WEP '12, Day 75 - Old Republic Log XXVII

The funny thing about this log is that I canceled my Old Republic subscription last Monday so I wouldn't have to pay the $15 on Tuesday.  And yet, here I am, writing a new log...and not even a epilogue either.

I suppose I should explain how we got to where we are.  Morgan canceled his subscription with three days before the next payment.  He just wasn't enjoying his character, and it was impractical for him to get another one up to speed.  Besides, as Bioware must have feared when they moved it back to March, Morgan decided he'd rather play Mass Effect III.  And frankly, if my 360 weren't dying and I thought my PC could handle it, so would I.

The funny thing is, this is a Free Trial Weekend for Old Republic.  So I was able to create a brand new account yesterday and I can play through Sunday.  I'm not going to play all that much, to be honest, but I wanted to give the Imperial Agent storyline another try.

So now I've got a fifth character, Alisera, the Chiss Imperial Agent.

All told, while her story ain't bad, it ain't exactly thrilling so far either.  What's more, I'm not a fan of the cover based combat, which can get really frustrating very quickly.  I may squeeze in a few hours more today or tomorrow, but there's been nothing here that really compels me to stick around.

I guess we'll see.

Alisera, Level 7 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 71 - Old Republic Log XXVI

Here's to the session that wasn't.  Luke and I both use Wide Open West for our cable and internet, so when a major fibre-optic line in Schaumberg got cut and disabled WOW's service for much of the Northwest Suburbs, we were both screwed.  They finally got the 'net and phone back online around 2am, and cable around 4am, some 14 1/2 and 16 1/2 hours after the line was cut.  Sounds like they weren't prepared for a disaster of that magnitude, and I find myself wondering how a major line like that gets cut in the first place.

But this entry really isn't about all that.  After all, between Luke and I having no 'net and Matt having a house full of sick kids, only Morgan was even able to make our Midnight Runner game, and odds are, he just played Mass Effect 3 instead.

No, what I'd like to talk about is the degree to which The Old Republic starts to waste your time after you've completed your first story.

As you may recall, I've adopted a "log it as you go" system of time management.  That means I've been jotting down how long I spend on various endeavors, including how I game.  And that includes how much time I spent playing Old Republic last week.

Last Thursday, for example, I got Kelynn back on track after a couple weeks off playing Tasia.  I finally restarted my vicious Trooper's main storyline.  That involved heading back to my ship and contacting my boss from the holoterminal on board.

Now you have to understand that, despite my best efforts when buying the damn thing in the first place, my machine seems to be on the low end vis a vis playing Old Republic.  In particular, my loading screens seem to take much longer than everyone else's.  Pretty much every time we're doing a Guild run that includes a conversation, everyone else loads first and gets to the first dialogue option, then waits around for my slow ass machine to catch up and get involved.  Once I've loaded the conversation, we're good....everyone moves at the same pace until the end.  But that first load is a bitch.

What's more, that extends to every load screen.  I'm always the last to arrive at a Flashpoint and, because it takes so long for me to load back to the fleet and then back into the instance if I die, standard procedure during a wipe is to just wait around as a corpse and get revived by one of my guildmates when they get back in to the zone.

In other words, every load screen I see is a serious pain in the ass, even more for me than it is for most other players, and it's no picnic for them.

Right, so load screens suck.  Let's count how many I had to go through to get my story started again, shall we?  There was the one going from the main part of Carrick Station to the hanger.  A second from the hanger to my ship.  I have a conversation with General Garza, and she tells me to meet her on Coruscant.  So load screen three gets me from my ship to the Coruscant hanger.  Four gets me from the hanger into the spaceport.  I talk to Garza and get my mission.  I need to go back to Tatooine.   Fine.  Load screens five and six take me back to my ship.  Seven and eight get me from my ship and out of the hanger onto Tatooine proper.  I rescue my contact without any more load screens, but getting into the hanger of my ship where my other contact is waiting is number nine.  I find out what I need to know and get back on my ship with number ten.  Garza wants to debrief me on Coruscant.  Despite the fact that she was perfectly willing to discuss the disposition of known Republic traitors over the holoterminal before, this mission needs a face to face.  Okay, so eleven and twelve get me back onto Coruscant.  Garza tells me to get my ass to Balmorra.  Thirteen and fourteen to my ship, fifteen and sixteen to get to the surface of Balmorra proper where I can finally get shit started.  At which point I'm too tired to actually do anything and just park in the cantina and call it a night.

I've got it logged.  That whole runaround took two hours and sixteen minutes!  In that time, I scored a tiny fraction of the experience points I needed to level up.  I spent all but a handful of minutes of that time either staring at load screens or running around through places I've already been.  What's galling, however, is how unnecessary it all was.  If they'd just had the decency to put the contact on Balmorra and have Garza brief me onboard my ship, they could have eliminated 75% of the load screens and not wasted so much of my time.

And maybe I'd have played Old Republic since last Thursday.

Gabe from Penny Arcade had the same complaint about the bullshit runaround.  When I first read his post, I thought he was being overly dramatic.  Now that it's happened to me, I can see his point.  My time is precious.  I've become even more aware of how precious lately.  Have I got time for a game that thinks my time is valueless?  I don't know anymore.

This question comes to me at a crucial time.  My paid for time runs out one week from today on March 20th, and I'm not sure if I'm going to renew.  Old Republic holds a lot of attraction for me.  I like the stories.  Granted, I like Tasia's story more than I do Kelynn's, but keeping up with the Runners demands that I play Kelynn more.  And there is the guild.  We've had some fun times Flashpointing our way across the galaxy.  Hell, we came up with our own bullshit tactic!  As a subset of the guild is the fact that I get to play with my brother once a week.  Time being what it is, especially on his end with the 4 1/2 year old and 1 1/2 year old underfoot, my ability to game with Matt is pretty limited.  Being able to shoot shit up in Old Republic together is a pretty rare thing.

On the other hand, there are other games.  Guild Wars 2 is on the horizon.  So are Mechwarrior Online and Mechwarrior Tactics.  Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online are all free to play and available now.  So it doesn't have to be Old Republic.  


The question is, do I still want to play the game?

Kelynn, Level 36 Vanguard, Balmorra

Tasia, Level 29 Sith Sorceress, Alderaan

Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant

Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 64 - Old Republic Log XXV

With Morgan back from the West Coast, we re-convened and did Maelstrom Prison.  And while we did wipe some four times, with a couple of extra individual deaths along the way, at no point did it seem like we were going to get shut out entirely the way we had the first time we did Hammer Station and Taral V.  It pretty much want about as smooth as one could have hoped for, really.

