Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story is a decent movie. Not a great one, as I suspect many fans were hoping; and not a terrible one, as much of the Internet would have you believe.

Solo is an origin story for Han Solo, that lovable rogue from the original Star Wars films. Starting from his lowly origins as a orphaned urchin on Corellia, Han talks and fights his way into and out of any number of improbable situations on his way to becoming the smuggler we know. Along the way we see him meet Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian, and of course find the Millennium Falcon.

I went into this expecting to see how Han met Chewie, and maybe some other stuff. Which is pretty much exactly what I got out of it. Just about everything involving Chewie was great...I particularly liked that he rescued another Wookie at one point...and the rest of the movie was decent, but nothing spectacular. They filled in a few gaps (like what exactly the Kessel Run was) and expanded on the smuggler's underworld that Han inhabits. Sure, there were some silly bits (like making the marauders into a proto-Rebellion) but I'm used to that with Star Wars. (Midichlorians, anyone?)

I didn't think any of the actors did an exceptional job, but none of them were terrible either. Donald Glover was the best of the bunch as Lando, but his role was too minor to really stand out. Alden Ehrenreich is no Harrison Ford, but that would be true of just about anybody, and I thought his Han was solid but not particularly noteworthy. Neither Woody Harrelson nor Emelia Clarke impressed me much with their performances, but it's not like they were terrible. Just kinda mediocre.

The writers clearly tried to interject some social commentary into the film, most notably with Lando's droid L3-37 (oh, haha, what a clever name) agitating for droid rights. Which, in my opinion, fell completely flat because they couldn't decide whether it should be a serious issue or comic relief. Going back and forth between the two failed miserably.

There's been a ton of angst all over the Internet about how Solo had a poor performance at the box office. I doubt Disney is losing much sleep over that, because they're still going to make millions overall (merchandise, DVD sales, etc). And even if they do lose some money on this one, the Star Wars franchise isn't in danger any time soon.

For Star Wars fans, it's worth seeing Solo for a bit more story about characters that you already know. You'll likely have a good time watching, but I doubt you'll find much that stands out.

Rogue One

It takes some extra skill to put together a story when everyone already knows the ending. I think the Rogue One folks did a fine job.

This newest Star Wars film takes place prior to A New Hope. It follows Jyn Erso, the daughter of an engineer forced by the Empire to work on the planet-destroying Death Star. She and various rebellion irregulars track down her father, discover that he has sabotaged the project, and go into the lion's den to get the details to the Rebel Alliance.

We've already known for nearly four decades how the story is going to end, since A New Hope starts with the Death Star plans already in the hands of Princess Leia. (RIP Carrie Fisher...the news of her death broke on the same day I saw this movie.) Rogue One takes full advantage of the fact that nearly every viewer is going to know that story. There are lots of familiar people and places and things that show up as Jyn's story unfolds, from C-3PO and R2-D2 to Darth Vader to the princess herself (pretty decent CGI on that). The journey doesn't end happily ever after for everyone, which might have been depressing if we didn't know what comes next.

Having said that, I also enjoyed the story that Rogue One told beyond just looking for the ways that it links to the larger Star Wars story. Jyn is a flawed heroine, involved in the conflict more for revenge and following her father than for the ideals of rebellion. Just about everyone that accompanies her on her journey is a misfit or outcast of some kind. The story is as much about those misfits coming together to get a job done as it is about setting up A New Hope.

One thing you don't see much of in Rogue One is Jedi. There are references to the Force, and one character who has at least some Jedi skills, but this story takes place in the time when Darth Vader has largely exterminated the Jedi Order. It's a stark contrast to most of the other Star Wars films, where being or becoming a Jedi is almost always a central theme. I was pleased to see that Rogue One worked out well without them.

Just about anything Disney puts out under the Star Wars name is going to make plenty of money, but between Rogue One and The Force Awakens, it seems they're trying to make decent movies as well as cashing in. As long as they keep that up, I'll keep watching them.

May the 4th Be With You

May the 4th be with you  - it's Star Wars Day.

According to Wikipedia, the first time someone used that particular phrase was back in 1979, in a London newspaper. To celebrate Margaret Thatcher taking office as Prime Minister, of all things. Who knows if that's really the first usage, of course, but it makes an interesting anecdote. And the timing makes sense, only two years after the original movie release.

This seemed like the most appropriate day to go see The Force Awakens again. I enjoyed it the first time, though not so much that I've felt the need to go search out another showing over the last few months. This felt like the most appropriate way to spend a couple of hours of May 4th, though.

The local cheap theater still has The Force Awakens playing for $5. I remember when cheap theaters were a lot less than that, but I guess inflation hits everybody. Unfortunately I also got a reminder of why the cheap theaters aren't always the best choice. Some guy came in late, made a bunch of noise, coughed up a storm, and was just generally annoying. After a few minutes he settled down, but then about halfway through the movie he started coughing again and then yelling at the screen. I asked him to be quieter so the rest of us could watch, but he was having none of it. Started going on about how the movie woke him up (which explains why he was quiet for a while) and he was on meds and so on. So, I went and got a theater employee from out in the hall, and just as we were coming back, he walked out...guess he knew what was coming. That sort of thing could happen at any public place, I suppose, but it's probably more likely at cheap movie theaters. On the upside, outside of that guy, everything else was fine...place was clean, seats comfortable, no problems with picture or sound.

The movie itself was exactly what I remembered from my first viewing: a rehash of just about everything from A New Hope, moved forward a generation. That's not always the case with second movie viewings. Sometimes you get a different perspective, or notice some new details that change the way you think about the overall experience. Not in this case. This film stuck so closely to the formula that I couldn't help but see the similarities as the overwhelming focus. I noticed a few details that I'd missed the first time, but certainly nothing to change my overall impression.

I'm still glad I saw The Force Awakens one more time in the theater, annoying random people aside. There's enough impressive effects to be worth a trip to see them a big screen. And of course, it's a great May 4th activity. May the 4th be with you!

SWTOR: No Group For You

Playing Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) as a duo with my friend L has been a good time, with our characters working together. We made it all the way through our class story-lines and the Rise of the Hutt Cartel content on the planet Makeb. And then SWTOR decided it wasn't going to let us play together any more.

From the early sections of the game all the way through the Makeb story, the story aspect of instanced missions worked one of two ways. For our class story-line instances, the owner would make all the story decisions, while the other player would see the cutscenes but not have any control. Only the owner got credit for mission completion, which was fine since the other player didn't have the mission anyway. For all other instanced missions, both players would be able to make decisions, and the game would randomly choose one choice. Both players got credit for completing the mission instance, no matter whose choices were chosen. It worked fine, and allowed us both to progress the same missions without having to do everything twice.

