[SWTOR] Lagacy of the Empire

Cool title no?

I have been meaning to post this for a little bit. Sorry to any twitter folks that have to see this image for a second time. I was really anxious to get it out there at first.

Anyway, I have finally made it to Legacy level 50 in SWTOR!

I am pretty proud of this achievement considering I rarely have capped a character in a game, but I have managed to level cap 5 characters in SWTOR altogether. Now I don’t have any really cool bragging rights like saying that I have participated in beating Explosive Conflict in Hard Mode or that I am a stud PvPer, but I at least have this accomplishment that I know few of the people that run in my circle have completed.

What have I learned in my time to Legacy 50?

• I have become terribly efficient at running Ilum and the Black Hole Dailies (I never even do the Belsavis ones anymore.)
• I have noticed that will all the bonuses that I have gotten to the “presence” stat, that leveling has become a lot easier.
• I have just about worn out the space bar on my keyboard from skipping all the dialog from the repeated quest content.
• I have no idea why they gave us 50 Legacy levels when they don’t require hardly anything into the double digits for Legacy perks.
• I am perpetually broke because leveling a character from 1-50 is expensive and I tend to buy the Legacy leveling perks.

Anyway, I have 1 character done on the republic side, and 3 more to go. I really don’t enjoy the pub side that much, so I imagine it will take me some time to get that one done. In the meantime, some friends are starting to play the game again so I am hoping to get back into some of that raid content that I enjoyed so much.

-Pid

 

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends (Pt. 1)

I apologize for anyone who found this post by accident when they were looking for song lyrics. This is not the site you are looking for.
This post IS about a MMORPG game and the people who have reshaped the way that I approach them. I noticed it was getting very long so I decided I had better break it up. So without further ado, here is Part 1.

A long time ago, in blog not too far away I read a post by MMOGC that was calling for gamers to join a guild she was helping to form for what was one of the most anticipated games in a very long time. I didn’t know Ms. MMOGC from Eve back then but I ultimately have to thank her for putting out that advertisement because it was that post that got me involved with what is now the Mercy Gaming community.

We were all waiting for SWTOR to drop and the people who started the sister guilds Republic Mercy Corps and Imperial Mercenary Corps were beginning to organize. They got forums up and running and organized a ventrilo server. Maric and @RyanHVND were the people who ran the show back then. Ms. MMOGC was taking a sabbatical for some odd reason! I started getting to know them via the forums and some random games of Team Fortress 2. They were just names on a page back then, but I know they were doing a tremendous amount of work trying to get not one but two guilds off the ground for SWTOR’s imminent launch.

For reasons I still cannot understand to this day, @RyanHVND asked me if I would be a Lieutenant in the IMC at guild launch. They were very organized and were prepared for the influx of people who would need guild invites in the early days of launch. I said sure expecting to be a Lt. for about as long as it took for them to realize their mistake. I still remember the excitement/disappointment of waiting for the email that said I was eligible to log into the game for the first time.

Finally, the game launched and I think I invited all of 3 people into the guild those first few weeks. I played the snot out of the game early on. I remember there were two people in our guild that capped their characters right on launch day. One managed to get it even before they took the servers down before launch day. I was pretty green in the game while any number of people were beta vets, but I managed to clip along at a good pace even though I made the mistake of making a tank my first character.

I had been in guilds in other games before, but I never did too much as far as group content was concerned. In the beginning I was doing more or less the same in SWTOR. I logged into vent here and there but not very often. When I did I often found myself chatting with @RyanHVND who was online at many of the same times I was. He is a very charismatic person and he was always trying to help people out in the guild, to the point that he was always very far behind in leveling. Eventually, enough of us made it to level 50 and got some gear so we could attempt our first Operation (aka raid).

Thank you MMOGC for inviting me to the guild and thank you Maric and @RyanHVND for all the hard work you did getting the guild together.

To be continued…

 

 

 

[SWTOR] Slow down! There are no levels past 50!

I reached level 50 yesterday afternoon after about a month of playing. Here are some thoughts on the leveling part of the game:

• According to /played it took me somewhere between 6 and 7 days to accomplish this goal. I don’t know for sure because I forgot to check the moment I hit 50. This boils down to somewhere between 5-6 hours a day over the 28 days since the games unofficial launch. If it weren’t for a fair amount of vacation time this would never have happened.
• In the same time that it took me to get to level 50, another member of my guild has two level 50 characters and a new one in the twenties!
• The content at level 50 is tough compared to the previous content. I can only speak to Ilum so far, but I have  a long way to go gear-wise and learning to play my character in group situations to be good at level 50 content.
• I am absolutely broke! After speeder training, skill training, and repairs on equipment I have very little money left in the bank. I don’t know how I am going to fund a crafting profession.
• I played a lot of the content solo, but I did group along the way from time to time. Character quests were much better when you do them solo because you can enjoy them and not worry about holding anyone up. The rest of the content is much more fun when grouped.
• Playing as a tank spec made the process slower by-and-large. I died very infrequently with my healer companion, but my DPS output was so paltry it took a long time to get through mobs. Unlike the two imperial stealth classes, I couldn’t just sneak past them to get to  a quest point.
• I really need to invest in a gaming pad, because there are just too many buttons to push and I can’t do it quickly enough on my keyboard. As a powertech bounty hunter there are a ton of situational abilities that are essential and having only a few keys at my fingertips makes life tough.
• I am antsy to start working on another class instead of gearing up this one, but I am going to go out of my comfort zone a bit try to gear up for operations and hard mode flashpoints.
• I am closing in on the end of the “free” month and I have no qualms with paying for this game. Having a blast! /cheer for SW:ToR!