The shining moment of the night was the formalization of the Midnight Run, named after our guild, the Kessel Midnight Runners.  The Midnight Run is the bullshit tactic we used on Taral V where someone dies while fighting a boss and the survivors run for the respawn point and team up with the returning ressurected characters to finish off the already damaged boss.  It worked great on Taral V for the last boss.  Technically, we'd even tried it as far back as Hammer Station but that boss resets if you go to far from his starting point.

But here in the Maelstrom Prison it worked perfectly.  After I died to the guys crazy face-lasers, the rest of the team hoofed it, I caught up, and we put that bad boy down.  While we were doing it someone suggested calling it the Midnight Run, and so our new favorite tactic was perfected.  I'm not sure how often it'll work, since it didn't work on the last boss of Maelstrom Prison even, but it's nice that we've started to develop a repertoire of combat tactics.

Even if it is bullshit.

The other thing that was significant from our Prison break was the fact that Kelynn got herself a new outfit.  It's only green gear (both in item quality and actual color), so it'll be replaced sooner or later, but it does increase my offensive stats nicely.  Unfortunately, it also decreases my health, so I ended up switching back to the old armor for the end of Maelstrom Prison.  What's worse is the fact that while the helmet and breastplate work fine together, I never found a pair of pants for it, and the old yellow pants from Kelynn's old outfit doesn't go with this one at all.  Still, it's always nice to get new gear.  

The challenge now is to get Kelynn up to level 39 in time to do Colecoid Wargame, the next Flashpoint.  I'm not sure it's possible given how much leveling has slowed down since level 35, but I'll give it a go.  Worse comes to worse, though, we'll just do Heroics next time and hit the Wargame in two weeks instead.

Kelynn, Level 36 Vanguard, Republic Fleet

Tasia, Level 29 Sith Sorceress, Alderaan

Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant

Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 60 - Old Republic Log XXIV

Right, so I didn't actually do all that much, but I would like to talk a little more about Tatooine, as far as the Sith Inquisitor goes.  So let's get all Spoilery with it, shall we?

Kelynn, Level 35 Vanguard, Republic Fleet
Tasia, Level 29 Sith Sorceress, Alderaan
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

Nothing but suns, sand, and SPOILERS!

Are you sure you're ready for the SPOILERS?

Right.  Tatooine from the Sith Inquisitor's side is pretty boring. Go in, pick up your new space pirate companion, help him track down the guy who betrayed him, then track down the corpses of the guys who betrayed the first traitor.  Nothing much to it.

What bugs me, though, was the fact that the main Planet Quest line actually merges with the Republic on by the time you hit the Dune Sea.  Out there you find the same beacons, including the one right outside the Republic Outpost, which is a bitch for Imperial players, go into the same ruined Czerka base, and get into the same confrontation with the sentient artifact of the Infinite Empire.  Granted, the actual story diverges at the end as the Imperial characters don't get a final confrontation with the Czerka guy who'd been plaguing the Republic characters, but even so, there was a lot of overlap.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except that the guys who marketed TOR claimed there was no duplicate content from Empire to Republic.  But that's clearly not true.  For one thing, besides who briefs you on the mission, most of the Flashpoints in the game are identical regardless of which side you're on.  And now there's the duplicate content on Tatooine.  Sure, they can claim the technicality that there are a few changes, but the fact that I'm level 35 with one character and level 29 with another and I've gone through a lot of the same stuff from planet to planet is pretty disturbing.  Especially now that I'm on Alderaan and I'm seeing "save the besieged outposts" and "poison the bugs" missions on both sides of the fence...

It's just a little worrisome, is all.

WEP '12, Day 58 - Old Republic Log XXIII

While I should probably do my next Amazing Race analysis, the problem is that I haven't seen the episode yet...I was, as noted, watching the Oscars.  And since we did have a Kessel Midnight Runners guild run tonight, I might as well catch up on the Old Republic Log.

Of course, with Morgan out away in the wilds of San Francisco this week, and Paul long since having left the game, the three of us that remained weren't going to be able to do a Flashpoint on our own unless we added a random stranger to the mix, and no one was that enthused about that plan.  Since I'd been running Tasia for the last couple of weeks and both Matt and Luke wanted to use their Imperial characters, we went Dark for the night.

That put us at Tasia, my Healer spec'ed Sith Sorceress, Vyrace, Luke's DPS Bounty Hunter Mercenary, and Mal'Drak, Matt's DPS Sith Marauder.  For the fourth spot I broke out Tasia's companion, Khem'val, who took on the Tanking duties.

Which reminds me, we need to either find or have Morgan create a fourth Imperial character so we can get an Imperial guild going.  Not that guilds actually DO much at this point, but it makes organization a bit easier.

Anyway, after an interminable forty five minutes or so getting everyone in the same place and giving Matt and Luke enough cash for them to go to Tatooine and get speeder bikes, we finally got going on a couple of Heroics on Nar Shadaa.  Problem was, the first one was a Heroic 2+ that was way below Tasia's level.  It worked great for Vyrace and Mal'Drak, but doing the whole thing only earned Tasia five experience points.  Being so overleveled did make it a breeze, especially since you could activate sliced Imperial droids along the way and get yourself some heavy firepower backup.

The second Heroic was a 4+ that Tasia could get some benefit out of, and indeed turning in the final quest brought her to level 29.  That one included one of those multiple stage quest objectives.  So we started out having to blow up organ crates, then steal neurotoxin, then use the neurotoxin to poison some cyber-implants, then finally track down and murder the boss of the place.  There were only a handful of social points in the whole thing, and it really just felt like a beefed up version of a regular zone quest.

Still, the character shuffle did lead to us each playing a different role.  Between my Static Shield, the Heal Over Time Rejuvenation that buffs my other heals, and my big heal Dark Infusion that Rejuvenation makes go as fast as my Dark Heal, Tasia can keep people up pretty darn well.  I'm too busy switching from heal to heal to do more than the occasional crowd control on offense, mind you, but Vyrace and Mal'drak have got the killing down just fine.  Khem'val, since he's only a Companion, couldn't hold aggro the way a real Tank would have, so I was healing a lot, especially in the larger group battles.  The boss battles, on the other hand, were pretty damn easy, letting me slip in a few Damage Over Time attacks as well.  In fact there was only one death all night long, and that was Khem'val.  The actual players rarely got below half health.

Indeed, I'm beginning to think that while the Trooper/Bounty Hunter is great with all the area effect and raged attack powers, the Counselor/Inquisitor lines may be better healers.  Tasia has three ways to either protect your health or heal it with an instant cast ability, which is huge, and then can use one of those instants to make the biggest heal go off in 1.5 seconds!  It's rare that any enemy can overwhelm that kind of healing, and overall I was pleased with Tasia's performance tonight.

Next week, we hope to have Morgan back so we can roll through Maelstrom Prison, the other half of the story that began on Taral V last week.  Maelstrom is rated at level 35, and both Kelynn and Visa are that level, with Dae'wan at level 36.  Pretty much regardless of where Shahistasa is, since the last time I saw her she was 33, we should be able to at least give the Maelstrom a reasonable try.

