Star Wars: The Old Republic Archives - Page 2 of 16

Eternal Alliance

April 22, 2019 by Belghast

The extended holiday weekend for me was largely about playing Star Wars the Old Republic and working on the Knights of the Eternal Throne content. As I talked a little bit about last week… I got caught up in the Star Wars spirit which lead me to return to the Star Wars game I keep visiting periodically. Thankfully the easing in period was pretty short and my muscle memory returned pretty quickly for hitting the right combat abilities at the right time. I would have been completely screwed if my hotbars had somehow gotten reset between times playing the game however. It makes me realize how much of game play for me is sort of fuzzing my mind out and letting my fingers do the actions on their own. I think that is in part why I keep setting up various games in the same manner so I just don’t have to think about the controls and can instead focus in on enjoying the story and world.

One of the things that I am amazed by is just how compelling this game is when it releases new content. While the early expansions Rise of the Hutt Cartel, Galactic Starfighter and Galactic Strongholds are a bit of a snooze fest… starting with Shadow of Revan and going forward the game reaches a level that rivals the original main class stories. There is however a necessary shift from class specific stories to being a more general story that has little nuggets of information embedded for specific classes but not necessarily an entire unique arc. The logistics of maintaining class specific story arcs is just not viable given the less than solvent state that SWTOR has been in at various times in its history. Knowing that rocky history however makes me appreciate all the more the content that was accomplished against this adversity.

When I last played SWTOR Fallen Empire had wrapped up and Knights of the Eternal Throne was just about to begin. I am very thankful that they have a 2 month pass non-reoccurring option because in general this is about how long it takes for me to get the game back out of my system. I am a content locust and I swarm back into a game after a large volume of content has been released and then fly away while it regenerates a batch of content for me to visit again. This time I had the entirety of the Eternal Throne campaign as well as a bunch of side content that takes place after those events. Which should keep me busy for the better part of this sixty day pass. Again I would never suggest playing SWTOR without subscribing because the free to play experience is highly frustrating to me because it locks away a number of features that I consider crucial.

The thing that I like the most about both Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne is how cinematic the content feels. It is weirdly disconnected from the rest of the game which in itself is a little weird to get used to, but once you have accepted that fact it is really great to experience. At any point you can pick back up the story by simply hitting the play button in the upper right hand corner of the screen at which point you are teleported into the last step that you left off at. The only real negative with this approach is that I found it extremely hard to stop playing until I had finished a specific chapter of the content. I wanted to see how each step would eventually resolve, and along the way there were a few things that probably served to be controversial to long time players… but made your decisions feel like they had significantly more gravity.

Now however I find myself in the extremely weird position of having defeated this beat the content and reclaimed the Eternal Throne for all that is right and good in the galaxy. Then immediately afterwards as I started the next batch of content… found myself as a Light Side Jedi Guardian… willfully choosing to align with the Sith against the Republic. There are distinct story reasons why I did this… but man does it feel really weird to have made that decision. I am largely hoping that this just has consequences related to the current batch of content and that I did not actually join the Sith Empire permanently. Maybe the content that I just went through made me way more grey than I expected, or maybe I ultimately made the right choice given the sequence of events that played out leading me to this decision. Whatever the case I am embracing it for the time being and playing across faction, which in itself is pretty interesting that they went there as an option. I am no longer a Jedi Guardian… but instead the Commander of the Eternal Alliance… and have to make the choices that I feel best for the galaxy as a whole.

I am having a blast visiting all of this content, and it makes me realize that now that I have one of every single class… I could in theory do it over and over again if I so got the gumption. The Jedi Guardian however will always be the character that represents me, and I like a lot of the directions his story has gone in as a uniter of allies rather than a dogmatic practitioner of an ancient order. One of the things about Bioware and Star Wars that I loved… is there was always a bit of nuance to a lot of the experience. They after all gave us Jolee Bindo one of my all time favorite Star Wars characters, and now that Kathleen Kennedy has announced that they are working on Old Republic content… it is my hope that some parts of this universe can make it into the greater Star Wars story. For me… Revan and Bastila Shan is just as crucial and fundamental to the Star Wars experience as is Darth Vader or Boba Fett. I grew up without placing barriers between what was officially Star Wars lore and the stuff that was excluded… and now that I have Grand Admiral Thrawn another favorite character of mine I am hoping they swoop in and gobble up all of the Bioware goodness.

