Ranking the 7.7 Dynamic Encounter Planets

I've been meaning to write more about the dynamic encounters that were added with patch 7.7 for a while, but I struggled to make up my mind about what format I was going to use for the post. I had fun with the top ten lists I made for Hoth and Tatooine, but that format doesn't work so well when you're dealing with a larger number of planets, each of which has a much smaller number of dynamic encounters than those two.

I ultimately decided that I'm just going to rank the planets against each other instead, talking about each planet in more general terms instead of discussing too many individual encounters in detail.

Going from best to worst, I would start with: 

1. Dromund Kaas

If you split the seven planets that had dynamic encounters added in 7.7 into three groups - capital worlds, starter planets and Ilum - I think both of the capital worlds definitely came out on top. With more than twenty unique encounters per planet they offer the most variety of the bunch, as well as offering an easy way to grind Conquest points.

The encounters on Dromund Kaas are thematically very varied, mostly leaning into the different regional "themes" previously established in side missions, such as the spaceport being somewhat in disarray or the lightning spires being under attack. They mostly seem to be set in the same time period as those original exploration missions, though I noticed while dispersing unruly Imperial citizens in Kaas City that one of them yelled "What is Xarion hiding?", which I thought was an interesting detail that would place that one after Onslaught in the timeline.

In general, most of the encounters are quick and fun, and strategically placed in locations where people are bound to come through on their way to some other mission objective, making it very temping to allow yourself to be distracted for a moment to complete an encounter. Prime examples of this are doing "Bad Monkey" just after arriving at the spaceport, or hunting down the rogue bounty hunter while passing through Kaas City.

If I had to cite anything negative, I'd say that there are a couple of encounters with flaws. The Apex Predator in "Shock and Awe" feels way overtuned for levelling players (trying to solo it on a level thirty-something with a healer companion I was chunked to death within only a couple of hits), and the final boss for "Kubaz Incursion" can be a bit annoyingly hard to find. "Powder Keg" actually being possible to fail is a neat idea but the fact that it's the only encounter of this kind and that it's not obvious at all what is going on unless you're already in the know makes it a bit unpleasant in that regard.

Also, I wish they'd fix encounter voice lines sometimes playing when the encounter isn't even up, because every time my speeder rides past the lightning spires I get spammed with yells about multiple encounters that may not actually all be active.

Anyway, all in all it's still a fun romp, and the reason it's edging out Coruscant for first place in my opinion is that the map makes it both cheap and easy to get around if you want to do multiple encounters. Which brings us to...

2. Coruscant 

In general, Coruscant is one of my top three planets in the entire game, and most positive things I said about the dynamic encounters on Dromund Kaas above also apply to Coruscant. The reason I put it in second place is simply the fact that it's a bit of a pain to travel between dynamic encounters due to the planetary layout with the different sectors, which all count as being really far apart, which in turn means that moving between them always requires either a looong taxi ride or paying the maximum price for quick travel. Even if you do opt for quick travel though, the sectors are still laid out in such a way that it can be a pain to just travel from one dynamic encounter within the same sector to the next one.

The said, I adore most of the encounters in the Senate Plaza, which is where I'm always passing through when I exit my stronghold, and I basically never pass on an opportunity to set off some fireworks or to help clean up the party's aftermath.

Negatives are that some of the Black Sun and Justicar encounters don't have nearly enough clickies if there's even more than one person trying to do the encounter at the same time, the way Ugnaught Engineering was horrifically bugged when it first came out and made people get into fights about who was supposedly causing it to bug, stealing kills or whatever (regardless of whether it was true or not), and the one encounter on the Senate Plaza that I don't like, "Understaffed". Like with "Powder Keg", you can tell someone just wanted to try something different there, but the final result is just too undercooked, with a tutorial mode that teaches you to do things the wrong way, and people being able to ruin the encounter for each other - both intentionally and unintentionally - which is never a good thing.

3. Tython 

Next we have the starter planets, which I think are all pretty similar in quality, and I don't feel particularly strongly about the order in which I've ranked them against each other. The main reason I consider them worse than the capital planets it that there are very few encounters, so you'll run out of things to do pretty quickly if you're just trying to grind on a single planet, and that none of the DEs on the starter planets give Conquest points. I can see why the devs decided to have that limitation, but it still means that for someone who's very Conquest-focused like me, they tend to have a lot less replay value.

With that general preamble out of the way, Tython is definitely my favourite of the bunch, since it's my favourite of all the starter planets and I think all its dynamic encounters are very on point, whether you're doing simple chores at the Jedi Temple or beating back the flesh raiders.

The only thing I'll say is that I do wonder a little how having a dynamic encounter pop up the moment you leave your intro phase is going to affect new players' perception of the planet and the game as a whole, and whether it might make things come off as a bit "loud" and overwhelming to less experienced gamers. I would love to have insight into the devs' behavioural metrics on the starter planets for that one... 

4. Hutta

Hutta is actually one of my least favourite planets, generally speaking, but I think in terms of dynamic encounters it works well enough. Again, the themes of the encounters go very well with what's also conveyed via the existing side missions, from dangerous wildlife to rebellious evocii.

The only thing I'm not so sure about is having an encounter that is basically a vehicle quest right outside the spawn phase, because it makes me wonder whether that isn't a bit confusing/overwhelming for new players. Even if seeing a bunch of droids enter the gang wars right outside the Poison Pit does serve to drive home the point that the town is a bit of a mess. 

5. Ord Mantell

Ord Mantell is one of two planets where I actually feel like some of the encounters are slightly off in tone. This may very well be my personal bias speaking, as someone who mains a trooper and was instantly scarred by being blamed for the death of Bellis the informant at the hands of the separatists by multiple people, but I always perceived the whole setting with the separatists as very dark and desperate. Even the smuggler story with all its goofiness has a pretty dark turn here with Corso's parents being dead because of the separatists and him having that one moment where he wants to execute that random sep in cold blood.