Oh, and to conclude, here's the orange gear that I got for finishing off the Heroic 4+.  The headband is fine, and much better than the stupid lekkuless mask, but I've got serious quibbles with the shoulderpads on the robe.  How does she get into cars or through doors with those things on?

Kelynn, Level 35 Vanguard, Republic Fleet

Tasia, Level 29 Sith Sorceress, Nar Shadaa

Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant

Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 51 - Old Republic Log XXII

In retrospect, I should have waited to do my Old Republic Log until after tonight's guild run, because I can't sit on this story for very long.

So we're doing the Taral V Flashpoint that we failed at last week.  We've already bounced off the optional boss three times, and declared failure on that score.  However, since everyone's higher level than they were before, those were the only wipes we'd encountered.  Until the end boss, that is.  We wiped on him trying three different tactics.  Finally, we decided on the fourth try to quit being fancy and try it straight the way we did the first failed time.  We got into it...and like ten seconds in, he dropped me.

Morgan called for a retreat and though Luke died on the way out, Morgan and Matt kept running...all the way to the entrance of the final bunker.  Since the boss himself is a slow mover, they actually managed to hold out until both Luke and I had resurrected, transitioned back into the Flashpoint, and arrived at...the start of the bunker!  Just in time to take on the half dead boss and finish him long before his equally slow moving reinforcement droids managed to walk the length of the complex to catch us!

I sincerely doubt that was how the fight was supposed to play out.  Indeed, we all agreed that it was weapons grade bullshit to win like that, but since none of us were at all interested in having to go back and do Taral V three times in three weeks, we let it stand.

Here's to bullshit!

Today's portrait, like Kelynn's last one, comes to you because I'm happy with her basic gear and don't really plan to change it anytime soon.  And the only change that has happened was her getting a nice belt with glowy bits on it, and the default picture that I use for the portraits doesn't show the belt slot.  So instead, I've gotten my hands on "The Republic Dancer" outfit, available for purchase from the Security Key Vendor.

Well, what the heck.  Kelynn's technically on leave, so if she'd like to work on her tan, who can begrudge her that, right?

Kelynn, Level 35 Vanguard, Republic Fleet

Tasia, Level 25 Sith Sorceress, Imperial Fleet

Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant

Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 50 - Old Republic Log XXI

Not that anyone cares, or even should, but we're doing another double episode day as I spent most of yesterday in Wisconsin for my nephew's baptism.


Today we'll be discussing the Sith Inquisitor Nar Shadaa storyline that I managed to complete over the weekend.  Not that I'd much further to go since Log XX was done at level 24 with Nar Shadaa 3/4 complete.  Since then, I've finished off the rest of the planet as well as taken a little side jaunt to Korriban and made it to level 25.

Mechanically, there's not much to comment on.  Level 25 brought with it the usual minute advancements in combat power and access to speeder bikes.  Of course, I haven't got the requisite 48,000 credits required to actually buy said bike just yet, but my experience with Kelynn showed that all you need to do is quit crafting and don't buy anything else for a couple of levels, and you'll earn the cash you need for your bike.  Until then, we walk.

So, on to the Spoiler section, after the portrait as usual.

Kelynn, Level 35 Vanguard, Republic Fleet
Tasia, Level 25 Sith Sorceress, Tatooine
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

The glittering jewel of the Hutts conceals SPOILERS in its shadowy depths.

The Screaming Blades have many secrets.  Some of them are SPOILERS.

After arriving on Nar Shadaa in search of the fourth part of the artifact of Tulak Hord, you discover that said MacGuffin is in the hands of a renegade Sith named Lord Paladius who runs a cult in one of the bad parts of town.  Since he'd ignored your master when she asked him nicely for the artifact, you're there to ask him not so nicely. So you go about stealing his cult out from under him.

That's actually pretty fun.  Granted you're mostly doing the same things you normally do, but there's actually a branching mission structure where you can be peaceful or violent about your takeover, which was pretty interesting.  In the end, you do have to beat down Paladius to get the artifact from him, and you can choose to kill him or spare him at your discretion.  Despite being a Light Side character I went with kill, since he'd betrayed me once before, so there was no reason to suspect that he'd be any  more trustworthy in the future.

Then the ghost of Lord Kallig tells you that your master is planning to betray you and suggests that you retrieve his old mask from a Sith on Korriban.  Which I did, and now I'm looking for the next artifact chunk on Tatooine.

All well and good, but there are a few hiccups along the way.  For one thing, in the final battle against Lord Paladius, he uses the artifact piece he's got to drain you of Force energy.  This is shown when you try to shock him in the conversation and nothing happens.  "Let us resolve this matter with our lightsabers!" he declares.  Except that when the fight itself happens, my Force powers work just fine and he goes down to the same Force Lightning barrage that everyone else does.  Seems like a bug.

The ones that bothers me more, though, are the ones with the Korriban side jaunt.  For one thing, when I get into the SIth's chamber, he's got a couple of apprentices with him.  When I initiate the fight in conversation there's an animation of them both igniting their lightsabers at the same time the Lord himself does.  It's pretty cool.  Except that when the fight actually starts, they vanish...and not a stealth vanish or something.  They're simply not there and do not participate in the fight at all.  It was pretty jarring.

What was worse, though, was the mask.  The game knows Tasia is a Twi'lek.  When I tried to claim the mask from the Sith guy and said that it was my inheritance because I was descended from Lord Kallig, his response was: "A Twi'lek slave inheriting a Sith artifact?  The only thing you'll be inheriting is a slave collar!"

So why is it that when I put on Kallig's mask, I look like this?

Seriously, it was bad enough when they pulled that shit with the ghost of Lord Kallig back on Dromund Kas.  At least then, I could fanwank the idea that maybe Kallig himself had been a human or pureblood Sith and that Tasia was descended from a Twi'lek lover or something.  But what the hell am I supposed to here?  Say that Tasia cut her lekku off, which contains a good chunk of her brain mind you, just to wear the mask?  Because there's no way in hell she's fitting them under that thing.  And if she did and those boxy things are cybernetic implants that replace the lost brain functions or some such, why is it the lekku spring back out when I take the damn thing off?

It's just sloppy, and it breaks immersion for me that they couldn't be bothered to make any kind of allowance for one of the most popular races out there.  Since the mask is a plot item and an orange piece of gear to boot, I've just gone ahead and set my head slot to off, so that I get the mechanical benefit without having to explain how I got de-Twi'leked to people.  

But it's still bitterly disappointing that Bioware could be so slapdash about this.

