Star Wars: The Old Republic Discussion

I think they said the beginning of next year.  But no specific date.  Other than...........you guessed it! SOON(tm)

The mission I completed tonight was quite... Humorous. I had to take point and lead the charge of of a ragtag group of Jawas. We fought Ugnaughts. I avoid making fun of peoples heights; however, watching Jawas fight Ugnaughts did give me a laugh once or twice. Especially when some of them got thrown around. It was especially funny when one of the Jawas pulled out a flame thrower.

Yes it did involve delivering socks, ha.

Jawa: Ah, da, da, da... (Pulls out flame thrower) burn-tini.

Recruiting/reuniting with Blizz really is THE best Alliance alert there is

I am not above that nickname; however, it does sound familiar, ha.

...Or it's a reference to the Taris arena in KOTOR. You know, considering that this is sort of a sequel, made by the same company and all 

Returned to SWTOR about 2 weeks ago, I revisit the game every year since release. I've done all the class stories, but I tend to get bored before I can get post-Makeb. Usually way sooner, my issue is just how static and linear the game can be. I kinda wish it had GW2 dynamic like events with SWTOR purple quests and world building...alas.

Anyway, having never made it post-Makeb content despite always subbing when I played, I decided to give it a try by starting a new character from scratch (aka going through all the story minus operations and not purple stuff). I'm currently 3/4 through KOTFE on a new character.

So far, I care more about the post-base class story characters than my base game companions outside the first one I got and spent the whole game with (my little sister Vette, I made a female Sith Juggernaut). The late base companion are gotten so late that you end up having more interaction with the "new" characters than them if you just do purple quests and don't bother bringing them along (which I don't because I went everywhere with Vette). The only thing these new characters are missing is outside of story content dialogues (which I miss) and getting to pick who comes with me on mission.

Also, KOTFE might have cool cutscenes, but it is missing in downtime that isn't mission based, side quests and none-linear storytelling (although, it kinda open up after chapter 9 a bit with the alerts and star fortress content but it's half-way through the expac). They also seems to have stuck themselves in a corner with the story (I'm tired of the "you are the leader who does all the hard work because everyone else is incompetent" storytelling). MMOs works best if the players are seen as adventurers/agents IMHO.

I'm kinda wishing they took the time to rework the entire game too (combat, engine and even fixing up the linearity). All MMOs get those over time, even The Secret World got one this summer and it released 6 months after SWTOR did and always had a much smaller playerbase.

I'm just laughing at this:

www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20171023

specifically, teh KOTOR speeder. It was previously a sub reward. Now they're just giving it away. There's some freakout about it on the TOR boards (though surprisingly not as much as I'd thought).

All I can say though, is about damn time that little bubble of entitlement was burst. I can sort of understand "muh exclusives" when it comes to gameplay achievements. Did you wail on the billion HP thing in a raid only the most hardcore of nerds can do? Or are you uber pr0 at ganking? Ok, fine, you get your shiny that's just for you. But "I gave a corporation money on this date, therefore I'm special?" Get over yourself.

Precedent has been set, and set right. Let's see more. I qualified for that speeder thing when it first came out. I couldn't care less that's its given away now. I welcome it in fact. If it makes people happy and gets them playing, it's a good thing.

Eh, I'd feel better about it if they'd at least reskinned it or something. 
There is nothing wrong with subs getting pixel things as 'rewards' that the free to play players never do.  Not sure why you'd say that subs have a sense of entitlement when you have a group who doesn't monetarily contribute to a game demanding the same stuff as those who do. 

I do like that they are giving away the SoR expansion though.  Hopefully it brings some people back, and they actually stick around.  I'm more worried about the impact on APAC players, because they all seem pretty pissed off at the server move.

As someone who's never missed a sub reward, I've always been kind of...disappointed by how mean-spirited people were towards "second chances". I don't lose a reward just because someone else can get it later, but for some people it seems like waving it in the faces of the "unworthy" is the only reason to get a bonus in the first place. So I'm glad to see this happening, and hope there's more of it in the future.

I'm trying not to be judgmental about the ping thing for now. I am (at least at the moment) pretty much halfway between one US coast and the other, so I've never had problems with any server. Overly-competitive players will hem and haw at any excuse to claim they're being handicapped, but while a tenth of a second doesn't seem like it should feel debilitating to me, I also know I've stacked a lot of Alacrity on characters just to cut off that that time from a gameplay standpoint...so it might be a more reasonable complaint from the technical side of things, too, than I realize.

The underlined is wrong. What do you care who does or doesn't give a company money and by extension has or hasn't a shiny? That's where the entitlement comes from. "I gave money, therefore I'm special", with the shiny being a symbol of that.

Are there two sides to it? Sure. People that demand things as if they're owed, that's entitlement too. But it has more to do with how something is done. If you're a dick about it, you should expect a less than pleasant response. But the self-righteous huffing I've seen everytime someone's even asked for an alternate way to get a reward, even if it's just an extension of the terms or a sob story is, frankly, ridiculous.

Not to mention that it's not unheard of for promotions like pre-order bonuses to come back, either as a new deal or as a nice (parting) gift from the devs. Yet it's only MMO players (that I've seen) that have heart attacks over the very idea. You want to feel good about "supporting" a game, the act itself should be rewarding enough. Early access to a thing is perk enough. You got to use the shiny for all this time before it was made available to the "f2p/non-preordering scrubs". Why is that not enough for you (hypothetical you, not calling you out)?


Otherwise yeah, the ping concerns seem to have taken precedence, over "muh exclusive". At least priorities are straight.