Replaying this game has left me with weirdly mixed feelings about Anthem. Seeing Bioware at its story driven greatness is one thing… but also realizing that this same studio Bioware Austin is largely responsible for reviving anthem gives me hope. It also makes me chagrin for what might have been had they given that game enough time to properly cook. That however seems to be the story of every game that doesn’t quite land solidly on its feet… is that it needed a bit more time to coalesce into its final product.

The Eternal Throne

April 18, 2019 by Belghast

Commemorating the seventh anniversary of Tales of the Aggronaut I had my good friend and artist I keep commissioning to draw stuff for me… make this collage of “Bel” characters. If you are so inclined you can even get it in T-Shirt form with all proceeds going to the artist and zero to me as intended… I have one hanging in my closet. The characters pictured present my characters scattered through a bunch of games that were important to me… from left to right: My World of Warcraft Human Warrior, My Blades/Shotgun character from The Secret World, Middle top my Exo Titan from Destiny 1, Middle Bottom my Bahmi Warrior from Rift, my Imperial Dragon Knight from Elder Scrolls Online and finally my Lalafel Bunny Warrior from Final Fantasy XIV. As much as I love this image… it was sort of awkward to work with over the years and mostly just has to be used as is to adorn my blog’s sidebar. It also made me shift how I actually requested commissions from Ammo, given that each of the individual characters was drawn as you see them and could not be pulled out or separated from the total image.

Instead these days when I put in a commission for her to draw something, I pay for her to do something in a way that allows me to break the pieces apart and use them as I need for various other purposes like adorning the website, as channel art or turning into a social media avatar. The individual comissions are more expensive but I also sorta like to make sure Ammo keeps a steady flow of commission work… as does Tam who has in total commissioned way more than I have. While I did not have time to deal with this prior to the anniversary post because work has been crazy… and I was up until midnight on Tuesday night dealing with an outage… I did finish up the intended collage masthead last night and added it to the site. The logo itself is a little off center so that it is effectively centered over the block of text and then the image extends out over the sidebar as well. What you see before you is a bunch of individual commissions that I have composited together. I am exceedingly happy with how it pulled together even though it greatly increases the vertical space of my masthead.

Once again I will talk a bit about each of them going mostly left to right. First off we have a more updated version of Bunny Samurai Belghast from Final Fantasy XIV wearing the second version of artifact gear and wielding the glowy Palace of the Dead axe. Next up we have my default visage from Monster Hunter world wielding the Nergigante Longsword and with my Real Life and in Game Palico Kenzie decked out in my favorite Baan Astronaut gear. Then in the center-ish we have a commission that Tam actually did, with the goal being drawing how he sees me… the advisement to Ammo was something to the effect of “Warrior Disney Princess and Friend to Woodland Creatures”. So you have me heavily armored… and then lots of buckles to make fun of my love for gear with extraneous straps and buckles… the House Stalwart tabard to represent the guild that I started so many years ago… and finally woodland creatures in the form of a bunch of bluebirds that play dual symbolism of me and my “birb” friends in my backyard and the fact that I am always on twitter. Next up you have my Elder Scrolls Online updated Dragon Knight wearing the cosmetic gear that I generally wear in that game. Lastly you have a Destiny 2 Sentinel Titan shield charging like a badass… but with a head that is based on a comic book version of my actual appearance. Last but not least you have a bunch of Moogles that I commissioned to represent the fact that I am part of the Moogle’s Pom Community team even though I have not streamed in eons due to anxiety issues. The extra chubby one with the beard and a hoodie resting on the logo is the one that actually represents me.

