An Expansion Tease & A Peculiar Controversy

On Wednesday it was time for the dev stream preparing us for the launch of 7.8! And it was... okay? To be honest, there were less "news" than I'd hoped for, though to some degree that was to be expected considering we already knew a fair bit about the patch's major features. Still, I was a bit surprised that they spent a full fifteen minutes recapping the Legacy of the Sith story so far - I have no doubt that's useful to some, but probably not to that many among your hardcore audience that come to watch you live on Twitch. Whenever I glanced at chat people were complaining that they were bored and wanted to move on, and I had to remind myself to not pay too much attention to chat because it always contains a lot of negativity, sadly.

Also, what they told us about Galactic Threads was pretty much the exact same stuff they told us about it a year ago when it was originally meant to launch. Really, the most exciting bit of genuinely new news to me was a note that they'd be updating the large ceiling hooks in strongholds to work like large floor hooks, meaning they'll also contain a three by three grid of small hooks. This is great because the devs gave us a bunch of new small ceiling decorations this season which look really nice but were hard to place in an effective way due to the lack of small ceiling hooks available in almost every single stronghold. Either way, 7.8 still looks exciting to me and I'm very much looking forward to it.

One slightly sad piece of news for German and French players was that the voice work for 7.8 still isn't ready in their languages, so they'll only be able to play the new story in English for now. I wonder why Broadsword couldn't get that done while the English voice actors were on strike - the German and French ones weren't, as far as I'm aware! Either way, I guess it's up to these players to choose whether they want to play through the new story in English or wait even longer. 

(Side note: Sometimes I wonder whether a future project for me, once I hit legacy level 50 on all servers, could be something like playing through the class stories in German. I bet hearing all those player characters and familiar NPCs talk in completely different voices would be wild. But I'm getting sidetracked...)

Anyway, I'm not going to go into much more detail about things like new Cartel Market additions and so on. As usual you can find full, detailed breakdowns elsewhere:

• Official SWTOR website
• Swtorista
• Today in TOR
• Vulkk

I just want to talk about two more things that came out of this livestream. First off, Papa Keith appeared at the end of the stream, and as he so often does, casually dropped a hint about something yet to come that would hype players up. Specifically he said that in his producer's letter for the game's anniversary, he'll be giving us a roadmap for what's coming in the new year, and that they'll be "wrapping up Legacy of the Sith". That's kind of like... telling us that they are working on an 8.0 expansion without telling us that they're working on an 8.0 expansion.

EEEEEEEEEE!

I'm trying not to get too excited just yet because it hasn't been stated explicitly at this point, but it's hard not to be hopeful. I still stand by everything I wrote about the prospect of a new expansion a little over a year ago, but man, would I ever love for a good expac launch to make the game feel exciting and invigorated again. I'm looking forward to learning more.

Now, for something completely different - at the end of the stream, they showed off the new loading screen/key art for patch 7.8:

My reaction to that was something along the lines of "Nice. Lana and Shae's faces look a bit weird though. Oh well." And then I moved on, because a character looking slightly off on the art of a SWTOR loading screen is a pretty common thing. I remember when Legacy of the Sith's key art was first revealed, one of my guildies commented that Lana looked like Adam Driver in a wig, which made me go "oof" but I could also see what he meant!

When I checked social media for chatter about Wednesday's dev stream, I was surprised to see a few comments that accused the new key art of being AI generated. Warning: I'm going to go into way more detail than this probably deserves, but it's a subject that interests me and I kind of fell down a rabbit hole, so you've been warned.

As a certified AI hater my reaction was of course to be shocked and want to find out more. From what I've seen of the SWTOR devs they've always struck me as very pro human creativity and anti AI art, but who knows what's going on behind closed doors when there's money to be saved? I tried to look for more information on where this whole idea came from, but couldn't find more than the same three people or so repeating that it was "obviously" AI, no explanation needed, which was of course not helpful.

Finally Tacogoats, a SWTOR player I follow on Bluesky, shared a link to a tumbler post of his in which he attempted to break down the evidence he saw for the art piece being artificially generated. And for all the details he circled... I did not find it convincing at all. The comments seemed to either be flat out wrong (no, Anri is not missing her index finger; it's right there), issues that I couldn't make out at all, or even if I could kind of see what it was that was bothering him, I still didn't see how these things were in any way evidence of AI involvement. So what if the one knuckle on Malgus' hand has a slightly odd edge? Cause human artists never create the slightest imperfections when drawing hands? I was expecting some kind of "gotcha" like a line from something in the foreground merging into a different line in the background, like you can often get with AI art since it doesn't actually have any concept of three dimensionality. However, there was nothing of the sort.

In fact, the more I looked, the more I became convinced that this couldn't be AI. AI image generators are very good at conjuring up things for which they have lots of references. They can easily create a photorealistic image of a non-existing human because their training data contains millions of photos of humans! What they are not good at is creating very specific details for which they don't have (enough) references. And let's be real, random SWTOR NPCs are not something for which any AI is going to have lots to work with.

I remember when I encountered the very first image generator I'd ever seen - a few years ago now - I tried to get it to generate images of Darth Malgus and Satele Shan and it failed utterly. I think Malgus was a black blur with angry eyes so it clearly had some vague reference for him, but Satele pretty much just resulted in random noise. Obviously things have progressed somewhat since then, but it's not like the internet suddenly got flooded with millions of screenshots or art of all these SWTOR characters that wasn't there before.

I actually got curious enough to dust off my OpenAI login and ask ChatGPT to generate me a "painterly" image of Lana Beniko (since she's one of the characters on the key art). I'll be honest, the result was actually better than I expected. It clearly had enough material to deduce that Lana's a white, slightly angry-looking woman with mid-length blonde hair and a side parting. I also asked it to generate an action shot in which she'd have her lightsaber out and again - it wasn't totally terrible in my opinion.

