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SWTOR E3 2012

If you missed it, check it out here.

SO EXCITED.

So, quick overview of what they said:
New Space Mission: Space Station Assault–definitely looks like a lot more moving around.
New Operation: Terror from Beyond (At least I’ve finished EC on normal?…but god this looks creepy)
New Companion: HK-51 Assassin Droid (Which has been known for a while)
New Level Cap and Combat Abilities. – I wish they stated what the new level cap will be @-@ Thankfully, it won’t really be grinding with the other new stuff.
New Warzone: Ancient Hypergates
New Planet: Makeb (BRONTO-SHIP)
New Race: Cathar
Harder version of Nightmare/Difficulty modes.

So excited for more story!

And this is apparently coming in July?! Dear god x___x oh phew, just the Level 15 thing. Rest will just be sometime this year.

Some interesting tidbits:
While only Cathar and HK-51 were confirmed specifically, they did say races and companions. Same goes with Ancient Hypergates as Warzones also was plural.

Also going to bring up this from Dulfy.

And from the little chat:
1:28 Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder of BioWare, is now on stage to talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic.
1:28 ”Our goal is to provide a living service that’s always on.”
1:29 The Old Republic will be adding new PvP warzones to the game, along with more challenging group and high-level content, including a new version of Nightmare difficulty mode.
1:30 Group finder, ranked PvP, and character transfers are now available, and level caps have been increased for every class.
1:30 A new planet, Makeb, will introduce new storylines and more. There are also new companion characters and playable species coming soon.
1:31 Looks like one of the new companions is an Assassin Droid! Lots of sneak peeks in this trailer.

Things I’d like to get done before this happens:
1. Get Amidaia to level 50. (Preferably, I’d like to get Aurorra, Cellina, Miisha, and Zoara to level 50 as well, but I won’t have time for that if the date is correct and I don’t think I’ll have the 3 million for Miisha and Zoara anyway)
2. Get all of Amidaia’s companions to 10,000 affection. (Would include others too if I was getting them to level 50, but yeah)
3. Get the pets I still need (M0-GUL Thrall Droid, Midnight Rakling, Taunling, and Wondrous Egg/Orochick).
4. Get the Legacy Ship Unlocks I want T___T
5. Have a good amount of money saved up (and maybe rocket boots too)

I’d love to be more geared as well in preparation for the new Operation, but due to feelings mentioned in the last entry, I don’t know if I’m ready to go for EC some more (and Lost Island and I don’t get along too well either).

Ugh, I’m so excited but now I’m stressing T___T Too much to do!

However, I’ve noticed some people are either annoyed or saying how SWTOR has failed due to the “free to play until level 15” …except it’s been this way for months with the friend trials and free play weekends. And it’s not a bad thing! That lets people try the game and see if they like it. There’s many pay to play games I did not try because I didn’t want to pay to try them. And then when they would finally do a free trial, part of my dislike for the game would be I’d feel too far behind to catch up as I’m a collector. The fact that they are doing this early and giving people a chance to play the first two planets, see their story, and even do their first flashpoint is a great idea and it’s stupid to think that’s “ruining the game”–even if it’s going to be more opened.

Wardrobe Thoughts

I’ve been thinking very hard about what I’d want each of my characters to wear. While Marilea is all set in her Elegant Dress set and her Elder Seeker’s Headgear (though, I may want to find a hat that is more circlet-y/tiara-ish) along with her Righteous Harbinger’s Lightsaber, I’m still having an awful time finding Amidaia a nice shirt. She is pretty much fine with everything else though (however, I should probably try and learn to make the skirt so I can get an augment slot for it…at least those kits will be out in 1.3).

I have been checking on the awesomely helpful TOR Fashion site to try and get an idea for what I’d want to do for Miisha, my future smuggler, but it doesn’t seem there is too much up yet for Medium Armor. I did, however, find what I will probably want my future Trooper, who I finally have decided to name Zoara, to wear. I haven’t seen exactly what I want for my Imperial Agent (Cellina) or Bounty Hunter (Aurorra) yet, but I shall have to just keep checking back.

