Hustlin' through The Old Republic: Keep your friends close when Starfighting

Well, well, well it has most certainly been awhile since my last post, actually it’s been a whole freakin year, more than that actually, goddamn really? where has the time gone? I got quite a shock when I saw my last Hustlin’ through The Old Republic post was from the 11^th of July 2013 so there’s gonna be one hell of a lot of ground to cover but anyway, here we go.

So after finishing off the Jedi Knight storyline I headed to Ilum to do the last bit of story that led to The Battle of Ilum and The False Emperor and wow what exciting flashpoints they were doing it for the first time with guildies Neffias and Areah *SPOILER ALERT* finally bringing down Darth Malgus was satisfying to say the least. So that was basically then end of the original set of story flashpoints. Pretty soon the very first expansion for SWTOR Rise of the Hutt Cartel had come out, bringing a new operation, species, planet and the experience cap to level 55. I had the good fortune to be invited by a Neffias to do a run of the Scum and Villainy operation and even more fortunate to be gifted a full set of modifications from him that would get me up to scratch to do the op as well, man he was such a nice guy I wrote a post about it in the forum. I wasted no time in deciding on a new armour set from the Cartel Market, I chose the Valiant Jedi set as I liked it from the cinematic as it was the armour that Jedi Master Ven Zallow wore, finally getting rid of my Tionese set though I still had my funky glasses!

Oo yeh Valiant Jedi Style

Scum and Villainy itself went ok, was with 16 people probably my first time doing that, we got to the end but unfortunately couldn’t finish off Styrak. I can’t remember at what point the Academy Exemplar guild I was in broke up to join Dawn (which is now called The Reclaimers) but it was around January last year that the guild leader Hawking decided to close Academy Exemplar and jump ship to Dawn which had a better and bigger playerbase, this was actually a very good move as I did much more raiding and instancing when I was with the new guild and started learning a lot more about end-game content. So anyway after I’d finished Ilum I decided to finish off several heroic areas of their quests such as Section X on Belsavis and the Black hole on Corellia. I had the idea to do these things in patch order because I had taken so long to finish of my story mission I needed to see all the content that had come out while I had been faffing around and also because I hadn’t purchased the game till the Aussie servers had come out which is kind of ironic now to be back playing on US servers.

I quite liked this picture of Makeb

 It didn’t take very long to finish off the pre - Rise of the Hutt Cartel content and soon I was off to Makeb which is quite a pretty planet indeed despite being wracked by earthquakes and instability due to Hutt Cartel Mining operations, I found Makeb to be pretty damn annoying as there were enemies pretty much everywhere and as the planet was made up of floating mesas it was difficult to avoid enemy npcs due to the tight confines of islands and bridges. But I got it done and it was quite a interesting storyline too.  Another note was I was as I had gotten T7 to maximum affection and I had achieved maximum Light side points and had gotten “The Pure” title. I was determined to use Lord Scourge though unfortunately this meant being evil, as he’s evil as fack and unfortunately an when I got to the first Dark side choice I just couldn’t, so that was that really. I continued on with Doc but lately it’s been kind of hard as you just don’t get enough story quests in endgame obviously.

Pure... but not simple

Sooner then I knew it, the Galactic Starfighter expansion had been released, honestly I reckon this was something they should have had from the start as when the game first came out everyone liked the on-rails starship missions but little else and they just trailed off from there. Don’t get me wrong the starfighter battles are fun but it’s little more than a feature and hard to play casually nowadays as you get massively upgraded people who you have no chance against though this happens all the time with PvP anyway. I had a bit of fun with it at the start when everyone was  new to it as well and it’s fun to dive in at times, can’t see myself playing it for a significant amount of time though. Around this time I finished off the Kaon under Siege and Lost Island flashpoints from the Rise of the Rakghouls patch, Kaon under siege was pretty damn harrowing I must say, with a few multiple NPC endurance bosses thrown in there.

Galactic Starfighter, well it looks pretty

Wham!, bam! shazam! Yeeeargh! Kaon under siege was a pretty chaotic affair

 After finishing off Makeb with Jxan, I got back on my Sith Inquisitor Shadow Kxan and set to work completing Belsavis which had quite an interesting part where I myself freed the Dread Masters, man wish I hadn’t done that now lol. Then I went to Voss and saw what the Empire side of the story was like, and it was actually pretty entertaining playing the trust of the Voss and getting their favour while making them scorn the republic, you even get into trouble by allowing a Gormak to leave Voss. Also I purchased a mobile security key so I could have access to the vendor to finally get the customization for Ashara Zavros where she has red-skin and white facepaint making her look much more appropriate to her new Sith identity, ironically after that  I managed to get her to full affection which was pretty fraught with uncertainty and timidness but we did end up doing it (I think) though not quite as much as with Kira Carsen man she was eager. She was probably the fastest companion I levelled up though as she liked most things Light side and I had racked up quite a few Courting gifts as well.

Ahh beautiful Voss

I then decided it was time to start a new character and this one of course would be a non-force user, I was initially trying to decide between a Smuggler and an Imperial Agent and even made forum post about it to get some ideas about the two classes. I decided against the two though mainly because I kind of wanted a more boss (dare is say it) Master Chief style of blasting away as an armoured soldier, but no so boss as to be a commando carrying a huge gun as a rifle was good enough. It was a huge conflict because my first two choices were pretty easy, I wanted a Jedi Knight first and foremost then I wanted to make a ‘good’ Sith so I chose Inquisitor Shadow for a few reasons as I didn’t want to do a Sith Warrior as they were pretty much the Sith equivalent of a Jedi Knight though I may make a Marauder in the future to cover that side of things. The other reason was that I wanted to create a Jedi Sage so I can use force telekinetics rather than a Sith Sorcerer where is mostly just force lightning. But this was different as it had lots of conflicting decisions for example there were lots of pros  and cons for each for example I knew I wanted to make a Jedi Consular so I technically should have gone Empire Side

Smuggler

Pros: Funny alternative storyline from Jedi and Sith serious stuff

Cons: Republic Side, Healer advanced class uses stealth like Sith Assassin, Gunslinger class used too much by other players

Imperial Agent

Pros: Empire Side, Awesome looking Ship

Cons: Serious story again unlike Bounty Hunter and Smuggler, Healer advanced class uses stealth like Sith Assassin, Sniper class used too much by other players

Trooper

Pros: Boss as boss, uses rifle new odd looking ship, easy to raise companions affection as will be Light side

Cons: Republic Side, serious story, another tank character....