With that said, I just feel like some of the encounters involving separatists feel a bit too silly. Like that mad scientist type sending you out to shoot separatists with one of his droids? It's one thing if there's a specific NPC that's bit ridiculous when you talk to them, that's clearly just that one character, but the fact that you hear the dynamic encounter yells repeated endlessly even when you're just driving by gives them a much stronger impact on the mood in my opinion. Might just be me.

6. Korriban

That's also the reason why I rate Korriban last of this batch, because again, several of the encounters just feel a bit too goofy to me personally. Don't get me wrong, both the Sith warrior and inquisitor stories have plenty of humorous moments even on Korriban, but I still always got the vibe that as a setting, the planet is clearly meant to be very grim, with all the racial purity nonsense and dog-eat-dog behaviour encouraged in the acolytes. Stuff like k'lor'slugs running wild around the academy feels more like the kind of hijinx you'd find in a young adult book series about a magic school. (That said, looking at how busy each planet is, this one actually seems to be very popular with people, so again, this might just be me.)

7. Ilum 

Finally, in last place - alas, poor Ilum. I really wanted the addition of dynamic encounters to this planet to feel like a revival for it. I have some fond memories of Ilum from the game's early days, even though it felt somewhat unfinished even then, but over time it's only ever declined in relevance. Sadly I can't say that I feel like dynamic encounters have put it back on people's radar, and based on the small number of other people I see doing encounters there, I get the impression that it didn't really land for the majority of the population either.

Good things first: the theming is once again spot-on on this one. They really leaned into the Republic vs. Empire conflict from the original storyline and even added some encounter achievements that are meant to encourage world PvP. (I'm 99% sure that almost nobody will bother with those, but I appreciate the effort.) On the Western Ice Shelf, they've expanded on the lore of the Tonvarr Pirates that were previously only really relevant during the Gree event. It all works.

The problem is simply that too many of the encounters are just not very fun. Too many of them have multiple stages and feature a large number of mobs - when sometimes mob-killing isn't even part of the main objective, which makes it feel like you're just endlessly wading back and forth through constantly respawning mobs to actually get to the next clicky you need. It just feels tedious to the point that my brain keeps trying to forget that Ilum is another planet that has dynamic encounters now and I very rarely even remember to go there.

All that said, I wanted to also give a shout-out to a change to dynamic encounters in general that came with 7.7 but that I didn't see in the patch notes: When they released these new encounters, they changed it so that on staged DEs, you no longer need to complete every single stage by yourself to get credit, but rather you can join in at any time and still get completion. I feel that this has been a great change and has been most noticeable for me during encounters such as the base attacks on Tatooine and Hoth. It used to be that I felt that there was no point in joining in if people were already fighting the stage two walker, as it wouldn't give me anything and I'd just have to restart the encounter from scratch afterwards anyway. Now I'll gleefully jump in and help out because I'll actually be rewarded for it too, which I think has been a great change.

How many of the new encounters have you done at this point? And do you agree with my ranking of the planets or not? Let me know in the comments. 

Kessan's Landing

I've settled into a kind of routine when it comes to writing about SWTOR's major patches: write a first impressions post, put together a detailed review of the new story content, sum up how I feel about the new planet/flashpoint/operation/whatever the main new gameplay feature of the patch is, followed by a couple of additional posts for any other business, such as UI updates or other minor changes.

As far as 7.4 goes, I covered most of that, but the one thing I was still missing was a rundown of the new planetary map on Ord Mantell, Kessan's Landing. To be honest, I think the main reason I've been putting off writing about it is that it's been... fine. Good, even! I have no major complaints. At the same time I didn't exactly feel blown away by its awesomeness, so... I've just kind of struggled to find a lot to say about it.

I suppose the one thing I'm not too fond of is that it's night time there. I guess the devs opted for that to strengthen the slightly oppressive mood that hangs over the town, plus to create additional visual distinction between Kessan's Landing and "old" Ord Mantell, as the two areas use a lot of the same general "building blocks" otherwise, such as sandy beaches, rocky cliffs and glowing lava flows. Night time is never great for taking screenshots of your character though.

Doesn't mean there aren't any nice vistas to look at.

I also thought it was interesting how much bigger Kessan's Landing is compared to many older in-game towns. All the villages on the starter planets tend to consist of like, five buildings, which is quite video-gamey and not very realistic. I liked that Kessan's Landing felt more like a real place where people could actually live.

The dailies were decent fun. As I've said many times before, I'm not a huge fan of dailies, but I do like doing them sometimes, and they are one of the better types of content for me and Mr Commando to do together nowadays, considering that the story is a purely solo affair. After the troubles we had with Ruhnuk, it was nice to return to a mode of running dailies that felt more relaxed and less punishing. The map is reasonably open for the most part, meaning you don't have to fight every single mob you encounter, except for the narrow tunnels leading up to and inside of Fort Ronning, but that's okay because it adds flavour by making that particular area feel more dangerous.

Mr Commando soon figured out a path that took us through a full round of both normal and heroic dailies in good time, and we faithfully did that every week until we maxed out the reputation track. I thought it was interesting that while most of the dailies come from the terminal in town, there are a couple that have to be "found" and picked up from NPCs around the area, something that reminded me of Yavin IV and Ziost. I was just a bit disappointed that the missions seemed to be exactly the same for Republic and Imperial players - with exactly one exception, oddly, in that Republic players have to save grazers while Imperials capture an asharl panther.

The heroics were decent fun to duo as well, and the [Heroic 4] is proper hard without feeling like a slog, as you basically just have to fight one mob with a lot of health that also has some hard-hitting mechanics. Ironically, the open world boss FR3-D0M felt relatively easy in comparison, though at least it has some bad stuff you actually need to step out of - as opposed to Kithrawl on Ruhnuk who's basically a big sack of potatoes that you just need to wear down.