WEP '12, Day 48 - Old Republic Log XX

With Kelynn on vacation on Carrick Station, I returned to Tasia after a few weeks.  Part of the reason I'd backed off my Sith Sorceress was because I'd tried to start my Class Quest on Nar Shadaa and gotten wiped out twice in a row.  That was pretty disheartening, and since I needed to power level Kelyenn to catch up with the rest of the Midnight Runners anyway, I left Tasia pondering her failure for a time.

When I came back, I noticed a world quest available, so I went off and did that instead.  That got me up to level 22, and when I went back to try that stalled Class Quest again, I prevailed.  I also came to realize that while my technique of focusing mostly on shielding and healing my Companion works fine when confronted by a boss, it actually isn't a very good idea against multiple enemies.  So now I've developed two combat routines, one heal based for single powerful enemies, and one aggressive lightning based one for groups where its more important to thin their numbers before they can overwhelm Kham Val.

What's interesting is the degree to which the Sorceress is all about crowd control.  Lacking the numerous area effect powers that are the best part of the Trooper's repertoire, the Sorceress is forced to rely more on disabling enemies with several stunning and slowing powers.  That actually works pretty well, even against groups, because I can Force Whirlwind one enemy out of my way, then use my various lightning powers, some of which also stun, to eliminate a second enemy while Khem massacres the one or two guys who remain.  Finally we team up to kill the whirlwind victim quickly to end the fight.

Meanwhile, in boss fights I tap a couple of Damage Over Time abilities, then re-shield and heal Khem, then maybe throw in a Force Lightning or something, then more heals, and so on.  It's slower, but more sure, since Khem rarely goes below half health when I'm working it that way.

I've almost got the Nar Shadaa Class Quest worked out, and indeed, have gotten Tasia a couple of levels more, so I'll do a story spoiler section once I've got that next chunk done.

Kelynn, Level 35 Vanguard, Republic Fleet
Tasia, Level 24 Sith Sorceress, Imperial Fleet
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 45 - Old Republic Log XIX

We hit Taral V last night.  The result?  Failure.  Everything had been going fine until the final section.  Taral V feels like you're adventuring outdoors for the most part.  You've got a primary objective, some secondary ones, and even a sequence of staged objectives where you kill wildlife, then kill Imperials, then hack security terminals, then finally kill off a side boss, the base commander.  There's another sequence where you blow up research stations, after which you can use a terminal to blow up a couple of the sentry guns protecting the final boss.

Unfortunately, the last three bosses, including the base commander, are stone cold bastards.  There's a giant robot with near instant kill missiles that you have to avoid.  We eventually got past him, but then there was the Sith Lord optional boss who could Force Storm and pull everyone in then blast the shit outta them.  We lost to him a few times then opted out of the option.  Finally the big boss hits like a truck, has sentry guns, and halfway through calls in some guards to help him out.  It was a pain, and we were all tired and frustrated by the time we got to him, so we called it a night after our fourth defeat.

By comparison, the early bosses, one a guy and his giant cats, the other another guy and his tamed monster, went down on the first try each.  Probably we need more levels to take out the big guys, which is annoying, but what can you do?  We also discovered that the three Flashpoints we thought we were going to do are really two Flashpoints.  The Jedi Prisoner Flashpoint only exists to give you some story elements before sending you straight into Taral V.  Why the need to call it something else and make us think there's an extra Republic Flashpoint, I've no idea.

I finished Alderaan, and put the finishing touches on chapter one of the Trooper story, which is pretty cool. I'll talk about Alderaan in the customary spoiler section after the portrait.  Speaking of which, it occurred to me that I've got a couple of non-combat outfits that Kelynn can wear.  I'll start with the first one I picked up, a Coruscant High Society Dress....

Kelynn, Level 35 Vanguard, Republic Fleet
Tasia, Level 21 Sith Sorceress, Balmora
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

It is a time of civil war...and SPOILERS.

SPOILERS for the rightful Queen of Alderaan!

No, despite the silly outfit, you don't end up being the Queen of Alderaan.  The dress does look pretty royal, though.  Anyway, Alderaan is all about the Alderaanian Civil War.  Obviously, as a Trooper, I'm also there to hunt down the traitor Gearbox, but that's actually pretty easy.  Three missions, none of them very hard, and bam, one blown to hell traitor.  However, since Garza also ordered me to help the Republic's mission to Alderaan, I spent a hell of a lot more time saving House Organa, putting a beatdown on their rival houses, and, eventually, deposing the usurper and restoring the Alderaanian throne.  

After all that, I got word from base where to finally find Tavus, stormed his Star Destroyer, and captured him.  Oddly enough, there was no Light Side/Dark Side to whether or not to execute him, so I kept him alive for interrogation purposes.  After which, Garza gave me some time off!  I can start the next chapter by holo-calling the boss, but until then, I can do what I want.  And since Kelynn Vashe (having just earned her Legacy title) is now level 35 and ready for the next two guild runs as is, I'm just going to let her relax on Carrick Station.  Maybe I'll play Tasia or Leanra for awhile instead.  

WEP '21, Day 42 - Old Republic Log XVIII

Yes, this one is late.  I wasn't feeling very good last night, and indeed don't feel that hot now, so I missed an update.  Sucks, but that kind of thing happens sometimes.  I'm just going to have to double post today to make up for it.


In the last few days I've blown through Tatooine and moved on to Alderaan.  I'll do a spoiler section for Tatooine at the end of the post, as usual.

As far as gameplay goes, I've gotten a couple of new powers.  I picked up "Storm" which is similar to the Jedi Knight's or Sith Warrior's charge ability.  When I use it, I jump across the field and hit the target for modest damage.  For all that it doesn't do much damage it's still situationally more useful than the Harpoon, which does no damage at all.

I've also got another close range area attack, and an attack that forces enemies to attack me for six seconds.  Finally. I got Adrenaline Rush, which is a Heal Over Time self-heal.  The pisser to it is that I only got Rush at level 32, but I've had access to Skills that boost it for ages.  Which, since they were boosting a power I didn't have, I ignored....but now dearly wish I had, because Adrenaline Rush is awesome.  That strikes me as pretty piss poor design, though.  You shouldn't get access to power buffing Skills until the earliest level that you could possibly get the power it buffs.  That seems like Game Design 101, ya know?

With at least two of us, myself and Matt, at level 32, we should be good to go for the Taral V Flashpoint on Monday as long as Luke and Morgan make it to at least level 30 so they can get into it in the first place.  I'll probably do a log about our next adventure then.

Oh, and I finally got enough orange gear to get Kelyenn color coordinated all in yellow and white.  It's a small thing, but it makes me happier to look at her like that.  Now, if I could only accomplish the same thing for Kelynn's companion...

Kelynn, Level 32 Vanguard, Alderaan
Tasia, Level 21 Sith Sorceress, Balmora
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

Twin suns and SPOILERS below.

