Category Archives: SWTOR
Red Is My Favorite Color
This is a picture of a Shuttle Pilot for the Republic Transport Service standing next to the shuttle that takes you from the Illum: Republic Orbital Station down to the planet of Illum itself. I want her clothes. SO BADLY. Red is my favorite color and on the Republic side of things there are so few red items. These clothes would totally match my Longspur Blaze. I would be smiling, styling and profiling.
This Game Is Going To Kill Me
I hate to actually admit it out loud, but this game is starting to piss me off. I’ve gotten used to the various bugs in Operations which cause wipes for no reason. I’ve gotten used to how fucking hard it is to use the GTN with it’s clunkiness. But some things are getting hard to ignore. Like the fact that everyone needs augments, augments require Advanced Neural Augmentors and I never seem to be able to get many of those.
On my main toon, I have 2 companions maxed out on affection and one of them is Tharan who has +10 slicing. I run both of these guys on Mysterious Funds and Whispers On The Net (2 of the abundant tech parts missions) non-stop with an occasional Extinguish The Sun thrown in and I would say I average 3 Advanced Neural Augmentors every 80 runs. THAT’S HORSESHIT! Yes, I know I can buy the level 340 slicing missions from the GTN to get a guaranteed 4 purple augmentors and the missions I’m running will only return them on a crit. But doesn’t the rate of crits, or actually the lack thereof, bother anyone else? It’s ridiculous. I shouldn’t have to buy them, I LEVELED UP SLICING! And here’s a weird coincidence… my level 15 bank alt finally has slicing up to grade 6 but she’s not yet at 400 and now that I’ve started sending out T7 with about 30% affection he has returned purple augmentors 3 out of 6 missions. I found a few other discussions by googling the subject which seem to indicate there is a better chance at crits if the skill isn’t maxed out and the character isn’t level 50. ISN’T THAT WEIRD? I’m not saying that’s actually what’s going on or that it’s by design, but my experience sure does make it seem true and other people are talking about it too. I’m not bitching about this because I want to sell these things and make a profit, I’m running these missions for the good of the guild. We’re a raiding team, everyone needs their shit augmented. We’re chipping in and working together to make that happen. No, I’m not the only slicer but yes, others are having a terrible return rate on these too. I am so angry. Grrrr.
The reason this is boiling over is because of the recent server move which was forced on us (again) with no real advanced notice. I work 3rd shift and I don’t log in every day, so imagine my surprise when I was at work Monday night / Tuesday morning reading our guild forums and seeing a post from our GM that she just found on on that Monday we would be moved to a new server the following day. Which was already here by the time I read it. I panicked. I’m the official banker, do I need to empty the bank like I did the last time we were forced to move? Will the guild need to be disbanded and re-formed? Not that any of that would have mattered because it was already too late. From what I gather, we had less than a 24 hour notice about the move. That’s so completely not cool. Yes, they did move the guild and guild bank for us so there was nothing that needed to be done, but big fucking deal. I was already on a server that averaged 2 instances of the Fleet and Black Hole and was very populated. And I ended up on that server because they moved us off of my original server and I lost my legacy name and several character names. Now we’re moved again. To an even bigger server. As if running Black Hole dailies didn’t already suck enough. I lost another character name. Woo-fucking-hoo. Yes, I did get to change my legacy name back to what it was originally, but honestly it just doesn’t mean anything to me anymore because now anyone can have it. It’s not special anymore. It’s not legacy anymore. It’s just a fucking name. I am one of the few who got in on the first day of early access. I am absolutely a founder of this game and I am not happy with the way things are going. Grrrr.
EVERYONE RELAX
I did decide to renew my domain name. Even though it’s rarely used these days, I did enjoy blogging here back when I was more active and the name still cracks me up, so I had to save it. Now if I ever do find anything I want to say about SWTOR, I still have a platform I can use. Honestly, it may happen sooner than later because I’ve been getting real cranky lately about how often my rich and abundant slicing missions DON’T yield the Advanced Neural Augmentor, even though I’m running them constantly with 2 companions who are maxed out on affection. Grrr…. now I’m pissed off all over again just thinking about it.