Kessan's Landing also has a new datacron, which... honestly, maybe I should just make a whole post about the evolution of datacrons at some point. However, for this post it's enough to say that the most recent trend with them has been to force players to do the work themselves, ensuring that people can't just get summoned to the datacron location on day one and get their stat buff without even knowing what was involved in unlocking it.

The Ruhnuk datacron also required you to do a lengthy relic hunt quest chain first, which I didn't mind - my issue with that was more that it also felt like it was meant to benefit your daily-running, and completing it for that purpose on every alt felt tedious to me. In that regard I have to give the devs props for making the relic hunt equivalent for Kessan's Landing irrelevant to the dailies and only required for the datacron, so you only really need to do it once. As it was, I thought it was a fun little quest chain that sent you traipsing around the galaxy (and that featured another cute gonk droid). Fun fact: during the part on Quesh I got the codex entry for "lobel" on my main... only took me thirteen years. I might even repeat the quest chain on an alt at some point, but I'm happy knowing that I don't have to in order to be able to do the dailies efficiently on alts.

Completing the chain unlocks access to a secret cave where you then have to go through some puzzles to get to the datacron. I initially got a bit frustrated by the part inside the cave because it felt quite lengthy, yet any failure would send you back to the very start and force you start over from scratch. On my first visit I eventually gave up after dying to the hidden droids in the lava one too many times, but funnily enough, when I came back a couple weeks later I simply changed one utility to boost my speed and easily made it through that same lava bit on my first try. Gotta use that brain!

After that I was extremely paranoid though as I didn't want to get sent back to the start yet again, so I only progressed very slowly and with a guide on hand. I was in fact so slow that the door you're meant to unshield and blow up had re-shielded itself by the time I reached it. Fortunately I only had to backtrack a little bit to unshield it again. Ultimately it was far from the hardest datacron I've ever done, though I definitely would have appreciated a couple of check points along the way.

Most of all though, I'm really happy with the way the dev team has managed to deliver a new planetary zone three major patches in a row now, and with any luck we'll get another one in 7.5. This is something I love and definitely don't take for granted. And as I said previously, I'm more than happy to revisit existing planets, so I don't mind at all if it's not entirely new environments.

Meeting the Curator

Aside from the big Chains in the Dark story update, patch 7.4 also contained a smaller side story with KOTOR-style cut scenes, which continued the storyline that started with Lane Vizla on Ruhnuk in 7.2.

What's it about? Spoilers ahead:

Lane recalls you to Ruhnuk to tell you that she's been working on restoring the small Basilisk droid you left with her but she's made no real progress as she just doesn't know enough about their inner workings. She has however found out about a reclusive rich guy called the Curator who apparently collects rare droids, and she wonders whether he can help. As he shuns company, she wants you to infiltrate his home stealthily, while pretending to be a courier with his newest purchase.

For this, you have to fetch a bunch of stuff from around Ruhnuk, Mek-Sha and Dantooine. You then go to the Curator's house, which just happens to be on the outskirts of Kessan's Landing (convenient!). Your disguise gets you in, but it quickly becomes obvious that you're not delivering the real goods he expected (though I think it's funny that he instantly turns on the messenger instead of assuming the seller sold him a fake or something like that). His defenses consist of nothing but some antique astromechs though, which are disabled with as much as a kick and a slap.

When you demand to know more about Basilisk droids, he has to admit that they are so rare that even he doesn't own the schematics... however, he knows of an equally as rare/even rarer(?) HK-24 droid on Belsavis, a type of droid that was specifically used to hunt Basilisks and should therefore have lots of information about them. He suggests that you retrieve its memory core, and that in exchange for providing you with its location, he gets to keep the chassis for his collection.

You do go along with this plan and return the HK core to Lane. She puts it into an old astromech to access it and the astromech goes absolutely nuts, yelling about how it's malfunctioning and wanting to self-destruct, followed by an attempt to destroy the powered off Basilisk droid. 

Lane asks you to return the astromech to the Curator to see if he can fix it up to not go crazy. He's not too pleased to see you again but offers to put together a bespoke restraining bolt. While you fetch some parts for him, he puts the HK-24 core back into its chassis and of course something goes wrong, causing it to turn on and attack him. You come back in time to take it out again and protect him, after which the memory core goes back into the astromech with a restraining bolt applied.

When you turn it back on on Ruhnuk, it still gets somewhat agitated, seemingly arguing with itself, but in a somewhat more restrained manner. Lane also says that the Curator has contacted her and wants to sponsor the restoration of the Basilisk droid.

This story was about what I expected in terms of length and depth. I was a bit surprised by just how silly it was, considering that the previous installment of this storyline was quite serious. Not that there's anything wrong with silly, but we did just have the goofiness of the Galactic Season 5 story as well...

There were only a couple of small things I didn't like. For example I was thrown off by the fact that during the first conversation with Lane, her pronunciation of the "G0-T0 eye" (the thing you're supposed to pretend to deliver to the Curator) changes between "go-to" and "gee zero tee zero", which is quite a big difference.

Also, the whole premise of pretending to be a delivery person was a bit... eh. It wasn't quite sweeping the floor of the Gormak cantina, but it felt close. Not exactly a job for an Alliance Commander or Sith Lord in my opinion. The whole thing was a bit weird from a mechanical point of view as well, as they literally make you put a whole gear set on, which in the age of the Outfit Designer doesn't change your appearance anyway (unless you go and select "show gear as outfit", which I did for my own immersion, but it did feel a bit clunky). I would've expected to just get a quest item that you click and poof, you're disguised. But I don't know, maybe someone out there was really happy to get this cosmetic gear set for future pizza delivery roleplay (since you do actually get to keep it)?

Finally, the last thing that got me was that when you're on Belsavis and some guards stop you, you have to kill them even as a Republic trooper! That just felt wrong; there should have been a non-violent solution available.

Aside from those things, I quite enjoyed the story. I had a good chuckle at all the droid shenanigans, from the ridiculous defense droids to the maddened HK to digging for parts outside the Curator's house. I did laugh out loud at the bit when you first leave his house and there's this glowy chest next to the door... I was like "Is this a lore object?" and clicked, just to be greeted by an "intrusive thoughts" cast bar, which finished with my character swatting the relic off its pedestal, to an audible expression of dismay from the Curator.