There is an awful lot of symbolism packed into a single image… and while it is extremely busy… it also represents this blog. I am constantly swapping between games and also giving a dose of myself with each post. The only regret that I have and this is minor… is that I sort of wish that I would have had Ammo draw Kenzie and Monster Hunter Bel completely rather than as a single composite image. I could have faked it out… but it would have been nice to have Kenzie overlaying the logo a little bit to add more depth… but I am not sure if it would have made visual sense. I kept the placement of Bunny Bel and Titan Bel in largely the same location as the previous logo more or less on purpose because I thought they made good bookends. The only problem is… I already have a bunch more character commissions that I want in my head… so I fully expect this to evolve over time. Before I plug Ammo again… I feel like I have to state once more that when I post links to her stuff it is completely unsolicited and it is just the fact that I am a huge patron of her creations and want to spread the word. Saying that… here comes the link dump of where you can find her (thankfully I already did this in a post and can just copypasta).

Twitter
Ammosart.com
General Tumblr Blog
Art Only Tumblr Blog
Pinterest
YouTube
Society 6
Red Bubble
Tee Public – Has the 7th Anniversary Aggronaut Shirt!
Ko-Fi

Finally for some actual game related stuff… I have been playing some Star Wars the Old Republic of late and I am currently blaming Pete since he was talking about it on twitter. More honestly I think I am being influenced by what I have called the BlizzCon Spirit, but I feel like I need to explain that. Each year around BlizzCon time I find myself getting enthralled by Blizzard products. If I am not currently playing World of Warcraft at the time of the convention… then I find myself playing it shortly after. Similarly we recently had a whole bunch of news come out of Star Wars Celebration in Chicago… featuring a trailer for Star Wars Episode IX, a trailer for the Respawn game Jedi Fallen Order, and some leaked footage from the Disney Plus Mandolorian Television Show. All that goodness in one place has produced a BlizzCon spirit like effect in me… which is not shocking given that I went through a massive renaissance of Star Wars the Old Republic leading up to the release of Force Awakens.

When I last played I managed to push my way through a bunch of the new content and through the entire Fallen Empire campaign. However Eternal Throne was brand new content and I did not hang in long enough to actually start on it. So Tuesday night after getting home from work… I patched up the client and started working my way through the Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion. I am taking it pretty slow, not playing a ton on a given night with me just finishing the first chapter last night and moving into the second. Every time I return I forget just how good the storytelling is in the game, and how much it reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic especially in the more modern single player incarnation. As a cherry on the top it came out yesterday that Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that they are looking at doing a movie set in the Old Republic era… which gives me goosebumps at thinking that maybe just maybe some of my favorite characters from the KOTOR series will officially enter the canon. I still very much love Star Wars and even though Last Jedi mostly landed flat for me… I am looking forward to the end of the Skywalker Saga and seeing what they do from that point onwards. I am hoping that we see a huge cinematic saga centering around the large set pieces of the Old Republic setting. Bioware has created so many great characters that are just waiting to be realized on the big screen.

Addon Trolling

May 18, 2017 by Belghast

I am having one of those mornings that I am simply struggling to find any inspiration to write. It’s been one of those weeks, namely because I am juggling a huge meeting load and feeling like I am accomplishing nothing in the process. When you have a few 30 minute blocks between the rest of your schedule being in meetings, it becomes really hard to make any headway in anything. However I guess that is what happens when you move up to management. The problem being that when I finally do get home I sort of revert to a gelatinous state and struggle to find any forward momentum in games either. As predicted my forward momentum in World of Warcraft has stalled quite a bit upon getting the flight unlock. I could in theory alt all the things… but instead I am largely just logging in each day and doing whatever faction based world quest there is for a shot at fury friendly legendary items.

A few days ago I had installed an addon called Leatrix Plus, which adds a bunch of quality of life improvements for World of Warcraft. Among the tweaks were a few settings that I figured were largely good ideas. The first being to accept invites to groups from the guild/friends, and the second being to accept summons from the guild/friends. Last night however I learned that maybe this is not the best idea to run with enabled. Now in my head I had completely forgotten that Wednesday was raid night. I mean it was one of those things that I was aware of, but not completely cognizant of. So I found myself after eating dinner logging in to do my daily run at legendaries, and like I often do alt tabbed to do something else while the game finished loading in. When I finally tabbed back I found myself in a raid and sitting at the Nighthold summoning stone. While afk I had apparently been invited to the raid group and summoned… and my handy little addon absolutely allowed myself to get trolled. I bowed out once I realized what had happened because honestly I am not ready for “serious mode” raiding.