Anywho, long live allforthewookiee.com
A Few Haiku, For You
Oh how I love thee
Pretty purple lightsaber
You make death look good
Riding my speeder
I feel so bad-ass and cool
I am such a dork
Every chance I get
I club dance with my guildies
They never tip me
My Jedi wears pants
Instead of a sissy robe
Her butt looks so good
It feels like cheating
To make these silly little poems
A published blog post
Does This Mean I’m Vain?
Real life = Crazy. Nuff said.
Moving on… I have switched from using Tharan to do dailies with to using Nadia. The main reason is because I am keeping Tharan out running slicing missions constantly trying to gather pretty purple sliced tech parts. I figure he’s likely happier running around the galaxy with his beloved Holiday instead of following me around all day anyway. So Nadia got promoted; but before I could allow myself to be seen in public with her once again, I had to give her a makeover. I was not a fan of original Nadia at all – she looked like an emo teenager to me. Unfortunately, one of the things I hated about her most was the blue tattoos smeared across her face and it turns out you cannot have a Nadia without blue face tattoos. Bummer. Not that I have an issue with face tattoos, I just like them to be a little more subtle. I finally decided to go with the customization that managed to cover her face a bit and give her hair the same color as mine. Because my hair is awesome.
Then I dressed her in a shirt that matches mine.
Is that weird? 
Keeping The Minions Busy
Before patch 1.3 went live, my minions didn’t really receive much love. Tharan was allowed to follow me around and heal me through dailies, but aside from occasional slicing missions and making a few stims to put in the gbank for raiders, the rest of these guys rarely saw any action. Well, actually Lt. Iresso saw some major action for a while there (of the BSOCK variety, if you know what I mean – wink, wink) and I managed to hit 10,000 with him, but the rest of my companions remained way below that number. Tharan came in second simply because as my only healer he spent plenty of time observing cut scenes during dailies and even though he gave me the -1 of shame most of the time, after all of our time together he was around the 7,000 mark. Qyzen was around 4,500, Nadia was around 4,000, Zenith was only at 2,000 and CN2 was at 0. Yep, I pretty much did that all wrong.
Obviously Lt. Iresso got to max affection because I was very interested in the romance storyline and wanted to see it through to it’s conclusion. But the rest of them were just basically ignored because… well, because I’m an idiot I guess. I knew in the back of my mind higher affection somehow affected crew skills, but since I wasn’t a serious crafter I didn’t really spend much time worrying about it. I suppose I’m technically a lazy gamer. I love to be logged in and playing and I follow a lot of SWTOR blogs, but I don’t REALLY pay attention to learning the things I should probably learn about the game. I skim blog posts, read headlines about patch notes, etc. Aside from not loving a weekend raiding schedule, this laziness for learning is a big part of why I don’t have a history of raiding in other games. I have never felt like spending an hour or two a week studying for a game I’m playing for the purpose of fun and relaxation. For the record, since I am now committed to raiding, I always make sure to read any boss fight strategies the raid leader directs us to in preparation for our next adventure. Luckily, that doesn’t happen a lot or I’m afraid I would get lazy with it too. I wish I knew what caused this behavior, because it’s not the way I am with other things in life.
Anyway, back to why my companions all look so intensely hard at work in the screenshot above, I have finally FINALLY realized the error of my ways. Since the patch dropped (sadly if I had paid more attention to blog posts and patch notes I would have started working on this weeks ago) I have been trying my damnedest to help the guild out with getting everyone all augmented up. I started making and RE’ing level 49 green implants with my biochem for the purpose of stocking the bank with Augmentation Slot Component MK-6 for the serious crafters in our guild to use in making Augmentation kits. That’s been pretty easy since the bioanalysis mats needed can be farmed on Ilum and gotten with rank 5 biochem missions. But I’ve also been sending out 2 companions on level 6 tech part slicing missions non stop in an effort to get the purple Advanced Neural Augmentor items needed to make augments. After having such a crappy return rate on actually getting the purple items I googled it enough to learn they are only returned when the mission crits. And is there any way to increase the chances a mission will crit? Why yes there is, Kristalys, you idiot. If you have your companion’s affection level maxed out it totally increases your chances of mission crits.