Talking about Legacy

Ran into a topic about “Legacy being a Failure” on the official forums and felt the need to post. Got carried away though, so I figured I’d mention it here:

I actually really like the Legacy system, though, I do agree that the prices are definitely fairly over the top. I have yet to afford anything I didn’t unlock somehow (And all I’ve unlocked are the human race presence bonus, all the social stuff, all the valor stuff, and the Light V Ability…and well, all 3 Jedi Consular things) which is pretty depressing as there is a lot of stuff I do want, even if I feel the prices are sort of ridiculous.

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The Problem with Credits & The Legacy System

The main thing with the Legacy System is it expects you to either to play a lot of Alts or do dailies constantly. If you play lots of alts, you’ll have all the races and etc.

Ignoring that there is 9 races and only 8 slots right now (If you were really focused, you’d be best playing anything but human and then just buying that), most people who play Alts figure out exactly what characters they’d want a specific race.

However, most of those people wouldn’t make a character just to get the race and delete to make the character they want.

Similarly, people who do not have time to make alts are those same people who won’t have time to do dailies. They’ll be helping people out and maybe focused on raids and that is what they do with their brief time on. So, any money they do have will usually go to repairs so they won’t have the 7.5 million for all the ship stuff.

And if someone has alts, while they -might- have the races (see above for why not), they won’t have money for most of the stuff as they used it to get their alts geared.

I probably wouldn’t even be Legacy Level 25 if it wasn’t for my grinding up PVP to hit 65 valor.

But really, I’m just frustrated that the only good ways to make money or either be a jerk and do things like camping the Unusual Eggs to sell, play the market, or suffer through dailies. :/ It sucks.

Glitches

While most bugs don’t bother me, especially ones that seem to bother other people (like the sound glitches), some things do get to me.

Like the whisper glitching right now where if someone whispers you while you are talking to someone else and have the whisper set to that someone else, the whisper will be sent to the most recent person to whisper you.

And the ticket glitch which unfortunately I only know of myself to have where my tickets refresh themselves and I have to reclick each one so the notifier isn’t there anymore.

Most importantly though, this glitch makes me incredibly paranoid so I hope that’s fixed soon :/ I managed to get the Longspur Scout recently so I have 9 ATM. But I also have 12 pets at the moment with 5 to go (6 counting the Ram Tauntaun we should be getting in the mail soon) so I’m paranoid if that may have the same issue 🙁

Besides that, sometimes getting stuck somewhere sucks, but I can really deal with most.

Anyway, back to trying to find groups for pets now… I have to say the worst feeling in the world is knowing you have stuff to do, but have nobody you can ask to help :/ (or in this case, not enough people)

Guilds

As most people know by now, we are currently not in a guild. We have, at the time of writing this, received a total of 7 Republic Guild invites and 2 Imperial Guild invites. We have an idea of who we will end up joining, but the reason we’re not in a guild right now is a very simple reason:

We do not want to bring anyone down.

What happened on Thursday, despite the 1.2 awesomeness, really hit us hard and put a very bitter taste in our mouths towards the game. And it’s very hard to try and just shrug it off. And even a simple reminder of it reminds us why we haven’t joined a new guild yet.

However, it’s a catch-22 because right now, a lot of the stuff there is to do kind of needs a guild (seriously) as finding a pick-up group is a pain. The only other thing for us to do is PVP (Which neither of us care for much. Just trying to get our valor up every so often plus the codexes we need for Novare Coast…I think the interruption one is glitched though), dailies (so cruel–but need to start doing them again for the Black Hole Relic plus speeders…and money. I really want the ship stuff .___. Nearly everything can be two-manned except that heroic in a heroic with the Eshkah on Belsavis), and alts (which I have a lot of trouble being in the mood to play).

