. It may not be much, but every little helps!

On Dromund Kaas, I managed to suffer my first death (not counting warzones)... by falling down the elevator shaft in Lord Grathan's estate. And when I say "falling", I actually mean "jumping". Because you know, why would you pay attention to silly things like whether the lift is actually there? It was annoying too since you can't res on a moving platform, so I had to respawn all the way back at the medcenter and promptly got distracted by nearby gathering nodes again the moment I tried to make it back into the compound.

I also realised that since I soloed the Black Talon instead of running it the "normal" way, Agent Shintar is social rank zero and couldn't complete her Social Points quest. I'll have to run a random flashpoint or something purely to amend that. Having no social points whatsoever is simply unacceptable.

In the Nexus Room Cantina, I actually ran into some people who were roleplaying. (I didn't see where they were and didn't go looking, but I saw their chat.) Up until then I hadn't even thought about the fact that the Progenitor is a roleplaying server. Fun fact: I actually spent most of my time in World of Warcraft on a roleplaying server (on Earthen Ring EU), though I wouldn't consider myself a roleplayer. I always feel a bit bad for roleplayers and how their servers get invaded by people who don't actually want to roleplay but who think that roleplayers somehow make for a better community. (At least that used to be the argument back in my day.) In WoW I actually got pulled into at least some roleplay by people who roleplayed in public, but towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King that kind of seemed to die out, or at least I hardly ever saw it happen anymore. It's nice to see that roleplay is still happening in SWTOR in any case. I wonder where else the roleplayers hang out? (These Sith were discussing how they'd like to be buried by the way; seemed very appropriate.)

While uncovering the last couple of pieces of map that I hadn't explored yet, I ran into a level 55 soloing the world boss (very, very slowly). I wondered if he doesn't have Shadow of Revan, to spend his time soloing lowbie world bosses at 55.

I also did a couple more warzones and continued to get about a zillion achievements for each match. It's pretty ridiculous really. I used 250 of my warzone commendations to buy a Makeb Pergola, which is apparently going for nearly 100k credits on the local GTN right now - I'm thinking that can't be right. However, even if it's not, I reckon that it's going to be an easy way of making at least a little bit of money quickly.

The GTN seems weird in any case - I was looking to sell a skill mod that I had found and expected there to be lots of them since agents are popular... yet there were only a couple of pages of similar items, and the highest level mod of that type was only level 29. Really makes you wonder if it's true what they say about roleplaying servers... (that people are too busy roleplaying to care much about regular content). Feel free to correct me, Progenitor players.

Being a Noob on the Progenitor

I've been wondering whether to do anything with this whole 12x Epic Story XP boost that's going on right now. I've said a hundred times that I'm not a fan of things like double XP weekends, but I think I've made my peace with the fact that they exist and that there is a clear demand for them. At least they are preferable to changing XP requirements across the board and thereby forcing fast levelling on people. This time Bioware also remembered to give people an option to turn the whole thing off, so all is well from my point of view.

Personally I have little incentive to level another alt as quickly as possible. I enjoy levelling in general so I don't really want to rush it, and I've seen all the class stories. There's a certain draw to repeating some of them to see a slightly different outcome, but then I ask myself: "Do I really want add another max-level alt to my stable on The Red Eclipse?" For some reason having too many unplayed alts makes me feel vaguely guilty. No, I don't think that makes sense either - it is what it is.

But then I saw someone make a suggestion for an alternative use of this XP boost (sorry, I forgot who exactly it was): use it to level a character on another server. This has been one of those goals that has been at the back of my mind for ages, wanting to have the ability to visit friends on other servers and play with them, but somehow I've never been very good at this. I've tried in the past, but usually I just faff around on the starter planet for a little while and soon end up logging off and never coming back. I figured that giving myself a bit of a push, so I would quickly get to the point where I could actually found a new legacy, would help me to maintain momentum, and it has.