I believe there's been an indication that part three of this storyline, when it arrives, will bring it to its conclusion, presumably with us actually getting a Basilisk... companion? Then again, I'll be very surprised if this is the last we've heard of the Curator, and I wouldn't put it beyond him to mess things up somehow...

Chains in the Dark Story Review

It is here! My big 7.4 story review. I'm always surprised by just how much I have to say about new story updates, as this post once again clocks in at close to four thousand words.

However, before we get into the actual meat of the story, let's talk about a certain "technicality": the KOTOR-style cut scenes. In 7.3, it was slightly startling when the conversation interface switched to that style at the Interpreter's Retreat, but I rationalised it as that section being a secondary story within the primary story and ultimately didn't mind it too much. However, this time around, the devs inserted silent protagonist cut scenes into the story seemingly at random, and I was less of a fan of that.

Don't get me wrong, I get that this format saves a lot of money and I don't mind it being used for anything that's not the main story, but to have a scene with an NPC with "proper" cut scenes and then in the next conversation with that very same NPC it's black bars and silence from our character - that's just jarring and confusing. I'd love to know what Broadsword's criteria were for creating some scenes in that style and not others. As a player, I'd really like to be able to manage my expectations, and the way things were done in this update was not helpful in that regard.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get to what actually happens in the story. Full spoilers ahead!

We start with a visit to Heta Kol's fleet, where we see Heta surrounded by Hidden Chain Mandalorians when Ri'kan walks up to her and tells her that they're "ready" for something, leading to her ordering everyone to their stations. Sa'har looks uncomfortable in the background and when Heta leaves, she expresses doubt to Ri'kan whether they're doing the right thing, but her concerns fall on deaf ears.

Next we see Jekiah Ordo giving orders on what I can only guess is Shae's new flagship, when suddenly a bunch of red dots start popping up on his galaxy map to indicate Hidden Chain activity. He contacts Shae to ask for advice on what he should focus on but doesn't seem to get a response.

We switch scenes to a cantina in an unspecified location that is later revealed to be Port Nowhere. The player character is having drinks with Rass Ordo and you have an option to flirt with him while waiting to see a Harido Wald contact. Suddenly there's an explosion and the Hidden Chain attacks! It's not called out in the dialogue, but it was noteworthy to me that these attackers are all from clans that we haven't seen fight for Heta previously, such as Bralor, Farr (like Ceta Farr, the Revanite from Dromund Kaas), Rodarch, Werda and Sharratt of Nar Shaddaa heroic fame, which seems to indicate that despite her defeat on Ruhnuk, her support has actually been growing.

You fight off the boarding party and blow up the tether they've attached to the station, but a group of them has already taken hostages. You can play it safe by using what you see through the security cameras to take out the hostage takers with a remote surprise attack, or you can opt to just charge in and leave the hostages to scramble in the crossfire, which leads to some injuries. They are grateful for the rescue either way.

After defeating the Mandalorian boss (who has some pretty interesting fight mechanics for a story encounter by the way), Rass gets a call from Jekiah telling him about the Hidden Chain attacking, to which you're like "no duh"! He says he's lacking resources and needs someone to check on the situation on Ord Mantell. One of the former hostages overhears this and chimes in with some advice on how to best get a foot in there.

Now, here the devs did something interesting as the hostage in question is different based on your background:

• For Republic Force users, it's Master Cedral Gend, who's the quest giver for the Republic-side seeker droid/Seeds of Rage quest chain.
• For Republic tech users, it's former(?) agent Folaris, who gives the exploration mission "Partial Eclipse" in Coruscant's Black Sun sector.
• For Imperial Force users, it's former assistant overseer Markan, who instructs young Sith inquisitors on Korriban to see their class trainer.
• For Imperial tech users, it's Thera Markon, daughter of Crysta Markon, whom bounty hunters meet and help out in their class mission on Rishi.

Now, usually I love recurring minor NPC appearances like that, but here it didn't work as well for me because some of these NPCs were so obscure that I didn't even recognise them, and when I did, there wasn't always a dialogue option to indicate recognition when there probably should have been.

On my trooper, who did the first run through, I at first mistook the hostage for Beryl Thorne from the smuggler story (who does look similar, but has a different hair colour), but then I looked at her name in the chat log and figured it wasn't anyone I knew. There was no dialogue option to indicate recognition, even though my trooper did do her quest back in the day.

On my warrior, I once again had no idea who the hostage was, but there was an option to ask "Do I know you?" (which does make sense in context since warriors don't get a quest from him but might have seen him around the academy) and after his reply I had to google him to confirm that he was indeed an existing character.

On my consular, who has done the seeker droid chain and obviously would have recognised Master Gend, I had the option to ask "Do I know you?" as well, but in that context I obviously didn't want to pick it as I did know him. I guess you could play it as they so obviously recognised each other that there was no need to comment on it, but it's been so long that it still felt a bit odd.

Either way, you agree to check on the Hidden Chain activity on Ord Mantell while Rass gets recalled by his brother. This is where the story splits for Republic and Imperial players.

On Republic side, you travel to Fort Garnik to seek out Captain Blyes, who once probably gave your trooper or smuggler their very first side mission. (I actually got a bit confused by this because I went straight to the new area Kessan's Landing and ran around aimlessly for a bit, only later realising that this bit of the story actually takes place on "old" Ord Mantell. In hindsight I think making you go there was a pretty clever move on the devs' side, as I think it's good for an MMO from a social point of view for new players to also see higher-level players near the starting zone - as long as they're not competing for the same resources.)

Captain Blyes is not in his office, and his nervous protocol droid eventually admits that he's several hours overdue. You find him getting smacked in the face by Black Sun smugglers in a hangar in Oradam Village and rescue him. He's grateful but has no idea about any Hidden Chain activity - though he promises to look into it if you can deliver a few supplies around the area first.

