The Fanatical Swordsman

Time flies…get it? 😀

Inspired by an article over at Inquisitor’s Roadhouse, I have suddenly realized that it has been almost 6 months since SWTOR launched.

So with that in mind, I have two things I want to share with you! The first is a Top 5 Things I Have Loved, where I gush about my favorite game and the things you should check out. The second is a Top 5 Things That Need To Change Immediately, where I bar no holds and tackle the issues that plague us all, or at least me.

Top 5 Things I Have Loved

There are so many things I have enjoyed about this game, but here are my top 5!

1. Class stories
   The class stories of all the classes have been so enthralling, it is like a book that I just can’t put down. I have completed the Knight, Smuggler, Trooper, and almost the Bounty Hunter stories, and they are just so riveting, I cannot wait until more is added to each of these wonderful tales.
2. Warzones
   I am a PvP guy, that is for sure. Currently, my Gunslinger is rank 63, my Sentinel is rank 54, and my Powertech is level 48/rank 48. I love the thrill and unpredictable facet of PvP, and my favorite thing to do is get a good Warzone, especially if the teams are well-matched. I’d almost lose 5-4 in Huttball than win 6-0 (I did say almost though haha). Some of my best friends in the game I met while PvPing in a Warzone. I think the designs for all of the current Warzones are simply brilliant, especially Huttball. There is a lot of potential for great strategy games here when Ranked Warzones and full Ops group-queuing comes.
3. Ilum 1v1 duels
   Back when Ilum was where all the cool kids hung out, i.e. when there were still quests there, I really enjoyed going out on Saturday nights and dueling Imps and getting Valor for it. This was NOT the low, petty practice of kill-swapping, this was 1v1 for the sake of good, old-fashioned competition. We often would queue for Warzones and wait on Ilum even after we had gotten our daily/weekly done so we could spar with our friends on Imp-side. Yes, that’s right, friends. We would stand around and chat while waiting to duel each other, and then a Warzone would pop and we would joyfully kill each other while emoting the whole time. It was good, social fun.
   
4. Class dynamics
   The classes were all so well designed. Each class has its interesting facets that are all equally enjoyable to explore. I was worried when I picked my Gunslinger or my Sentinel, since all they can do is DPS, but they have such interesting ways to do it, that I really never get bored. In fact, I was changing my spec so much on my Gunslinger that I was chalking up quite a bill for a while there, it was so much fun. No class is boring, and I love that.
5. Operations
   I have gotten to do both Eternity Vault and Karagga’s Palace, but only on Story Mode. This is a highly enjoyable challenge, and is especially fun with my guild, The Order of the Dawning Wandere (yes, misspelled, I know). We get very distracted through the whole thing. As we are very casual, there are times when some of us have to go AFK, so we tend to get the banter going quite easily. I think both of these Operations are very enjoyable, because each of them has something unique to them. I love that both Ops have a puzzle boss, the Ancient Pylons (3rd boss) in EV and Heavy Fabricator (4th boss) in KP. My favorite boss fight of all time is in EV with the Dark Council (4th boss). I can’t wait to see what other ideas Bioware has with regards to boss-fight design, because these were doozys.

Top 5 Things That Need To Change Now

No game is without its flaws. I will say that I plan to stay despite the problems I am about to lay out, but I do hope they are fixed soon.