Once we started the Shadow of Revan expansion content on Rishi, though, this was no longer the case. The instanced planet story-line missions took place in something called a "Personal Phase", which meant that it worked like the class story-line missions. Only one player was in control, and completing the mission only counted for that player. If we wanted to go through the story-line together, we either had to do everything twice, or separate every time a mission instance showed up. We could still do non-instanced content together, and when a Flashpoint came along that was still fine, but all the other mission instances forced us apart. If that was a rare thing it might be OK, but those mission instances show up a lot, and several of them are fairly long.

Moving on to Knights of the Fallen Empire made things even worse. Almost everything you do until reaching Chapter IX is in an instance. You can summon another person into your instance, but again they can't progress their story. Worse, the second person misses a lot of the content: cutscenes start without them, and they can't hear side comments from companions and other characters. The second person also gets kicked out of the instances regularly, so the owner has to redo the summoning. It's a terrible implementation for grouping, so much so that when the patch notes say "We've made it even easier for you and your friends to play Knights of the Fallen Empire together" I'm tempted to call it false advertising.

Even after reaching Chapter IX, actually playing the game as a team is nigh impossible. The new conversation format only allows one player to participate at a time, and those "Personal Phase" instances keep cropping up. The entire Odessen command center bunker is inside one! Heroic missions and Flashpoints are still workable for a duo, fortunately, but not all the content is set up that way.

I sort of understand why the SWTOR designers chose to go this route. I get that it allows each character's story to unfold separately, and that it makes story-writing a whole lot easier. But it also means the game is a long single-player chain, which players can't enjoy together. Back when I first went through Knights of the Fallen Empire, I said that it felt like watching a movie. But at least you can do that with a friend. This is more like each watching a show at home, only able to talk about it afterward. After you finish that long chain, then you can play together in repeatable Flashpoints or heroic missions, but at that point the game is primarily just an MMO grind exercise, not a story to follow.

I'm pretty disappointed in the way things have worked out for our duo in the recent content. One of the best parts about playing as a duo is seeing the story unfold together, and talking about things as they happen. It's really difficult to keep that going in the newer content. L and I may still go back to earlier content, particularly with a couple of Imperial characters of classes that we haven't tried yet. But when SWTOR releases new stuff, I'm afraid we'll each be going it alone.

SWTOR: Recent Events

As L and I have been working through the Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) story as a duo, we've taken the time to investigate a few of the world events. These events are week-long and mostly rotate every week, although occasionally the schedule changes a bit. We've participated in three events: the Rakghoul Pandemic, Relics of the Gree, and the Bounty Brokers Association.

Rakghouls are sort of the Star Wars version of zombies. If you get infected with the plague, you get sick, and eventually turn into a mostly-mindless Rakghoul. In the Rakghoul Pandemic event, a planet is suffering an outbreak of the plague, and various opportunities await the player willing to fight it. There's an assortment of daily missions, mostly related to exploring a set of tunnels where the infection is sourced. Most of these are easy for a solo player, but there's one fairly difficult mission recommended for four players, and an operation-level giant Rakghoul boss requiring at least eight players.

L and I were able to do everything except the giant boss as a duo, although the four-player mission did require some time to push through. It wasn't really dangerous, but it took us a while to do enough damage to take out the bigger enemies. I also fought the big boss with my guild, the New Outriders, and that really showed up the difference that high-end raid gear makes. My tank Trooper couldn't survive against that boss, in mostly 208-level gear from non-operation vendors. Another guild member got his tank that had mostly 220-level gear from operations, and I barely saw his health move. We got the big guy down in the end, but it took teamwork and a whole lot of firepower.

The Gree are an alien race with advanced technology who show up occasionally around the galaxy. I first saw them in a quest line on Coruscant, helping the Republic rebuild damaged infrastructure. In the Relics of the Gree event, a giant Gree ship shows up on the planet Ilum. Players can do various daily missions for rewards from the Gree Enclave representatives. Similar to the Rakghoul event, there are several missions easy to solo, one suitable for a small group, and a big operation-level boss encounter. There are also a couple of world bosses that I know only from mention in the event missions, as I've never gone looking for them.

The Bounty Broker's Association event is a different beast. The idea is that players are being offered the chance to assist in bringing in bounties on criminals, presumably because the supply of criminals outstrips the capacity of the bounty hunters. Rather than having a set of daily missions, you can hunt down only one bounty each day. Finish enough bounty missions, and you're offered the chance to go after a bigger enemy.

My personal favorite is the bounty event, in large part because the daily time investment is minimal. It works great for L and I to track down a bounty together in short order, then move on to doing other things. There's several different missions, so you're not doing the exact same things every day. They're all similar, of course, but at least you go to different locations and have slightly different enemies each day. I also like this event particularly when playing Eltaix, since she's a bounty hunter and it feels right for the character.

Eltaix with her latest bounty target. Captured this one alive.

The SWTOR world events are interesting to discover as a sideline to the main stories. We'll probably get tired of them after enough repetitions, but for now, L and I are enjoying learning about the events when we happen to run across them.

SWTOR: Duo

I stopped playing Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) for a few weeks after finishing the Shadow of Revan expansion with my Jedi. I've picked it back up recently in large part because a friend of mine (we'll call him "L") has done the same.

My trooper on the right, L's Jedi on the left.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I haven't done much grouping in my travels through SWTOR. This time, though, my friend and I decided to start a couple of characters together and play them through the story-line together. L is playing a Jedi Knight, and I'm a Republic Trooper. That's a whole different beast than grouping up with random people.

Over the holidays, there was a sale on a 60-day subscription code, which I picked up and activated just recently. L had already subscribed, so both of us could take advantage of the subscriber benefits. This helped out mostly in terms of being able to use quick travel often, letting us avoid some of the worst of the "run across the map" scenarios.

Playing as a duo highlights some of the best and worst of SWTOR. It's nice to have someone else there to experience the story, and you get to see their character's personal story-line as well as your own. You can also do the "heroic" multi-player missions easily. On the other hand, the combat is even less impressive with two people. Wiping out entire sections of the map is incredibly easy, even the "heroic" portions, as you play through the various planets across the galaxy. One reason for this is that there's no scaling of enemy difficulty - you see the same bad guys whether you're alone or in a group. Another is that you gain levels incredibly quickly when doing all the missions, and are very soon at or above the maximum level for the zone.

The exception to the "combat is easy" rule is when running a Flashpoint, which we've done a couple of times. We did the Hammer Station Flashpoint when we were both only level 20, and with just the two of us. It's designed for four players, and everything (including us) is scaled up to level 65. That was a challenge, especially the final boss, who took a good number of attempts to defeat. Although had we recruited two more people, or been higher in level, I doubt it would have been nearly as difficult.

I'm enjoying playing SWTOR as a duo with L, but as with my solo experience, it's more because of the story than the actual gameplay. I expect we'll make it through the story-line, but not sure how much longer we'll continue after that.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I went to an actual theater to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens recently. The act of going out to see a movie is an event in itself for me...I almost never do, preferring to wait on home releases to avoid 1) crowds, 2) cost, and 3) uncomfortable theater surroundings.