Sorry about the mess...of SPOILERS!

On Tatooine, you're hunting down Fuse, the traitorous Havoc Squad demolitions expert.  He actually contacts you pretty early on to tell you that he's reconsidered his defection, but that the Imperials were holding him a prisoner and forcing him to design bombs that the Imperials are getting some Geonosians to test in a terror campaign  in Anchorhead.  

Speaking of which, Anchorhead annoyed me.  I mean, yes, it was mentioned in Star Wars, but it was spoken of as a place that was too small to have its own spaceport, since Luke was planning to drop Ben off there where he could get transport to Mos Eisley, where he could get a ship to take him to Alderaan.

So why does Anchorhead have a spaceport the same size and configuration as the one on Coruscant?

I mean, yes, three thousand years and all between game and movie, so the spaceport could have closed down or been blown up or whatever.  It's a long time.  But it strikes me that if you're not going to use a place the way people who know the movies would expect it to be, why use it at all?  Have us land in Mos Espa, or some new Mos Whatever that you've just made up and have us visit small town Anchorhead as a quest hub or something.  And don't get me started on every planet, both Imperial and Republic, having the exact same spaceport layout, just with different colors.  That's just lazy.

But back to the story.  You zip around Tatooine and wipe out the space bugs, find clues to Fuse's location, and eventually track him and the Imperials down.  Where, as one might expect, you get a choice.  The base has been set to self destruct.  You can either race to the control room to shut down the self-destruct and open Fuse's cell, or you can hunt down the Imperial Commander before he gets away with Fuse's bomb specs.  That one was an easy call for me.  I put a blaster bolt between the eyes of the Commander and let Fuse get his ass blown up.  

It was a fitting end for a bomb making traitor, don't you agree?

WEP '12, Day 39 - Game Calendar, February 2012

It occurs to me that I haven't done one of my Game Calendar posts in over a year.  I was still only on LiveJournal back then!  What I do here is cover the games I've played recently, usually ones that were on the previous calendar, then look ahead to games I'd like to play.  Traditionally, I do one of these every six months or so.

The thing is, I never did get around to playing most of the games on last year's list.  DC Online, Dragon Age 2,  Marvel vs Capcom 2, and X-Men Destiny all got mixed to bad reviews either online or from friends, so I skipped them.  Arkham City got great reviews but I'd never finished Arkham Asylum so I never got around to City.

So here are the games I did play:




October 7, 2011 - Panzer Corps

Panzer Corps is, for all intents and purposes, a remake of the old Panzer General series. In fact, the basic campaign in Panzer Corps mimics that of the original Panzer General, almost mission by mission.  You go to Poland, then Norway, then France, then do Sea Lion, then invade Russia, and so on.  It's pretty decent.  What makes it more interesting, though, is that they've been doing year-by-year expansion packs.  So rather than do the whole war in one twenty six scenario campaign, you now have the chance to get the Panzer Corps: Grand Campaign expansions.  Grand Campaign 39 lets you do 1939 as fourteen scenarios from Poland to Norway, then Grand Campaign 40 gives you France in fourteen scenarios, then Grand Campaign 41 sends you to the Balkans, Greece, and Russia, and so on.  They've only released as far as Grand Campaign 43 East, but the plan is to go all the way to 1945 and the end of the war with some 70+ scenarios in all.  I haven't gotten any of the Grand Campaigns yet, but once they're all out, I think I might invest in some serious World War II.


October 28, 2011 - Sword of the Stars II

This was another Elemental scale disappointment.  Fortunately, I'd learned my lesson from Elemental and didn't pre-order the damn thing, because Sword of the Stars II came out buggy as all hell and unplayable.  Even after I let them patch it for months and managed to buy the thing on sale, the game still disappointed.  Granted some of that may be due to the problems I've been having with my machine, but even so, this was a game by a smaller publisher that I trusted because of their earlier strategy game work, and I was severely let down.


December 20, 2011 - Star Wars: The Old Republic

Well, yeah, obviously I'm playing this.  I've got some seventeen Log posts about it.  Here's the first one.   I do have to snicker at my own estimate in the last Game Calender that I thought it could be out by September.  Not so much.  Of course, I was actually playing it through beta by October and had the game a week early because I pre-ordered it.  And I'm enjoying it.  Especially our weekly guild runs where, despite a certain number of growing pains, I think our group is gelling nicely.

---

March 6, 2012 - Mass Effect 3

And so we move into the future.  I'd expected to have played ME3 by now, but it got pushed back to March so it wouldn't compete with The Old Republic's launch in December.  I'm going to play it, of course. But I do have some hardware concerns.  My XBox 360 is well out of warranty and is starting to show signs that the inevitable "Red Ring of Death" that plagued the early model 360s may be about to claim my own early model 360.   Thing is, I've only played the Mass Effect games on the 360, so all my save games are on the 360's hard drive.  And since they track your progress through the games into the finale with your old saves, losing them means losing all my work over hundreds of hours.  And that sucks.


April, 2012 - The Secret World

This is a modern era MMO where magic is real and you're a member of one of three conspiracies that knows that, uses magic, and wars against magical threats and the other two factions.  I'm not up for another $15 a month subscription game, but if it's free to play, I might give this a spin.  I know that Paul, a retired member of our Old Republic guild is looking forward to this one.


2012 (?) - Guild Wars 2

My cousin in Vegas was big on the original Guild Wars.  Presuming they keep the same "pay for the game up front, play it forever free....but also pay for the expansions" business model, I'll probably give this a gander.  The (theoretical) impact that you can have on your game world is pretty appealing even if it is, in the end, just another medieval fantasy MMO.


And that's about it.  I never finished Diablo II, so Diablo III doesn't excite me.  Most everything else, like BioShock Infinite or Borderlands 2, is in the "definite maybe" category.If the reviews are good, I'll consider it.

WEP '12, Day 38 - Old Republic Log XVII

Last night we plowed through the Cademimu Flashpoint.  Though structurally similar to most every other Flashpoint in that you blast your way through groups of baddies interrupted by boss fights, Cademimu is set in a Republic city, so at least the scenery was different.  As far as the actual content goes, there were two boss gimmick fights, the first and the last, with a single stand up fight in the middle.  As is to be expected, we wiped a few times each on the gimmicks before figuring out what to do, while the straight-up fight was easy.

In particular, the last one had some comedy moments as we discovered a disconnect between what Matt and I expect to be the logical way to sequence numbers and the way Morgan does.  I'm not sure if it was a USA vs Canada thing or a Chicago vs Halifax thing, but to our eyes, when assigning quadrant numbers the way that seems most natural looks like this:

1   2

3   4

That, however, is not what Morgan heard.  He heard:

1   2

4   3

This was important because we were in a launch bay and fighting an enemy general.  Every once in a while he'd activate one or more of the rockets, completely filling some of the quadrants with flame and killing anyone there.  Since Morgan was our best spotter, he'd call it out...and then some of us would burn to death, because our four and his were opposite each other.  In retrospect, it was pretty funny.  Eventually, we did all got on the same page and put the general's ass in the ground, but there were some rough moments there before the end.