But two things stood out to me: that it was actually very good at giving her an attractive face (even if it doesn't look exactly like Lana does in game) - which is something to think about when the first thing anyone mentioned being slightly "off" about the key art were the faces - and the fact that the AI had absolutely no clue what sort of armour she wears, dressing her in a generic black combat suit with matching pauldrons and a cloak.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that ChatGPT might not be the best image generator and that my prompting was extremely low effort - I'm sure someone could prod an AI into producing something better, but anywhere close to the sort of detail we actually see in the key art? That seems incredibly unlikely to me, not with where we're at right now. And all that's just talking about a single character, never mind five of them in a balanced composition. In a way, going down this rabbit hole has actually increased my appreciation for this new loading screen.

I can't blame people for being paranoid and suspicious. Corporations trying to cut costs by replacing real artists' jobs with an inferior AI-generated product is a real thing. But so is people being overly paranoid and thinking that everything is AI when it actually isn't. As a creative person myself (even if my hobby is writing, not drawing or painting), someone accusing my stuff of sounding/looking like AI would actually be more hurtful to me than just saying that they think it's terrible. We're not doing the art community a favour by immediately accusing things of being "AI slop" as soon as we don't like something.

Bonus AI laugh: I also asked ChatGPT to generate me an image of Shae Vizla and that one was a lot less charming. It clearly had enough of a clue to give me a red-headed Mandalorian, but what the fuck is that armour? Why is the "blaster" I asked for in the prompt just a plain old 20th century gun? And why is there another random Mandalorian's helmet attached to her thigh?!

Character Modernisation Panic on the PTS

I mentioned in my post about the 7.6 livestream that the devs revealed that they're also working on updating NPCs and player characters with new textures, shaders and more. They emphasised that they were aware of how important it was that your character still felt like your character afterwards, and the examples they showed in their previews looked very good.

I didn't expect them to also push this update onto the PTS immediately afterwards, but they did... and I found out about it because there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about it. Well, actually, the first time I heard about it was when Intisar showed me a before and after screenshot of his main and commented that his Jedi suddenly looked old enough to be her own mother, which just made me laugh. However, as I heard more reports and saw a couple of honestly kind of appalling-looking screenshots, I got curious - something was clearly wrong here.

So I updated the PTS myself to have a look and... honestly, at first I didn't get what the fuss was about, as both my Republic and Imperial main (who are a body type four cyborg/human respectively) pretty much looked fine to me. But then I loaded up some alts and yeah, I could see that things looked rough. Doing my own before and after shots for my Chiss agent and Mirialan smuggler, they both appeared to have aged about twenty years each.

I figured that obviously couldn't be right, considering that it went completely against what had been said and shown on the livestream, so I was still more amused than worried. I posted some feedback on the PTS forums, but in what I thought was a kind of playful tone - you might want to review some settings on these, guys! I also took further heart from seeing posts like this one from someone who has some knowledge about 3D models and textures and showed that a lot of the issues people were seeing could indeed feasibly just be caused by one slider basically being set to the wrong number.

However, the SWTOR community loves a good freak-out and I still saw many posts that weren't just pointing out that something was wrong, but whose authors were seriously upset, threatening to unsubscribe forever over this, and so on and so forth. As someone who's 41 in real life, I was honestly a bit offended by some of the comments that claimed that the changes made their characters look 70 years old. Have you ever seen a 70-year-old in real life, kiddo?! I'll admit that some of the memes people came up with were amusing, but all in all I found the whole thing a bit tiring, considering that it seemed so obvious to me that it was simply a bug on the PTS, which exists specifically so people can find bugs before go-live.

Fortunately the latest PTS update has improved things and the worst of the panic seems to have subsided... though I'm still seeing some criticisms in the new PTS feedback thread, the most poignant of which to me was the one pointing out that the new faces look a lot worse on low graphics settings than the old faces, which I agree is definitely something that should be looked into.

I also had a kind of strange experience when checking out the new update myself, as I basically logged into the PTS, clicked through my characters on the character selection screen one by one and thought "yep, these all look great". However, after I took a few more screenshots for comparison purposes, I lined them up next to the "buggy" faces and they... actually didn't look all that different? As in, there are still some pretty noticeable differences compared to the old faces, and I can still see more wrinkles than I'd necessarily like to on my idealised video game heroines, but at the same time - it didn't bother me at all while in game, only when staring intensely at the close-up shots, which is not something I would usually do while playing.

Bugged PTS vs. updated PTS

Live vs. updated PTS

Bugged PTS vs. updated PTS

Live vs. updated PTS

My conclusion for now is that I'll be fine and will be happy with my characters getting updated, but I also feel like I have no clue how the majority of players will react to these changes. As mentioned, there are still plenty of complaints being raised in the feedback thread, some of which I can kind of see, but others just make me feel like Pam from The Office, going "They're the same picture" (meaning I honestly don't see what all the fuss is about).

And maybe that makes you think that my eyesight is lacking and obviously everyone will still hate this update, to which I'd respond: Will they though? Because I've also spoken to people who saw that very first, bugged update and genuinely thought it was fine too, going "sure, my character looks a bit older than before, but so what". My hunch is that most players will probably be fine, because even if you do notice differences between old and new that you don't like in the direct comparison shots, I reckon most players don't actually spend that much time staring intently at their character's nostrils in everyday play if you get what I mean. I don't think the differences will be as noticeable when you're actually playing the game normally and not glaring at your character like they're about to have their police mugshot taken.