I started my experiment by creating Agent Shintar the Cathar on the Progenitor, where some old friends reside on Imperial side apparently. (If you're my friend and playing on another server, don't think that I've forgotten you! But this is where I felt like making a start.)

Oddly, I was immediately struck by just how long it's been since I started a character on a new server with zero support. I was kind of surprised when an achievement popped up for killing people in the starting area on Hutta, because on the Red Eclipse I have so many achievements that I rarely see one these days outside of new boss kills in ops. I also realised that I'm terribly ignorant about which features are actually account-wide and which ones only legacy-wide. For example I immediately had three bank tabs unlocked, but barely any inventory space. While my mailbox was full of crap the usual "gifts", I had no stronghold to admire my furniture in, or legacy perks that would have allowed me to fly a speeder early. Bhagpuss wrote about the joy of starting fresh on a new server the other day (in the context of Everquest), and I can definitely recognise myself in that a little. I've become too spoiled by my big, fat legacy. There is fun in being a scrappy noob.

Of course even a scrappy noob feels a bit overpowered in SWTOR these days. I had forgotten that training new skills is now free for subscribers forever, and it feels like cheating. Don't I have to spend money on anything while levelling up? And the XP gains from my class quests on Hutta were utterly ridiculous of course. Sometimes I even gained two levels at once from a single quest hand-in. I feel like levels really start to lose their meaning at that point. I did all the quests anyway and was level fifteen (going on sixteen) by the time I left Hutta. I was too high level to queue for the Black Talon before I even got to it! I decided to solo it for fun, even if it granted me little XP. I was hoping to be able to scavenge some metal, but I forgot that unlike during its Republic equivalent, the Esseles, you hardly fight any droids in this flashpoint. I think I counted a total of five. It was also noticeable that my companion wasn't beefed up by tons of presence bonuses, as things actually took a bit of time to kill.

I also did a lowbie warzone, which seemed pretty flooded with lowbie agents of some flavour or another, and got eleven achievements in a single match. Operative healing feels extremely powerful in lowbie PvP now that they get Kolto Probe so early. Oh yeah, did I mention that I chose Operative over Sniper (again)? Being able to just choose my advanced class from the UI certainly made things more convenient at the end of Hutta, but I did the little "choose your advanced class" quest on the fleet anyway once I got there. I wonder if new players find that confusing.

I remember when ships in flashpoints going into Hyperspace used to crash my game. Good times.

We'll see whether I'll actually be able to progress, get distracted by side activities while ignoring the XP boost, or lose interest if my character levels too quickly (seemingly without me actually doing much of anything).

Attack of the Clones

I'll say it right away: This post has nothing to do with Episode II. Sorry if you came here thinking that it would. The title was just too appropriate not to use.

A long time ago, I saw a video on YouTube that was bashing SWTOR pretty badly. I can't find it anymore, but it was very straightforward really. The video-maker was running around the Imperial agent/bounty hunter starter area on Hutta and accusing Bioware of being lazy and of having created a dead and uninteresting world. His evidence? The NPCs in front of Nem'ro's palace were all the same. Not literally all of them of course - but as he was walking around, he pointed the camera at various citizens that were strolling around the area, talking to vendors etc. and there were indeed a lot of clones among them. The guy sounded so bitter and hateful that I found it easy to ignore him and to dismiss his criticism. After all I had already been playing the game for a while by that point, and I'd never noticed anything like that. I figured that it was probably footage of placeholder NPCs from beta or something.

I kind of forgot about his whole argument until late last year, when my guild was getting really into conquests. Initially, one of our main sources of conquest points was grinding low-level heroics on multiple alts, which worked particularly well on Nar Shaddaa. As I was mindlessly killing the same mobs over and over again, multiple times a day and for several days in a row, I couldn't help but get a closer look at them. Since they were low level compared to my characters, they posed no threat and combat required no real attention. So instead I started to notice... similarities.