Bounty Hunter:

Pros: Empire side, Powertech boss tank  “Rebel without a cause” story, totally hot romanceable companion

Cons: Ship interior looks too much like Jedi Ship, Can only use blaster pistol :(

So after trying both the smuggler and bountry hunter starting areas for a bit. I decided on Trooper cause I can kick ass with heavy armor and a rifle. Yes I was on Republic side but meh, I picked a male Zabrak with a tank body as he was meant to be a tank and yes I know I now have 3 tank characters lol went with “Gxan” as in G-troops heh realised after level 10 I had spelled it “Gzan” so had to use my free name change to change it lol. Starting out wasn’t quite the start I’d hoped, you’re a recruit of the famous “Havoc Squad” and are thrown into the action on Ord Mantell after your troop transport is attacked though I must admit my first time blasting weak enemies with my rifle was pretty damn cool and the rocket boots were so goddamn helpful in getting around. Ord Mantell itself was actually kinda pretty apart from the war going on.

Gxan lookin' boss

What a lovely cove/inlet, apart from the lizard

When the time came to get my first speeder the way I look at them is by going to Dulfy.net’s awesome speeder guide  then checking out what’s available on the cartel market. I had a look at what was available and man did the Rark K1-A sure stand out, and it was only 30,000 credits too with an adaptive speed licence, though technically that colour scheme and the badass-hog riding position may be more suited to a bounty hunter or smuggler, but screw it, my Trooper is badass. I’m kinda wishing that your companion had their own speeder instead of just disappearing when you mount up, the ladies could even share the one, or the men too, I’m just imagining Khem Val or Lord Scourge riding on your back on one of the standing speeders LoL. Coruscant was a pretty muted affair as I had done it before obviously, though it made for a couple of good screenshots.

Oh yeh, roll out the red carpet for me and my stupid hat.

LooooL at option 3

But of course then it was time to get back on Jxan and continue with finishing shit off and exploring new shit (their both technical terms or course) starting with the two Makeb datacrons where my very helpful guildy Tyr helped me to get the Endurance which is by far the hardest and scariest datacron yet.

We're almost there! *splat*

 Then it was on to the Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droid missions which were a bit different to the MMORPG norm I must say. The Macrobincoluars missions have you chasing a mysterious character called “The Shroud” and to do this you have to use these binoculars to find the Shrouds spy towers and solve puzzles while visiting a host of planets most of which you’ve been to before, it’s kinda like a nostalgic journey. I was glad that I decided to do the Seeker Droid missions as well as this, as they involved using this Seeker Droid bot (which works similar to the ‘Survey’ archaeology ability in WOW) to retrieve the Dread Seeds which have been buried on various planets, almost exactly the same ones that you’re sent to with the Shrouds missions I might add. The Shroud’s puzzles were somewhat fun but the Seeker Droid was a bit of a pain to use.

Oh man yeh I can totally see that, that's shifty as, man this guy is good.

But I got there and now I’m up to the final two mission for each but goddamn trying to finish them was a hell of a pain, I think I organised a night twice with my guild to get them done and missed it both times, I almost got the Macrobinoculars one done with 3 people but unfortunately didn’t get the credit the first time and then we couldn’t quite finish it the second time so I’ve still got them sitting there, oh well maybe a bit of spamming in Fleet chat may help.

End of the final Dreadseed quest which I unfortunately didn't get credit for.

During this time I completed quite a bit of end game content as the Dawn guild was pretty active during this time, I completed the tactical hardmode flashpoints such as Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown from the Titans of Industry patch, the Kuat Drive Yards from the Galactic Starfighter Patch, and the Assault on Tython from the Invasion patch. Tactical flashpoints are interesting as you don’t quite need a healer or even a tank as they are designed to be able to be completed without the “Holy Trinity” Tank/Healer/Dps setup, so they are based on quick fights and have healing devices which you touch to heal your group around boss fights. As well as this I finished pretty much all the operations I had missed before inc Eternity Vault, Karagga's Palace and Explosive Conflict, I also got to the end of Terror From Beyond but failed to defeat the damn thing even after 5 or so tries, and managed to down the first boss of The Dread Fortress. I earned quite a few pieces of gear and commendations for this and it was great to see the story mode for all the fp’s and op’s (Flashpoints and Operations). 

They call him... Soa! the infernal one himself

I also acquired the Desler Avenger from the Eternity Vault which although looking pretty boss was freakin huge and because of its size looks even slower than my current mount, though really I never expect much from this game’s mounts anyway.

Crusin at 30km/h in style

 I had collected a few new pieces of armor from the operations which made me look somewhat ridiculous, I was sad to get rid of the Valient Jedi gear but at least it will always be there in case I get decked out with modifications again.

Black Hole Pummeler gear, fitting name for looking like a futuristic NFL player.

Meanwhile back on Kxan I had acquired the companion Xalek who had beaten the last opposing apprentice by killing him even when he’d lost fair and square and to be honest having a look at his likes and dislikes I’m not too fond of him already but regardless he’s the first companion I’ve had that takes the same armor type so I finally can gift one of my companions all my old armor, and that I did. I had been using the same set of armor, well the helm and chest mostly for quite a while and I thought it was time for a change. I had a look at the various sets of armor on the cartel market and was first interested in the Investigator robe which looked kind of like the robes the Sith Inquisitor was wearing in the ‘Return’ cinematic which was pretty cool but the helm was actually similar to the “iron man” one I had before. I decided on the Eradicator armor as I reckon it looked pretty cool and was pants instead of a robe which was better for Sith Shadow spec, I also purchased the Vindicator’s Sabrestaff which looks pretty cool and had an odd sound and delay when lighting up. After they were purchased I used my mass amount of planetary commendations to purchase modifications from the Makeb vendor which is the highest you can get and once I was all decked out I looked pretty damn cool, and what made it a bit more fun was I got to deck Xalek out in my old gear.

Some pics of my Eradictaor armor dyed with the red and black armor dye module

Fack this datacron was a close call

So after that I finished off Voss and then headed to Corellia which is packed with Republic vs Empire Lore and I was eager to see it, and after getting some nerve wracking datacrons I had done the place and won Coreillia for the Empire (go me!) and as with the Republic side even got my own personal  crowd celebration. Since the Eradicator helmet is full faced I’ve gone against my previous vow and sometimes have my helm hidden (especially for important quest cutscenes) and managed to take a pick of Kxan looking very sensitive and not at all Sith like.