All in all, I guess this goes to prove once again that player character updates in MMOs are a tricky thing. I remember when I briefly resubbed to World of Warcraft in late 2013 after having been away from the game for more than a year, the low-resolution old character models that I'd always liked before suddenly appalled me, as I'd gotten too used to SWTOR's much better-looking avatars. When WoW then updated its models in 2014, I logged in once just to check out my characters' new looks, and while I thought Blizzard did a decent job with the upgrades overall, I also noted at the time that many characters looked older and angrier than before, and ten years later I'm still not over what they did to female tauren. So this kind of thing is always a bit of a gamble, but remembering my own reaction to WoW's old character models in 2013, it's probably also a necessary one if the game is supposed to continue attracting new players.

If you have any doubts about this update yourself, I can only recommend downloading the PTS, copying over some of your characters, and giving feedback in the relevant forum thread. If you've already seen your characters' updated looks, how do you feel about them?

7.6 Dev Stream Reactions

After watching the big Warcraft Direct stream yesterday, it was quite a contrast to spend time on SWTOR's 7.6 dev stream tonight. Smaller studio, fewer viewers, but also a much more relaxed atmosphere and lots of laughs. I was immediately overcome with an urge to make a bunch of gifs of the interactions between Eric Musco and Papa Keith, intending to post them on Bluesky, but it couldn't cope with me uploading any images at the time (I later learned it wasn't just me), so I'll be inserting them into this blog post instead, even if that may seem a bit random!

As usual, if you want the full rundown of every little detail, I recommend watching the recording of the stream yourself or reading a detailed summary elsewhere - Kal already has one up here for example. Over here I'm more choosy with what I talk about and won't mention everything, but I'll add some commentary to make it more interesting. Let's get on with it!

Topical and time-sensitive things first: There's a new Twitch drop for the next 14 days, an Ilum poster deco with a purple border. Handily livestream viewers were able to earn it right away simply by watching the stream as it only requires one hour of watch time. There'll also be another Twitch drop, a purple Vulptilla mount, once 7.6 launches. We weren't given an exact date for that, but from what they did say on the stream it sounds like it will be early December.

Also, effective immediately, there's a big 50% off sale on dyes going on! The interesting thing related to this was that they mentioned that they're planning to make changes to how dyes work soon... I'm sure I'm not the only one whose mind immediately jumped to the notion of making them unlockable in Collections, something I've seen people request more than once. I don't think that will happen though - dye sales have got to be too much of a money-maker for that - but I'm still curious to hear what they've got in mind once the time comes.

We got some info about the 7.6 story, and I tend to not go into too much detail about story previews in these posts, but I did want to note that Imperials will finally get to see Major Anri again, almost three years after Manaan, and that the story is supposedly going to be structured a bit differently, consisting of four threads you can advance in any order, about Shae Vizla, Darth Malgus, the Hidden Chain and Darth Nul's holocron respectively. I'm curious to see how that'll pan out - it could mean more content, but I've got to admit that personally I'm a little worried that "you can do them in any order" means that each "thread" will contain a lot of exposition/cut-scene watching and fewer interesting choices - but we'll see.

Unfortunately after all that talk about how interesting the new story is going to be, we won't actually get to see it at 7.6's release, because while the patch itself will still land as planned, they had to delay the story update part of it because they "currently don't have all the elements [they] need to complete this story", which I've seen people interpret as having to do with the voice actors' strike, though I don't know whether that's just speculation or backed by anything that was said elsewhere.

There was some talk about dynamic encounters and the new lair boss, but I won't go into that here as I already covered those topics in my post about the PTS from last week. They just confirmed that dynamic encounters will only exist on Hoth and Tatooine at launch, with the possible exception of Hidden Chain invasions, which might also happen on other planets from the sounds of it.

The new lair boss is also going to drop crafting materials for new augments, something that people had already caught on to some time ago but that hadn't been officially announced. These new augments will be better than the current gold augments. I guess this will offer a sort of gear progression without further raising overall item rating, though it does make me wonder whether the next gear reset perhaps isn't as far away as I thought.

There was some talk about new Cartel Market items, which I usually don't go into here either, but there was one thing that piqued my interest: there'll be a new decoration bundle called the Remote Outpost Bundle, and it'll come with a small amount of story/gameplay attached from the sounds of it. I was immediately reminded of the encrypted datacubes from back in the day and how people were not happy with those, though I guess a big part of that was that they came from inside Cartel packs, while this will be a direct purchase. I'll make sure to get it when it comes out and will let you know whether it's worth the money or not.

In terms of gameplay, there'll be a new UI feature called comlink to interact with terminals and characters in a more organic way without having to always resort to KOTOR-style cut scenes. They emphasised that this isn't meant to replace cinematics and proper conversations but should simply serve as another option for interactions where appropriate. The example they showed was of someone using a terminal and being given a prompt to enter a password, where in the current system that would bring up the KOTOR-style black bars and mute dialogue options like "enter code" or "walk away". They explained that they could also see this working for characters "texting" you.

PvP Season 7 will still start with the launch of 7.6 and bring an end to 8-man premades, as they'll once again be limited to four people max, and the devs are also disabling the old level 75 set bonuses in PvP to reduce the power of twinks. Not what I personally consider PvP's biggest problems right now, but better than nothing. What did stand out to me was that one of the new season rewards is actually going to be a proper emote instead of the previous "text-only" one, which might actually be something to look forward to for me.

As the stream was getting close to wrapping up, Eric and Keith dropped a few more surprises on us at the end. First off, we'll get a new mount as a free subscriber reward that introduces something new: the ability to have your (humanoid) companion ride in a sidecar beside you and a non-combat pet in the luggage rack. The preview looked hilarious and made me laugh out loud. I'm not sure how much I'll use it but it'll be fun for a little while if nothing else. Plus I appreciate that they decided to make it a sub reward instead of a Cartel Market item. There'll also be two new mounts from dynamic encounter-related achievements that won't show your companion but will include your active mini pet.