The thing is, to a certain degree I honestly expect lots of mobs to look similar. In SWTOR, we spend a lot of time fighting enemy soldiers of a certain faction or another, and it's no surprise that people in uniform or heavy armour all look kind of same-ish, especially when you're more focused on selecting the right abilities than on inspecting them up close.

But as I was grinding those heroics on Nar Shaddaa, I started to notice things that looked a bit odd to me. For example the [Heroic 4] Mandalorian Rage requires you to kill a lot of Mandalorians from Clan Sharratt. Especially when they have a helmet on, it goes without saying that a lot of them will look the same. But I noticed things like that all the mobs called "Clan Sharratt Vanguard" were female Zabraks with red skin. That's a rather striking look, and when there are two of them in each pull it looks rather odd.

A similar thing caught my attention in the [Heroic 4] Lab Animals, where you fight some bad guys called Xenobi. The Xenobi thugs were all body type one (or two, not sure now) with short hair so not particularly eye-catching, but the ones called rangers were all body type three and had that wacky haircut that Corso Riggs comes with by default. All of them. It was slightly disconcerting.

After that I started to notice the same pattern pretty much everywhere I cared to look: Bioware would make a bunch of different mobs with different names and mix them up in larger mob groups, but every mob with the same name would look exactly the same. I won't pretend that this bothers me very much, because most of the time when I'm in combat I'm busier with focusing on my survival than on inspecting the facial features of some random NPC, and I rarely go to low level areas to mow down mobs that can't really fight back (that heroic grinding for conquest purposes was definitely an exception). But every so often when Bioware gives one of these generic mobs a more striking look, with an unusual skin colour or a funky haircut, I notice it again.

I even went back to check on Hutta, and the YouTuber whose name I can't remember was actually right. That same NPC is still there, playing a whole plethora of roles in front of Nem'ro's palace.

I'm just wondering: Who else has noticed this? And if you have, does it bother you? I'm kind of thinking that in theory, I would like a world where no two NPCs look the same, but I'm not sure how much additional work that would create for the artists. I'm kind of doubtful it would be worth it, when even long-time players like myself can take almost three years to actually take a close enough look to notice.

Whatever happened to...?

Bioware keeps adding new features to The Old Republic at a decent pace, and even if they slip up in certain areas sometimes (such as letting us go with no new operations for over a year), you can feel safe in the knowledge that they are probably working on something new in the background. Recently, GSF players have been worried that their favourite part of the game might be in danger of being forgotten because every time the subject is brought up, the devs declare that they currently have no plans for new GSF additions. However, at least Galactic Starfighter is still being talked about. There are other parts of the game that haven't seen updates in much longer and genuinely seem to have been forgotten by most people. Here are three that I've been thinking about lately:

1) Original Space Combat

It seems to me that the last time this received a significant update was in patch 1.6 when heroic space missions were introduced. That was over two years ago. But does anybody even care? Unlike with GSF, I haven't heard anyone clamour on blogs or podcasts that Bioware needs to make new space missions. Were they really that unpopular? I have to admit that I never liked them very much myself, and I can only think of two people I know who ever played them with any real gusto, but I also seem to have a vague recollection of Bioware stating that a fairly significant percentage of players were doing at least one space mission per week. (Though of course I can't find a link to that piece of info anymore.)

I kind of have a suspicion that Galactic Starfighter was more or less intended to replace the original space game, which is why they stopped updating the latter. Of course it's a bit questionable to replace a PvE game with a PvP one, and while GSF has found its fans, I wonder how many players actually migrated towards it from the original space combat. Of the aforementioned two fans I mentioned, only one really took to GSF as far as I know.

At least the original space missions are still in the game, and most players probably give them a try at least once, considering how prominent that quest icon is on your starship. The fact that space combat has never been relevant to any other parts of the game actually has the advantage of making it timeless.