I made an exception for this film for a couple of reasons. One - Star Wars is one of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy franchises, along with so many others who grew up in the 1980s. I'd put Tolkien's Lord of the Rings world and the Star Trek universe a bit higher on my personal list, but all three are great. Two - I knew special effects would be a big part of the film, and there's really no substitute for seeing big-budget effects on the big screen.

Going in, I had mixed expectations. On the one hand, I love Star Wars and anything new is likely to get me excited. On the other hand, I remember feeling the same way when Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out, and that one was disappointing. Not so much because it was bad, but because it felt like a kid's movie and I was expecting something else. So this time, I tried my best not to go in with preconceptions.

Of course, that doesn't mean I had no idea what the film was going to be like. You can't be active on the Internet and/or be a nerd with similarly nerdy friends without getting some idea what's going on in these big movie releases. I avoided detailed spoiler discussions, but I knew more or less what to expect - something very much like the original movie, Star Wars: A New Hope.

No question, The Force Awakens is exactly that. You can't call it a remake of A New Hope since it's new characters and is set a generation in the future, moving the timeline along. But it sure does follow the same formula, from amazingly gifted youngsters in the desert to major family dysfunction to evil guys in masks to destroying giant space weapons. The idea behind this movie was clearly "give the people what they like," rather than "break new ground."

I don't think The Force Awakens suffers because it's so similar to the older movie, though. Perhaps that's just my nostalgia talking, but I don't mind new takes on an old formula as long as it was a good formula in the first place. And I had no complaints about the actors, production, and writing on this movie. They did a good job making the old formula hold up in a new age, and there's plenty of opportunity for future films to work on breaking some new ground.

SWTOR: Hutts, Revan, and the Jedi Master

Having finished the pre-expansion Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) story arcs, Master Jedi Ineffablebob moved on to the Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan expansions. Some story spoilers below, FYI, although at this point I suspect most people who are worried about these stories have already played them.

First stop, Makeb to deal with the Hutts. I expected pretty much the same overall story aspects as I saw when exploring Makeb on the Imperial side, and that was true at the highest level. Hutts mining the planet for a dangerous resource and destroying the planet in the process. I recognized much of the terrain, too. But the similarities ended there.

Obviously I was dealing with Republic rather than Imperial contacts, but beyond that the actual result of the arc was very different. Rather than finding a way to stabilize the planet's core, the Jedi Consular arc focused on evacuating the population. I kept looking for options in the story conversations to actually save the planet, but never saw one. Interesting that the Imperial Bounty Hunter story allows you to find a way to save the planet, but the Republic Jedi Consular does not (or at least, I couldn't find it).

Before moving on to the next expansion, I went through the Directive 7 Flashpoint. It's a side story, not really tied into the larger happenings in the galaxy. The gist is that some droids have gone rogue and are threatening to reprogram all their brethren into killing machines. Not exactly breaking new ground, but I had fun with it. The final boss fight took me a few tries to figure out, since I hadn't looked up the details online. Once I realized what the game was trying to tell me when it flashed up messages like "Core 3 has overheated" - that means stop killing droids and go blow up core 3 right now - it went smoothly enough.

Anti-Revan forces. Yes, the Wookie is wearing a droid.

The Shadow of Revan content didn't have story differences in the same way that the Rise of the Hutt Cartel stuff on Makeb did. From the Flashpoint preludes, to Rishi, to Yavin 4, to the epilogue on Ziost, everything was pretty much just a mirror image of the Imperial arc. Same characters, same story, just a few conversational differences. I expected this, but it was still a little disappointing after the real variety in the Makeb story.

Finishing off these stories got Ineffablebob all the way to level 65. The Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion remains to be played, but there's no reason to hurry.

SWTOR: Groups and Guilds

I finally decided it was time to make an actual effort to play group content in Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). I know, I said before that I'd given up on the idea. There's one more significant step I wanted to try, though: joining a guild.

It's not hard to find a guild to join - there's announcements in all the public chat channels in-game on a regular basis. Most of those are either for heavy role-playing groups, or guilds just starting out. Neither is exactly what I was looking for, so I did a little more research on the game's forums. That led me to The New Outriders (NOR).

NOR is an established group that has been active across multiple MMOs, has a screening process, and runs scheduled events on occasion...pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Actually joining was a pretty simple process. I filled out their application form, and got a message in-game from them just a few hours later. Technically I'm a "recruit" for the first month before becoming a full member, but that doesn't make much difference. I found everyone to be very nice when answering my dumb questions about guild membership and teaming in the guild chat.

Shortly after I joined the guild, my subscription time ran out. This put me at "preferred" status, which is a step above the free-to-play status I had before subscribing. There's a whole list of what you can and can't do. Right away, I noticed:

• I'm now limited to 8 active characters - no problem, I only have 2.
• 2 crafting/crew skills instead of 3 - no big deal, wasn't using Treasure Hunting much anyway.
• A credit cap at 350k credits - limiting for high-end items, but not a problem in standard gameplay.
• Three quickbars for ability shortcuts - I was using 4, but it's easy enough to go down to 3.
• A minor XP penalty - not significant at all, considering I hit the level 65 cap shortly after this.
• No access to the guild stash - I hadn't used it anyway.

What I didn't realize immediately is that being a preferred player means no Operations, which are large-scale (8 or 16 player) group content. When I joined my first one with a NOR group, I had to get a special "weekly pass" in order to participate. The guild provided it, which was extremely kind of them, but I don't want to rely on that in the future. I'll need to re-subscribe if I want to do that kind of content regularly (or buy the passes myself, but it's more cost-efficient to just subscribe).

Doing the Operation itself was fun. Group play with people who know what they're doing and are willing to explain makes all the difference. Unlike my experiences with random groups, this one had little trouble progressing through the entire scenario. The Operation had no interactive conversations, which eliminated one thing that I didn't like about previous grouping attempts. We used Teamspeak for communication - not my favorite thing, but pretty important for this kind of cooperative play. I didn't play a key role, of course, basically just hanging near the back of the group and throwing ranged attacks at whatever everyone else was targeting. That's what the new guy ought to do, though, so it was fine.

I even found some decent new equipment from the boss drops in the Operation. Unfortunately, I can't use any of it, due to another preferred status restriction - no artifact-quality items. Again, subscribing would solve this, or I could buy authorization for the items separately. It's pretty clear that you can survive easily enough as a solo player in preferred status, but if you want to do group content regularly, it makes more sense to subscribe.

However...despite this being a good experience, I still don't think I'm going to continue with the end-game group content in SWTOR. Once you've seen an Operation or Flashpoint, there's no surprise left, so running it again is just part of the MMO grind for better loot. If I want to do that, there are other games where I can do it without paying a monthly subscription. (Star Trek Online, where I'm a lifetime member, Guild Wars 2, and the free-to-play Path of Exile and Marvel Heroes come to mind.) I like the NOR folks, but I can still play with them by jumping back into SWTOR occasionally without doing the entire endgame raid grind.