"Aw shucks guys"

So I destroyed Darth Thanaton and was accepted into the Dark Council with the title “Darth Imperius”, I can’t remember what the name meant though. I then had another ceremony where Khem Val of all people announced my ascension to the dark council and my new title with all my companions and some familiar faces I’ve seen on my travels all kneeling.

Hail to the king baby!

Man did I feel honoured though I’ll say it now that I hate the way your companions gear only keeps the “unify colours” feature when you have them summoned as they don’t retain it for cutscenes and look ridiculous.

See what I mean about the colours? and yes Talos' helmet does look a bit ridiculous

At this point my current guild Dawn had made an executive decision to transfer to the Harbinger realm, which had a much higher APAC server population, now I was all for this, my guildmate Shiki guaranteed the facts that group finding finding was quick and pick up groups for raids were always going on, plus there is always heaps of people on fleet. So I just decided to go the gung ho and head in, so I purchased an extra 2400 cartel coins for $20 which coupled with my existing coins was enough to transfer my 3 characters over which I did with minimal trouble. The problem came when I got to Harbinger, due to the higher population my “Jxan” and “Kxan” names were taken (wow they must sound better then “bui”). So I had to go with “Hxan” for my Guardian which sounded ok because he’s “Human” and a “Hero” lol and “Uxan” for my Inquisitor because I couldn’t really think of anything else and “Sxan” sounds too much like “Susanne”

 It was relatively quiet in the Guild after the change, I actually haven’t even been able to find the “Drunk before Dawn” guild or whatever the hell we’re called on Harbinger but goddamn did I feel the difference as soon as I got over there, there is so much more people! On at all times! There’s people doing everywhere going everything it’s so amazingers. But anyway I got back to leveling on Gxan, I was now up to Taris, and met my much anticipated companion Elara Dorne who as you probably guessed is a romance option for the male trooper, though she is not quite as hot as Kira Carsen I liked the difference customizations you could give her, and besides pretty much all females in this game have killer bodies so just going to say I appreciate that and nothing more. She has been an interesting one to romance with her straight-up-the-line-post-Empire-citizen attitude and demeanour but she seems a nice person on the inside which will be fun to play out.

Trooper companion Elara Dorne with customization 4 enabled, yawow she is cute.

 Speaking of companions I must mention that since I’d left Ord Mantell on my merry quest to vanquish the traitorous members of the former Havoc Squad I’ve had Aric Jorgen as my companion who does ranged DPS with an Assault cannon or blaster rifle. I went Trooper Vanguard obviously so it was good to have an assault-cannon wielding commando that I could blast shit up with. Aric interestingly enough is quite obedient to his superiors, I found myself picking darkside options at times where I normally wouldn’t so I wouldn’t lose affection with him as he seemed to be blindly loyal and obedient to the Republic at times even when making choices like keeping a deadly virus to be studied or destroying it, whereas Elara was content to tell sensitive information for the good of the Republic to the SIS against General Garza’s orders (boy was that fun to watch).

Aric Jorgen with customization 3

I finished off Taris and then Nar Shadaa, killing Needles along the way, I dunno who I like better out of the two companions, probably Elara but there was that sort of kick ass bros comradery with Aric, though at the finish of the Nar Shadda, I acquired M1-4X as well who’s pretty much straightforward to the Republic too (man we’re an emotionless bunch lol). It seems I’ve got my work cut out for me here, I’ve got two companions who both use the same armor stat and type that I do making them damn easy to gear up as they can equip my hand-me-downs and well as any quest gear meant for me that I don’t need, and I also do Cybertech which means I can make gear for M1-4X as well, man so many possibilities so little time.

This isn't my photo of M1-4X but it shows how big he is compared to a female Trooper. Going to be kinda fun having a big droid as a companion.

That’s the other issue as once you finish off your story quests there becomes fewer and fewer quests which you can use to raise companion affection especially since you don’t get it while doing operations and flashpoints. I’ve read some posts and information on it and people say that some daily quests offer affection gains and you can always do mission skills or even just purchase companions gifts but it’s an expensive way to do it which is why I’m hoarding all my gifts for the future. Nothing much else happened on Nar Shadaa, apart from story the missions are slightly different when you do them with a different class but not much, I’m liking the B-7 Thunderclap mainly because it’s quite unique and I like the name lol, inside is so non-linear it’s almost confusing and I get lost sometimes, it’s possibly the most original player ship in the game.

The BT-7 Thunderclap, one odd-looking ship

I finished up at level 29 on Gxan, yes I know what you’re saying I should have gone that bit more and got to 30 but screw it I didn’t want to start Tatooine early. So back on to Jxan I go! There wasn’t that much to finish off on Jxan in terms of quests etc I had to do. I finally headed to Oricon to start the “Assault on the Dread Fortress” storyline and the advice I was given was correct you do get given a decent set of “Artifact Quality” level 55 epic armor which includes gloves, helmet, chest, legs and boots so needless to say it’s best to head there as soon as you can, I’m probably going to go as soon as I’ve finished Ilum on my Inquisitor which finishes off the story mode for me.

You finally get a different "ship approaching planet" sequence then the norm for Oricon

 So I finished off that questline which was rather interesting and I got myself up to speed with the story of the Dread masters, I also finally got that bitch the Terror from Beyond down with a PUG of all things, took us a couple of tries on those goddamn “anomalies” bits but we got there. I also went to Tatooine to complete the Czerka corporation mission terminal there as I did on Makeb where you use your trusty Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droid, it’s a great way to see new areas of old planets after finishing those questlines as you can continue to use the toys. I also went there to participate in the Rahkgoul Resurgence even which is actually a continuation of the original Rakghoul Pandemic  event. This is where the T.H.O.R.N faction is located who I know that you can get the “infected companion” customizations from, why you’d want that I wouldn’t know lol maybe it’d make some of them look cool. I recently had to get my security key removed from my account due to me not being able to login but I think I might put it back to get some of the better "companion customizations" it's just pretty annoying to type in all the time though.

The Dread Fortress! *ominous music*

I was in the middle of doing the T.H.O.R.N missions and was travelling to a quest giver then it happened again, I got there and they were nowhere to be seen, this was of course because the event had ended so I was running around like a moron to get to nothing. This has happened before with the Bounty Brokers Association Week and now Relics of the Gree is back again where I once travelled all the way to Ilum just to find the NPC wasn’t there though I really want to do that one cause I orange parallel the way the Gree speak, just remember the dates I guess. One of the last things I did was the Korriban Incursion flashpoint, this was the first time I had finished this one and am looking forward to doing the Empire version of both that one and the Assault on Tython, apparently having now finished both of them there’s something more to this that has just started with the Invasion patch.