So it’s like, with so few things to do, it makes it even harder and more depressing about the old guild drama. At the same time, everything we really want to do needs a guild–and I know there won’t be room for us to raid to begin with as we’ll be the new group. We might be able to fill in…but that’s about it. And that’s kind of depressing.

And it’s like, we don’t want to bring people down. Or be unable to help and just taking space because our attitudes are a bit dampened.

and of course, this just makes pets being random drops even more frustrating as well as everywhere they drop also involves needing to be able to get a group together.

And when it comes down to it, I’m just not very good at it. But we don’t want to bother a guild either with stuff unless they would be all for helping and whatever.

Stupid catch-22’s.
Stupid random drops.
Stupid drama.
Stupid ship stuff being 7.5 million credits.

🙁

New Pet Overview + Feelings and thoughts

Okay, at this point, most of the pets have been figured out, so I figured I’d just do a quick overview post and then explain my thoughts/feelings after because…well, I write a lot, god. XP

Tauntauns

1. Taunta – Can be bought from the Collector’s Edition Vendor for 200K
2. Taun Fawn – Gotten from a code from PAX East
3. Ram Tauntaun – Gotten for being an active subscriber.
4. Taunling – Dropped by Gargath
5. Taunlet – Head to X:834, Y:759 on Hoth with the Ice Scrabbler Jerky Buff on (gotten from eating the Jerky). It will lure out Taunlet who you need to use the NVSCSS on to capture them.

Orobirds

1. Orokeet – Hatched from Unusual Egg found on Alderaan.
2. Orosquab – Hatched from Mysterious Egg which is dropped from either the second or final boss (or the first and third if not counting minibosses?) on Hard Mode Lost Island.
3. Orochick – Hatched from Wonderous Egg which either drops from Warlord Kephess (the final boss) on Hard Mode Explosive Conflict OR apparently spawns in a nest in the new operation, Explosive Conflict, after defeating Warlord Kephess. Difficulty unknown. NEITHER CONFIRMED. Both have been said, but at this point, there has been no proof.

All Orobirds are hatched on Tatooine through the same method.

Raklings
1. Midnight Rakling – Dropped from the bosses on Hard Mode Lost Island.
2. Crimson Rakling – Gotten from completing the “Tracking the Origin” Quest during the Rakghoul Pandemic Event on Tatooine.
3. Pale Rakling – Bought from Jeelvic in the Dune Sea (X:-896, Y:-925) for 60 DNA Samples which you get from completing quests and/or exploding from Raghoul disease during the Rakghoul Pandemic Event on Tatooine.

So far everything except the Orochick has either been confirmed with screenshots and/or multiple confirmations. However, considering the new operation has Orobirds running around and considering how you get the Mysterious egg, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true.

Now, since I don’t think anyone cares about my thoughts, I shall just say continue reading if you do~
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The Problem with the Sage/Sorcerer Nerfs

I had known about the nerfs for a while, but decided to wait until I had a full chance to test them out in a flash point or operation. The funniest part though? This was done mostly due to PVP complaints which I actually still have no problem gaining force back through. Essentially, if you’re having a bad time, you’ll die so fast, you don’t need to worry about gaining force by through that kind of method. If you’re having a good time, you’ll be able to get your force back quick enough without needing to use anything for it.

So despite being done to lessen the “overpoweredness” of Healers in PVP, I don’t see much of a change. In PVE however, it’s right there. There is nothing more insulting than wiping on a boss because your force gets way too low for you to be able to do anything. To see someone die, unless the idiot was stupid and ran away from you, is really depressing, especially when you can not do anything about it.

We finally got around to doing Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island on Hard Mode today. Having just finished the former and about to start the latter, I’m incredibly paranoid about how it’s going to go. The issue with Noble Sacrifice taking HP (and the “now takes no force” thing is a joke as it barely took any to begin with) is because as a healer, your job is to keep the team alive. If you’re too busy healing yourself to do that, what use are you?