You meet up again in the frontier town of Kessan's Landing, and when you arrive there you also run into Arn. Apparently Blyes inquired about more reinforcements, and Arn is all he got - can't say I entirely blame him for being disappointed! One of Blyes' scouts has a lead on potential Hidden Chain activity in the geothermal power plant, so this is where you're off to.

Meanwhile, on Imperial side...

You go straight to Kessan's Landing, to see Ord Mantell heroic quest giver Gizmel Gam, who's apparently become known since then as the type of scoundrel who'll work for anyone. You don't immediately find him in his office either, but instead it contains a couple of disgruntled people who are clearly not happy with something he's been doing and are also looking for him to complain. You can talk to them or just sneak off to search the other locations you overhear them mention as his potential hideouts.

As you search around town, you find more people that are similarly annoyed with Gizmel about something or other. (I've got to admit I chuckled at the droid in the cantina that's called ME-3P and says nothing but "Meep. Meep.") You eventually find him in the so-called Legate Lounge (which features an Ortolan playing the organ Max Rebo style) and he promises to help you if you first take care of his most urgent problem, some SIS agents that are on his case.

You find the SGS agents posing as mechanics in a local shop. There's supposed to be a saboteur option here, but it launched buggy and shows for loyalists instead, and only for them, which makes no sense of course. Might want to hold off on taking any Imperial saboteurs through this bit until they patch it. Either way, you have the option to resolve things peacefully or violently.

When you return to Gizmel's office, you're surprised to find Darth Krovos and her retinue there. Turns out that she's got assets on Ord Mantell to help stir unrest, and Gizmel contacted one of those people in an attempt to sell you out. She knows about the Mandalorian in-fighting as well and thinks that it's in everyone's best interest to get rid of them here, so she's planning to assist you. Gizmel is still deemed useful enough to provide more intel, and advises you to check on a drop-off the separatists expect at the geothermal power plant to find out what's going on between the separatists and the Hidden Chain.

As you sneak inside the power station, the stories of the two factions converge again. You run into Hidden Chain and separatists working together, and eventually encounter a Cathar woman fighting some of them off with a blaster and some minor Force powers. She introduces herself as Petra and explains that she was looking for her sister Mina, who used to work in the station but has recently gone missing. She also explains that she saw the Hidden Chain remove vital cooling rods from the power plant, without which it will explode sooner or later. As you can see signs of a meltdown being imminent already, you agree to help her with cooling things down at least temporarily by redirecting some water from a reservoir. Arn or Krovos hang back to first flip a vital switch and then to provide remote assistance/intel afterwards.

After you save the power station from immediate doom, Rass Ordo calls you on holo to share something he deems very important: Shae Vizla hasn't been responding to Jekiah's calls for help and is effectively missing. Petra is somewhat alarmed by the whole conversation (presumably because she's just been fighting Mandalorians) and questions whether she should even trust you, but you agree to track down the Hidden Chain together to retrieve the cooling rods, both to foil their plans and to assure that the power station can be repaired.

Your search leads you to a crashed tram car (the opening of which involves a brief sequence with an adorable Gonk droid), in which you find cages and what looks like some deceased prisoners, one of whom Petra recognises. She gets very upset and angry, and her worry about her sister intensifies. She reckons that the enemy must've continued to the nearby supply depot of Fort Ronnig and that you should go there.

Republic players have to fight their way into the enemy base while taking out a whole lot of defences, while Imperials get intelligence about a secret back door that bypasses a lot of that. Either way you eventually find a separatist leader guarding the cooling rods. You defeat her, but she gets one more message off to tell her associates to "get the assets off-world" and activates explosives around the room. You now have the choice to insist on disarming them, or to make a run for it to try and capture the "assets"/prisoners.

I found this to be a very interesting story choice, as it's not clearly light or dark or even necessarily a moral question, but more a matter of having to make decisions with limited information. If you just wanted the Hidden Chain to not have the cooling rods, letting them blow up seems fine, but if you wanted to return them to the power plant, it's potentially very bad for the population of Kessan's Landing to let them get destroyed. You prevented the power station from blowing up on the spot, but what will happen without the cooling rods in the long run is anyone's guess. On the other hand, running after the prisoners might end up being a completely futile endeavour as they might already be dead anyway, like the ones in the tram car - who knows what the Hidden Chain even wanted with them.

If you go for the prisoners, you find Mina in one of the prison cells and the two sisters are delighted to be reunited, but Mina says that some people have already been taken away. Mina then takes charge of the remaining prisoners and vows to lead them home. Outside, you and Petra see a shuttle take a few more cooling rods aboard and take off. If you save the first set of cooling rods by disarming the bombs instead, you arrive just in time to see Mina and the last few prisoners get taken away on the same shuttle, much to Petra's distress.

Almost immediately afterwards, a different shuttle arrives and lands, spitting out more Hidden Chain mooks and the leader of Clan Varad, Tyrus Brokenblade. It's interesting to note here that Petra asks who he is, and your character replies with "I don't know" - because of course they don't, it's only you as a player who's seen him multiple times in the "meanwhile, at Heta Kol's" cut scenes. That clear dissonance between what I knew and what my character knew felt a bit jarring to me to be honest... then again, you could also see it as a clever way of making the player invested in an encounter that would otherwise just be a random mook to you. Interestingly enough, Tyrus tries to convert you to Heta's side, framing it as someone with your power being wasted on Shae. Eventually you come to blows (if you don't start the fight, Petra will) and he's another pretty interesting boss fight for a story encounter! Though you still win of course.

Unfortunately, Petra gets too close after Tyrus has been forced to his knees, and he manages to impale her on his techblade. I honestly thought she was gonna die there, but it turns out she joins the Outlander and Sabine Wren in the "walks away from being stabbed in the chest" club. In fact, she's more than fine because the latter two at least needed medical attention, but Petra literally just walks off and appears completely fine when you talk to her later. I don't know, maybe the injury isn't meant to be as severe as it looks in the cut scene?