Next they announced that they'll do a character name purge for the first time in a long time. If you're a subscriber, all your characters are safe, but if not, you'll want to log into any toons that haven't been logged into since January 1st of this year, else they will be flagged for a rename. I wonder if that'll give me a chance to claim Shintar without the funny i on Tulak Hord, the one server where I don't currently own the name... they also mentioned that they'll try to remember to do this a bit more often in the future to not have all these names taken up by inactive characters.

Finally, a big surprise at the very end: they're working on more art modernisation for planetary environments, but also for player characters. Musco immediately assured everyone that their number one priority was to not change the overall feel of the characters. The examples they showed looked really good, with just more detail on the facial textures and more gloss on the eyes. (When I tried to explain this to Mr Commando afterwards, he said that talking about shiny hair and eyes made me sound like I was trying to sell him a dog!)

All in all, a fun stream with lots of news and some interesting things to look forward to, though the story update being delayed with no clear ETA was a bit of a bummer. What was your favourite part of this stream?

7.5 Dev Stream Highlights

Yesterday it was time for another SWTOR dev stream, hurrah! As usual, this is not the place to find all the details about everything that was said, but rather a summary of what I thought were the most important points, with my own opinions sprinkled on top. If you're looking for something more comprehensive and less editorial, let me point you towards one of the sites below instead:

• Swtorista
• Today in TOR
• Vulkk

Now, on to my own thoughts...

7.5 Story "Desperate Defiance" on Hutta

We got a little more detail about the next story update coming with 7.5, without really getting into spoilers. As previously established, it will take place on Hutta where we'll be interacting with a number of new characters. My favourite of these was a Hutt called Yusinduu with a cool new look.

Again, without really going into spoilers, they said that Sa'har will follow up on what was said at the end of the 7.4 story, and apparently how we respond to her will have an impact on her development going forward - curious to see what that means.

My only slight disappointment was hearing that the new area on Hutta won't contain a new daily area or anything. It's not so much that I'm particularly dying to have a daily area in every patch, but it kind of sounds like there's literally nothing there other than whatever you do for the main storyline, which sounds kind of wasteful to me if true. We'll see I guess.

Graphical Updates for Hutta

They'll use the addition of the new area on Hutta as an opportunity to also give the planet as a whole a graphical update, which sounded good to me. I mentioned it in the past when they made similar changes on a smaller scale on Tython and Korriban.

The only thing that threw me for a bit of a loop was how utterly different the skybox looked in the footage with the updated graphics. Hutta's sky is currently dominated by yellow clouds that cause the whole planet to be basked in a yellow-ish hue, while the updated version seems to feature a uniform grey cloud cover that looked like it strongly changes the vibe. I don't know how I feel about that yet. If you like the yellow, go and take some screenshots while it lasts I guess!

Below you can see before and after shots of the sky over Jiguuna that I took in the live game and on the PTS. I'll admit the change didn't feel as drastic in game as it looks in the screenshots and the new version is definitely much crisper and more detailed.

I'm curious whether this update will also affect the Karagga's Palace operation, since it is also set on Hutta so might be sharing some assets (but I can't be bothered to check that out on the PTS).

Dantooine Spring Event 

We currently have Nar Shaddaa Night Life in summer (which will start on the 9th of July this year by the way), the Feast of Prosperity in autumn and Life Day in winter, so there was a gap in the calendar that the SWTOR team wanted to fill with this new event. It's going to be full of chill activities like growing crops, dancing around the Star Wars equivalent of a May pole, hunting for eggs (random Easter vibes?), looking after animals, baking and eating pies, and finally... fishing. Yes, after more than twelve years, SWTOR finally gets its own version of fishing!

I don't know, I can't claim to think that this was something that was desperately needed, but I've enjoyed it in other MMOs that have it as an activity, even when it worked in very different ways. The appropriately Star Wars twist on it is that you basically make a little probe droid do the work for you, the notion of which amuses me greatly.

Yes, I actually logged into the PTS to check this out.

I think this sounds like a lot of wholesome fun and I look forward to experiencing it in full once the event goes live.

Our Own Little Basilisk Companion

Another thing that will happen in 7.5 is that Lane Vizla finally manages to fix that little basilisk from Ruhnuk and it will become our companion - a proper one that fights and everything, not just a non-combat pet. It'll be called B3-S1 or "Bessie" for short. However, there'll be a twist, as we'll have to train the little bugger to truly make it ours, which will involve something called "ventures" and will require you to take Bessie out to do dailies over the course of a longer period of time. I have to admit my initial reaction to this were somewhat mixed feelings.

On the one hand: new companion that we actually have to work for and build a relationship with! Yes! I'm 100% on board with that concept, and we haven't really seen anything like this since the release of HK-51.

However, from the way it was described, I'm not sure why we need a new "feature" with a new UI just for this instead of it simply being a quest chain or tied to an achievement, because it doesn't sound that dramatically different from anything already in the game. In fact, it sounds a lot like yet another way of making us go back to old daily areas, which makes me somewhat less happy. Also, I'm waiting for clarification on whether there's going to be an option to just unlock Bessie for your alts via the legacy system after you've jumped through all the required hoops the first time.

PvP Season 6

This was a bit of a weird one. First off, they announced that they'll be changing the launch timing of PvP seasons and have them more regularly start alongside the big patches. I'm in favour of that in so far as it should avoid some of the weird overlap issues that have been occurring with Galactic Seasons sometimes, assuming that those will continue to go live on the x.1 patches between the major ones.