So guess who spent an outrageous amount of credits yesterday buying companion gifts and running back and forth to my ship to have companion conversations. Ugh. I hate spending money in big chunks like that. How nice would it have been to have slowly built up their affection over the past 6 months like smart players had already done. You live and you learn, I suppose. I certainly will pay more attention to this with my alts. Of course, I just couldn’t make myself spend all my money in 1 day so I don’t have them all maxed out yet. I did get Tharan up to 10k and Nadia and Zenith are both over 8k each now. Qyzen has been ignored for now since he’s my main bioanalysis monkey and the level 5 mats I need don’t require crit. But I’ll start working on him and CN2 as soon as I top off Nadia and Zenith and build some money back up.
So yeah, lesson learned; a happy minion is a more effective minion. And I’m an idiot.
My Excuses, Let Me Give You Them
Yep, things have been slow around here. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I’ve discovered that being perfectly happy and content with your gaming life leads to a very boring blog. I have to admit, it bothers me a tiny bit to realize how this space has suffered because I truly do enjoy blogging. But I’m certainly not going to complain about being in the perfect guild with the perfect people. Lack of blog posts is a very small price to pay for such an amazing environment.
But aside from that sickening display of love for my people, I have also been busy with alts. While I have always been someone who creates a lot of characters because I enjoy deciding how they should look and what they should be named, I never really get them very far before I delete them to create someone new. I played WoW for over 4 years and only ever had 1 toon reach max level. The second highest alt I had hit around 70. The many others I created seemed to never make it past their 30s. But as you can see from the screenshot above, I have recently made some progress with several alts. Yes, they are actually still pretty low level but I am admittedly a very slow leveler. I always have been. Too much time spent taking screenshots, tabbed out googling items, sitting idle behind a tree while talking in guild chat, etc. So I am very excited to see those alts up there. I also have a Smuggler on a separate server (co-worker peer pressure) who’s level 18. Hooray me, I’m alting!
When I’m not alting or running Operations with the gang, I am farming. Farming in SWTOR isn’t as easy as what I’m used to from my previous MMO experience, but it can still be done. Sure, most of my farming consists of just standing on the fleet and sending my minions out on missions for companion gifts and missions I can sell on the GTN, but I am also spending a lot of time making circles around a lake on Voss gathering Quick-Growth Agent so I can create stims for the guild bank. That… is pretty boring, to be honest. But it’s a necessary evil.
Okay, there you have it. My list of excuses to explain why I have not been blogging as much lately as I started out doing. Luckily, between the new busy server we are now on and the fact that patch 1.3 drops today, I am pretty optimistic things will begin to pick back up. So keep checking back. I will be blabbering about something soon enough. I may even decide to return to Twitter. I’ve really slacked off on that lately.
Home, Almost Sweet Home
On my way to a guild raid – I totally mean Operation – I passed by this dude on the Gav Daragon Mission Deck. It seems I’m not the only one who isn’t totally thrilled about the server transfers.
Day 5 on our new home server and my emotions are still mixed. I will say I had quite a rant prepared for today which was to be all about the Guild Bank. When we transferred on Thursday night, we had a plan in place for handling all of the items and money from the bank. So we put that plan into motion, did all the transfers that night, disbanded the guild on the old server and before logging out Thursday, we had an official support ticket open asking them to give us our bank back on the new server. Friday night we raided and the idiot who was responsible for storing all of the guild bank items didn’t bring enough stims to the raid for everyone. In fact, she even forgot one for herself. Okay, I’m that idiot. Anyway, Saturday night I was still playing the part of the guild bank but I did remember to bring ALL THE THINGS so there were stims for everyone. I realize Bioware was likely very backed up with so many transfers going on and so many tickets being opened, but it was annoying to not have a guild bank we could use. We did finally get our bank back last night at approximately 8pm CST, btw.