I didn't get any loot worth mentioning, it was all going to Morgan's Knight for whatever reason, but I did go from just barely level 28 to around halfway to 29.  Which is good, because I need to be at least 30 by next Monday if we're going to do Taral V, the level 32 Flashpoint that's next in line.  Even better, we're hitting a string of three Republic-only Flashpoints that are levels 32, 33, and 35, so we won't need to bust our humps to level up quite so much from week to week, maybe giving me time to run Tasia or Leanra or something.  Or to get Morgan's Trooper up to speed if he still wants to go that way.  Also, if The Esseles was any indication, the Republic-only Flashpoints should have much more in the way of conversations, which means more Social Points.  And, frankly, better storytelling, as every Flashpoint since Esseles has been a pretty straightforward dungeon crawl with no story to speak of.

In solo play, I've got my bad attitude Trooper onto Tatooine.  I'll talk about the plot once I get offworld, but for now it's reasonable.  And hey, I got a new helmet out of it!

Now all I need to do is find a breastplate that has the right color scheme, and I'll be all set.  While this portrait doesn't look too bad, the fact that my pants are also yellow while my boots are green kind of makes it look pretty silly overall.

Ah well, it's back to the desert for me!

Kelynn, Level 28 Vanguard, Tatooine
Tasia, Level 21 Sith Sorceress, Balmora
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 31 - Old Republic Log XVI

Another guild run, another Log entry.

Last night, we did the Mandalorian Raiders Flashpoint.  It was a level 25 Flashpoint, and since I hadn't played since the last guild run the week before, I was only level 23, as was Morgan's Knight.  On the other hand, Matt's Trooper was 25 and Luke's Smuggler had made it to 27.  So we were a smidge underleveled for the Flashpoint, but managed to beat it nevertheless.

Granted, as an underleveled Tank, I died in every single boss battle except the final boss.  The first boss fight was a single bad-ass Mandalorian and his pet hounds.  I lasted until the boss himself was nearly down before I got dropped in that one.

The second boss fight was our bane, though.  That one consisted of an opposition Sith team of a Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Bounty Hunter, and Imperial Agent.  We wiped three times before we finally managed to win on the fourth attempt.  In the end, the important part was figuring out the right order to kill them in.  The one that finally worked for us was Agent, Warrior, Inquisitor, Hunter, though your mileage may vary.

By comparison, the final boss fight was a cakewalk.  That one consisted of a single nasty Mandalorian who kept retreating to places where he was covered by sentry turrets.  We pretty much just chased him around, killed his turrets, and then killed him dead when he stood and fought rather than keep retreating.  And I didn't even die!

The lesson here is that I need to keep myself leveled up properly.  The next Flashpoint is a level 29, so I'll need to be at least 27 to even get in, and preferably 29.  Luckily I made it to 24 at the end of Mandalorian Raiders, and I've quested to 25 since then.  It's too soon to discuss the Nar Shaadda, but I'll answer the question I asked back in Log XIII.  Find out in the Spoiler section.

Kelynn, Level 25 Vanguard, Nar Shaadda
Tasia, Level 21 Sith Sorceress, Imperial Fleet
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Corusucant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

SPOILERS follow.

Beware, for the story is SPOILED!

Right.  As you may or may not recall, I wondered what impact, if any, making the Dark Side choice had over the Light Side one at the end of the Coruscant missions for the Trooper.  At that time, I had gone in to rescue a Republic Senator who had been captured by one of the traitors I was hunting, Wraith.  I found the Senator, but he was rigged with explosives.  If I freed him, it would alert Wraith to my presence.  So I left him there, found Wraith and killed her, but she blew up the Senator before I could put her down.  My question was whether or not making that decision would impact the story.  I suspected that it would not, or that if it did that it would be a minor change where rather than facing Wraith solo as I did, she'd have guards or something.  Unfortunately, I'd have to level up a new Trooper to find out for myself, so I'd resigned myself to never knowing.

Except that Morgan has a Light Side Trooper and rescued the Senator....only to discover that doing so means that Wraith escapes and you never get to fight her at all!

That was pretty damn impressive to me.  They actually made realistic consequences to decisions we both made.  Morgan got to be the hero and save the Senator, but I got to kill the traitor I was looking for.  Just knowing that was possible has increased my appreciation for the game and made me want to get ahead in the Trooper storyline just to see how things play out in the end

Good job, game!

WEP '12, Day 29 - Sinning with a Solar Empire

It's the weekend, so my schedule is usually disrupted, so I tend to prefer to do something that takes up less brain space.  Therefore, I'm going to briefly discuss the game I'm playing right now, Sins of a Solar Empire.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a real time space 4X* game that moves slow enough to let you make real decisions but quick enough that you don't die of old age waiting for for fights to play out.  In that respect, I think it actually works better than the Sword of the Stars games that, while I enjoy the greater level of detail that the Sword games give me, the faster and flashier combat of Sins works for me.

There are significant compromises, though.  For one thing, you can't design your own ships.  All you can do is pick from the ship lists and put them out into the galaxy.  Secondly, research, while important, doesn't feel very revolutionary.  Most of the military upgrades are handy but not game changing.  For instance a 10% increase in laser damage is nice, but harder to feel the impact of rather than a brand new weapon or new class of ship that one might get in more traditional space 4X'ers.

Likewise, there's no ground combat.  You nuke enemy colones from orbit, then re-colonize the ruins and build the place up from scratch.  Who ever gets a colony ship to the recently nuked site first gets the planet, and after a few minutes the place will be easily rebuilt and as good as new.

Sounds like I don't like it much, right?  Wrong.  I do enjoy Sins of a Solar Empire when I'm not in the mood for something deep.  There's something satisfying about being able to build battleships and battlecruisers and carriers, naming them, surrounding them with a swarm of escort ships, then launching them into war.

So it's a fun game that I've mastered, and while I'm enjoying my victory, I'm pretty sure I won't play it again anytime soon.  Sins of a Solar Empire is amusing, but shallow.  I've got the game down and there isn't much else for me to do in the game right now.  The expansions, both of which I own, have added new wrinkles, but I've mastered those too.  All that's left is to play a game once in a while, and wait for the next expansion.

Which is fine.  Not every game ought to be Civilization IV or War in the East.  There's room for light strategy in my life, and Sins of a Solar Empire fills that market.