SWTOR: Master Jedi

The Jedi Consular Ineffablebob has made his way through the Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) Galaxy and defeated the Children of the Emperor, thus ending his primary class story-line. In terms of story, I felt like I was playing a whole new game compared to my experience as an Imperial Bounty Hunter. SWTOR really does a good job of providing individualized story lines for each class.

A Trandoshan.

I like the different companions, too. The Jedi Consular's first companion is Qyzen Fess, a Trandoshan, which means he's basically a humanoid toothy lizard. Having a non-human companion, complete with very alien morality structure based on scoring "points" for hunting dangerous game, was pretty cool and made for some interesting conversations. There are several other companions as well, including eventually a Padawan trainee to go with your status as a Master Jedi. The story aspects of the companion arcs don't go into a whole lot of depth, but they're still fun to go through.

This time through, I did almost none of the individual planet story arcs. My personal story still took me to all the major stopping points, but I skipped large parts of the content and only focused on my own story-line. However, I did take a side trip into a Flashpoint when the opportunity presented itself. Doing them in solo mode is basically just another story-line, albeit one with a bit more combat than usual. It was nice to get some backstory on events in the main story, such as the freeing of Revan from his prison.

Despite my original intent to spend a little more time with the multiplayer aspects of SWTOR while playing the Jedi Consular, I found myself doing almost everything solo. As I mentioned last time, I did try a Flashpoint group, but it was a poor experience. I was progressing nicely through the story and gaining levels on my own, so why bother with a group? It only makes the conversation pauses awkward, and slows down progress when someone inevitably has to log out or go AFK. If I was going to play this game for years, I'd probably find places that I wanted to explore as part of a group. But for now, I've pretty much given up on the team aspects.

I finished off my progression in the crafting system along the way. Sending your companions on all the gathering missions required certainly used up my credit reserve. I made some of it back by selling a few of my crafted lightsaber parts, but for the most part it was a pretty significant credit sink. The fact that I ignored the crafting system on Eltaix goes a long way toward explaining why she was running up against the credit cap for a while. In the lower levels, it was moderately annoying to keep sending companions away on missions every few minutes. By the time you get up into the 400-500 skill range, though, companions are gone for 10+ minutes at a time for crafting missions. So it's much less of a chore to keep the missions going.

Once the main story ended, I also went back to Ilum. I had a poor experience there before, when Eltaix was unable to complete the Flashpoint at the end of the story-line. This time, though, solo mode was an option, so I had no problem getting through. (And I expect if I went back on Eltaix I could find the solo mode there now, too, now that I know what to look for.) Took me a bit over an hour to progress through two Flashpoints and defeat Darth Malgus. Extra bit of satisfaction there, cleaning up a loose end.

The Ilum arc felt much more similar to the Imperial side of the story than the primary class story-line. I suspect that will be the case through the Rise of the Hutt Cartel, Shadow of Revan, and Knights of the Fallen Empire content as well. Outside of a few conversation items, class differences mostly disappear in the expansions.

SWTOR: The Light Side

My Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) subscription lasts another couple of weeks, so I decided it's time to try the light side. I picked a Jedi Consular. After playing as a self-serving bounty hunter on the dark side, the selfless Jedi seemed like a fun and different direction. Doing this made sense for trying some of the multi-player aspects of the game, too. I named him "Ineffablebob" because I have no creativity whatsoever.

Not actually my character, but I liked the image.

As you'd expect, much of the game unfolds in very much the same way as a Republic citizen as it did as an Imperial. A short prologue on your opening planet, a trip to the center of the Republic, your own story to follow as well as planet-specific story-lines, companions joining your little band, your own ship, and so on.

Heroic missions are also present, and I even completed one in the early going with another player who happened to be in the same area. I had one false start...the first guy I invited disconnected almost immediately. The second one worked out, though, and fighting through the tougher monsters was fairly easy with two of us. I wasn't too impressed with the way grouping handles the story aspects, though. There was a lot of waiting involved, and it randomly chooses which one of you responds to conversation prompts.

When I did this early section on Eltaix, I wasn't a subscriber, and the difference is noticeable. The most useful difference with a subscription is the ability to use the fast travel shuttle every few minutes. Instead of completing a mission and running back across half the planet to my contact, I can use the shuttle after just about every mission. It's still annoying to have to run through the gigantic buildings where the contacts like to hang out, though. The Senate building on Coruscant is especially bad.

The Jedi starting planet of Tython and the Republic capital of Coruscant were new places to me, which makes sense as an Imperial would have little reason to be on either. After completing my story-line there, though, I moved on to familiar territory on Taris and Nar Shaddaa. The missions I was doing were almost entirely new, though. I recognized the terrain and planet descriptions, but otherwise it was very much a new experience. I'm sure if I played a second character on either the Republic or Imperial side, it would feel much more similar.

I decided to try a Flashpoint with a group before I moved on to Tatooine. As I've mentioned before, random groups in MMOs are often frustrating, but I wanted to give it a try since I'm going beyond soloing with this character. Sadly, this instance proved the point. Finding a group was easy enough with the group finder function, and we got through the first sections of the flashpoint without much trouble. But then one guy dropped out...another joined, then dropped out...another joined, stuck around but was doing horribly dumb things...we died to the same boss four times in a row because that guy couldn't figure out how to move out of the big lightning AoE and three people wasn't enough damage...eventually after more than an hour, I gave up. Not an experience I'm eager to repeat.

I've also dipped into the crafting system, which I pretty much ignored up to this point. It's similar to other MMO crafting in that you need to make a whole bunch of stuff to level up your skill, then learn how to make better stuff, make a bunch of that, repeat, repeat, repeat. It's different than most other MMOs in that you can craft pretty much anywhere at any time, because it's not actually you doing it; rather, your companions are out doing the work. It takes time for them to complete the tasks. That's good in the sense that you can craft as you go about your business around the galaxy; it's bad in the sense that you have to re-assign your companions to new missions every few minutes in order to keep things moving. I chose to become an Artificer so that I can make my own lightsaber, which is pretty cool. I don't know if I'll have to patience to get the skill all the way up to the max level of 500, but at least for now it's more interesting than tedious.

The first half of the personal story for this character is now done, after traveling to Tattooine and Alderaan, and defeating a fallen Jedi master. Just what you'd expect for a Jedi on his way up in the galaxy.

SWTOR: Knights of the Fallen Empire (Chapter 1-9)

Following her adventures on Rishi, Yavin 4, and Ziost, the time came for Eltaix the bounty hunter to move on to the latest Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) expansion: Knights of the Fallen Empire. Or at least the first part of it: at release, only the first 9 chapters (of 16 announced, and possibly more later) of the Knights of the Fallen Empire story were made available.