2) Legacy

This one might seem a bit odd at first, considering that we probably spend a fair amount of time looking at our legacy window to check things like achievements or reputations (all of which are legacy-wide). What I'm talking about however is legacy as something other than a simple accumulation of character perks.

Remember legacy levels? I have to admit I almost forgot that they exist, considering that I hit legacy level 50 over two years ago, which caused my legacy experience bar to disappear. I'm sure I'm not the only one who expected these to gain some sort of purpose eventually, but they never really did. The maximum legacy level has also never been raised, even though the maximum character level has gone up to 60 in the meantime.

Or how about that family tree? I have to admit I always thought that it had some potential for roleplaying additions, but Bioware never really did anything with it. I would have loved to be able to connect it to the characters of other players!

Basically, the legacy system originally appeared to be something that could really allow us to build our own story in game and build stronger connections between our characters. However, nobody has really shown any great interest in taking it in that direction in the last two years, neither the devs nor the players. It still has its role to play as a point to collect achievements and certain character perks, but I can't help but think that it could have been - and could still be! - so much more.

3) Matrix Shards & Cubes

The first time I actually felt compelled to hunt datacrons in the game was when I built my first matrix cube. At the time, good relics were pretty hard to come by, and none were better than this simple item that you could build yourself... even if it did require some effort. These days, I like to pick up as many datacrons as possible whenever I level a new character - but sadly all those matrix shards effectively go to waste, as Bioware never added new matrix cubes for level 55 or 60.

Why not, I say? I'm not saying that these new matrix cubes would have to be best in slot, but having new versions of these at all would offer players at least an alternative way of getting something for that particular gear slot.

I find it strange that while Bioware keeps adding datacrons to give people stat boosts (and players embrace them, with all their crazy jumping requirements and secret puzzles), this secondary function of datacrons seems to have been all but forgotten.

Would you like to see any of these features updated and added to? Or can you think of other parts of the game that both devs and players seem to have forgotten about?

Five Myths That Shouldn't Stop You From Playing Star Wars: The Old Republic

While SWTOR is my "home" MMO, I'm still interested in other games and the state of the industry in general. Burnout and content slumps happen, and then it's nice to be able to check out other games for a little while.

While I think that the image of SWTOR on general MMO sites has improved a lot since it had to deal with all those issues in its first year, you'll still find a fair amount of people commenting on SWTOR articles purely to spread misinformation about the game. (I'm not saying that they are doing this intentionally, but the effect is the same, whether the intent was malicious or whether they are simply basing their judgement on outdated information.) It always makes me pretty annoyed, but when has anything good ever come out of arguing in an internet comment section?

Nonetheless it's not good to have this stuff out there, because people who genuinely don't know anything about the game will read it and think it's true. (I'm pretty sure that I must have some pretty warped views of a lot of games that I've never played myself, having used random internet comments about them as my knowledge base...) I thought that I could at least try to provide an article that those who are curious, who want to learn more about the game and are wondering whether some of the bad things they've heard about it are true can read as a counterpoint - a counterpoint from someone who has actually played the game since launch.

You might argue that this makes me biased, and of course it does, but I've never claimed that SWTOR is perfect or that everyone should play it. However, if you don't think that SWTOR is your cup of tea, I'm sure that you'll be able to come to this conclusion based on actual facts, not rumours and myths that some people like to perpetually regurgitate in comment sections.

Without further ado, here are five myths about SWTOR that shouldn't prevent you from trying the game, where they originated, and why they are wrong.

1. SWTOR is effectively a single player game

I actually wrote about why this wasn't true shortly after launch, but sadly I still see it pop up quite often even three years later.

Why do people believe this? When SWTOR first launched, the way it delivered quests with cut scenes, multiple-choice dialogue and voiceovers was quite revolutionary for the genre, even if its ultimate importance was overhyped. Since then other MMOs, such as The Secret World and Elder Scrolls Online have adopted similar systems of quest delivery, but at the time of SWTOR's launch it was very novel. It was the closest thing to questing in a single-player RPG that any MMO had done before, and it made sense that people noticed the similarities. However, some players got so caught up in their class stories that they ignored everything else and were then confused that nobody wanted to play with them.

