Finally Current on the KOTFE Chapters

So I finally managed to get my Jedi Knight completely current on the set of  KOTFE chapters, finishing up Chapter 11 with Aric Jorgen earlier in the week.  I'm now focused on finishing up the initial storyline quests on some of my other toons.  My Imperial Agent just finished chapter 2 and is starting on her final chapter.

I'm still sort of torn on what I think about SWTOR at this point.  I'm less than enthused with the chapter storylines at max level, although I guess at least it's some form of new content, even if it only works out to about an hour a month.

I've also started doing some of the alliance alerts, and those have been interesting as well.  As a WoW player, I can't help finding a tiny Jawa named Blizz really amusing.  I'm told by my guildies that I should start checking out Star Fortresses as well, so I may give that a try.  I haven't really done anything to gear up my Jedi Knight although I certainly have enough credits and other currency to do that easily enough.  Also, it sounds like there's at least a chance to get some useful gear out of the crates that you get for doing the alliance alert missions.

The class storylines up through level 50 continue to be my favorite thing in this game though, so I'm enjoying going back and working on some more of those.  My plan is to finish up my Imperial Agent and then work on my Sith Sorcerer.

Finished Shadows of Revan and Almost Max Level

So I finished the storyline for the Shadows of Revan expansion yesterday, and find myself sitting at level 64, only one level short of max, with an entire expansion worth of storyline still to go.  I continue to find the content in SWTOR to be really interesting and the Jedi Guardian has been a fantastic character to play at this point.  I'm really looking forward to running him through the KOTFE content, even though it looks like I won't be getting xp for most of it.

Once the Jedi Guardian is done, I will likely move most of my characters onto a single server in order to consolidate what I'm doing from a Legacy perspective, and take full advantage of those perks.  I haven't fully decided which server I want to end up on from that standpoint though.

My Imperial Agent will be the next character that I at least run through their initial class story, although I haven't decided how many classes I want to take all the way to max level at this point.

I'm also making a fair amount of credits from my crew skills, and show go into max level being able to purchase a fair amount of gear on the GTN if I need to.  Although as long as my gear remains adequate for getting through the storyline, I'm not sure I'll be paying that much attention to upgrades.

After the Imperial Agent, will likely finish up a Sith Inquisitor / Sorc.

Cheers!

Complete Through Hutt Cartel / Makeb

So I've finished my initial class storyline quests on my Jedi Knight as well as the content from the Hutt Cartel expansion - the planet Makeb.  Both storylines were really interesting and enjoyed both a great deal.  Without any difference at the class level once you get past 50, I'm not sure that it will be quite as interesting for the next 7 classes after 50, but at least for now, it's keeping me very interested.

I've now started on the Shadows of Revan content.  Having been away from the game, I had no idea what was coming, but the whole concept of a solo dungeon with an additional companion added on to make it seem more like the traditional "holy trio" is a really interesting one.  The use of solo dungeons to move the story along is really interesting as well.

The only concern is I'm not sure how much of the story lines on the two planets I'm going to end up having time for before I hit level 60, but I guess at this point, it doesn't really matter and I can just work through the content.

All my other characters are lined up and ready to go with their storylines as well, but I haven't been doing much to progress any of them at this point.  If I keep working through these, the Imperial Agent will be next followed by a Sith Inquisitor.

Fast Progress on Leveling

I'm continuing to make really strong progress with my Jedi Guardian.  He's working his way though Voss and is sitting at level 45.  So far, I'm finding that just doing the class story line quests and maybe a handful of the planet storyline quests is more than enough to keep me on track.

I've really been enjoying the Jedi storyline so far.  I may get tired of the cutscene thing after a while, but at least at the moment, I really appreciate the new content and the way things fit together.  It also feels much more cohesive with being able to limit the quests that you're doing while leveling.  Not as much running around on random tasks.

It appears that in the course of sitting around for 4 years since the last time I played, a couple of my characters managed to lose their class story-line thread.  So far, it's happened on my Sith Inquisitor, but from what I've read on the forums, it sounds like I can expect that to be the case on one or two more.  I've wandered all over trying to pick it back up with no success.  I put in a ticket last Saturday but so far have not gotten any response.  The good news is that the character involved was very low level (around 11), so it's not a big deal for me to start another and quickly catch him up.  It is a bit disappointing to have a ticket sitting out there that long with no answer though.

My current plan is to play this Jedi straight through to current max level, then go back and work on finishing up other story lines.  My Imperial Agent would likely be next because that character is sitting around level 35 or so, so not far to go.