It's immediately clear that this is a different beast from the prior expansions. Starting the expansion story-line comes with a warning that you're about to leave everything and everyone behind. That's fairly rare in the MMO world but much more common in the single-player RPG genre. I've always considered SWTOR to be a marriage of the two. I've purposely focused on the RPG side up to this point, and Knights of the Fallen Empire certainly feels like it belongs on that side of the equation for the first 8 chapters.

Going through the story mission for this expansion resets the state of affairs in the galaxy. A new power, the Eternal Empire, is revealed and quickly becomes your primary adversary. The Jedi Republic and Sith Empire still exist, but the main conflict is no longer between those two, but rather both against the new threat. This isn't too surprising. From a story perspective, it follows fairly naturally after Republic/Empire cooperation against Revan. From a MMO mechanics perspective, it's pretty natural for developers to want to develop content in a way that allows them to address it to all players with minimal customization (as opposed to doing everything twice, once for each side). This reset also provides a easy starting point for new players, and that's reflected in the ability to create a character at level 60 and jump right into Knights of the Fallen Empire, rather than going through all the prior content first.

I was a bit sad to say goodbye to my ship and companions, particularly Mako, but such is the price of progress. I do like that I'm seeing a lot more of Lana Beniko, who played a big part in the Shadow of Revan story and is now one of my new companions. (Too bad they taught her how to comb her hair, though.) Other new companions are gathered along the way, very similar to the early-to-middle sections of the pre-expansion game, although more quickly.

Some of the new crew.

The way the story moves along in the first 8 chapters of Knights of the Fallen Empire feels like it's entirely your personal story. Previously, you always had at least two stories to follow: your own, and whatever larger conflict was going on around you (usually specific to the current planet). This newest story-line doesn't bother separating the two. The same story-line addresses your own character development and the fate of the galaxy-spanning conflict with the Eternal Empire. It feels almost like watching a movie more than playing a game...albeit a movie with interaction points. That's not a bad thing, especially if you're in it for the single-player experience, but it is a bit jarring if you're expecting standard MMO gameplay. It actually feels strange to see other players in the few shared areas that you run across.

One benefit of this consolidated story-line is that there's little downtime between chapters. I rarely had to spend any time getting to the next area, though there still were a few places that required a whole lot of running around. I still wish mount-speed travel were available in some of the larger zones, but for the most part the back-and-forth-across-entire-planets annoyances are gone.

The here's-your-new-gear-for-the-new-expansion rewards were mostly useless to me this time. Perhaps because all the stuff I bought with data crystals was so good. Or maybe the gear power creep in this expansion isn't as bad. That would be nice; constantly rising power levels across expansions is one of my least favorite things about MMO mechanics.

The combat feels slightly more difficult than before, but not significantly so. I can still breeze through normal enemies, though I did find that in some locations it's no longer safe to run past enemies until they stop following you. I died in one swamp area because the population of the entire zone was on my tail by the time I got to the end point where I needed to stop. The bosses I encountered were occasionally tough enough to force me to switch my companion over from attack to healing mode, but none of them posed a significant challenge. (That companion healing was supposedly nerfed, but it still feels like god-mode to me.)

Then you get to chapter 9, and suddenly the game is an MMO again. Other players are everywhere and there's a bunch of things going on, not just your personal activities. You're thrown back into familiar territory, able to travel around to all your old stomping grounds in the Republic and Sith Empire. After a brief introduction to your new base and the group of revolutionaries that you now lead against the Eternal Empire, you're pretty much left to your own devices instead of being moved along by the story. They even give you back your ship, though not your companions. (Yet. There are certainly hints that they may be back.)

Your job is to gather allies to recruit from various Republic and Sith Empire worlds, and build up various aspects of your alliance: military, scientific, Force-wielders, and logistics. There are some story aspects to this, mostly in the ally-gathering which takes you around the galaxy, helping and/or threatening potential allies until they join you. Beyond that, though, progression is through a whole lot of daily or weekly missions, mostly to complete group-only or PvP objectives, which raise your influence with the various characters in your alliance. That sort of grind isn't why I'm playing the game.

So that's about it for my journey through SWTOR with Eltaix the bounty hunter, at least until more chapters of Knights of the Fallen Empire are released. But I'm certainly not done with the game. Next, I think I need to try a Republic character, starting from the ground up.

SWTOR: Shadow of Revan

After finishing up business on Makeb, Eltaix headed back to the Imperial Fleet to begin the Shadow of Revan story-line. The mission came with a nice little transport device to take me directly to the contact, which is awfully nice. That's a handy shortcut that I hope they include with all the major story missions in the future.

I started making my way through the Shadow of Revan prologue story mission, and almost immediately was sent to a Flashpoint. You may recall from my previous post that this was not a good experience when it happened on Ilum. In this case, though, I was sent to a solo version of the Flashpoint. Eltaix and Mako were buffed way up and we were joined by a combat droid, rendering the Flashpoint enemies basically the same as those you'd find in normal combat. Some of the boss fights were still a little more difficult, but not by much. Mostly it just took a while to get through all their hit points. I don't mind seeing Flashpoints as long as I can go through in solo mode.

The strike team. That droid is more dangerous than he looks.

Shadow of Revan has an extensive story. The prologue alone spanned multiple Flashpoints, and took me several hours to complete. I didn't mind much, as the story was interesting and the combat wasn't too difficult. Things moved along more quickly than through much of the earlier game, in fact, primarily because there was almost no travel time. Between that transport device that I mentioned earlier and easy-exit transports at the end of each Flashpoint, I rarely had to do much more than go down the hall to the next segment of the story. Sadly, this state of affairs does not continue; things revert back to "go do some stuff then run half-way across the planet to your contact" after the prologue.

Once into the main story, it's time once again to visit a new planet. Rishi is backwater planet run by pirates, and you show up pretending to be a pirate yourself. The idea is to get information on a larger conspiracy, of course, but it's kind of fun doing silly pirate stuff. Almost every mission gives you a new piece of significantly improved gear - in comparison to the story mission rewards to this point, at least. That's a typical MMO tactic for getting casual/returning players caught up for a newly released area. Feels a little weird in my case, since I'm playing it so long after initial release, but I won't complain about getting nice stuff.

After sufficient pirate-kicking, the story moves along to tracking down and thwarting Revan's plans. I was a little disappointed when I had to fight a fellow Mandalorian bounty-hunter rather than coming to some agreement with her, but that's a minor quibble with an otherwise interesting trip across Rishi. It all culminates in another Flashpoint (also with a solo mode) that felt appropriately epic, battling on the ground to turn the tide of a massive space battle above.

The story then moves on to another planet, Yavin 4. It doesn't have as much character as Rishi; lack of pirate gangs will do that to a planet. Plenty of wild animals and overgrown jungle temples, though. This time the story actually contributed to the choice of whether to run solo or with a group: solo players had to gather NPC help for the big final battle, via some extra missions (which also are daily reputation missions for all players). I didn't try the group option, obviously, but I assume you'd do some big group fights instead of those extra missions. I thought that was a nice touch, marrying up the story and gameplay mechanics.