However, then the devs also said that they wanted to make PvP seasons longer to give people more time to complete them, which sounded fine enough to me, but then they also want to add extra levels and make each level require more points... someone on the forums immediately did the maths and it sounds like you will still need to play pretty much just as many matches each week as before, only for more weeks, which doesn't really sound like an improvement.

Also, they talked about adding warzone medpacks and adrenals as rewards for the extra levels, which made every PvPer go "what?" - you already get more of these through normal gameplay than you could possibly use (because of their internal cooldown, you literally earn them faster than you can click them), and every character that does PvP already has hundreds if not thousands of these. That just seemed... odd. I hope they'll review that particular plan based on people's feedback.

What Now?

There isn't an official launch date for 7.5 yet, but we're probably looking at a late May/early June release.

The Public Test Server is up and you can check out the graphics updates, the spring event and some of the "venture" stuff there if you like (no story content though).

The reward code they gave out during the stream this time was "MalgusWhen", which grants a Darth Malgus in-game poster decoration - if you don't already have it, because unfortunately this one's a repeat of a reward they handed out previously. If, like me, you already had it, you can still enter the code and it will say that you successfully claimed it, but you'll get nothing. It's valid until May 16th.

Speaking of things that are valid until May 16th - in order to celebrate Star Wars Day, there's also some other goodies available. Logging in between now and then will grant you another floating cube droid non-combat pet, there's double XP going on, a Cartel Market sale, and a 50% off Collections sale. Enjoy!

Is SWTOR Unusually Bottom-Heavy?

One feature of the 7.4 patch that wasn't officially announced but got noticed by players on the PTS was a number of small graphical updates to low-level content, the most striking of which was the retexturing of Korriban. I had to take comparison screenshots for myself when I first heard about it, which you can find below.

I find it quite interesting how the devs continue to subtly improve and tweak the starter planets and other early levelling content (such as when the Black Talon and Esseles received improved cut scenes a couple of years ago). It's not unusual for older MMOs to drastically revamp their starting experience if they feel that it has become outdated, but these smaller tweaks are fascinating to me.

Another one I encountered personally and that initially confused me was that the optional champion probe droid at the end of the Chamber of Speech heroic on Tython was turned into a gold assault droid that blocks your path now. Why? Who knows, but somebody at Broadsword clearly thought it was a worthwhile change to make.

At the same time, they have to be very careful with adjustments like that because SWTOR's early game is still incredibly precious to people. The low levels tend to be a particularly enjoyable experience in many MMOs, but I can't think of any others that I know where many players would outright say that the lower-level game is better than the max-level game, which is a sentiment I see people express about SWTOR quite often. Even if you really enjoy the newer stories (like I do), it's hard to deny that the base game with its eight distinct class stories wins in terms of sheer volume of varied content available.

The other week I saw a reddit thread (which I unfortunately can't find anymore or I would have linked it too) where someone said that they had a "problem" because all their characters tended to fizzle out around Hoth, at which point they'd just start over. At the same time the poster didn't really sound that unhappy about it though, and like they were actually having a good time going through the starter experience over and over again, and there were quite a few commenters who concurred.

Even among those who actually finish the class story and reach the level cap, I'm always surprised by the number of people I see on reddit (a place that by definition attracts a more engaged audience) who've never even played through any of the later expansions and don't seem particularly bothered by it. I'm sure that players like this exist in other MMOs as well, but games like WoW for example tend to push you towards endgame quite vehemently, so I can't imagine that play style being hugely popular there. With SWTOR though... I really do wonder just how many dedicated players (not just new ones, who obviously start off at the bottom by default) are happily just puttering away in low-level content for months or years on end.

I can imagine that this must make for a bit of a conundrum for the devs sometimes, to justify the development of new story content at max level when many players don't even go there (which in turn makes it more understandable why many MMOs try hard to push you into it). Then again, I'm pretty sure that there are still quite a few players like me as well, who are always excited to check out new story releases (and subscribe to check them out).

What's your experience with this? Do you know anyone who just sticks to the base game by choice? Or maybe you yourself prefer to hang out in low-level content?

A Livestream About 7.4 and Beyond

Yesterday was livestream day for SWTOR, a day that's quickly becoming a major event to look forward to for me, as we finally find out what's to come in the next big patch while getting to connect with the devs and deriving some entertainment from the process at the same time.

The stream lasted for more than an hour and yet time seemed to be flying by! A lot was said and done, and as usual you can watch a recording on Twitch or find a full written summary of absolutely everything that was revealed on the sites of the usual suspects:

• Swtorista
• Today in TOR
• Vulkk

I have no desire to go into that much detail myself, but will instead comment on the main things that excited me, of which there were still a lot! So let's get into it.

First off, it was interesting that they started the stream with Papa Keith saying hi and showing new studio pride by wearing a branded Broadsword jumper. (By contrast, I noticed that Musco was still wearing a SWTOR shirt with the Bioware logo on it; naughty!) What was really interesting about Keith's intro though was that he immediately started things off by telling us that beyond 7.4, they just reviewed their road map up to 7.6 with Broadsword, content that is meant to come out over the next year.

This was reassuring in the sense that it showed that there are no signs of things slowing down after the studio transition, and it was interesting to note that this planned patch cadence basically confirmed that there isn't another expansion coming soon. I personally didn't think there was, but I'd certainly seen some people speculate that the next patch after 7.4 would be 8.0, so I'm kind of glad to have that misconception dispelled. Obviously I'm not saying I never want another expansion again, but Legacy of the Sith definitely feels like it needs more time to cook at this point so I'm okay with adding more patches to its runtime.