Why is it not true? SWTOR is, on average, no less group-friendly than other theme park MMOs. You receive bonus experience while in a group, there are group quests and world bosses on every planet, and the endgame is very group-centric. In fact, it's other MMOs that have introduced features like XP penalties for grouping and forced solo instances! In SWTOR, being in a group is pretty much always rewarded and there's no content to which you can't bring along a buddy.

Yes, you can make your way to the level cap on your own if you wish, but you've been able to do that in pretty much every major MMO since the launch of World of Warcraft. The mere option of being able to play on your own does not turn any virtual world into a single player MMO. I always found it odd how SWTOR got singled out for this as if it was something new.

Busy being bored in my no-endgame, single player MMO.

2. There is nothing to do at endgame

I can understand why people believed this at launch, but at this point it's just baffling. Do you honestly think that Bioware hasn't added anything to do in three years?

Why do people believe this? At launch, a lot of very vocal people burnt through the levelling content very quickly and then found themselves bored with the endgame. Even then it wasn't true that there was "nothing" to do at max level - there was PvP, two daily areas, an operation, three normal max-level flashpoints and nine hardmode flashpoints even at launch, but it's understandable that this wasn't enough to keep people busy who had burnt through the entirety of the levelling content within days.

Why is it not true? Speed levellers were never a good benchmark to measure when people would run out of content. Personally, despite of playing for several hours a day immediately after launch, it took me over a month to hit level 50, by which point Bioware had already patched in another operation and another flashpoint. I never experienced a lack of things to do at max level.

Since then the game has kept adding patches at a pretty steady rate of about once every two to three months, raised its level cap twice, and added space combat and housing. There is plenty to do.

 3. The servers are dead

In the comment section of the old Massively site, I noticed this one guy who liked to claim this repeatedly and "backed it up" by posting a screenshot that showed his character standing on the fleet, alone.

Why do people believe this? Because there was a time when many servers were dead. The game launched with dozens of servers and initially they added even more... so when the game lost over half of its launch population in the following months, a lot of servers were left as ghost towns.

When Bioware actually started "soft merges" by allowing people to transfer off towards a designated number of target servers, those ghost towns became even emptier... yet they were still left open for a while, ready to give new and returning players a terrible impression of the game. (No, I didn't think that was a good idea either.)

Why is it not true? This was back in mid-2012. Ever since all those smaller and deserted servers were merged into a handful of mega-servers, the populations of those have been healthy. Obviously there are still differences in terms of how busy things are depending on the time of day and your exact location, but there are definitely people around.

Somewhat related to this, not everyone understands the way the game's instancing system works. If more than a certain number of people (I think it's 250 on the fleet, less on most planets) are in the same place, the game will create a new instance of that location to split the population up. However, the counter in the top left will only ever show you the population of your current instance. So even in game you sometimes get players going "oh my god, only 42 people on the fleet" - while they miss the fact that there are already two full instances of the fleet and they happened to load into the newly spawned third one.

The Republic fleet on The Red Eclipse on a Saturday morning, ca. 11 a.m., instance one of two.

4. The alignment system affects your gear progression

In other words: I can't play my character the way I want, I have to maximise my light or dark side point gains or I won't be able to wear the best gear in the game!

Why do people believe this? There are items with alignment requirements on them in the game. People who saw these drop early in the game and couldn't use them due to their alignment obviously jumped to conclusions and aren't shy about sharing those conclusions with the world.

