The Fanatical Swordsman

I love Star Wars: The Old Republic. I will continue playing it through free-to-play, I will continue playing on the FOUR SAME MAPS in PvP, and I will continue to level characters through my pet peeve planet Balmorra over and over again so I can continue to learn these great stories.

But I think Bioware goofed on this event. Here are some of the things that made me say “Really?!?”

Points of Screwage

Good ol’ LOTRO Reporter and their Point of Screwage segments that I enjoyed so much. Great podcasts by the way, hit MMOReporter.com to see what I mean.

Weapons only able to be used by 3 advanced classes (basically 2 classes).

REALLY?!? That is 3/8 or 2/8 of the population, depending on how you look at it, and assuming equal distribution of classes (which I don’t). I mean REALLY, in reality, Vanguards, Snipers, and Operatives are among the lowest played advanced classes (according to an albeit slightly outdated census here). So Bioware decides to make the majority of the rewards only usable by 25% of the population, REALLY?!?

The sand people outfit is a reskin of the Tatooine Social gear

Is there REALLY a difference between the two pictures above? REALLY and truly?!? Which one is the new one?

The quests are boring.

You give us standard MMO fare and expect us to be happy as if it is a change of pace? REALLY?!? A New Lead had a lot of potential as a droid race, and I thought it would have been fun if it had been like the Taste of Hobbiton quest, where you would place bets on Hobbits to see who would win an eating race. Instead, we disarm a mine, disable a zapper, and run back to the NPC. REALLY standard fare.

The ways we obtained the quests were annoying.

The way we get those three quests at the end is REALLY annoying (A Lead, A New Lead, and Another Lead)! You could send us the mail the next day so we would be able to do it. Giving quests to compulsive MMO players that are literally not able to be completed is REALLY annoying. In the Rakghoul event, the quests were a mystery, fun and interesting to find, confusing but interesting. So instead of that, you give us quests we can’t complete, saying “Come back later,” REALLY?!?

The methods of obtaining tokens after finishing the quests are boring.

In the Rakghoul event, I had a lot of fun infecting my friends and dying to get more Rakghoul DNA samples. But this time, it is a RNG grindfest that we have to compete with other players for, I mean REALLY. This is ridiculous. You have already shown us that you are smarter than this with quest design. Stop being lazy making us run around looking for nodes like WoW players looking for ore.

Sometimes, the quests can kill you!

Another Lead was actually a really interesting quest, making you ride off of a cliff with faith, catching your speeder and making you go on a preset, hidden speeder path. Another Lead also has a really nice, unique bug where you die INCHES away from the crate containing the last piece of the Grand Acquisition Race. MULTIPLE TIMES! No feedback on how to not die, no real reason to die, just dead!

REALLY!?! SO CLOSE!!!!

What, I can’t talk now?

SWTOR is founded on player dialogue and decision? REALLY? Because I didn’t see any of that. All I saw was a single-path, reactive instead of proactive system that pushed me through a cheesy and trivial story, I mean REALLY. I come through 50 levels with my Gunslinger smarting off to authority and sassing Hutts and now he can’t talk? REALLY?!?

The speeder is Tier 1, and it looks stupid.

First, it is expensive; second, it is TIER RUTTIN’ ONE; and third, it is broken. They finally give us a speeder that looks like the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi, and it is broken. REALLY Bioware, REALLY?!?

I absolutely LOVED the Rakghoul event, and because of that, I was really looking forward to this one. Let me put it this way, I was so excited about this questline, that when the video went live, I went to Nar Shaddaa the day before the event started and logged out there. I thought it would be a massive, multi-planet scavenger hunt, with new dialogue and story elements.

Instead, it was a standard MMO’s “go here, kill this guy, jump up here, come back later” grindfest. I am highly disappointed. It is a good thing that I really play this game for the PvP, because after this, trying to recapture the feeling I had with the Rakghoul event will be difficult. Too bad too, because that was one of the most innovative events I have ever seen in an MMO, and LOTRO has some doozies. Bioware will have to step it up to recover from this, but I think they can recover. Oh well, better luck next time, I am REALLY hoping.