1. World PvP
   Ilum is dead. So freakin’ dead. I go out there sometimes because I want more PvP than Warzones can offer, and I miss the good ol’ times that I mentioned above. Even the dumb quest they had back before 1.2 was better than the total lack of incentive to go out there now. Yeah, there were people kill-trading out there. I wasn’t. I live for 1v1s and now I can’t get them. Outlaw’s Den was also a big disappointment to me. It sounded so cool, and it is just so barren there, with one measly quest that is not repeatable to go there. I hate that. I really want people to get on the ball with World PvP, Dueling, 4v4, etc. at Bioware. We need something to spark our interest in the PvP community or we will lose players, it is just a matter of time. The Warzones are brilliant, but they get old. Anything Bioware. Come on, you have a great game, don’t let it die.
2. Laaaaaaaaaaag and Long Loading
   I am really getting tired of running at the lowest settings and still having massive lag spikes when I finally get to log in to a planet. It is always when I first come out of the spaceport, so it may have something to do with the rendering of the landscape. I am also EXTREMELY frustrated with the long load screens. When I am queued for a Warzone, I sometimes have to wait 20 minutes or more for a pop, just because of server population going down. I try to get something done in that time, so I will go do the daily quests, and as I sit there for 3 minutes looking at the load screen for Corellia, I keep praying that a queue didn’t pop in that time. I hate it when I finally load in, and there is the message “You are no longer queued for warzones.” So I requeue, then I take the shuttle to the Black Hole, which is another long load, and then “You are no longer queued for warzones.” I requeue, and then do all of the dailies with no queue pop. I then have to decide: do I want to go back to the Fleet or to Ilum or Belsavis and risk missing another queue pop, or should I stay here and run around in circles jumping? Guess which one I pick. Thank goodness for persistent sound, so I can work on things like my Sentinel guide or my Gunslinger guide while I am waiting.
3. Ranked Warzones and Failed Promises
   Bioware really goofed on the Ranked Warzones debacle. They should have put some version in. It wouldn’t have been pretty, but the PvP population dropped almost immediately after the free month they handed out. They definitely should NOT have canceled it the day before. That was a mistake, because it gives the impression of a cover up or a cop-out, not to mention all of the people who cried “bait-and-switch!” It was a crushing blow to the PvP community, and it hasn’t recovered yet. Maybe with the actual addition of Ranked Warzones, people will come back, but the absence has really taken its toll, and I hope it isn’t too late.
4. Server Population
   This is something that Bioware cannot directly fix, as concurrent population was bound to die down after the holidays and as time went on. Maybe the addition of the LFG tool will help resurrect the population, and I am hoping the server transfers will help as well, but I am not convinced that all will be solved there. Server mergers must and will happen, because there are simply not enough people to warrant all of these servers. I would rather have to wait in the queue to get into the game on patch days and big event days and have full Warzone queues the rest of the time, than have this mess.
5. 5 Tiny Little Annoyances
   1. The fact that we are six months in and there is still no /readycheck command just ASTOUNDS me. This is so basic, and even Bioware execs sounded confused when players said they didn’t have one. It is really starting to aggravate me.
   2. Another thing that is annoying (and this is recent) is the 30-second timer for Warzone shutdown when groups are not large enough. It used to be 120 seconds, then they took it out. I think a minute is good, that way there can be something actually done.
   3. As it is, and this is another pet peeve of mine, I have no idea how they decide a tie. I got an Alderaan Civil War and we got the 30-second warning, and I interrupted a cap with a Thermal Grenade which did more damage than was healed and it shut down with us as the losers. That was literally all that was accomplished. I would really like ties to be more clear as to why they were decided the way they are decided.
   4. I also really don’t like how loading in to a Warzone in progress doesn’t stop the Deserter debuff from ticking down and kicking you from the Warzone. Again, long load screens are part of the problem, but if it has me hit spacebar in Voidstar and Novare Coast anyway, they have a really good way of determining if I am in the Warzone or not. Why does that still kick me sometimes?
   5. I am sad they took out the Warzone vendors that were in the Warzones themselves, because I don’t like going back to Fleet all of the time, and it is really annoying to find out that I just joined a Warzone and I am capped on my commendations. They said they will be putting the vendors back after they get the tech that allows them to disable repairing and selling items. Apparently, some people were queuing up just to do that and then they would quit the Warzone. Dirty rotten bums made things difficult on me.

I think I may have cheated with that last point, as it was really 9 things total, but the last one is made of small things. There will be a post soon with a photojournal of all of my fun in SWTOR. Take a look!

What experiences have you up at night, in either excitement or frustration?