Over the past several months, I had totally forgotten what life is like on a busy server. There are a lot of advantages to it, especially when you want to find people to run heroics or dailies with. I’ve already gotten more of those done in the past few days than normal. Additionally, the Global Trade Network is more profitable because there are more people looking at the items I’m selling. In the grand scheme of things, I’m not completely hating it. But I am still not completely loving it. Forced changes to character names aside, it’s just annoying to be overwhelmed with people all the time. I’m having flashbacks of tundra mammoths parked on mailboxes in Dalalag and Stormlagwind. I feel like time has reversed itself and I’m suddenly back in the first month after launch. Tripping over people trying to tag quest mobs, having to repeat myself over and over again that just because I’m a sage does not mean I will heal you. People can make me so crazy.
Of course, all of this is overridden by the fact that I’m still with my little online family. We didn’t lose anyone due to the sudden decision. We’re all still together and we raided – I totally mean Op’d – this weekend. Being a part of a guild that meshes together as well as ours does, well it’s priceless. On the Juyo server, with it’s medium population, we were all wrapped up in our own little world and I’m sure it won’t take too many more days here on the new server to go right back to that.
All of this has made me realize something about my blog too. When you’re perfectly, completely content… you have less to write about. Actually, I could write about how awesome my guild is all the time, but I’m smart enough to know it would quickly grow old for the readers. So if nothing else the server transfers have served to give me something to blog about. I’m quite sure there will be many interactions with asshats here that I can use to entertain you guys. I hope you enjoy the forthcoming tales of the idiots we’re sharing a server with.
So We Just Transferred Servers….
The Snark Side is no longer on Juyo. In a flurry of activity, we moved yesterday. I have mixed emotions about this. Ultimately, I don’t care what my server name is; but I definitely think things could have been handled differently on Bioware’s end. For one thing, I think they should have provided a list in advance of what servers would be made origin servers and what the corresponding destination servers were going to be for all moves before any transfers started. That way, players on those servers could have mulled it over and prepared. It was not fun hearing transfers would hit some servers but not actually knowing if you were going to be affected until THE DAY it started. Complete panic mode happened. Should we move? Should we move now or wait until after our raid nights this weekend? If we wait, will we miss the window of opportunity? There was more chaos game-wide than there needed to be. There’s no reason we shouldn’t have had a list in advance.
Also, I lost my legacy name. I know a lot of people in the community did; but it really kicked me in the stomach when I realized it happened to me. I spent a long time coming up with the legacy name I wanted and I chose one that gave me an identity. There are players who just use funny names, or band names, or whatever and they probably didn’t mind having to pick a new one. But mine was a last name. One that I wanted my characters to be known by. I tried alternate spellings and those were unavailable too. Which made me realize even if I did come up with an unusual spelling, obviously several people were going to have essentially the same legacy name as me. Ugh. Stress. Rage. Sob.
I’m not going to complain this should have never happened. I understand the reason for filling up servers a bit more. It was nice to be somewhere where there is 10 times the activity there was on our old server. It should help with sales on the Global Trade Network and it will definitely help with finding someone to do a quick heroic with. There are good things about the whole process. But there was also some confusion, extra work guilds had to go through, etc. And again I will state I believe that all could have been alleviated with advance notice. Our server transfer was acted on quickly because we didn’t know what staying behind would mean. Would we be allowed to stay there for 1 week? 1 month? 6 months? Would we have to pay to transfer later? No one knew. Some of our poor guildies came home from work to login and find the guild disbanded. Discussion threads on our forums were happening too fast to keep up.