Anyway, just as Tyrus is about to strike a second time, delivering what definitely would have been killing blow, a pink light saber blocks the attack. It's Sa'har! He calls her a traitor and claims that Ri'kan will enjoy killing her, which gets her riled up and the two start fighting again. Eventually you team up with Sa'har and beat him down for good. Sa'har tells you about how she gave the holocron to Heta, who is now using it to build some sort of machine (which is what all the raiding is about) but that she feels it's all wrong and wants to stop it but can't do it by herself.

It turns out that Tyrus still isn't completely down, and he crawls forward to reach for his holocommunicator and call Heta. Sa'har responds instinctively and cuts his hand off to prevent him from doing so... on screen! I mean, there's no blood or anything of course, but we actually get a close-up of his disembodied hand, which is I think the "goriest" this game has ever gotten visually (at least the bounty hunter's head deliveries were always in sacks...).

Sa'har panics and you can now decide to either take Tyrus prisoner (in which case your ally will comment to tell you more about his identity on your return to town) or kill him (Sa'har refuses to deal the killing blow herself). She tells you that she needs to return to Heta and cover her tracks, but that she's still planning to sabotage her and that she'll contact you for help when the time comes. Her last comment is "your friend is gone", which is meant to indicate the (severely?) injured Petra having just walked off, but for extra confusion she was still lying there for me visually, seemingly half dead, but apparently none of my characters cared enough to even check on her. I'm pretty sure that's a bug.

You return to town, which is once again different for Republic and Imperial players.

As a Republic character, you re-unite with Arn in town and tell him about what happened with Sa'har. Petra shows up to complain to Blyes about everything that happened and to accuse everyone of not caring about the population of Ord Mantell. Blyes is somewhat dejected in response and admits that the people have indeed been neglected... he comments that he'd be appreciative of any help you can provide (do dailies please).

On Imp side, you get a call from Petra when you return to Gizmel Gam's office. She doesn't trust the Sith enough to show up in person, but she wants you to know that after everything that happened, people are finally starting to ask questions, and she feels a certain degree of gratitude. She also says that she's willing to do anything, take help from anyone to either save her sister or improve Kessan's Landing's lot in general.

Krovos gives you the rundown of your mission's after-effects. If you saved the cooling rods, she's particularly pleased as this gives her leverage she's planning to use. Gizmel says the incident with the power station caused a lot of chaos, even if it can be repaired eventually. He also tries to wriggle out of working for the Empire again, which gives you the option to kill him. Finally, you tell Krovos about what happened with Sa'har, and she's not impressed.

We get one more shot of Sa'har getting called by Ri'kan, who asks where she's been, to which she replies that she was just tracking something for Heta and ran into a dead end.

Overall, I think this is a story that definitely benefits from being played through more than once, not just to see the differences between Republic and Empire, but also to see more of the small variations that occur based on your origin story and various choices. The difference between saving Petra's sister vs. not saving her is definitely worth seeing as well. Plus there were a lot of small details that I honestly just missed the first time around.

As for the core of the main storyline... I did enjoy it, and I thought the showdown with Tyrus and Sa'har was great (leaving aside the oddness around just what happens to Petra there). I thought it was interesting that Tyrus was still interested in turning you to their side after everything that's happened, and I was genuinely surprised to see Sa'har show up (though the game did spoil itself a little by the systems message that said "Sa'har Kateen has joined you as a companion." earlier on, but that came at such a random moment that I actually thought it was just another bug, hah).

It's been clear through all the cut scenes we've seen her in that she's been unhappy with what Heta and her gang are doing, but she just seemed too consumed by guilt and a desire to make nice with her brother to do anything about it. I mean, I always figured that she was going to "snap" at some point, but I didn't expect it to happen like this, with her just showing up to ask for help and outright turning against one of Heta's followers. It'll be interesting to see where that goes.

Shae going missing was also interesting, especially after how angry and obsessive she was when we last saw her in 7.3. I can't see that going anywhere good for her...

Seeing Arn and Krovos again was nice, though they didn't really get to do that much, and I've got to admit I did wonder a bit whether they were really the best people to have along for this particular ride, e.g. wouldn't hidden Imperial operations to stoke unrest on Ord Mantell be more in the wheelhouse of someone like Xarion or Rivix?

The character I had the most issues with to be honest was Petra, which is a bit of a shame because I don't think she's a bad character. In fact I thought it made for quite an interesting dynamic that she's both mad at the separatists and the Republic. Her voice actress also does a good job - if you don't manage to rescue Mina and you watch the shuttle fly away with her, Petra's repeated cries of "She was right there!" are absolutely heart-wrenching. The problem I had was just that... Petra simply wasn't a very fun person to have around and she's your companion for most of this story.

She's (justifiably) distrustful and angry and yells a lot, and to be honest that just made me feel the same way I feel about angry people in real life: I just wanted to be done with her and get away. Like, stop yelling at me, lady, I've got other things to worry about. I didn't dislike her or wanted to harm her, I just wanted her to go away and leave me alone, haha. Ironically, the one moment when I found myself really caring about her, when she got stabbed and I wanted to check on whether she was going to make it, that was not an option the game gave me.

Finally, who the hell is that Rodian in the key art? He wasn't actually a character anywhere as far as I could tell.

Did I miss anything important? Or do you just think anything I said is way off? What did you think of this story update in general? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

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.

Bugged for a Decade

I have a low-level trooper on Satele Shan that I created ages and ages ago - I don't remember when it was exactly, but it must've been at least close to a decade ago. It was before you chose an advanced class at level one, and looking at my achievements for Ord Mantell it might've even been before the achievement system was introduced with Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

I originally created this character to say hi to Redbeard on whatever server he was playing on at the time and which later got merged into something else. I also remember that I only got to level seven because I ran into some sort of bug that prevented me from progressing - which didn't bother me too much at the time because it was just a random alt and I figured I'd just come back to it at a later date, by which time the bug would hopefully have been fixed.