The main announcement was the reveal about 7.4's story content, which will take us to... a new town on Ord Mantell? Can't say I expected us to return to another existing planet immediately after the return to Voss in 7.3, and Ord Mantell wasn't on my personal list favoured destinations, but I can't say I'm unhappy with it either. Actually, it's an interesting callback to the ten-year-anniversary news post from two years ago, when it was teased that as part of this expansion, we might "gain an opportunity to return to where your character’s journey first began so long ago…" My only disappointment was that when there was some talk about how it can be safe for Imperial characters to go to Ord Mantell, nobody thought to mention Lost Island. Come on!

I won't go into any detail about what they said about the story there to keep things as spoiler-free as possible, but unlike the Interpreter's Retreat, the new town Kessan's Landing is going to be a proper daily area and yes, we'll chase after Heta Kol and the Hidden Chain again. No, I don't know whether we'll actually achieve anything this time around. But! We'll interact with both new and returning characters, and I was particularly pleased to hear of the return of Sergeant Captain Blyes and Gizmel Gam. If those names don't mean anything to you, Sergeant Blyes is literally the first NPC troopers and smugglers talk to outside their class story phase, the guy who gives you your very first side mission to blow shit up in the village. And Gizmel Gam is the shady heroic quest giver who wants you to fetch his illegal drugs from Savrip Island (without telling you that it's illegal drugs). I love it when minor characters like that get to reprise their roles.

A story-related announcement that surprised me was the continuation of the Lane Vizla story from Ruhnuk. Now, again, trying to keep it as spoiler-free as possible... the way that story ends on Ruhnuk does sort of imply that there'll be a follow-up, but I honestly figured it would just be a mail or maybe a short conversation. But no, it looks like it's actually turning into a proper side storyline that has you seeking out new characters and places, and I'm here for it.

Next they announced a technical update that probably had me way more excited than it should have: "cinematic lighting". What does that mean? It means older in-game cut scenes will have better lighting, making better use of "natural" light sources and shadows instead of artificial spotlights. They showed a few clips from starter quests for different origins and I just kept thinking how gorgeous the new versions looked.

What can I say: this is a game with a heavy focus on watching your character look cool in cut scenes and it heavily encourages you to play alts. I'm not sure there's any other game where an announcement about improved lighting would make me feel like it's one more reason to make a new alt, but it really does in this instance.

Also, my favourite side story related to this was that when I checked the forums afterwards, I found this thread by someone going by the forum name Jazulfi, posted about a month ago and complaining about how bad the lighting in some of the old story cut scenes was. Needless to say, they were over the moon about this announcement. Just imagine being in that position, making an incredibly niche complaint about something and a few weeks later the devs announce that they are about to release a major technical upgrade addressing your specific issue. The timing just cracked me up. Good for you, Jazulfi!

Also interesting was the demo of the GTN update that had been teased before. At a glance I thought it looked kind of similar to the way things are set up in the modern World of Warcraft auction house - which is not a bad thing, as it's mostly quite convenient. Even better, the new GTN will have a "claim" button so you can grab your stuff directly from the GTN terminal instead of going to your mailbox, which I really appreciate because in WoW I always buy stuff from the auction house and then run off without remembering to actually take it out of my mailbox, so this is a very real problem for me. The only slight concern I have was that there was a brief mention of the deposit now being classified as a fee, which makes me worried that it might no longer be refunded if your item doesn't sell. That would be a shame as this particular bit of generosity of SWTOR's GTN was a really nice feature and meant that I was never shy about re-listing stuff as I didn't have to worry about actively losing money if nobody purchased right away. We'll see I guess. (Edit: This has now been confirmed in a forum post.)

In terms of gear, we were told that 7.4 will bring another gear rating increase. Implants and mods will become upgradeable to 340, and Rakata gear's max rating will increase to 344. There was also a cryptic mention of Rakata gear for everyone, not just ops players. The main takeaway I got from this is that after about a year of R-4 Anomaly on veteran mode being the only source of max-item-rating gear, they're basically dumping that entire idea and nobody will ever go there again. Can't say I'm sad, though the thought of updating gear across my entire stable of alts again is a little tedious, even if it won't be hard to do.

Now, the Cartel Market section of these streams never really interests me that much, but this time they had something that caught my attention... because it was SHINY! Basically, they're adding a new type of dye that doesn't just colour your gear but also gives it a shiny or matte effect, and the example they showed looked amazing.

To be fair, this is a brand-new gear set that has likely been optimised to work well with this new effect, and it might not look as great on older armours, but still... I could definitely see myself picking a couple of these up to see if I can give an old outfit a new shine. This gets a thumbs-up from me.

Finally, they finished the stream with an interesting twist on the Best View in SWTOR contest - they haven't chosen the winners yet, but Jackie wanted to share the five finalists for each planet... and I can see why, as they were all gorgeous. I kept an eye out for any of my own submissions, but while one of the Nar Shaddaa finalists looked kind of like one of mine, it had someone else's name on it so was presumably submitted earlier. However, apparently no fewer than three people I know found themselves featured among the finalists. Yay them! Either way, I loved seeing all those screenshots and they looked like worthy winners regardless of which ones actually end up being the final choices.

Oh, and if you read this before November 1st - they gave out a free deco code again, so you can redeem "LotsVizla" until then for another in-game poster of your (perhaps not) favourite Mandalorian(s).

Either way, the stream clearly did its job for me as it got me properly excited for 7.4. We don't have a release date yet, but based on how they've been handling these recently, it's probably going to be late November or early December.

All SWTOR Planets, Ranked from Best to Worst

The other week, the SWTOR Escape Pod Cast devoted an episode to the subject of ranking SWTOR's planets. It's a light and frivolous evergreen topic, and I was surprised just how much I enjoyed the discussion - these sorts of lists are always a fun opportunity to hear people articulate their opinions, from the relatable to the bizarre (such as Max's love for Mek-Sha... heh).