"Ahh screw you too!"

I couldn't stop laughing at this guy's "Jedi Cowboy" gear

As a bonus I got the Imperial Korrealis speeder wooo! though to be perfectly honest it’s just another huge impractical speeder that’d rather not use. I just want the Aratech Fire which you need to complete a quest to kill all these bosses from the first 3 operations which I have done though the problem is they have to be finished in friggin story mode which no-one does anymore, I mean seriously why is that restriction there at all?. Too many cool mounts are in the Cartel Market packs then are on the Galactic Trade Network for huge prices.

Well at least this one's two seater.

Well anyway my subscription ran out on the 18^th and funnily enough the Galactic Strongholds Early Access came out a day after, whodathunkit? Well at least I’ll have something more to do when I get back, lookin forward to finally having a house to myself in an MMO, as if personal starships weren’t enough now we have accommodation hah.

Oh Tatooine, one of the lonliest planets ever.

So that wraps up more than a years playing, was a bit brief but we’d be here forever If I was to explain everything, I’ll be back with a potential new character next time I play and will hopefully have a home for each of my characters. Also I hope the Reclaimers guild I’m in gets back up to speed, I seemed to be the only one playing for a bit, oh well, we’ll see, lovin the new realm though.

May the Force be with you bros.

JD

Howdy from Denova, the bluegrass planet, *plays banjo*

For what we've already accomplished, the future looks bright...

Hustlin' through the Old Republic: Back in the US of A

Well it’s official, it’s been official for awhile actually, the news regarding the fate of the Oceanic servers has been announced with further explanation here. I’ve got to admit, I was kind of disappointed with Bioware’s decision as were a lot of other people. Their choice to close down the Asia-Pacific servers and transferring us into 3 US servers was not well received though their reasons for not merging the APAC servers were:

1. Certain players would lose their preferred gameplay type i.e. PvP, RP/PvE
2. The current population issues would still exist.

I do understand the first reason but I would hardly think that PvPers and RPers would care that much, as the players on the PvP server would only lose open-world PvP and the players on the RP server would have to mingle with people from PvP and Normal and possibly cop some harassment or abuse but I think that’s completely tolerable.

The second reason, I along with the reason of the Australian SWTOR community it seems really don’t understand, the representative from Bioware, Eric Musco claimed the below:

“To clarify a bit more about this decision. We did previously ask what folks on the forums would like to do as an APAC solution and some, but not all, offered up the solution of merging all APAC into one. The other option on the table was to merge APAC into the NA servers. When we discussed the options internally we looked to address everyone’s primary issues with APAC, low populations were creating a less than optimal game experience.

We went and looked at what current server populations looked like across all of APAC and to put it simply, even merging all of APAC together into one server would not solve the population problems. Even with that solution you would still see long queue times for things like Warzones and Group Finder. It was because of this that we decided that moving APAC into the NA servers was the best option.”

A lot of us were baffled by this, almost all of us were for the server merge, and as player keltzy replied:

“So having 100+ on coruscant, 150+ on fleet, 3 instances of Ilum for gree event is not considered Population? Each planet while questing had at least 30+ on it and that's just PUB side on Dalborra”

Which was true in a way that Dalborra never really had that much of a population problem, it was the other servers which had the issue and merging the three into one would most definitely fix the issue. But as people have said it seems this is more a financial move by Bioware rather than a considered response to the community as I could see how shutting down the APAC servers would be a more profitable solution then keeping them up.

I decided to stay with Academy Exemplar and move to Bergeren Colony as I had been with them for a while now and didn’t really mind that much playing on an RP server, I am not and have never been a Roleplayer but I didn’t mind it and it’s pretty fun to see in action. We’re all on there now and are setting up the Guild, getting people invited and organising operation/etc the ping isn’t that bad (usually around 170ms) and I don’t really have that much of a problem with it as I used to play WoW and I also don’t PvP at all really though it is still a shame as the low ping was one of the main things SWTOR had going for down this end of the earth.

But anyway we can’t dwell on the past and life goes on. I’ve actually missed a month where I was playing and trying to remember what happened So if I remember correctly I finished off Voss with my Jedi Guardian Jxan, reached level 50, got my Tionese gear and was currently up to Corellia which might be the final planet of the Jedi Knight storyline but was thinking Ilum might be. I also finally got to grips with the last (non-heroic) space missions and with the help of my Guildie and friend Nefash’s Pilot Training school which has great tips (like using the movement keys to doge enemy fire while aiming with your mouse) and also I shelled out the Cartel Coins for the three Grade 7 ship upgrades pack which made things much, much easier especially with the specific functional ones. Unfortunately though when I tried some heroic space missions, it required you to have grade 7 ship armor so you can guess I failed hard and pretty much gave up doing Space missions until I just want to either farm the old ones or try harder with the heroics but goddamn there SO MUCH STUFF SHOOTING YOU aaaaaaargh! but anyway practice makes perfect.

Regnant Station Assault - Republic Heroic Space Mission by Nefash, damn he does it well

I had finished off Alderaan and helped House Thul to conquer this time instead of House Organa and started Taris on my Sith Assassin Kxan. Taris is interesting on the Empire side as one of the two planets  with dramatically different questing levels for the Republic and Empire (Balmorra is the other) it seems that Taris though is in a completely different instance of the world as it contains the same locations but the npc’s and setup are different and it always seems to be at night time. The end of the Sith Assassin questline on this planet was quite important as I finally was able to get Ashara Zavros as my companion and could start gaining light side points to my hearts content without fear of affection loss though recently it put me in deeper thought about it yet again, it’s becoming the most contentious thing about my SWTOR playing.

Republic Taris, happy days in the ruins

Empire Taris, moonshadow

I had a good think about the issue of Dark/Light side favouring when I was faced with the situation again after getting to 10000 affection with T7 on Jxan as I though the logical step would be for me to use Lord Scourge as he’s a tank but he does quite a bit of damage too possibly more than T7 and plus I could make gear for him having the Synthweaving skill, I then realised though that I was almost full light sided (9650) and It would be a shame not to get the achievement and see the purchasable items once I was full light though to be honest I did look at what was available from the Light Side Vendor but apart from a vanity pet and speeder that I didn’t want anyway she doesn’t really have much apart from some pretty good relics.