Only... that never happened. I made other alts on Satele Shan, but for some reason I remained reluctant to go back to this one. I remembered making a lot of dark side decisions during those early missions and felt kind of bad about that in retrospect. So she just sat there, for years and years.

However, this week one of the weekly seasons objectives was to do fifteen missions on a trooper, so I thought I might as well use that as an opportunity to dust off this particular alt on Satele Shan. I logged in, cleared out a decade worth of subscriber reward emails and ran around a bit to pick up some exploration missions. Then I talked to a twi'lek NPC just outside Fort Garnik for my class story. When the conversation finished, my personal holocom popped up and the mission instructions changed to tell me to take the call. So I clicked on the holocom and... nothing happened, except a short voice line from Aric Jorgan telling me to get a move on already. I could get that to repeat by clicking again, but no conversation would actually start. In fact, I could not move at all.

And in that moment I remembered that it was this exact bug on which I had gotten stuck last time - it was still there a decade later! I did a quick Google search to find whether other people had any experience with this bug in "The Ambush" and whether there was some sort of workaround, but all I found was someone complaining on the forums back in 2015 that this bug still wasn't fixed even though it had originally been reported in 2012. I've got bad news for you, buddy...

I tried the usual standard procedures to deal with that kind of thing: relogging, resetting the quest, restarting my entire game... and while those allowed my character to move again, I could not get past that bugged holocall. Eventually I submitted a customer support ticket describing the situation and asking whether they could move me past that step of the quest somehow. And to their credit, they did! I got a response within less than 24 hours that the matter had been handled, and I found that my trooper was now level eight and on the next step of the quest, meaning I could finally continue.

I was just kind of surprised that such a game-breaking bug was still around after more than a decade, and that there was so little documentation about it. I can only guess that it's pretty rare and triggered by an obscure set of circumstances, seeing how I've taken many troopers through Ord Mantell myself without ever running into the issue. Fortunately it wasn't a big deal for me since the character was just one of a million alts and customer service responded within a reasonable time frame. I'm just a little worried whether she's still bugged in some other way as I noticed that while running around and questing I kept getting constant "out of range" error message pop-ups without doing anything...

Enjoying the View

A year ago, in the run-up to the game's ten-year anniversary and the Legacy of the Sith expansion, Bioware held the "Best View in SWTOR" contest. It wasn't anything fancy, just a basic screenshot contest inviting players to capture nice views of their virtual environment, but I liked the idea. After all, I like taking screenshots!

In the end I only submitted screenies for three of the ten eligible planets though (the ones used to illustrate this post) - I honestly don't remember why I didn't go for more. I only remember running around Zakuul for a while trying to take a shot that satisfied me but that I was ultimately not happy with any of the results.

I didn't win anything, but I can't really complain about that. In the news post that announced the winners, they stated that they received "thousands" of entries, and their chosen winners were all highly deserving. I still don't know where the winning Yavin IV screenshot was taken, but it looks amazing. (Feel free to enlighten me in the comments.)

Either way, I figured this contest was just a one-time thing for the anniversary, so I was very pleasantly surprised when the team announced a few days ago that we were all invited for another round this autumn, just with a different selection of planets.

I'd already liked the contest last year, but this time around it very much felt like the right thing at the right time for me. The other night I spent a whole evening just travelling to different planets and taking screenshots of the sights - it was quite refreshing to not think about gear or Conquest points for a change. As a result I've already submitted shots for nine out of the ten eligible planets this time around. I'm not sure I'll still come up with something for Odessen... in my opinion there just aren't a lot of good opportunities for nice views outside cut scenes there.

Again I'm not really expecting to win anything... but it just felt like a nice feel-good exercise, you know? I suspect that the devs and artists also enjoy looking at all the pretty screenshots and take satisfaction in knowing that players really look at their work and appreciate it. If you're feeling inspired yourself, you still have until the 12th of October to send in one or more submissions of your own.

Twin Sunmergames 2016

Sunday a week ago my guild held a fun little social event that was dubbed - based on what was originally a typo but was quickly appropriated for its punniness - "Twin Sunmergames". As turnout for social events on dedicated social nights has been somewhat lacklustre at times, it was decided that we would actually sacrifice an ops night for this one, something I was personally quite pleased with. I'm actually one of the people who tends not to attend social nights, but it's not due to a lack of interest - the problem is rather a lack of time and energy for additional nights dedicated to group events on top of our regular ops.

As the theme was summer fun, we were instructed to show up in swimwear. I initially bristled at this a little, considering my usual dislike for all the inappropriately bikini-clad characters on the fleet, but I couldn't deny that it fit both the overall theme and the silly nature of the event in this case. Once I actually set my mind to putting an outfit together, I was shocked by the prices of a lot of potentially interesting pieces. Pretty much any piece of Covert Energy armour was going for several million credits! I remember when these were a super common drop from the current pack and nobody wanted them... I was proud that I eventually managed to settle on something that didn't break the bank while also still providing a minimum amount of cover for boobs and butt. I was particularly happy with the cheap piece of random armgear I found that - while not invisible - looked like fairly light armbands.

The evening itself was going to be split into three parts: a game that the organisers had dubbed "Hot Ball", a relay run on Ord Mantell, and a race to get through normal mode Legacy of the Rakata as quickly as possible.

"Hot Ball" took place in our guild stronghold on Tatooine and was based on using the Custom Huttball Stand, an interactive furniture item, to play what's basically a variant of Hot Potato/Pass the Parcel. For those who don't know, the Huttball stand generates a ball that looks similar to the Huttball, which players can pick up and throw around - but it expires after a little while, which causes it to either disappear quietly or explode, with the latter option tossing the person currently holding it high into the air. As blowing up your fellow guildies is always a popular pastime, this was unsurprisingly good for a lot of laughs. To keep things organised, we were split into four teams, and the judges made a point of timing the matches and keeping score.