[SWTOR] Screencap O’ the Day

Really?

So for those of you keeping track of how dark side you are, you can apparently now do it to 13 decimal places! What the what?!

[SWTOR] Pictures from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Not a lot to write about these days. The wife has me wrapping presents like a fiend! I did want to post a few pictures of my escapades in Star Wars: The Old Republic. So here they are:

First, I have to toot my own horn and say I have achieved my legacy status by finishing Chapter 1 of the bounty hunter story. My character’s full name is Moruth Du’ul (more-ooth d00-ool). That is the name I have given to every character in a Star Wars game since I can remember.

These are just  a couple of pics of Moruth in travel. Oddly with all the technology in this setting, people on Alderaan travel by winged toad!

The First – Dromund Kaas World Boss

Grandfather – Balmorra World Boss

Here folks from the Imperial Mercenary Corps (with a couple friends) managed to take down the world bosses for Dromund Kaas and Balmorra. On to Tatooine next!

And lastly, yeah I did that. What are you gonna do about it…

-Pid

[SWTOR] Day 2 (Officially)

Ever wonder what a womp rat looks like? Wonder no longer.

Though I have been playing SW:ToR for over a week now, today begins day 2 since the official launch. It seems odd that the game has only been live to the masses for less than 48 hours and I am level 29 and should be finishing up Chapter 1 content in the next couple of days.

I am a little worried at the pace I have set. Now it was not too crazy, but pretty quick for me. (There are two people in our guild that were level capped just before launch or shortly thereafter.) I finished Tatooine in a little over a day’s worth of play and it was a pretty huge world. I didn’t bother to do any of the bonus quests, but it just seemed overly short. Maybe it is because I wanted to spend more time on the planet due to its significance in the Star Wars big picture.

Leveling has seemed to slow down quite a bit, but I am still capable of putting out a level and a half to two levels per day of play. It seems about right, but considering there are only 21 levels left to go, I hope that part takes a little longer. I really want to play some alts, but at the same time, I am really liking this character. I think they grow on you more when you have actively participated in their dialog and shaping their decisions throughout the leveling process.

Things should get better after the holiday season because I won’t have such gobs of time to play. If taken in smaller doses, I think the available content will be much more sustainable than at the pace I have set thus far. The big X-factor on this game will be what happens when you run out of the scripted content. What happens when the train hits the end of the line? How many alts can you make? Everyone is asking this question, but only time will answer it.

-Pid

[SWTOR] Screencap O’ the Day

For the last time, yes you are the beneficiary on the life insurance policy. Now why do you want me to keep backing up?

IMC is Looking for a Few Good Sentients

Calling All Sentient Mercenaries

Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to officially launch in a few hours. What could be more exciting? I just wanted to write a small note to promote an awesome guild in the Imperial Mercenary Corps (IMC).

If you are a mature individual that wants to have fun in a friendly environment, please head over to the recruitment page of the IMC and apply to our guild. If you like to play in a competitive environment that doesn’t have players that use names like Ishootu and Bubba Fatt check us out. We are not a raiding guild or a PvP guild, but there are plenty of people that enjoy doing those thing. We are predominantly focused on getting numbers up so that we can find people to group with at any given time to do flashpoints and heroic content. We play on a RP-PvE server (Sanctum of the Exalted) but very few of us are strict role players.

If this sounds like something you are interested in please click on the recruitment link and prepare to meet a great group of guys, gals, and other sentient beings that want to have fun without all the grief.

If you don’t join us, you might be facing off against these guys!

Game on!

-Pid

[SWG] In Memory

Wilhem has a great post up about the final night of Star Wars Galaxies. Apparently it passed into history without too many people realizing it. SWG was the very first MMO I every played, and had it not been for the fact that I was knee deep in graduate school, was newly married, and found out my son was on the way, I probably would have had a lot more experience with the game. As it stands, I probably played for a couple of months. I remember the  experience fondly though.

It saddens me that the MMOverse doesn’t have enough room in it for both SWG and SW:ToR. I know that Galaxies had its ups and downs and wasn’t a powerhouse like it could have been, but there were a lot of people who still enjoyed the game. As much as I am enjoying SW:ToR, I wish it didn’t have to be one or the other. My sympathy extends to all the SWG faithful who just lost their pastime.

-Pid

[SWTOR] Shipped!

The CE is on the way!

Well, as it turns out I shouldn’t need a grace period for SW:ToR. I was pretty worried at first though. When the preorder announcement dropped I was on the Carnival Cruise Lines’ Imagination in the middle of the ocean. I usually order from Amazon, but all you jerks must have bought up all the Collector’s Editions before I could get to it. 🙂 I opted to get it from Best Buy not having ever used them for such a “time-critical” order before. I remember riding the bus from the docks to the airport frantically searching the net on my phone to find an available copy. The expected delivery is Monday so I should be in good shape!

-Pid

PS By the looks of it this thing weighs almost as much as a sack of potatoes!