I found Yavin 4 to be much more heavily populated with other player characters than previous worlds. There were several times where I had to wait around for spawns since other players had killed things I needed for a mission, or wait for an object to reset so I could get credit for clicking it. Pretty typical in the MMO world - the higher level areas get crowded as more and more people progress past the lower content. Annoying, but not game-breaking. I did enjoy the fact that one mission included an actual puzzle to solve; it was ridiculously easy, but still, something different is good.

Lots of NPC help against Revan for us solo players.

The final battle against Revan started like any other boss, albeit one with a ton of hit points and some really big attacks. I learned very quickly that it was a good idea to stop shooting and just run away whenever he came after me, until he lost interest and went after one of my NPC allies. Partway through, he imprisoned all my allies and put himself in an invulnerable shield, and that was greatly confusing. There was no indication of what I was supposed to do, and eventually he killed me. Had I looked up the fight on the web first, I would have saved myself some frustration, but I had hoped that the fight mechanics would be clear in-game. After a couple of tries, I eventually realized there were little glowing things I could pick up and use to free the NPCs. From that point on, it was easy enough.

Following Yavin 4, I also went through the epilogue story on the planet Ziost. It follows up on the ancient Sith Emperor that was referenced quite a bit in the Shadow of Revan story. Fairly short, but an important episode leading into the next expansion.

Eltaix hit the level cap of 65 partway through the story-line on Yavin 4. Doesn't really matter to me, except that it means I can finally spend my 1000 common data crystals at the level-65-only vendors. There's still more story to go through with the Knights of the Fallen Empire story-line, regardless of level advancement.

SWTOR: Busting Hutts

When I finished my last Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) post, Eltaix the bounty hunter had just finished bringing the planet Corellia under the heel of the Empire, and was nearing the free-to-play level 50 cap. I didn't realize at the time how close I was to completing her personal story...one final mission to go. That last mission was satisfyingly epic in a story sense and very pedestrian in a game-play sense, which pretty much describes my entire SWTOR experience.

Another destination opened up even though I'd reached the level cap: the planet Ilum. I decided to check it out, at least until I'd racked up the XP needed for level 51, at which point it would be a good time to subscribe. So after a few days off to settle some islands, Eltaix headed over to Ilum where I found the usual sort of planet-specific story-line.

Partway through that, I did indeed become a subscriber. A friend provided a referral link, so I got an extra 7 days (and so did he) on top of the usual 30. Considering how much I've played the game so far, and that I'm getting a bunch more content via the expansions that aren't accessible as F2P, $15 isn't bad at all. I doubt I'll continue more than one month, at least for now, even though I know I won't make it through all the classes; I'm sure I'll be a bit burned out before then. I noticed two immediate benefits when becoming a subscriber: quicker fast travel recharge, and extra quickbar slots. Well, that and the constant "hey, you should subscribe" reminds went away, which alone is worth a month's subscription cost.

Back on Ilum, I got to an interesting story twist where a Sith Lord decided to go rogue and betray the Empire. (Technically a spoiler, but come on, who doesn't expect a Sith Lord betrayal? It's what they do.) I was looking forward to putting him in his place, but was surprised to see the next mission labeled as a Flashpoint (the multi-player instances in SWTOR). I hadn't noticed anything on Ilum up to this point indicating that a Flashpoint was coming up, but here it was, and I didn't see any other option to continue the story. I actually gave it a try solo, and with some difficulty got all the way to the first boss objective. But I had no prayer against the champion-level boss (actually bosses, there were two). I understand that group content is going to be part of the MMO experience, but I'd like to know when I'm going down a path that leads to group-only areas. Disappointing that the Ilum arc didn't offer me a solo option, and doubly disappointing that it wasn't clear from the start that it was leading to the Flashpoint.

I suppose I could have found a group, but that would mean a lot of time and likely frustration. First you have to figure out how group-finding works. Then you hope that you can get people interested in your particular instance, and further hope that those people aren't a bunch of jerks. When you actually run the instance, the experienced players will want to go through at full speed, making it difficult to follow what's happening story-wise. Random pick-up grouping on a first attempt at group content in just about any MMO is a recipe for disaster.

Becoming a subscriber opens up access to the SWTOR expansions as well, and that meant more story-lines to follow. First one up is the Rise of the Hutt Cartel, meant for levels 50-55. After leaving Ilum, I found that the planet Makeb was now available to me. The Hutts were causing mischief, and as the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy, the Empire thought I was the perfect one to stop them.

Mako keeps saying how nice the Makeb scenery is, but she didn't want to line up for a picture.

I found Makeb to be a bit more interesting than the average planet story up to this point. There are more areas to explore, which isn't surprising since it's the centerpiece of a game expansion. The story has several decision points where you decide the fate of characters, groups, and even entire populations, which is fun to go through. I admit, I may have killed off a few more people than absolutely necessary, but it all seemed like a good idea at the time.

I even ran across a couple of instances where the gameplay became somewhat challenging. One boss gave me a bit of trouble, requiring running around and hitting various objects while dodging attacks. It was easy enough once I realized what was required of me, but just the fact that there was something more complex than "shoot all the things until they fall down" made it interesting. Then a bit later on I found a multi-level area which was a bit of a maze. Took me a little while (and a few falling deaths) to work out where everything was; again, nothing too difficult, but a nice change of pace from "follow the map to the glowing thingy."

The Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion also includes a couple of side missions, meant to introduce a couple of new toys: Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droids. They're not exactly epic story-lines, but it was fun following them around the galaxy. At least, it was fun until I looked them up online and found that both ended up leading to "Heroic 4" missions, meaning meant for groups of 4 people. See above minor grouping rant...no more toy missions for now.

Next up will be the level 55-60 expansion, Shadow of Revan.

SWTOR: The Greatest Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy!

Just about everyone my bounty hunter meets in Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) these days is either deathly afraid or excited to meet the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy. Winner of the Grand Hunt! Survivor of innumerable ambushes! Rescued the Sith Lords known as the Dread Masters! A little ego-stroking is nice and all, but I think they may be laying it on a little thick. On the other hand, the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy does get the interesting jobs.

Since my last SWTOR post, Eltaix has progressed to level 50. She's been to Hoth, which was cold and mostly empty; Belsavis, a prison planet; and Corellia, the corporation-dominated merchant world. The Empire needs help crushing someone everywhere, of course: Republic fighters, corporate merchant marines, escaped prisoners, local aliens, you name it. A bounty hunter more interested in profit than ethics can do very well.

Doing all this hasn't gotten much more difficult. I'm constantly being offered upgraded gear from mission completions, so I haven't had to go out of my way to find better equipment. None of the standard enemies pose any real challenge, to the point where I'll occasionally fight a couple of enemy groups at once just to add a little interest to the combat. I did learn the hard way what a world boss looks like, though; I'll be giving those a wide berth in the future.