The second activity of the evening was a relay run on Ord Mantell. To be honest I kind of expected this one to be the least interesting bit, because well... it's just running around, right? I guess the team with the most classes with speed boosts wins? Fortunately things turned out to be a lot more fun than that.

What caused a lot of unexpected surprises was the fact that the proposed course wasn't entirely straightforward, and it turned out that several guildies had apparently never bothered to fully explore Ord Mantell's map or hunt bounties there. This resulted in multiple people dying from falling off cliffs, into lava, or just generally running in circles like headless chickens because they couldn't figure out how to get up that cliffside. I never would have thought that a starter planet could be this deadly and confusing to max-level characters. The high point of the run came in the form of a surprising and particularly amusing twist, when the guy who everyone thought was going to win (as his team was the only one who had made it to the last stage of the relay so far) ended up going completely off the rails, circled the local volcano instead, and eventually had to give up without ever having reached the finish line.

Finally the evening was wrapped up with a race to get through tactical Legacy of the Rakata the fastest, for which we were split into three random teams. This is another activity that I would have expected to be relatively straightforward, but once again I had greatly underestimated my guildies' ability to cause mayhem. From wipes due to overpulling trash to foolish use of the /stuck command and clickable objects bugging out for multiple people, it ended up being quite a mad race. Interestingly, the team that ended up winning by completing the instance in a mere sixteen minutes probably approached things in the most conservative way, just trying to kill things quickly while moving from one objective to the next as fast as possible.

Want to get a glimpse of the mayhem? I made a summary video:



It's cliché, but having a good group of people to play with and do things that go beyond what the game's basic framework provides makes any MMO so much better. I can only encourage any guild who might be thinking about organising similar events; it's definitely worth it!

Side Quest Love

Side quests in Star Wars: The Old Republic don't get much love. People complain that they get repetitive quickly, and others even claim that they are outright dumb. Last year Syp even made a post to suggest that they should be removed from the game entirely. Yikes! It's funny that people clamour for MMOs with more "worldly" aspects to them, but at the same time campaign to have everything removed that doesn't personally entertain them.

Time for some facts: It's true that doing the same quests over and over again gets boring, but it has never been necessary to do all the side missions on every character. You can go back to my levelling diary from launch and read about how I skipped several planets pretty much entirely on my first playthrough. No, just doing your class story wasn't going to do it at the time, but there were always options in terms of where to get that extra XP. If you decided to follow the exact same path on every alt, that's entirely on you. (My personal pet theory is that many of the complaints about repetitive side quests originated from players who couldn't decide on a class, kept rerolling, and therefore burnt themselves out on the starter experience in weeks.)

And if you consider the side quests "dumb", I can't help but wonder if you space-barred through all the conversations and focused on nothing but your quest tracker. No, killing x space baddies isn't revolutionary, but it isn't the point either. The point is the world-building done by the dialogue.

When it comes to Bartle types, I score about equally high as explorer and as socialiser. Some people think that being an explorer in an MMO means that all you ever want to do is wander towards the horizon and see new lands, but there are more things to explore than geography, and for me the background and the lore are one focus. I'm not usually someone to read huge walls of texts about lore, mind you, but I love it when the NPCs around me bring the world to life naturally, and that's exactly what SWTOR's side quests do. It seems quite appropriate that they were officially renamed to "exploration missions" in 4.0.



Let's take this one from Ord Mantell for example. No, the task of fetching two holodiscs by itself is not very exciting, but within the space of only a few minutes we get: insight into the tension between loyal civilians and the local military, the story of someone who decided to convert to the side of the separatists, and a taste of how the duration of the conflict as well as just spending too much time being exposed to this kind of thing can emotionally harden someone. Personally I also think that Lamalla is kind of funny.

On my Cathar trooper on the Ebon Hawk I decided to do all the side quests again for a change, and it really adds so much context to everything. How much do you really learn about Coruscant during your class story, no matter which one? Generally speaking, you tend to be too focused on your main objective to pay too much attention to the kind of scenery you're running through. Also, in a somewhat bizarre move (in my opinion), Bioware has decided to label the Black Bisector storyline as Coruscant's main planetary arc in 4.0... Don't get me wrong, I like these quests very much, but I would have thought that the stuff with the senators and the gangs would have been more relevant. Because yes, there is a lot going on: popular senators conspiring with gang leaders, Coruscant security being overwhelmed on all fronts, vigilantes deciding to claim whole sectors for themselves, infrastructure breaking down, and so on and so forth. Plus, some of it is just plain fun. How cool is it to help out a struggling security officer by sending a known thug off to jail with a simple wave of the hand?



Same thing on Taris. Funny thing, I never liked that planet much, and I can't help but wonder if that's at least in part due to me skipping most of its content at launch. During my brief visit to progress my class story, my main impression was that it was an icky swamp full of rakghouls, a type of mob that was simply annoying.

But when you listen to all the dialogue in the side quests, there is so much more going on: conflicts between old and new settlers, official recovery programmes clashing with greedy scavengers, and all kinds of exciting discoveries, such as that the Tarisian government decided to freeze itself to survive the bombardment, or the sad story of the refugees who built up a primitive society of their own underground after everyone else had been wiped out, until their offspring became infertile from radiation poisoning. There's more to the rakghouls as well: they may at least have some semblance of sentience...



... oh, and some of them have learned to use the Force. OK, I always thought that particular story idea was a bit dumb, but I figured there were only so many ways they could think of to make rakghouls more interesting.

The point is that a lot of what makes the planets in SWTOR interesting places to be comes from the side quests. I'm actually really excited about redoing all of those exploration missions now after skipping most of them on my more recent Republic alts and dealing with the single-mindedness of the KotFE storyline. (Chapters ten and eleven have tried to give a bit of background about the civilian population of Zakuul, but it's still quite thin compared to what could have been done with some simple side missions.)

Do you have any favourite exploration missions? I might do a "top ten" or something eventually...