Why is it not true? The Torhead database had over 58k items on record when I originally started drafting this post. (RIP Torhead.) If you looked at just the ones that had any sort of alignment requirement on them, the shown number went down to 871. Or in other words, about less than 1.5% of all items in the game have an alignment requirement, and not a single one of them requires max level. Most of them are pieces of orange (cosmetic) gear or levelling relics - in other words: totally irrelevant if you're worried about your gear progression. There are other reasons to care about your alignment, such as the story - but that only makes sense. Gear and character power however are definitely not a concern when you're wondering whether to be naughty or nice to those NPCs.

5. The payment model is horrible and will constantly annoy you

This point is probably going to be the most contentious one and I fully expect someone to pop up in the comments just to go: "No, you're wrong, SWTOR's payment model really is horrible." Nonetheless, I ask you to hear me out.

Why do people believe this? When you go to the official SWTOR website, it advertises on the main page that you can "download the game and play for free". It is somewhat understandable that some people misinterpret this as meaning that it's a free game. News flash: it's not. The game will remind you very early on that it's still a subscription game at heart and wants you to cough up some money. People can get very grumpy if they are asked to spend money on something that they expected (or simply wanted) to be free.

Why is it not true? SWTOR is a subscription game with a free-to-play option/trial and those options work fine the way they are. I suppose you could argue that they are being advertised in a misleading way, but that doesn't change how they work. I've been a subscriber since launch and aside from the fact that the game has inevitably changed and evolved in some ways, my subscription has allowed me to continue enjoying the game in exactly the same way I have since launch. While a cash shop has been added, I receive a monthly Cartel Coin grant as part of my subscription, and since nothing in the shop bestows any kind of gameplay advantage, there is no pressure to buy things all the time. On the rare occasion when something strikes my fancy, my stipend is usually enough.

If you're only planning to play casually, the "preferred" play status, which you gain as soon as you spend any money at all (the lowest amount you can spend is on a bunch of Cartel Coins for a fiver), isn't such a bad deal either, as you have access to a huge amount of content for free, the worst restrictions are lifted, and many of the others won't really apply to you anyway (e.g. if you're just going through the quests for the story, you probably won't amass enough credits to hit the credit cap, and wearing ugly hats or purple gear to maximise your stats is hardly required).

If you were trying to play without paying a single penny, then yes, the game will nag and annoy you a lot. But such is the way of free trials - they are not the full game.

Ziost, the Day After

So, five days ago, on Star Wars Day, we were allowed to see the conclusion to the Ziost storyline. (Spoilers this time if you haven't seen it yet!) There was a big crowd of people at the mission terminal that couldn't wait to see it.

As soon as you click it, you get a message that some sort of anomaly has been detected on the planet... and then you get to see Vitiate "consume" it by killing every living thing on the planet. Talk about a shocking moment, especially since the story up to that point had ended with NPCs expressing hope that maybe the former* Emperor wasn't as powerful as they thought.

People have pointed out that the whole thing is reminiscent of something that is talked about in the Revan novel, how Vitiate consumed all life on his home world to make himself immortal. If this was indeed a similar sort of thing, he only just got even more powerful. Personally I was also reminded of an event in the early Jedi knight story - it's been a while, so I don't remember all the details, but basically you get sent out to save a planet from an evil superweapon and arrive too late, which cumulates in a moment of shock similar to this one as everyone stares down at the planet's destroyed surface. Finally, the whole thing is an interesting contrast to Makeb, where the threat of the planet's destruction is dangled over your head for the entirety of the storyline, but it isn't very credible and it's unsurprising that it never bears out.

In hindsight, it makes a lot more sense now that the quest areas on Ziost felt so tiny, considering that they literally only existed for the purpose of progressing the one story quest. Ziost's "permanent" state is that of a dead planet. There aren't even any mobs down there, except for a couple of giant Monoliths (alchemical Sith creations), which you are better off dodging than fighting if you are on your own.