My ship is started to feel a little crowded, because as I go through all these interesting adventures, I'm collecting companions. As you go through your character's story, you'll meet quite a few folks that want to tag along. I've collected four now (five if you count my ship's droid). Honestly, I haven't paid much attention to any of them except Mako, who was my bounty hunter's first companion. In some cases that's because they're kind of annoying (Gault Rennow, Skadge); in others, because I just haven't taken time to see what all they have to offer (Blizz). Once I take care of the story-lines for my own character and Mako, it might be interesting to go back and see what the others are up to.

Mako and Eltaix on Correlia. And some random Sith guards.

The free-to-play account credit limit is 200,000, which doesn't take long to reach. For a while I didn't really have anything to spend those credits on, but then I discovered the Legacy system screen. The game had shown me a tutorial pop-up about it a while back, but it mostly talked about how Legacy levels benefited multiple characters on your account, so I'd assumed it wasn't useful while I had only one character. It turns out, though, that once you've gained a few legacy levels (this happens same as normal character levels, just slower), you're able to buy various perks with credits (or real money, of course). That solved my credit glut, by spending it all unlocking things like increased companion favor and quick travel to my home world.

Speaking of free-to-play, yes, I'm still working my way along without subscribing. I actually intend to do so at some point - I've enjoyed this game enough that I'd like to support it. But I haven't done it yet for two reasons. First, I'm curious to see how far I can reasonably get without paying anything. I'm going to finish out Eltaix's class story-line before I subscribe. (Edit: Originally I thought I could get her to 60, but F2P caps at 50.) Second, I tend to avoid subscriptions until I can get the most out of the time I'm paying for. It's not strictly necessary, but I feel better if I'm maximizing the benefit I get out of the paid time. So I expect that eventually I'll subscribe for a month or two, maybe advance Eltaix to 65, and try out another class or two.

SWTOR: The 4.0 Patch (at low levels)

The release of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) version 4.0 last Tuesday was a major game update. (Just look at the patch notes...that's a big list.) The headline item was the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, which adds content for high level characters. Since I've only played for a few weeks, that doesn't really affect me. I've noticed some changes that do affect us lower-level folks, though.

The update to major story missions is the most significant change. Your character's story missions and the storyline for each planet are now highlighted in the mission tracker, so it's easy to pick out what you need to do to progress. The rewards have been rebalanced so that you can level all the way to 60 by following those missions. I've gone through the planets of Nar Shadda, Alderaan, and Tatooine on my bounty hunter since the patch, and I can certainly confirm that the story mission rewards are enough to keep you moving along. In fact, I actually skipped the Tatooine planet story arc, because I'd already outleveled it from everything else I'd been doing.

Another change that I've noticed is Level Sync. This artificially locks your level to be appropriate for the planet that you're on. So when my level 30+ bounty hunter had to go back to Nar Shadda, she's treated as a level 26. That lets players group with lower-level friends, go back and complete missions they may have skipped, etc. I'm a little surprised every time that I run into an MMO that doesn't already have some kind of feature like this, because it just seems like such an obvious thing to include. (My City of Heroes bias showing, I suppose; the sidekick/exemplar system in that game spoiled me.) Glad SWTOR is getting with the program.

I was pleased to find that the level required to obtain a speeder license, which allows you to use a fast-travel mount, was lowered to 20 (from 25) for non-subscribers. As I've mentioned previously, there's a lot of open space in the game, so faster travel is very helpful. You still can't use your mount in some of the story areas where it would be helpful, but where it's allowed, it helps. I really like the variety of mounts available, too. You can get various kinds of animals and vehicles by going to different planets to shop around. A nice touch that adds to the immersion experience. (And of course you can spend real money to expand your collection.)

Eltaix on her Ubrikkian Hoverbike

Something that hasn't changed is the combat, which remains the least appealing part of the game. (Other than all the advertising for subscriptions, anyway.) Enemies that you kill sometimes remain standing, making it difficult to see what's left to fight. The camera will swing toward an enemy after landing a killing blow, which can be annoying or even dangerous if I've already moved on to another target. Most battles are laughably easy (at least in the areas I've been to), which is not great design and doesn't encourage learning a variety of tactics. The combat feels like it's based on a 15-year-old design with a cosmetic Star Wars layer applied on top.

Fortunately, the various story-lines continue to be excellent. Sure, some of it is pretty cheesy, as I mentioned previously, but if you don't like that, why are you playing a game based on a space opera? Every planet has a story arc to explore, as well as the larger adventure that your character is following.  With my own ship (which I stole, of course, like any bounty hunter would) I'm able to hop between planets and visit the Imperial Fleet for training. There are space combat options as well, though I haven't tried any yet. Too busy winning the Great Hunt!

SWTOR: Fifteen Levels, Two Planets

When I decided to pick up Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) a few days ago, I had no idea that I had timed it just prior to a big expansion release. Apparently there will be a full day of downtime on Tuesday October 20th to update the game, with full release of the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion a week later. It'll be interesting to see how much things change. I've now gotten through the first 15 levels and visited two planets. I know that's only a tiny part of the entire game, but I have a good idea how the basics work and expect to see some differences.

The game can use some changes. Besides the huge amount of in-your-face advertising for microtransactions, as I talked about in my last post, many of the worst aspects of MMO play are present. Here are some of the worst offenders (in no particular order):

• Unnecessary open space: A lot of open world games have this problem. There are wilderness areas, and those need to be big and have some empty space. There's a lot of other areas in the game, though, and they don't all need to be like that. For example, to get from the speeder quick travel point to my main story contact, there are several big empty rooms and hallways. That added space serves no purpose beyond showing off how nice your world design is, and I've already been suitably impressed aesthetically by the areas outside. Running through it repeatedly adds nothing but boredom and frustration. This has been the case on both planets I've seen thus far (Hutta and Dromund Kaas), and I have no reason to think it'll change further along.
• Poor handling of group missions: I'm mostly playing the game solo to this point, but I did join a group to try one mission labeled as Heroic (which means the mission is meant for multiple players). At first I was impressed, as I could see which group members had which missions on my map, and objectives from the leader's mission were clearly marked. But after doing the whole mission, when I tried to turn it in, the contact wouldn't speak to me. Somehow I didn't get credit for any of it. Now, it's possible I did something very simple wrong and I could easily fix it...if I knew what it was. Nothing ever indicated to me that I wasn't making progress - even the objectives on the map were updating as I went along. That's a really bad experience for the player.
• Lack of open world objective sharing: It's inevitable that multiple players in an open world setting will end up going after the same objectives. Whether it's trying to kill the same rare enemy, open the same box, or farm the same set of easy enemies, you're going to have two or more players doing the same thing somewhere. Most MMOs now have worked out ways to handle this, usually either through putting objectives in instances (every player gets their own) or sharing the credit for completion among all players in the area. In SWTOR, there are some story instances, but otherwise things are first come, first served. First person to shoot an enemy "tags" it and no one else gets credit when it dies. First one to click a objective gets the result, and everyone else has to wait until it resets. I've already had several occasions when I've had to wait for an objective to reset because someone else had already taken it, and in one case I even had to complete reset a mission when someone else killed off an enemy that I needed to progress. There are solutions to this sort of thing in modern MMO design, but SWTOR isn't using them.
• Visiting Trainers: Leveling up increases some stats, but to really get the benefits of your new level, you have to visit a trainer for your class. This has been standard practice in MMOs for a long time, but it's beginning to go away in newer designs. In SWTOR you have to visit the trainer both to learn new skills and to get upgrades to existing skills. I can sort of understand why you'd want players to be in a safe area and focusing on only the leveling process when getting a new skill, but there's no need for that with upgrades. There's no reason that my character's existing attacks shouldn't be more effective right away, especially when the level-up occurs far out away from a city while in the middle of a bunch of mission objectives.