Naturally, I was left with the urge to do my own ranking. The type of drag-and-drop "tier list" that they used in the show doesn't work as well for the written format though, so I decided to go for a plain old numbered list instead, ranking each planet from best to worst. I was surprised by how easy I found it to pick my favourites and least favourites - in the middle I felt a lot less opinionated and I'd probably rank some of them differently on any given day. Without further ado, let's get started!

1. Tatooine

Tatooine, to me, just has everything. The desert planet with its twin suns is super iconic and SWTOR brings it to life perfectly. It's mostly sand, but the blue sky gives it a pleasant air, while mountains and ravines break things up just enough in the visual department to make sure the environment doesn't get boring. The low mob density makes it easy to get around, and the missions are fun (the planetary quest chain involving Czerka and the imprisoned Rakata is particularly memorable). It's also the kind of place where (somewhat contrary to its theoretical reputation as an outer rim backwater) lots of stuff happens, from Rakghoul Resurgences to swoop racing. When strongholds first came out, I made Tatooine my main home.

2. Alderaan

Has any other game depicted Princess Leia's home world in this much detail? Alderaan's environments are absolutely gorgeous, and I love the lore about all the different houses. (Makes a nice change from the many random bandit/pirate incursions that most planets seem to deal with.) Like Tatooine, it's also a place you get plenty of reasons to come back to, whether it's for a set of particularly easy GSI dailies or to hunt rakghouls.

3. Coruscant

I'm not a huge fan of city planets, but Coruscant just has a certain oomph to it. As someone who primarily plays Republic, the first time I stepped outside the Coruscant spaceport and made my way to the Senate Tower, I was simply in awe. I'll admit that most of the sub-zones are not that visually interesting, but I still love all the quests and how they paint a picture of what the Republic is like for the new player. It's funny because the first time I wrote about Coruscant, I noted that "I didn't actually like this planet very much" because at the time the questing didn't feel particularly inspired to me, and as it was the planet where all the starter experiences converged, it felt very repetitive during the early alt rush. However, these days I don't level that many alts from scratch and nostalgia reigns supreme!

4. Ossus

I loved Ossus so freaking much when it came out, because it was the first time that one of the newer planets actually felt as good to me to play through as many of the original planets. It's reasonably sized, nice to look at, and the dailies are super easy and fun. I also had a blast with the world bosses back when they were current content... it's such a shame that they did not age well due to requiring such a big group.

5. Tython

Even though I main a trooper, Tython is my favourite starter planet. I love how lush and green it is, plus the whole vibe of the Jedi Temple and the ancient Jedi ruins. The bit where your Jedi character gets their first lightsaber is just... chef's kiss every time.

6. Onderon

I was kinda hesitant to rank this one this high, because at Onslaught's release, I was actually a bit disappointed by Onderon - I expected it to be bigger, and all the dailies with their green markers on green grass were annoying me. However, it's held up surprisingly well, and is one of the newer daily areas I actually visit quite regularly. It's a pretty pleasant environment visually, and a great place to farm grade 10 crew skill mats while you're at it.

7. Dromund Kaas

As I said I'm primarily a Republic player, but the Imperial home world is pretty cool as well. The mix of stark architecture surrounded by jungles and subject to constant thunderstorms creates a pretty unique vibe, and the missions are varied and interesting, introducing you to several different facets of the Empire. 

8. Nar Shaddaa

I was a bit conflicted about how to rank Nar Shaddaa because I've long thought of it as one of the original planets that I'm less fond of, mostly because the sub-zones have similar issues as Coruscant, only without exuding the same kind of charm. I also ranked it as the worst planet to navigate in the entire game at one point. But at the same time... it's kinda the place to go for anything that needs to happen on neutral ground, Hutts are fun in their own peculiar way, and both Soovada and the Feast of Prosperity are centred on Nar Shaddaa. It's definitely got something going for it, you know?

9. Belsavis

I immediately loved Belsavis' unique aesthetic when I first saw it, combining snowy glaciers with tropical jungles. I think fondly of the old dailies there, and Primal Destroyer remains a favourite to revisit among world bosses. All the enemies being either Esh-ka or escaped prisoners does make the whole place feel a little same-y though, and Section X is a bit too much of a slog for me to enjoy revisiting often.

10. Odessen

Odessen is a hard one to rank because outside the story phases there just isn't much there, you know, but I decided to still put it relatively high up, because it's a neat little base/hub and I'm happy to go there. Though I do wonder whether the devs ever expected it to seriously replace the fleets as central hub locations...

11. Balmorra

Balmorra is pleasant enough to look at, and the fact that it changes hands from Empire to Republic as you level up is interesting. Killing colicoids is decent fun, but the all-encompassing civil war/rebellion theme does wear on you a little after a while.

12. Makeb

The layout with all the little mesas made Makeb feel a bit odd when it came out, but I liked it well enough. It's of course the first planet where we no longer got a class story, plus at launch the mob density was also horrible. The dailies aren't great either, but I did enjoy the main storyline on both Republic and Empire side very much, plus I just like the visuals.

13. Manaan

Manaan is a bit of a funny one to rank because it consists of both the small but pleasant visitor area that introduces the Depths of Manaan flashpoint and the larger Invasion Zone that came with Legacy of the Sith, which is a dark and rainy warzone. I like the aesthetics of the former and not so much of the latter, however I've actually come to quite enjoy the Manaan dailies, which is what bumps this one up.