After doing my nightly bombing run on a legendary, I wound up logging and digging into Star Wars the Old Republic. When I started the night I was sitting on Chapter XIII and managed to play my way through to a good ways into Chapter XVI. The whole chapter thing feels odd considering I am functionally doing the same thing as Netflix binge watching. Its hard for me to see where the seams normally would have been between chapters, but I guess the content is naturally released in a format that feels akin to how Final Fantasy XIV does. Looking at the Wiki page it seems like originally the content was released roughly a chapter a month between February and August of 2016, with the initial content providing the first nine chapters at release. The only negative about binging the content like this is that I am not really spending much time with any of my newly acquired companions, since for the most part each mission requires me to use a specific combination. Also the reveals are probably less dramatic than they would have been if I was being drip fed the content. Whatever the case I am still very much enjoying it, and some of the shit is getting weird. Going to be interesting to see what it is like to roll into the Eternal Throne content.

Two Years Behind

May 12, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday I had zero intent to sit down in the morning and start writing about level scaling systems. Sometimes posts just happen. However after writing it one of my friends mentioned a key point. There should functionally be a way to flip off level scaling if you absolutely positively want to just go wreck things. The prime example of this would be if you just want to farm up a bunch of low level materials quickly. I remember when I was leveling any of my various tailors up in World of Warcraft, I would simply find a dungeon in the level range and mercilessly wreck it for the sole purpose of getting as much cloth in as short of a time as I could. This would have been completely maddening were I not greatly over leveling the content. Once again I think we can look to Final Fantasy XIV as a good example here because some time ago they added in the ability to queue for content “undersized”, which functionally turns off the level synchronization process allowing you to just wreck the content if you so choose. However I still think I would prefer it if MMO worlds scaled by default, and then simply allowed folks to disable that option if they so choose.

I’ve said recently that I really love returning to an MMO after some time has passed and be confronted with potentially years of content to go off and experience. The thing is this also has an extremely negative side to it. Right now I am in this weird place where I am super into content that happened two years ago. There is something to be said about experiencing things at the same time as your friends, because it allows you to have conversations about what is going on. This has been one of the best parts of Final Fantasy XIV is that each time they give us a slow drip of story content we all consume it then can talk about the revelations that are contained within. This allows us to have moments of theory crafting and speculation… knowing that at some point in the future we will be able to resolve what is actually going on. With Star Wars the Old Republic and the Knights of the Fallen Empire content… generally speaking either folks played through this content two years ago when it released… or will likely never play through it.

That puts me in such a weird places because I have all these thoughts and feelings about the game and what it is doing… but I don’t exactly feel right talking about them on my blog. Knights of the Fallen Empire has some pretty big revelations that would be better experienced than told about. This is one of those times when everything about it is extremely heavy on the spoiler front. Each time new revelations come to light… I wish there was a group of people that I could talk through them with. Basically this is one of those times when I wish I had played through the chapter based content as it was being released rather than this current Netflix style binge sequence that I am going through. I have a feeling that Guild Wars 2 and its living story content is much the same… likely best experienced as it is being released a little bit at a time. This also makes me really want to get caught up so that I can at least join the discussion happening with the Eternal Throne content. However I am also extremely cautious of looking up too much information for fear of getting these plot twists completely ruined for me.

On the positive front I have stumbled across a really awesome YouTube channel that has helped me get back into the game and the modern concepts. Swtorista has this awesome Star Wars the Academy series that breaks down a bunch of topics like “What to do at Level 70” or how the Galactic Command system works. The best videos though are a sequence on the best looking craftable armors for each class, since we all know the true end game of an MMO is looking awesome. Through her videos thought I have been able to catch up pretty easily without risking spoilers too badly. Side note… there is a special place in hell for folks who put obvious spoilers in YouTube video titles… as I already have apparently one of the Iokath revelations spoiled because of this. For those interested I am largely playing Belghast my Jedi Knight on Ebon Hawk at least while I do all of the chapter based content. I have a large stable of character spread between the two factions and they are either in House Stalwart on Sith side, or Einherjar on Republic side. If you are also playing feel free to ping me and say hi.