But the good news is, we’re all together. We didn’t lose any guild bank items or money. So that is good. I’ll likely post more in-depth thoughts on some of the details and specific issues next week. For now, I’m just trying to relax from all the shock and surprise of yesterday.
How SWTOR Has Completely Changed My Play Style
I do not have a long history of multiple pc games and MMO’s. I do, however, have a fairly long history of playing WoW. I always played a healer and I always loved it. I leveled my main character as a healer the entire way. It took me forever to kill things cause I’d whack them a few times and then have to heal myself once or twice before whacking them again; but I loved it. Although I was never a raider in WoW, I did enjoy healing my guildies through dungeons and the occasional farm nights and alt nights when things weren’t too serious. I will admit after Cataclysm launched and heroics were so brutal, I let the constant “blame the healer” attitude that began running rampant in-game shatter my confidence. I started to become disenchanted with healing a bit. I pretty much stopped running dungeons and the ones I did run, I ran as dps spec. But I never really embraced being dps, so I just concentrated on dailies and achievements and started working on alts a bit more. Alts that were healers. I truly enjoyed being self-sufficient as I leveled.
Cut to SWTOR where I knew going in (thanks to joining a guild pre-game) that I was going to be a serious business raider. I studied the races and classes and I knew there were already several members of my guild who WOULD be healers as they had been raiding healers in previous games. So I became interested in giving ranged dps a go on the Jedi Consular. When I got a chance to play in the beta, I rolled a Sith Inquisitor and specced her as ranged dps (because it was similar to the Consular but didn’t spoil my story before diving into the game for real). I loved it. I was confident I had made the right decision as far as what my main, raiding character would be. However, I did truly want to have at least one alt who was a dedicated healer. After all, I really enjoyed doing that.
Except apparently I don’t enjoy doing that any longer. Because the story lines in SWTOR are so engrossing and because I was determined to get raid ready as quickly as possible and then stay raid ready at all times, I only recently began putting serious work into some alting. The first one I spent time with was a Trooper who proudly chose to be a healer at level 10. It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t love healing with the trooper. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something just didn’t feel right about it. I wondered if it was because troopers heal with gadgets and aren’t as hands-on (or maybe i mean hands flailing about casting spells) as I was used to in the past. I stuck with it for a few levels, but I was so unimpressed with it that I didn’t spend much time on her and leveling slowed way down. After a few weeks, I reset her trees and went with a dps spec instead.
Still determined to play a healer, I next rolled a Sith Inquisitor in my guilds part-time “let’s go be evil” guild. I knew the Inquisitor would be the type to cast heals (flail hands) instead of launching mechanical healing globes like the trooper did. But again, once I got there and started doing it, I didn’t like it. I was sort of disappointed, but then not really. Because I LOVE my main character and I don’t NEED to have alts that can heal. I was only disappointed in theory, if that makes any sense. But I did scratch my head and wonder why I no longer wanted to heal. And I think I have finally figured it out. It’s the companion. I love the companions in this game and on my main character, as I’m throwing everything I’ve got at a bad guy, it’s awesome to have someone beside me either patching me up, or kicking the guy in the shins along with me. It’s still me kicking the guys ass, they’re just helping out. But on both the characters I tried healing on, I felt the exact opposite. I felt like I was just helping them out. I felt useless. I just stood there and occasionally tossed a few heals while my companion did all the work. So I started throwing some dps in there and then I got to where I was so busy trying to bust out as much dps as possible, I wasn’t watching my companions health.
So apparently, healing a two person group (1 1/2 really because my tanking companions kept aggro completely off of me for the most part) is just not that damn exciting to me. And throwing rocks is TOTALLY exciting to me. So now all my alts are switched back to dps and for now, I have no desire to heal anything. I think that desire may be completely gone. However, I will say that to give it a fair shot I will likely try switching back to heals once I get an alt to max level and see if I enjoy it more when I have more heals to choose from and when I can run in groups and have more responsibility. Or maybe I won’t.