* = 4X games are called that because the general pattern to the game is eXploration, eXpansion, eXploitation, and eXtermination.  That is, you start off with limited territory and little idea of what's around you so you send units out to explore.  Once you have at least a partial lay of the land you expand out to grab more territory.  Then you build up your ability to exploit the resources of your new territory.  Finally, you use those resources to manufacture what you need to exterminate your opponents.

WEP '12, Day 26 - Old Republic Log XV

Note: I recently realized that my longer titles made the sidebar navigation less useful, so at the risk of getting confused with "Wired Equivalent Privacy", I've gone back and shortened "Write Everyday Project" to "WEP".


It seems as if my "Memoirs of a Gamer" feature is running long, so let me step back for a moment to keep the Old Republic Log updated.

I haven't really played all that much, but I've nevertheless gotten Kelynn up to level 23.  That was mostly through going back to finish off old Heroics and the bounty of pulling off the Athiss Flashpoint with the Midnight Runners last Monday.  Still, it's progress, however desultory.

I also completed Taris which was....eh.  I mean, it was fun to revisit an important locale from The Old Republic and all, but the actual Trooper story there felt kind of blah.  I'll cover my feelings about that in detail in the Spoiler section after the portrait.

Speaking of which, I've discovered a flaw in my methodology.  You see, I try to put up a new portrait every Log, and to do that I need either new headgear or a new chest piece.  Except that with Orange customizable gear, it's pretty easy to just keep your old gear and never need a new helmet or chest piece!  Fortunately, I did fin a new chest piece during Athiss that was worth wearing, so that's reflected in Kelynn's new portrait.

Kelynn, Level 23 Vanguard, Republic Fleet
Tasia, Level 21 Sith Sorceress, Balmorra
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

The SPOILERS are buried deep.

Some things, like SPOILERS, are best left forgotten.

The problem with Taris, and indeed with Balmora on the Sith side, is that your Class quest takes a backseat to what's going on planetside.  Okay, sure, dealing the Rakghouls is important and all, I just wish that my personal story meshed better.  I really felt like I was doing everything else except my assigned mission most of the time, in a way that wasn't true on Ord Mantell or Coruscant.

It also didn't help that the renegade Havoc troopers that you're chasing go from interesting characters to villainous caricatures when you meet them the second time.  Needles, the Havoc medic you run down on Taris, was a friendly and efficent guy when you worked with him on Ord Mantell.  By the time he reaches Taris, though, he's become Space Doctor Mengele, with a plan to infect whole planets with the Rakghoul virus.  This, it seems to me, is a gross over-reaction to the feelings of abandonment he felt from Havoc being left to die by the Republic Military.  It really undercuts the idea that maybe the deserters had a point when their response is "wipe out civilization throughout the galaxy."

So yeah, I was disappointed by the story lines on Taris, even if I did enjoy walking through the remains of the Endar Spire, the ship that you start on in Old Republic.  That was cool, but the rest of it?  Kind of blah. Here's hoping that things pick up once I hit Nar Shadda.

WEP '12, Day 17 - Old Republic Log XIV

And so we return to The Old Republic.  Things have progressed, albeit slowly.  Tasia is up to level 21 now, but she's stalled out on her Class Quest because the final monster on Balmorra is a pain in the ass for a healer build like the one Tasia's running.  I'm hoping to get some guild help from Matt or Luke to get the job done in the next couple of days.

Kelynn is keeping pace at 21 as well, having finally finished off Hammer Station last night with the rest of the guild.  It took us three tries to take out the end boss, but we got it done.  We got it done so quickly, in fact, that we also had time to blitz through the Fall of the Locust Heroic 4.  That one wiped us four times, but since you can use Medical Probes in Heroics, we were able to recover faster.  Considering that they've got dialogue and everything, the Heroics, especially the four player ones, really are mini dungeons, which is nice.


Finally, in a fit of either boredom or curiosity, I started a fourth character.  Leanra is a Chiss Imperial Agent.  She's only level 3, since I haven't put more than a couple of hours into her development, but she exists, giving me access to 3/4 of the characters, mechanically anyway.  Given how poorly my machine handles melee, I'm unlikely to try a Jedi Knight or Sith Warrior anytime soon.

Speaking of the mechanics, I think I enjoy the Trooper/Bounty Hunter mechanics best of all.  With a ranged focus and lots of good area of effect attacks, the Trooper gets me the most bang for my buck.  It's unfortunate that the Tank build of Vanguard, which is what Kelynn is, requires me to get so close to be effective.  Still, that does leave me the option of going with a full on shooty Bounty Hunter one of these days, and that could be fun.

Since both Tasia and Kelynn are rocking orange gear that you can upgrade as you go, neither of them have changed in any significant way.  So here's Leanra instead.

Tasia, Level 21 Sith Sorceress, Balmorra
Kelynn, Level 21 Vanguard, Taris
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta

WEP '12, Day 11 - Old Republic Log XIII

Bah.  I was ready to pull another last minute posting tonight at 11:30 when the internet (and phone and cable, yay bundles!) went down for two hours.  Nevertheless, we press on despite all that WOW (the cable company, not the game) tries to do to slow us down.

Things have been busy, if low key, on the Old Republic front lately.  I've gotten Tasia to level 20, Kelynn to 19.  I also switched the Guildmaster status from Alia to Kelynn.   Our third guild attempt at Hammer Station ended in the same ignominious failure that the first two tries did, though we consoled ourselves by slaughtering every living thing in a Heroic 4 Mission on Coruscant.

Matt and I did another Heroic 4 by ourselves on Balmorra with our Sith.  My companion can actually tank pretty well now, so I provide the healing and tanking both, while his characters kill everything.  I realized that while my heals are all time based, the protective force field I can put on my allies is an instant cast, so whenever I need to emergency heal someone, I do the Static Shield, then my faster but smaller heal, then finally the slower bigger one.  Works pretty well.

Kelynn's looking more and more troopery all the time now.  The helmet helps, even though her eyepatch sticks through the helmet lens, which is pretty awful.  I dropped enough credits to get a decent looking helmet on Kelynn's companion, but since he can't wear the one Kel's got on and he can wear the one I bought, I left it on him.

I did finish Coruscant, so I'll do a brief story spoiler section after the portrait.

Tasia, Level 20 Sith Sorceress, Balmorra
Kelynn, Level 19 Vanguard, Taris
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant

Coruscant SPOILERS follow.

Are you cleared for SPOILERS?

Right.  So following the betrayal of the rest of Havoc Squad, your first task is to cut off the supplies they're getting from the criminal underworld on Coruscant.  Surprise, surprise, that means blasting your way through the same three criminal organizations that every other Republic class is.  There's this bit where you're running down the guy who mentored Havoc Squad in the first place, and you discover that the last criminal gang has been co-opted by the Imperials, but other than that, it's pretty straight forward.