The quests are once again pretty varied (they kind of have to be, with no "ten rats" to kill), and the mission with the speeder bike ride was pretty fun. I was quite annoyed though when the one with the Macrobinoculars bugged out on me and my pet tank when we tried to do it in a group and we were forced to reset it and drop group to be able to complete it. I just can't help but see this as another sign of Bioware's decreasing interest in making their content group-friendly.

Even though the new dailies were a fun little romp, I also couldn't help but wonder why I should keep doing them. There is no new reputation or anything attached to them, so the only rewards are commendations and some new tokens for another set of orange gear with blue mods. As a raider, I have commendations coming out of my ears and the last thing I want to do is get more of them. I occasionally use them to buy gear for a rarely used alt or a companion purely because I don't like being capped, but other than that I really have no use for them. I guess people who don't do endgame group content may appreciate another way of upgrading their gear a little.

What I probably found the most interesting though were the Colossal and Worldbreaker Monolith bosses. Bioware has a history of experimenting with world bosses: giving them long respawns, then shorter ones, putting them in instances, then putting the next one outside again, and so on and so forth. The two Monoliths definitely feel like another step in this ongoing experiment, since one of them is a world boss and the other one is inside an instance (an operations boss). The weekly requires you to kill both, and to tackle the Colossal Monolith on hardmode you're supposed to have a buff which you only get from killing the Worldbreaker Monolith beforehand.

I thought this sounded immensely annoying at first, considering my bad luck with ever seeing the Yavin world boss out in the open, but fortunately Ziost spawns lots of instances quickly due to its small size, and even if another group just killed the world boss before you, he respawns after only fifteen minutes.

I also thought that the Worldbreaker Monolith was the more fun boss of the two in terms of mechanics. He spawns three adds that can't be killed and make him invulnerable to damage while even one of them are active, but if you get their health low enough, they go into a "stasis" for about thirty seconds during which you can actually damage the boss. What makes this fun is that it's vital that you co-ordinate dps on the adds or you'll end up with a "rotation" where at least one of them is always up and you can pretty much never hit the boss. The first time I pugged this fight and nobody knew what to do, we actually managed to have the boss enrage on us, which was pretty funny.

I've been less impressed by the instanced boss, the Colossal Monolith. He feels like just one more giant circle dance... and somewhat ironically, the current recommended strategy for killing him on hardmode seems to be to ignore his main mechanic and just AoE heal through the whole thing. My small guild group certainly didn't have much luck on our first night of attempting him on hard and trying to actually execute the circle mechanics correctly. But then again, considering that he's supposed to drop a mainhand better than what you get from harmode Revan, I would expect him to be something of a challenge.

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* On a side note, I thought it was interesting that it took until Ziost for the Empire to fully denounce the Emperor, and Lana insisting on calling him Vitiate felt quite poignant. Makes you wonder about the Empire's future though - there must be a huge power vaccuum now that no single person is officially in charge of the Empire anymore. Surely more than one Dark Council member must be more than eager to fill that role, wanting to become the new Emperor?

Conquest Fatigue?

Last week we had another Total Galactic War, and me and a couple of other guildies had diligently saved up crafting materials to make a push for first place on the planet of our choice again. We waited a bit with choosing a target to invade and eventually decided to go for Ilum, which seemed very quiet at the time. Within only a couple of hours, we had a good lead of about 500k points... which was when two other large guilds suddenly decided to join us. Since they were so much bigger than us and it was obvious that we didn't stand a chance, the whole excitement was over before it had even begun.

I still hit my personal target on five different characters and felt nicely rewarded for my efforts, but the whole thing certainly left me with a slightly awkward feeling in my gut. It only makes sense that I'm not nearly as enthused about conquests as I used to be when they were introduced. Trying to tailor my play around earning as many points as possible week after week was just not sustainable in the long run, not when I still wanted to play alts and spend time crafting non-conquest items.