So the bottom line is I’ll probably just be striving for full light just to get the achievement which is enough I guess, I would have gotten it not so long ago had it not been for the time I was trying to use this Lightsabre that I got which need Dark I (1000 points in Dark side) and ended up getting 600 points in Dark side which I now regret as before I even got up to using the sabre I replaced it with something better. I think that I might just go light or Dark depending on the situation though I’ll still try and get to full Light or Dark with a character before going back down (or up) again just for the affection of a companion as it seems the best way to do things though I get the idea that doing Dark side choices all the time might get a bit disheartening, and doing all Light side choices would seem a bid bland and boring but I haven’t really experienced that tbh.

Is it worth the toll on your conscience and good reputation to gain the affection of some slightly evil or ill-intentioned companions? I'll find out when Lord Scourge is my companion, he even wins the "evil-off" between him and Khem Val

So my Sith Assassin now has Ashara as his companion and I am free to choose Light side and the “good guy” number 1 options to my hearts content though I’ll still have to watch what I’m doing not just blindly pick good options like I do with T7 on my Guardian. I have some regret that I didn’t just go Dark as soon as I got Khem Val as now I have kinda decided to just go dark when he is with me and I lost so many points picking light side options with him around but anyway live and learn and I’m not going to start my Assassin over again I’ve done that twice already lol. When I stopped at level 40 I had just completed chapter 1 of the Inquisitor storyline (or 2 I can’t remember?) and have finished Alderaan and Taris and am currently heading to Quesh to save my new apprentices.

Ashara Zavros, don't make her go against her teachings as she repeatedly says, fortunately I have no intention of doing that.

I’ve noticed though that lately the Sith Inquisitor campaign that the character you play is kind of stupid, especially if you pick the Light Side of the force though it seems you’re forced to do foolish things regardless, I don’t want to spoil the story but repeatedly walking into Sith Lord’s Tombs and confronting powerful Sith Lords when you’ve been warned not to (only to be beat down on) is not a good idea I’ll admit that my preference for Light Side makes me a bit naive especially when you willingly follow her orders and never question but I’m not really enjoying the Sith Inquisitor storyline that much anymore. It was great fun when you started on Korriban as a slave and I kept humble picking non-threatening conversation options and Light Side decisions and it was funny to see the reactions to my unusual kindness, but now it’s all “I’m out there for myself and am going to destroy all opposition: (and fail a bit too) but nevertheless I’ll see how we go with the rest of the storyline.

This is an old shot of Kxan, but it's SO COOL

WARNING: JEDI KNIGHT STORYLINE SPOILERS AHEAD

I finished off Corellia with Jxan and managed to get T7 to max affection, I also managed to finish off T7’s questline which involved doing nothing at all really just a whole series of conversations of some kind of conspiracy in the Galactic Republic Senate and then T7 “worked it out” then that was it. It turns out that Kira is one of the “main” companions or perhaps “the” main companion in the Jedi Knight storyline, whether or not all romanceable companions have multiple side quests remains to be seen. After Coreilla there was pretty much just the finale with the Battle against the Emperor and there was some interesting conversations with all of my crew members and I had to be careful not to lose any affection with any of them. The finale of the Jedi Knight storyline was a pretty easy affair we ended up making a 6 man assault on an instanced version of Kass City and the Sith Temple which was pretty lame as the security was very minimal, it’d be funny if they asked you to storm the place in real-time on the server as you’d have to pick a time where almost no-one would be online heh.

During this final mission you were forced to use T7 as your companion as anyone else would fall to the Emperor’s powerful will much to the annoyance of many players who hasn’t used T7 since level 15 unlike me who had recently gotten him to max affection and upgraded his gear. The actual fight with the Emperor was pretty straightforward and kind of un-epic as 1. I had Epic Tionese Gear 2. I was level 54 and 3. My T7 had up-to-date gear. The Emperor splits into many clones who attack and I died the first time but the second time you could actually start with your focus on the real Emperor so you just attack him and let T7 tank them all and that’s pretty much that though Lord Scourge gets kind of angsty depending on what you do after you have defeated him. And so after all that you escape and fly back to a hero’s welcome about one of the republic starships with Master Satele Shan and a crowd of other people you’ve met doing the storyline missions in various planets which pretty much looks like every other ending in the Star Wars movies with you and your crew being exalted with your efforts, even Lord Scourge your reluctant Jedi-buddy.

Unfortunately this isn't me, I kind of forgot to take screenshots during the one-time-only ceremony. go me anyway this is a shot from it.

 The thing I want to know is, if in the Jedi Knight storyline you’re the one who defeats the Emperor, how the hell do the other Republic class storylines finish? I suppose they are all separate from each other. Also I now have 10000 Light side points from finishing the storyline but apparently you still don’t get the achievement for being full Light side until you “alignment” is 100% so what that means is I’m going to have to “reduce” my remaining 550 dark side points which seems to be what happens when you are full light but not zero dark.

 THE SPOILERS BE ENDED

So basically what this thing is saying it, I'm not Light V yet cause I still got some Dark in me but apparently I can fix my "alignment" by doing more "good" things. Who says you can't fix your past?

So all’s well that ends well, next stop: Ilum and maybe some actual High End stuff like Operations etc, if I’m going to get all the extra non-daily stuff done on other planets I’m gonna have a heap to do really, what I’d give for a larger quest log. Finally in some somewhat related news a US Academic has rewritten Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in Shakespearian, which is sure to be a lot of fun to read plus the illustrations are pretty cool too.

JD

And ever shall the Force remain with thee

Hustlin' through the Old Republic: Exclusive Membership Benefits

And once more unto the breach (or whatever that saying is) I hadn’t been on SWTOR for awhile with other things to play inc a some PS3 games inc Way of the Samurai 4 and Motorstorm Apocalypse which was a change. I came back finally determined to work out what the hell these Cartel Coins are about, and it turns out there’s a lot about them I should know. I’ve just barely keeping up with what’s happening in the game updates and patches though apart from the introduction of the Cartel Market, there has been a new warzone and new heroic space missions new grade 7 starship upgrades, plus the “Life Day” celebratory stuff.

And of course free-to-play is now enabled and basically looking at the restrictions there seems very little point in playing for free though I think the main reason for the free to play option is for people to see whether they like the game and then sign up for subscription if they do. As being a subscriber both now and in the past I had been given free cartel coins! That’s right as a subscriber I am given monthly rewards of cartel coins plus bonuses from my subscription in the past so that added up to 1850 coins! And I rightly knew where to use them, that’s right no more paying credits for speeder piloting or inventory space for me. As well as having, gear, upgrade and cosmetic items the Cartel Market lets you purchase in-game unlockables which are mostly abilities that subscribers already have access but some which I previously had to pay credits for in the past I can get with cartel coins.