I did get an interesting choice at the very end, though.  I'd been infiltrating a small enemy space station and I came upon the captured Republic Senator who was nominally my mission objective.  He was strapped to a chair that was rigged with explosives.  I could rescue him, but doing so would set off an alarm and maybe allow Wraith, one of the traitors, to escape.  So I went Dark Side and left him in the bomb chair and went off to confront Wraith.  She immediately blows the chair and kills the guy, saying:

"Mission failed, Lieutenant."

To which I reply:

"You're the mission, Wraith."

We fight, and she dies.  I have to cover my ass with the general I'm taking orders from and I took a huge -180 affection hit from my law & order companion, but I got the job done.

The question I have now...and as it's a class quest, I'd have to get a new Trooper from level 1 to 19 to find out in play myself...is whether or not anything different happens if you free the Senator.  Are there guards?  Does she ambush you?  Or did I let Wraith blow a Senator to meat chunks for no reason than my own paranoia?  (And desire for Dark Side Points.)

It's enough to make one wonder.

WEP '12, Day 3 - Old Republic Log XII

Our healer called in sick last night and our attempt to do Hammer Station failed pretty early on without one.  So, since one player hadn't done The Esseles, and I hadn't done it with Kelynn, we did that instead.  Since 2/3 of the players were gong Dark Side, the story changed a little as we took the Dark Side shortcut by sacrificing some crewmen, but the Light Side prevailed in the final choice, which was a disappointment, since I'd like to see how the story changed.  We did have a slight Ninja problem which ended up with a Smuggler wearing Jedi robes, but hopefully we can work that out better next time.

Once we'd finished The Esseles, our Jedi logged out, so the Smuggler and I teamed up to do a couple of Heroic 2+ quests.  That went reasonably well, and I ended the night at level 16 with better gear than I'd started with, so that was good.  Hopefully we can get the whole team together next week and beat Hammer Station.

So here's how Kelynn started the night:

And here's how she looked at the end:

I kind of prefer the former, which feels more Trooper to me, then the latter, even if the backpack is reminiscent of the Rebel Troopers from Hoth.  But the second one has better stats, so that's what I'm looking like for the foreseeable future.

Tasia, Level 18 Sith Sorceress, Imperial Fleet

Kelynn, Level 16 Vanguard, Coruscant

Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Republic Fleet

Old Republic Log XI

I got Kelynn up to level 11 last night.  Originally I was going to say that since her new armor was identical to her old armor, I was just going to rotate her portrait so you could see her cyberware a little better.  But then I remembered that I had some Ord Mantell commendations to spend, and when I had, I ended up with Kelynn's shiny new suit.  Still, I had both pictures, so here they both are.

First, Kelynn's old armor and a better look at her implants, such as they are:

I'll give you Kelynn's new pic before the spoiler section.

Matt and I also got some Sith time in over Ventrillo.  We decided to give Hammer Station a try to see how it goes from the Imperial side before we do it Republic style on Monday.  Turns out that we couldn't get the big boss down with just the two of us and our companions.  Hopefully, we'll have better luck with the Midnight Runners, but I have my concerns.  After all, Tasia and Mal'drak are level 18 and 19 respectively, and we never did better than getting him down to half.  I'm hoping that people have time to level up before we hit Hammer Station, because I'm not sure four level 13 characters can get the job done.

For the rest of this entry, I'm going to talk about the Republic Trooper storyline, so I'll catch you on the other side for the spoilers.

Tasia, Level 18 Sith Sorceress, Imperial Fleet

Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Republic Fleet

Kelynn, Level 11 Vanguard, Ord Mantell

The following section is classified as SPOILERS.

If you are not cleared for SPOILERS stop reading now.

This was, of course, the second time I've been through this story.  The first time was in the beta, and really, not all that much changed, despite my going with pretty much all Dark Side choices.  The tale is that of a stolen Republic nuke.  They don't call it a nuke, but if it can blow up the whole island and is highly radioactive, it's a nuke.  For all that I said during the beta that it was a war story, on reflection after the second time through, it's sort of a military/spy hybrid.

That's because your main mission is to find the bomb.  And to do that, you do spy things.  You try to get information from a Republic agent and you coerce information out of Separatist sympathizers. You infiltrate enemy bases.  It's all James Bond type of spying where it always leads to a big firefight.  Except you're in plasteel armor and carrying an assault rifle rather than a tuxedo and Walther PPK.   

The side quests, on the other hand, are all out of the war story handbook.  There's quests involving a thief who took medical supplies to help the refugees.  There's the one with the war correspondent.  Several about purely military objectives like taking out a Separatist communications network or dealing with enemy missile launchers.

That dichotomy makes it less interesting than either of the Sith starting stories.  Too often I felt like I was being pulled away from something really important.  I mean, sure, there were side quests on Korriban.  But in those cases it made sense.  You're a dipshit little acolyte.  When a big name Inquisitor pulls you a side with a job, you do it or eat lightning!  It's all a matter of staying alive by serving everyone above you, while plotting your revenge, of course.

For the Trooper, though, it felt kind of off.  I'm searching for a fucking nuke in the hands of terrorists who might use it to kill thousands if not millions of people.  Do I really have time to fuck around looking for this lady's necklace, or that family's lost son?  And yet, if I don't do it, I won't have enough experience points or gear to actually storm the enemy base at the end!  It felt more "gamey" to me, and took me out of the story in a way that the Sith storylines did not.  

So now I've got a Vanguard on my way to the Republic Space Station and then to Coruscant as I try to level up in advance of our Guild game on Monday.  Let's see how far I can get.

Old Republic Log X

Matt and I ran our Sith team last night.  We ended up doing the "Friends of Old" Group 4 quest on Dromund Kaas.  That was almost a Flashpoint, except without the evolving storyline and dialogue choices.  Actually, it felt like a short WoW Dungeon, with groups of trash mobs, progressing objectives that go linearly, and then a sub-boss fight and a concluding boss fight.

If it was less engaging than a true Flashpoint, it was still fun.  I've got my Sith Sorceress spec'd Healer, so I spent most of the time cycling between my Static Shield defense power and Dark Infusion heal.  It actually worked pretty well, though I discovered that lacking any kind of group heal, at least at this level, it was a lot easier to deal with one big bad enemy than a group of competent ones.  Thus the Sith Lord's apprentices wiped us once, but the Lord herself went down easy.

Overall, not a bad way to spend a few hours.

Tasia leveled up to 17, and got a new outfit out of the deal, as seen below.  I also managed to clean up all but one of my outstanding Group 2+ quests solo, and I'll get the last one when I log in next.  That will allow Tasia to move on to Balmora with a clear conscience.

Well, as clear as a Sith's conscience ever gets, that is.

Tasia, Level 17 Sith Sorceress, Dromund Kaas

Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant

Kelynn, Level 7 Trooper, Ord Mantell