14. Oricon

I used to frickin' love Oricon for its atmosphere and all the small little touches like the holocrons granting codex entries, the seeker droid/macrobinocular bonus missions and the challenging heroic area. However, recently I've just not enjoyed revisiting it as much as I used to... the mob density is quite high and can make it a bit of a pain to get around if you don't have stealth, especially when compared to some of the newer daily areas.

15. Dantooine

The addition of Dantooine is of course what inspired and enabled my pacifist levelling project, and it's got not one but two world events going on, the Pirate Incursion and the Swoop Rally. Outside of those events, there isn't really much there though.

16. Rishi

I've got kind of mixed feelings about Rishi (which goes well with it sitting smack in the middle of this list) - I like its visuals and it does have some fun things going on, but Shadow of Revan is also when Bioware started to funnel everyone (including the two factions) into one storyline and putting everything in solo phases and I'll always remember that with a certain bitterness.

17. Hoth

Hoth is similarly iconic to Tatooine, but I don't really like it nearly as much. Its bright whiteness is rather unpleasant on the eyes, and there are far fewer reasons to go there in general.

18. Ord Mantell

I like the starter planet for troopers well enough, but it's not as pretty as Tython, and like on Balmorra, absolutely everything being about the local civil war gets a bit tiresome.

19. Korriban

I'm sure many Imp players would rate this one much higher, but I've just never been that impressed by the Sith starter world. It's got a lot of orange and a lot of rocks, and the quests are fifty percent decent fun, fifty percent evidence of just how insane most Sith are.

20. CZ-198

I'll admit that like many others, I make CZ-198 my number one destination if I need some quick daily commendations or Conquest points, but other than that it doesn't really have much going for it. It's just a place with some offices basically.

21. Iokath

Iokath is another place about which I have some very mixed feelings. I remember being so hyped about us getting a proper planet again for the first time since the KotFE/KotET era, but then it was just a let-down in so many ways. Unlike seemingly most people though, I've come to quite enjoy the Iokath dailies though.

22. Ziost

I like the Ziost daily area for how chill and different it is, but other than that, there just isn't anything going on there. It's literally a dead planet. The "live" version of Ziost was more interesting, but of course you can only access that one for a limited time while doing the story. 

23. Ilum

As one of the original "endgame planets" at launch, Ilum did not impress me. It just always felt unfinished to me. It has a beautiful skybox, but the fact that it's always night kinda gets me down. I have some fond memories of Ilum from the game's early days, but it's been many years since I had anything close to that much fun there. Outside of the Gree event there's no real reason to go back. 

24. Mek-Sha

This is kind of the opposite of Onderon in that at Onslaught's launch I was kind of pleasantly surprised by Mek-Sha after not expecting to like it that much based on previews. However, it failed to really provide any good reasons to revisit, with the few repeatable quests being extremely hodgepodge and buggy at launch. Ultimately it just feels like a lesser version of Nar Shaddaa to me. 

25. Ruhnuk

I feel a bit bad ranking this so low, considering that I did like the Ruhnuk story overall and think that the planet is a good size and very good-looking. However, that terrible first impression of the dailies has stuck with me. I've gotten better at getting around, but I still find the area difficult to navigate and every indoor area is an absolute slog packed with tough mobs. It's just not very fun. I expect that it will rise in my estimation once it isn't the most current content anymore and distance has had a chance to make my heart grow fonder.

26. Yavin 4

I'm kind of surprising myself by ranking Yavin so low, but I just couldn't come up with any reasons to justify putting it any higher. Like I said when talking about Rishi, Shadow of Revan didn't really wow me when it came out, and I remember doing these dailies on so many characters for the (at the time) extremely powerful companion gear they rewarded; I just burnt out on them to a ridiculous degree. To this day I don't enjoy re-running the Yavin dailies a lot, even though I can't point at anything being particularly wrong with them.

27. Taris

It's a swamp full of ruins and all the mobs are rakghouls. It's not that deep, bro.

28. Corellia

I appreciate that Corellia looks a bit different from other city planets visually, and the tram was a cool idea at the time, but nowadays everyone just quick travels everywhere anyway. Overall it remains a pretty dull city planet that is another nightmare to navigate.

29. Voss

Voss is a funny one because it has some good things going for it like the beautiful environments... but the Voss as a people are just so bleh, as is everything about their storylines... I wrote a whole post about it back in 2017.

30. Hutta

Whether you're starting an agent or a bounty hunter, your class story makes it clear that you're at the ass-end of nowhere and can't wait to get out of there. All the quests emphasise what a swampy hellhole the place is, and I'm afraid the designers did such a good job with it that I'm always happy to get away and never to return.

31. Zakuul

Zakuul has some interesting tidbits going on with the swamp just outside the city and the Eternal Championship, but it's never really felt like a proper planet outside of the KotFE/KotET story phases. The best I can say is that I enjoyed farming grade 9 crew skill materials in the swamp and in Breaktown when that was the highest level of crew skills, but that's it.

32. Quesh

Another disgusting swamp world, but this one doesn't even have much story going on, has no repeatable content whatsoever, and felt small and weird even at launch. I also hate that you have to pick up the planetary storyline on every single character to even be able to travel to the surface.

33. Darvannis

I mean, I like the operation that's set on Darvannis, but the "open world" version of it has literally nothing going on other than the phase entrances for KotFE chapter fourteen and some crew skill materials that you can farm, but the omnipresent skytroopers made even that annoying back in the day.

As I said, these rankings are not set in stone and I could easily see myself changing my mind about some of these planets over time. I think the main thing I noticed while justifying my opinions is that a planet's aesthetics are very important to me - if I don't enjoy what I'm looking at, I'm not going to enjoy playing there very much.

Anyway, feel free to let me know in the comments which of my picks surprised you and which ones you strongly disagree with and why!