The Cartel Market as it appears in-game

I’ve now purchased Speeder Piloting III for Jxan, Piloting II for Kxan and an extra inventory slot for all current and new characters I create. These Speeder piloting perks allow you to use different speeders at lower than normal ranks for example you can get speeder piloting 3 at level 35, I’m pretty sure you do have to get all the speeder piloting in order so I’m thinking if Kxan is level 30 now I’ll just use the same speeder until I can get piloting 3 and a much faster one. Another thing I bought was an additional cargo bay for all my characters, Now that they all have more room I won’t need any more inventory space whatsoever and could possibly keep a large amount of extra resources on the one character if nothing it just keeps it clean as your able to separate all your crafting resources to the one tab.

Aratech Lancer bitch, that's right, though compared to the movies even the fastest speeders are still goddamn slow

 Regarding Space combat I’ve actually hit a rut as got up to the Drexel Sweep Republic space mission then stopped because it was getting too hard, might see if I can get some level 7 ship upgrades from the cartel market and try it again though most of it’s going to be for my alts speeder piloting skill. Our guild leader Nefash has brought out a Pilot Training School which is a site dedicated to Space Combat in SWTOR with movie guides on how to complete each mission which would be very helpful when I could be bothered trying them again. I do like them but dayum there’s stuff shooting at me all over the place I barely have time to scratch my bum with the force and it’s just getting too hectic though once I get some decent upgrades and learn how to use the ones with functionality I should be fine, I just don’t know how many Cartel Coins I’ll have to spare.

Drexel Sweep Republic Space Mission, done by Nefash

Well I’ve finished off both Belsavis and Voss and got my Guardian to 50! First level 50 wooo! Anyway I really enjoyed questing in Voss it had such beautiful scenery sort of like a world in permanent autumn I also liked the questline too, the Voss are some pretty interesting people. The Belsavis quests were pretty bland though I liked the idea of a jailbreak especially with ancient jails containing god knows what. I found once I was 50 there was an utter explosion of more quests to do on the fleet station including all the new space missions on your ship, all of a sudden you have all these extra heroic quests for flashpoints and world bosses and operations. And to my annoyance you could only have 25 of them at the one time, this is especially annoying as these are the kind of quests are the types you want to just leave in your log for when you might happen to do them, for example the Nightmare pilgrim as you might forget to have the quest with you. I managed to make enough space by taking out all the other quest chains that I guess were there similar to the bonus series’ for level 50’s to do once their 50. So all in all there doesn’t seem to be any lack of things to do once you’re 50 but I’ll get on to that later.

Voss, the land of Autumn

I’ve got Synthweaving and Underworld trading to 400 as well, though I am waiting till I get some higher level archaeology items before I can make the level 50 gear, speaking of level 50 gear, when I reached level 50 I immediately got 99 Tionese Commendations which I used to purchase a full set of Tionese Epic DPS Gear. I went DPS because I suspect that’s what I’ll still be doing the majority of the time I’m playing, as back when I wanted to be a tank and went defence spec I did shit all damage and I don’t want to be stuck in that rut again like everyone was before WoW introduced dual spec trying to farm and do daily quests all while in tanking or healing spec. And with the large amount of bonus quests and level 50 bonus series’ SWTOR seems to have I won’t have a lack of normal quests to do. I haven’t really done any raids or “operations” as their called in SWTOR, I haven’t really thought about what I’d do as it’d usually be with guild and If I think back to my WoW days my guild would have to be pretty desperate to use me as a tank. Partially why I healed on my Paladin instead of tanking.

My epic Tionese gear with epic Lightsabre (yes I know I'm supposed to have blue)

Anyway my New Epic Gear made pretty much any DPS gear I got on Voss and probably any other story missions to come pretty much obsolete, since I got DPS gear I’ve been trying to upgrade my tank gear as much as possible but Voss just didn’t seem to have the right gear or upgrades as the planet commendations change what kind of gear or modifications you get all the time in the later levels as it’s not just better then the last ones. It’s just the trouble that comes with having an ongoing storyline. In WoW I used to start in one area and would choose a different zone depending on what level I was when I finished that area but unfortunately with the class story missions I don’t have that luxury and there’s those times where you can either go to the planet where the quest is green or yellow but you have to do the story for both anyway which is very linear and I don’t know how I’m going to create a different experience between characters though I guess that just comes with the class storylines. Speaking of which I now understand the Jedi Knight storyline sort of, I’m currently battle and saving (or killing) the Jedi who accompanied me to Fight the Emperor at the end of chapter 2, I’m itchin’ to find out what happens in the end which really keeps me goin, I’ve got to do Corelia yet then possibly Ilum before I’m finish and I’m freakin' already 50, sigh.. hope it works out better with the way I’m pacing the levelling on my Assassin.

Our very stealthy party of Sith Assassins, why we all ran in stealth halfway across the map to get to the quest was anyone's guess.

I’ve got a lot to say about companions (as I usually do) I’ve been using T7-01 as my companion for awhile now I’m on about 6 and a half thousand affection and have had a lot of ‘conversation’ style companion quests with him but still don’t seem to have his character quest which is about one of his many previous owners or cohorts, being 200 years old I spose he would have a few, damn they make things to last in this Galaxy don’t they? I had a bit of decision whether to use T7 or Doc but to be honest I like T7 better though he doesn’t speak but I like the way he jumps around and zaps enemies and makes beeping and chirping noises, and he’s perfect choice for my good-guy playing style which continues to plague my Inquisitor. On Kxan I’ve sort of decided to use Khem Val until I get Ashara Zavros even though A. He’s an evil bastard and I’m not and B. I’ve got Andronikos Revel but I can’t help liking good old Khem, though once I get Ashara everything should be ok at least until I get her to 1000 affection.

T7 and I share a golden moment.

Speaking of evil bastards look at the two most powerful companions I have with their likes and dislikes two characters I have who are both on the Light Side of the force.

Khem Val

Likes: Killing Force users, displays of strength, making foolish people unhappy

Dislikes: Weakness in any form, not killing Force users

Lord Scourge

Likes: Using power against the weak, power, anger, revenge and spite

Dislikes: Greed, acts of mercy, Jedi and Republic authorities

I made some gear for Lorg Scourge, which being Jedi gear looks rather weird for him since he's a Sith, the combination of that and the odd-looking headgear gives him and interesting look indeed.