Now, I don't want to sound like the game is all bad. So here's some of the things I'm enjoying, again in no particular order:

• Mission design: Pretty much all the missions are designed around progressing a story, rather than just completing a task. Sometimes the stories are kind of cheesy (do we really need to provide a Rancor pet for a Hutt?), but at least they exist. You won't have some random person sending you to collect 10 rat pelts or kill off a dozen thugs. You actually will do those things, but the game cleverly adds them as bonus objectives to the main mission. It always feels like progress is being made toward a goal, even while you're just beating up those thugs.
• Companions: Like many Bioware games, you're not alone in the world. I got my first companion before level 10, and I expect more will come along in the future. The companions are characters in their own right with their own personality, goals, skills, inventory, and so on. They'll fight for you as well. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to my companion almost as much as I am for my actual character.
• Star Wars references: You'd expect to see a lot of familiar sights from the movies in a Star Wars game, and there is no disappointment here. From Hutt gangsters to spaceports to Force-wielding Sith Lords, it's all here. Sometimes they lay it on a little thick, like when my bounty hunter was hired to rescue a carbonite-frozen dude from a Hutt palace, but even those over-the-top reminders are fun to see.

I'm enjoying the game enough to keep going, primarily because the main storyline is keeping me interested. Plus I'm interested to see what sort of improvements come with the Knights of the Fallen Empire update. For now, that's enough to put up with the negatives.

Trying Out Star Wars: The Old Republic

I've been meaning to try Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) for some time now. It's been around since late 2011, and has had a free-to-play option since late 2012. I decided this week to finally give it a try. I only have a few hours of playtime thus far, so don't expect any deep analysis of the game. Just first impressions.

I'm not a huge Star Wars fanatic, but I know as much as any self-respecting sci-fi nerd who grew up in the 1980s. Love the original trilogy, read some of the comics and books in the '90s, was greatly disappointed by most of the prequel trilogy...the usual. I also played a bit of Star Wars Galaxies, the previous Star Wars MMORPG that shut down in 2011, but I never really got serious about it.

Registering and downloading the game went as smoothly as such things can, which is to say it took a half-hour or so of entering info and walking through the setup, and another few hours of waiting for downloads. I appreciate that the designers spent the effort to make the starting areas of the game playable while the bulk of the download finishes. I still waited about 2 hours to get to the point where I could start; fortunately, I expected that and left the download to finish while I went about my business elsewhere.

One note for the security-minded: SWTOR does have the ability to do two-factor authentication, but it's not particularly user-friendly. You have to download their own app to your iOS/Android device, rather than using something standard like Google Authenticator. There's no option to skip the 2-factor step when logging in from a known IP address, so you have to execute that extra step every time you log in. You do get a bonus (100 cartel coins for the in-game store) if you use it, though.

Immediately upon entering the game on a free-to-play account, it's made abundantly clear that getting your money is a priority. The second choice you make in character creation (after Republic or Imperial faction) is race, and most of the options are hidden under little dollar-sign icons. This is a recurring theme. Now, I've played a lot of free-to-play games and I get the concept...it's in the designer's interest to remind you regularly that the game will be so much better with a little cash outlay. But I've rarely seen one that's so in-your-face about it as SWTOR. Every time you walk into a cantina or other resting location...pop-up, saying only subscribers get the benefit of rest XP. Take a look at your character's outfit...there's that dollar sign, saying you can only hide your helmet in cut-scenes if you pay. Open a vendor window...reminder, subscribers pay less! I'll have to play a lot more before I can tell if the game is effectively pay-to-win, requiring you to spend money to get through, or if it's possible to ignore all this stuff and still make reasonable progress. But one thing is for sure, it's seriously annoying. I'm not averse to spending money on games I like, but I'm stubborn...I won't do it just to get ads out of my face. In fact, that just means I have to like the game even more to overcome the annoyance factor before I'll consider paying for it.

SWTOR has the Bioware label, and if you've ever played another Bioware game, the story aspect will look very familiar. Conversations are via cut-scene, with your character given lots of opportunity to select various conversational branches. I appreciate that all the characters are fully voiced, adding to the immersion effect, although I still have to turn on subtitles to make sure I catch everything that's said. In just my first couple of hours as an Imperial Bounty Hunter, I've already had my crew murdered, made a deal with a Hutt, sent some hapless kid off to the Sith academy, and allowed myself to be bribed by a trophy hunter who wants to kill off the native aliens for sport. I did have some opportunities to be merciful, but where's the fun in that? Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from an evil money-obsessed Imperial!

There's plenty of Star Wars in the world design, as you'd expect. Plenty of aliens, quick travel by speeder bike, droids rolling around the city areas, a Hutt gangster boss complete with slave girls, a nearby spaceport, and so on. The backwater planet where my bounty hunter is stuck for now is only the tip of the iceberg, of course. Plenty more of the universe out there.

The combat is pretty standard MMO button-mashing, at least at the low levels that I've seen to this point. Shoot, stand there waiting while your skill recharges, shoot some more. No dodging, cover, or other combat tricks. Maybe some of that shows up later. I actually hope it doesn't, because combat maneuvering isn't the easiest thing. I've already had some trouble lining up for melee skills, ending up out of range due either to lag or my ineptitude with the very coarse control scheme. Not a big deal for a blaster-happy bounty hunter, fortunately.

I haven't yet tried to interact with any other players. Judging from the various restrictions that have been popping up in the tutorials for free-to-play accounts, such as limited chat options, I may just stick with the solo approach. That's my preferred method to explore MMO worlds, anyway. Go through the story alone, learn how things work, then worry about finding groups to do more difficult content.

There's a whole lot more to SWTOR than what I've seen in a few hours, of course. I look forward to exploring it, if I can stomach all the cash-grab advertising long enough. The story aspect is by far the best part so far, and I see no reason that will change any time soon. It's a Bioware game, after all, and the story your character builds through the game is the core of every Bioware title I've ever enjoyed. Looking forward to seeing where this one goes.