In any case, it's providing a nice break from Warcraft while I wait for their next new expansion, expected around the same time as transporter and hyperspace technology.

Jumping Back Into SWTOR

So with the severe shortage of new content out there in World of Warcraft land, I decided to jump back into SWTOR, particularly after hearing from a pretty large number of online friends that they had made a lot of improvements to the game and to the content and that it was really worth taking another look at.

I really can't believe it's been four years since the last time I posted here or did anything meaningful in SWTOR.

So I've jumped back in.  Rather than pick up my level 50 Trooper Commando and try to level him to the new 65 level cap, I decided to go back and start from scratch and level a new toon all the way, just to see how they've streamlined the 1-50 leveling process, and also to get the hang of the game again.

It really does move much faster now.  At least so far, completing the class quests and a few of the key Story Arc quests is more than enough to keep leveling along.  (And I hadn't yet noticed or picked up on the XP boosts available in the Legacy tab), so that should make things move even faster.

I've managed to get my Jedi Guardian to level 28 in just a couple of days of sporadic play.  I'm enjoying the story line so far, particularly given that the new streamlined leveling process really lets you focus on it.  It's also nice having the option to have your companions play any role and not having to worry about gearing them.  So I take a different one out from time to time just to work on the influence level on each.

I haven't noticed much in the way of changes to crew skills, at least at low levels, but I always thought that worked relatively well in SWTOR anyway.  This particular Jedi toon is set up with Artifice, Archaeology and Treasure Hunting.

I'm apparently not the only one that's jumping back in, because there is a ton of activity out there in the world, at least on the servers that I play on.  So look for more updates here.

Another SWTOR Legacy Complete

So I finished Chapter One on my Imperial Agent earlier this week which resulted in achieving my second SWTOR legacy.  My Imperial Agent continues to be a lot of fun to level as a Sniper, focused mostly on the Engineering tree.  I'm still primarily using Kaliyo as my questing companion.  She makes a decent tank and is able to soak up the damage long enough for me to get most of the bosses down.  I still don't have her as geared as I should, as I still need to grab an ear piece and implants for her.  I wish there were more of those types of things available on the GTN.

I'm also spending a little bit of time on each of my 6 other characters that I'm leveling, attempting to maximize the time spent leveling with rested xp.  So far that seems to be working fine.  Since I've found the end game content to be less than inspiring, I'm not necessarily in any big rush to get any of these last 7 toons to max level.  Right now, a lot of the interest for me in SWTOR is in the leveling process itself.

I've also done a little bit of PvP on my level 50 Trooper, which has been fun.  It seems like SWTOR is either going to need to do some server consolidation, or is going to have to get cross server warzones introduced sooner rather than later.  Nothing kills interest in end game like 30-60 minute queues for the same four warzones.

So right now, on my Imperial Agent, I'm working my way through the bonus series on Nar Shadaa - somethingg I skipped completely on my Republic Trooper - before beginning Chapter Two.  The Nar Shadaa bonus quests have been really good so far, including a couple of decent Heroic quests as well.

Blending Advanced Class Representation

So having gotten my first SWTOR character to max level, I've now focused on leveling many of my other SWTOR alts.  I've also decided to re-roll two of my classes to make sure that I get the chance to level one of each advanced class as well.

As a result, my Jedi Sentinel and my Smuggler Gunslinger will both be getting rerolled as a Jedi Guardian and Smuggler Scoundrel.  After checking, I've got about 5 hours of played time in both characters, and it's definitely easier to reroll now, than to finish the next 140 hours on both characters and then realize that I want to go back and  level two more of each class.

See, on the Empire side, my Imperial Agent (the Empire counterpart of the Smuggler) is leveling as a Sniper (which is the counterpart to Gunslinger).  The Imperial Agent is currently level 31, so would obviously be abandoning a much larger investment of time.  My Sith Marauder is level 14, so it's not incrementally a ton more time, but I'd still rather restart a level 10 rather than a level 14.

It also gives me the chance to get all of my Republic toons on the same server.  Right now my Smuggler Gunslinger is on a different server, so I can reroll on my main Republic server and be able to fully take advantage of all the legacy features.

Once that is done, it will just leave me with one server transfer to do once that ability goes live - moving my Imperial Agent to be with my other 3 Empire characters.  Although I may debate moving them all to the same server to be able to fully take advantage of legacy abilities.  We'll see how that goes.

I may also try leveling a couple of toons purely through PvP just to see how that compares from a leveling time standpoint.  Right now I don't have enough data points to do a very strong comparison, but hopefully that will change within the next few weeks.