Wow what a friendly duo though I think Lord Scourge takes the cake for being the most evil, how am I supposed to be a good guy with these two? Bah I might even look forward to going all Dark though as a Jedi Consular as there are a couple of Companions in there which would work well with a Dark Jedi. But first I must at least try a non-Jedi class for couple of reasons 1. I can’t go straight for playing an Inquisitor to a Consular their too alike even if I’m being a Sage and using Telekinetics rather than being an Assassin and Lightsabering it up, their abilities (and first companion for that matter) are just too similar and 2. I’ve already been two Force-using classes and I might actually like the blaster users. The other decision that comes with that is what non-force class to do but that’s a decision for another time.

SWTOR classes: I like the Imperial Agent in this pic, lookin particularly gangsta'

 I’m currently doing Alderaan on Kxan and am already 32 so hopefully I can finish it off quickly before I gain too much experience. I’ve been forcing myself to wear or show this damn helmet that I have on now for realism’s sake, I look like freakin Darth Iron man or something it’s almost as bad as my Jedi-goggles but I can't have it hidden as it sounds really strange when your voice is crackly like it’s coming through the helmet speaker when you don’t have it on, which is another thing about companions that irks me, sometimes you get helmets for them or yourself where it obviously isn't blocking their mouth but their voice comes out through the "helmet radio" anyway,  ahh it’s all a struggle isn’t it?

Spot the Sith Iron Man

 Cya next time! in the galaxy y’know….

JD

Our money for your money

Hustlin' through the Old Republic: It's lonely in the galaxy, well this one at least

I was excited to go back into playing SWTOR this time around being away from it for awhile I returned to find my guild basically the way it was since I left with not many people on at all, before I had left last time I had befriended stacyj from the Republic side who I’d said if my current guild had not seemed to get any more populated I’ll switch over to the Academy Exemplar who she was part of. So since she was online I decided to take her up on the offer and joined, Academy Exemplar (along with their Empire Sister guild: Lyceum Narcissus) are a pretty good guild they have a guild website and possibly will be getting a Teamspeak channel soon. I can’t tell you how good it was to have people to talk to about SWTOR as I don’t really know anyone who plays it and the playerbase has unfortunately dropped even more since my last post and it’s becoming increasingly hard for players on our server to complete or even participate in end-game content.

There has recently been a large “Consolidation” or “Merging” as it would be more commonly known of the US and European SWTOR servers I only realised this when I came back that Bioware had gotten rid of a heap of US and European servers, where there used to be 20 or 30 servers for each of those regions this is now  8 for US and 9 for UK (3 each for England, France, Germany) What I think is that they've obviously had to do the cull as more than half of them I noticed when looking at the TorStatus constantly had a light population status. There has been some recent discussion and general buzz as well as apparently some formal communication with Bioware from Visz Alliance the main guild on the server, (well on the Republic side at least)

Oh no!, I'll never defeat that World Boss on my own, and with the population in the state that it is, who will help me? 

  I personally support a merge with Dalborra as I don't RP myself and I'm pretty sure most people on the server don't anyway. I'm certain that the small number of people who do RP could put up with some of the more rude or elitist players that can be found on normal servers in favour of a better game experience. That's probably the best I can hope for though according to TorStatus I noticed that the Asia-Pacific PvP server Master Dar'nala has the world’s lowest population so I don't know how Bio are going to solve that problem, Imagine if they merged all three AU servers into one and made it PvP! Ah wouldn’t that be fun, not.  However there is and was only ever 3 oceanic server, one PvE one PvP and one RP PvE and I highly doubt Bioware will merge the three into one or even two as this tweet %90 confirms.

Oh lordy lord the irony,

Believe it or not I actually originally chose to come to Gav Daragon around March 2012 (when the game came out in AUS) because according to TorStatus  the population rate of the Asia-Pacific normal PvE server Dalborra was actually quite heavy. Around that time it was actually the third most popular server in the world with an average population index of 2.52 (the largest at the time being the US "The Fatman" server with 2.56) and in some cases you had to wait to login. But unfortunately now it’s only reasonably populated making it ideal for play which is a cruel twist of fate. I reckon it's just people being unhappy with the game and moving on to others specifically things like Guild Wars 2, some people I know go through games at an insane rate and it's always "hey buy this game it's great! buy that game! what are you still playing that for? buy this and play it!" and I seriously cbf I mean I'm still happily playing GTA4 which came out in 2008, the only problem is with multiplayer games you like, need people to play it

Good thing I've got guildies!

Apart from a few issues, namely, no auto-attack, duel spec (yet) or allowance for player-made interface mods I'm fine with the game, I wanted a Star Wars version of WoW with a player storyline and that’s what I got, it's where people who were expecting greatness that were let down. Believe me I’m resisting going back to WoW as it seems a lot of people have done most probably because of this which I won’t mention but to be honest it is tempting going back to a large playerbase and a new expansion, but I’ve bought SWTOR and I intend to play until I can’t anymore, whether that lasts for as many years as WoW kept me occupied only time will tell.

But anyway, back to the latest in my Jedi/Sith ventures

Well If I can remember correctly on my Jedi I finished the whole planet of Quesh, which was even more of a monster ridden toxic waste dump than Balmorra so much so that before you went down they gave me some kind of injection to survive the hazardous environment though it was only a short stay as it’s only supposed to be a two level planet. 

Quesh, quite a messy place

I then went on to start Hoth in which for some reason I had continuous framerate issues whereas my FPS would go more than 30, this had happened before both in SWTOR and WoW and I only had to close and restart the game in order for it to go back to normal though I did this several times and it didn’t seem to work. After a bit of frustration I found that because I play in fullscreen windowed mode and I was out of the main screen when It loaded which somehow created the problem with the FPS, but anyway it hasn’t happened again so it seems to be fine. With Hoth the first thing I noticed that it was goddamn bright, I was even squinting at the screen in some cases because the entire landscape was white, though this was a given really cause Hoth as most people would know is an ice planet with a large amount of snow, first time I’d ever considered wearing sunglasses to play a game. 

Scene like this are particularly squint worthy.

The "Invisible Foes" heroic quest on Hoth, brightness and lightsabres everywhere, gah my eyes

I’ve noticed that Datacrons seem to be getting tougher to acquire especially the Matrix Shards, for example I have a RYY (one red two yellow 28 strength, 14 endurance) level 24 Matrix cube but in order to get the next one (YRR 29 str 33 end) I’ll either need to pay 18,000 credits to obtain another red matrix shard on Hoth or just wait to get to Ilum where I can get it for free, and I’m not even going to think about what I need to do to get a level 50 one (GGG 66 str, 56 end) as obviously the way the Matrix shards go you won’t be able to get three of the same colour until the end of the game.

