[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. 3)

In our last episode, our fearless adventurers were facing the dreaded Soa!

This is the final installment of my thank you series to the Mercy Gaming Community. This one may be a little schizophrenic, but I want to get it all in.

I used to be a very solo oriented gamer. I never really wanted to put myself out there and get to know people. The odd thing is, I always used to complain to my wife that there just weren’t too many people I knew that were interested in the same things as me. I guess I just got turned off by the couple of times I tried to go out on a limb and find some like minded people. I met up with some people to play pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons one time. I found them on a D&D forum. That ended badly. I tried to go to a local collectible gaming store to play Warhammer miniatures. That also ended poorly. I guess I just assumed there were no “normal” people out there that were into the same things that I was. In truth, I just didn’t look hard enough.

Like any other gathering of people the folks who make up Mercy Gaming come from all walks of life. We have people with white collar jobs and people who are in college. We represent both genders and a number of different races, creeds, ages and even countries (looking at you Ms. T.). What makes this community work? In a word … Respect. The people who log into the games, forums and vent channels all have a mutual respect for each other. Many of us know each other on a first name basis and have each other’s personal email addresses and even phone numbers. We are accountable to each other and therefore show each other respect. Does that mean we don’t aggravate each other from time to time? Not at all. But it means that instead of calling each other names and screaming at each other before logging out of a game or vent, we simply go our separate ways and give each other a break. It works!

As most people know, Star Wars: The Old Republic has seen its struggles. Unfortunately, our IMC/RMC guild was not immune to this. Gamers left to go play other games, folks left to join other guilds, and a war of attrition was fought and ultimately lost. To log into SWTOR at any given moment as an IMC or an RMC guildee you will most often find yourself alone. Did this game deserve the fate it has? Who knows, but it saddens me to see our guild so empty.

But as most things that fight to survive, the IMC/RMC SWTOR guild adapted and became the Mercy Gaming community. What do we play? To put it plainly, whatever we want! We have people like @Doubleunder who helped found the guild and is avidly playing GW2. Raeban even stops by now and again to play with him. We have people like @Tarantella who had her fill with SWTOR very early, but loves The Secret World and WoW (and rumor has it Pandas!). We have Maric & @MMOGC who play everything it seems! We have @JVC920 who is the worlds wealthiest man measured in digital currency and who is always chatting it up in vent. Musei, Mr MMOGC, @RyanHVND, Trent, Chris “Mr. Sparkle Powder” Zypher, Pat and so many more. These are my friends. They make any game fun just by simply playing it together. The IMC/RMC may be shadows of their former selves, but the spirit of what was formed back then lives on.

Some days I don’t log into vent at night. But this is the exception to the norm. I have a group of kindred spirits that I know and care about. I might not know them if I saw them on the street, but as soon as they say hello in vent my face lights up because I know I am with friends.

Thank you Mercy Gaming for giving me a home, for giving me a place to belong and be around people who have the same interests as me. We might not all be playing the same game anymore, but our relationships transcend SWTOR and become more about each other and less about the games.

This is the conclusion of my story, yet it really is not.

Have fun in your games, and find friends to share it with!

-Pid

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends (Pt. 2)

If you haven’t read part one of my ode to my MMORPG friends, please start over here.

My first experience raiding in an MMO was a mix of pure thrill and abject horror. I might be exaggerating a little bit, but not by too much. My first scare of the night was when the raid leader asked “Is there anyone who has never raided before in an MMO?” There was absolute silence except for one lone voice. Mr. Pid. I immediately thought the world was going to end. I had run some dungeons in WoW and a bunch of flashpoints in SWTOR, but no raids here. Ruh-roh, Reorge.

We jumped into the Instance. @RyanHVND was there, and I think @Tarante11a was there too. We had some trouble with the first boss, but by and large we managed to get through that and all the way to Soa, the final boss of the operation. This is where things started to go bad. The person who was in charge of leading the raid was extremely knowledgeable, but was a little condescending. By about the 10th try to kill the boss the raid leader was downright mean at times. I don’t think we ended up beating him that night, and I was pretty sure I would never raid again.

Silly me being a glutton for punishment, when they scheduled the follow-up, I said sure. I was certain the raid would end in tears and I would end up getting kicked out of the guild for losing my temper, but in their infinite wisdom the guild leaders asked Raeban to lead the second foray instead of the former raid leader. This is the part where I say thank you to Raeban for showing me just how fun raiding in MMO’s could be. We don’t play much together anymore as we are in different games these days, but through the subsequent operations I ran with the Imperial Mercenary Corps, Raeban made them fun.

Rae did a number of things right that I would encourage every raid leader to do. 1) He never yelled at anyone. He encouraged everyone to do better and pointed out areas that needed improvement. He also was quick to give out credit to people that deserved it. 2) He had fun. It wasn’t all business with him. He didn’t encourage all out silliness, but he would interject little jokes and whatnot from time to time. 3) He was fair. He tried to make sure everyone got a fair shake at loot whether you were a noob or a veteran raider. 4) He was really good at playing his characters. Remember the two people that capped their characters right at launch day? Yeah, Raeban was one of them. He is good…scary good.

For better or for worse, the way that guilds go, the IMC had a bit of a shake up that led to Raeban heading off with some other folks to a hard-core raiding guild. The drama of that event left some lasting wounds for a lot of people (me included), but at the end of the day I had an experience that I will always think fondly of and cherish.

Thank you Raeban for showing me what fun raiding can be.

To be concluded…

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…

 

 

 

What’s Up Buttercup?

 

Norn, the real Human race in GW2.

I am in an interesting place right now with my gaming. I am still playing a lot, but I am using a shotgun approach to gaming. Here is my typical gaming cycle these days:

Log into WoW and check the auction house (though not so much since auctioneer stopped working after the big patch). Log out of WoW. Log into SWTOR and fly 4 space missions on my level 35 operative. Log out of SWTOR. Log into TSW just to make sure it is still patched. Log out of TSW. Log into GW2 play for 30 minutes. Log out of GW2. Log into WoW and play for 30 minutes. Go to work. Come home from work. Play either GW2 or WoW for a couple hours. All this and I wonder why I feel like I can’t get anything done in game.

So why all the hopping around?

I’m guessing that the latest Flavor of the Month game (GW2) isn’t as engrossing to me as the rest of my guildmates. Also our once very tightly organized guild is seemingly spread out over numerous games. This is not a bad thing per se, but it makes keeping focus a little more difficult. I kinda miss having that feeling that I need to rush home from work because a dungeon run might be starting up. It was kinda exciting.

Anyway, anyone else out there feeling like they are getting pulled in twelve different directions all at once?

-Pid

[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?