But I have been enjoying taking part in the occasional event, especially Total Galactic War, and I had prepared for this one for weeks. To see the competition come to such a premature end so quickly was a bit disheartening, for me anyway. At the same time the number of people in my guild that seem to have any interest in conquest whatsoever seems to be going down as well. The hardcore achievers moved an alt into some bigger guild ages ago and get their achievements that way. The middle-of-the-road players on the other hand, the ones that I was previously able to coax into making an effort at least occasionally, seem to see less and less of a point in it and feel increasingly burnt out by the whole concept.

I thought that this may just be my guild, however I was struck by how many empty slots there were left on the scoreboard on The Red Eclipse at the end of this Total Galactic War. During the first event of this type, I expressed some surprise that ten slots remained unoccupied at the end but chalked it up to not enough guilds having a guild ship yet. When the event came around again a little more than a month later, all slots were claimed within days. However, since then, overall participation seems to have decreased again, and this week's event once again ended with nine empty slots on The Red Eclipse's scoreboard.

A few months ago I felt that a slighty decreased interest in conquests was part of their "maturation process" and not a bad thing, but now I kind of wonder... how far can said interest decrease before it becomes a bad thing? I've heard of guilds not even bothering to invade a planet anymore to give their members the benefit of the bonuses (which even my small guild always does, just to give any individuals who are working towards their personal target a leg up). Has the whole system become too predictable already, with big guilds causing smaller ones to immediately give up as soon as they arrive?

It's certainly something that I will continue to keep an eye on.

Day 10: Death

This is the tenth and last post in my 10 Days of SWTOR Screenshots challenge. Click on any screenshot to see a larger version.

Strictly speaking you never "die" in The Old Republic, because it wouldn't make sense lore-wise. You only get "defeated" - but "I'm dead" is just so much easier to say.

Last time I went through this challenge, I was still relatively new to the game and I was still constantly discovering new and interesting ways to die. After more than three years of playing however... well, not so much anymore. My alts rarely die while levelling unless my companion decides to charge off and overpull, or something respawns on my head at a very inconvenient moment, and neither is generally very interesting (just annoying). So when it comes to looking at interesting ways of dying, operations are the way to go these days, because that and PvP are the only places where you're expected to die frequently, regardless of your skill.

For example, if a boss or an add has a particularly powerful knockback, your body can end up landing in strange places. Pictured: me staring at one of my guildies on his Sniper alt, who had somehow managed to die above Draxus' gate in Dread Fortress.

 

A line that you'll often hear in operations is: "Slash stuck, everyone!" The /stuck command, which moves you if you get physically stuck on an obstacle somewhere in the world, has the nice side effect of killing you if you're in combat at the time. This has led to it seeing lots of use in operations to get people to "die up quickly" when it becomes obvious that a fight is going to be a lost cause and it's better to start over.

Some time ago a visual bug was introduced which causes your character to not fall over when you /stuck - on your screen at least. You still die and fall down on everyone else's monitors. This can lead to some strange images, like this one of my trooper seemingly "defiantly" standing up to a roaring Thrasher, even though I was already dead at the time.

While wiping quickly is good form for regular raiders, sometimes trying to stay alive for as long as possible is just too hard to resist, just to see if you can. This is particularly fun on a Sage, since their Force Barrier (which grants complete immunity to all effects for its duration) allows them to survive for a little while even when things have gone majorly pear-shaped, so you can briefly enjoy the illusion of being extremely powerful... until the bubble runs out.

When you're dead and know that you won't receive a combat res, that's a great time to take screenshots, especially if other people are slow to type /stuck (or the group is genuinely still trying to down the boss). From a vantage point on the floor, any boss looks even more imposing than usual, and you can capture all kinds of heroic last stands... or the moment just before a missile is about to kill your fellow healer.

I hope you all enjoyed (or at least didn't mind) this series. The posts for it were a lot easier and faster to write than many of my usual, (trying to be) more thoughtful ones, and I thought that it also provided a good opportunity to talk about random gameplay observations that usually wouldn't warrant a post of their own.