Ooooo green glowy box!

 Well Hoth went pretty well I can’t really remember what the main storylines were or why I was there to be honest but I do know when I finished  that was the end of Act 2 which I now released I’ve forgotten to mention in my posts. The “acts” as I refer to them refer to different climaxes and crucial plot points in your characters storyline, I’m not going to spoil what happens but the second one of the Jedi Knight was pretty intense I can tell you and was a real “wow so how’s this going to work out?” vibe to it. There’s apparently 3 acts in your characters storyline with the last one ending after you are level 50, I’m quite looking forward to both the first one on my Sith Inquisitor and the last one on my Jedi Knight. I've also gotten full affecxtion with Kira and even "married" her if you can call it that, I must have banged her 7-8 times during that whole thing ka-chow anyway since I've got no more romantic options availiable I've had to decided to my next companion character and thats between: T7-01, Doc, Sergeant Rusk and Lord Scourge. And I'm happy to say I picked T7, he is a tank character, which I don't really need and relatively weak, but I can't help liking the little dude and watching him kick ass.

T7 and I, the Jedi Guardian and his faithful Droid companion (I bought the green custom color for him)

I’ve now started Belsavis on my Jedi which is some sort of mass prison complex, shortly after starting though I reached level 45 in which I decided to go back my Sith Inquisitor: Kxan.

Now I was at a crucial point with Kxan I’d just finished the Dromund Kass missions and was now on to either Balmorra or Nar Shaddaa now according to this chart of the planets in SWTOR and the suggested levels the lowest was level 16 but after Korriban and Dromund Kass I was already level 20. I may have mentioned this before in previous posts but I’ve had a continuous problem with what seems like I’m leveling too fast which can be dissected by  a number of reasons. When I played WoW all I needed to do was determine which zone/area of the world was the appropriate level for me and I would go there and level up, this was made much easier when I got the Cataclysm expansion as all the quests for the region were in the one questline which could be started from notice boards and NPC’s in the main cities which let you know where you could go at your current level. 

It looks pretty empty but I actually ended up doing some heroics on Balmorra (under duress of course) I even ended up tanking a heroic-4 in which I did pretty well.

 However WoW had no character storylines only area/zone storylines whereas SWTOR has both, I’m not sure exactly how it all balances out but it definitely adds to the xp you get. Also as well as flashpoints/instances SWTOR has Space Combat missions which aren’t mandatory but any SWTOR player would be insane not to try it. When I finished Coruscant on Jxan I was about level 20 same as Kxan and I found that I had two options: one to go to Taris with was level 16-20 and Nar Shadaa which was level 20-24. Now in WoW terms I would have gone straight to Nar Shadaa but it was apparent that I had story missions for both planets and couldn’t do one or the other. So when going to Taris I felt compelled to do all the missions I could find, inc the bonus series which are some sort of strange offshoot of missions that start in various level ranges for example the planet Alderaan supposedly goes from 28-32 but you get the quests for the bonus series around 35-36.


Doing the "Companion Dance" ability with Khem Val, looks quite ridiculous I can assure you
 

So it was an amalgamation of these reasons for you levelling up pretty damn fast so after some research and guildy discussion I decided that the best option as to go to Balmorra and try to do as little of the missions as possible apart from the main story quest, so instead of taking everything on I only did the story missions plus some others I decided to do which were convenient and or any heroics that people roped me into helping them with. It worked out pretty well though next time I might try and do less as even though I did that Nar Shadaa is 20-24 and I’m 25 and not even halfway through but anyway, it’s better than Jxan where I’m constantly trying to stop my quests going grey. Though there is one thing I’m worried about that that is credits, as in if I do less quests I get less credits and I get kind of low when purchasing speeders/etc and the other things is since I can actually send mail between the Republic/Empire factions I’ve been using the resources I’ve collected from Archaeology and using them for the Artifice skill that Kxan does, the one for all the Jedi lightsabre and trinket making. 

With the leftover resources I’ve been sending them to Jxan for making any gear he can to upgrade what Khem Val and I are wearing. Although these upgrade are sometimes quite large I can’t help thinking it’s just not really worth it as I’ve had pieces of gear drop which I’ve had to think about whether I want to replace or not in which I definitely would if I didn’t have it made, and the companion have their gear upgraded automatically through normal quests albeit slowly. All this drains the credits quite a bit though I’ve bought my first speeder now and seem to be back up to speed (bahaha!) with credits.

Having so many companions and then alts to keep track of their gear is no small feat, especially when you can send cross-faction mail.

Speaking of speeders, I've become really disappointed with the endgame level 50 ones, I mean they just look horrible, the hoverbike things you get at level 25 and 40 look reasonably fine, but these car-like things look pretty ridiculous and huge I might add. Like for example they look like they'd be a two seater vehicle except the other side has been covered over so it's just your character sitting on the left with just the rest of the ship on the other side. Does this mean their going to make the speeders dual seater eventually? and if not why not just model them with the driver's seat in the freakin middle of the thing it's look much better and be smaller I might add. I can tell you if they don't change I won't really be celebrating getting one of these.

Nice ride buddy, got room in there for two? oh nope that's ok would have been pretty suss anyway

Damn the traffic at this hour is terrible

Well I can really feel the effects of the server drop now as it’s getting harder to get groups together, I’m levelling along good on my Assassin and almost got my second companion now but I just can’t seem to get a flashpoint going without guildie help, especially on Empire side, I’m just going to have to see how it goes I suppose as long as I get some flashpoints done though I really don’t know what endgame is going to be like once I reach 50 on my Jedi Guardian. Well at least I’ve got a good guild, who luckily is in league with what is possibly the biggest guild on the server.Though because of my insistence on playing my Sith Assassin I joined the Academy Exemplar empire sister guild: Lyceum Narcissus, in which I left my previous empire guild and went from having a few people online to no-one online most of the time but meh, I may as well be on the sister guild of my main one in so people can find me.

Admiring the view while finally getting to do the Mandolorian Raiders flashpoint, guildy Terril was nice enough to run me through it. perfect loot run for me too got 4  or 5 new gear peices

I’ve had a brief look at the new free-to-play preview but I can honestly say I will stay a subscriber, I don’t actually buy many games anymore so I’ll at least support the ones I play online, plus I’ll be able to reap all the benefits they give to existing subscribers. I can only hope that this move will bring more people to (or back) to the game so we can all have a better experience.

JD

Trying to resist the Dark Side but this ain't helping