The best way I’ve noticed to get around it is to get an AOE Heal down and then use it as that will usually get most of your health back up, but for fights where you have to move around a lot or worry about being interrupted among other things, that’s not always possible. There’s also the fact that it’s a constant risk of when to use it–you have to essentially predict how it’s going to go and how much damage you may take next. If you wait too long to try and do it, your force may get too low too fast. If you do it too soon though, the enemy may one-shot you the next hit because of that health removal.

However, the other big issue is the fact that there is no way to quicken up Deliverance/Dark Infusion. The heal is anywhere between 2.3-2.5 without being quickened. The problem with this is the main healing class in the game has the slowest heal. Everyone else’s biggest cast on a heal is 2 seconds. And that .3-.5 less actually is a big deal. The amount that Deliverance/Dark Infusion does, while good, is not helpful enough for those extra seconds. That extra time could be the time between someone’s death and someone still being alive.

On a different note, I hope the Set Bonus issue gets fixed soon. I kind of kind ahead of myself and put everything in my Elegant Set before realizing…so umm… yeah… >>

Getting things done…or well, trying to.

Despite my stressing and wanting to just curl into a ball, I am trying to get things done. Unfortunately, it’s not going well. And part of that reason happens to be guilds.

Guilds have a lot of great features. You can make new friends, find people to work with, and when a game doesn’t have a friend chat, it is the next best thing.

The problem comes in that most people will always go to a guild if they need people for flashpoints or raids. There is no looking for a group and people would rather work with those they know then work with the gamble of a Pick-up group.

So, if your guild is no longer bothering to get on and you have nobody to ask, you are stuck looking to find people to join. And because you are finally looking, you will most likely not find anyone. Either people who ask are too low a level/are not eligible, everyone is busy, or nobody is really on out of people who would do a Pick-up group in the first place.

But while flash points are a bit more common to maybe find people asking, operations are definitely not and more “guild only”. An Operation pick-up group is incredibly rare. Maybe to replace a member or two of a guild–but definitely not a full pick-up group.

And the main issue with SWTOR is once you do hit 50 (despite some FPs not even being available until then), you unlock “hard mode” flashpoints which is all most people will care about. “Oh, what did you mean you wanted to do a normal version to complete the quest as part of a story? TOO BAD.” It’s not exactly easy to find a flashpoint and if you’re asking for a normal version that isn’t farming Esseles for social points, the chances of you finding one are slim to none unless you get lucky and come upon some new level 50’s who still need to do it and aren’t alts of those already high levels.

Despite the lowness of this happening, I have tried to find a Battle of Ilum (normal) group and/or Karagga’s Palace (normal/Hard mode), but have had no luck. Afterall, nobody wants to do Battle of Illum on normal and operations are really a guild thing so bleh.

PVP I’d rather not spend more time than I need to in order to get it done, but I’m about 10% away from Legacy 25…not that I’ll be able to afford the only thing that needs that Legacy level.

And I think, because we couldn’t have enough stress and frustration, we might be switching guilds soon. Blah.

Besides that, apparently Ranked Warzones are being delayed. I don’t care too much as I’m not a big PVP person, but I know a lot of people were looking forward to them. At least they are listening to feedback and making sure it’s ready to go first. …I still wish the Patch wasn’t being released yet though. 🙁

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“How about not calling me sir? :|”

Despite knowing this is just a thing with Star Wars and not something wrong on BioWare’s part, it is one of those things that just bothers me. Is it correct? Yes, it is technically correct. But not all ladies want to be called sirs, okay?

Heck, I’d love if there was a “Lady” title instead of Lord. I think that’d be awesome for my Sith character. Right now, I don’t know if she’ll use any unless a Princess title suddenly appears.

But yes, it’s probably just one of those minor things that constantly gets to me in the game, even if it is accurate to the series.