Monday Musings: Lonely Hearts Club

Double XP meant double the fun this weekend as I got both my Smuggler and Jedi Counselor to level 60.

• This is now eight level 60 characters, one of each class for the Empire and the Republic.

• I have a Powertech, and Inquisitor at level 55, but outside of Crew Skills, there’s no real need for me to level them up.

• I guess BioWare figures a lot of the playerbase are single and available since they released double XP on Valentines weekend?

• As if double XP wasn’t enough to keep us occupied, they also brought back Bounty week.

• They must really think we’re lonely.

• I enjoyed the double XP, although it’s not as good at 12x XP.

• If it were up to me I would replace double XP weekends  with 12x XP weekends.

• If it had been a 12x XP weekend I  would have leveled characters below level 55. Double XP was not enough incentive for me to do that.

• I’d also like to see them add a GSI bolster to all the planets like they did on Makeb.

• One of the things I hate about leveling lower toons is that you have to keep them geared or you’ll get your butt handed to you.

• Whenever there’s accelerated XP gains, your gear becomes obsolete faster. It’d be nice not to have to fuss with that as you level.

• Let’s face it, with two level cap increases the original game is no more. This is not unique to SWTOR. WoW suffered a similar fate.

• Players need a means to get to level 60 quickly, and have fun doing it.

• 12x XP and planetary bolsters are the way to go.

• Now that I have eight level 60s, I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of these characters.

• I’ve taken a very casual approach to the game this time around. I’ve only set foot in an Operation once, and haven’t run any hard mode flashpoints yet.

• I know why I haven’t done the Ops. I don’t have time in my schedule to commit to it.

• I’m not sure why I haven’t done the flashpoints though. Part of it is I’ve heard they’re hard, and the other part is I play DPS and don’t like the long queue waits.

• I assume the queues are still long for DPS. I can’t say for sure since I haven’t queued for anything yet.

• I really would like to start collecting elite comms and getting the 192 gear though. Maybe this week I’ll give the HM FPs a go.

• Since I’m not running Ops or FPs, I’ve been mostly running Yavin IV dailies and working on crew skills.

• I’ve got all the crafting professions to 500 except Cybertech.

• I’ve got all the missions up to 500 except for Investigation.

• I have all of the gathering skills to 500 as well.

• I’m not very balanced with my Crew Skills though. I have too much redundancy with gathering, and not enough coverage with the mission skills.

• I’d like to drop some gathering for mission skills so I can better my chances of getting grade 11 artifacts.

• It’s funny, I never realized how ridiculously over powered that slot machine was until I started crafting items that used grade 11 artifacts.

• How the slot machine ever made it to the live game in that state is beyond me.

• I’ve been playing the GTN a lot more this expansion.

• I sold a few steady items in Rise of the Hutt Cartel, but now I’m branching out.

• When you don’t run Ops and FPs, you have a lot of time to craft and sell stuff.

• I currently have more credits than I need, but less credits than I want.

• My goal is to have 100 million credits on hand.

• There’s no reason to have 100 million credits, other than to tell people you have 100 millions credits.

• I hope to be able to tell you that one day.

• As of a few hours ago I was more than half way to that goal with 53.6 million credits in hand, but then I bought stuff.

• Specifically I bought Satele Shan’s armor set for my Jedi Counselor.

• You can get the belt, gloves and pants for almost nothing.

• The chest and the boots on the other hand…

• It was 2,800,000 for the chest and 4,500,000 for the boots.

• I’m feeling a little better about the purchase today. When I checked the GTN this morning there was one chest selling for over 5 million, and no boots for sale.

• Those are pretty sweet boots though, and those alone might make this worth adding to my account collection.

• You can add Satele’s armor to the list of uncreative outfits I’ve acquired for my characters. Smuggler – Interstellar Privateer. Jedi – Humble Heroes (i.e., the Luke Skywalker RotJ outfit). Bounty Hunter – Shae Vizla. Sith Warrior – Reaver’s (i.e., Darth Marr like). Sith Inquisitor – Thana Vesh. Anyway, you get the idea.

• I have made 2 million in sales since buying the set. Like I said when you don’t run FPs or Ops you have a lot of time to craft and sell stuff.

• I’m now leveraging Biochem, Slicing, Armortech and Synthweaving to craft and sell stuff.

• I need to take a break from crafting to finish the Revan story on my Smugger and Jedi Counselor.

• I haven’t gotten to their personal story lines yet, and I can’t wait for that.

• That’s the one thing that makes repeating the Revan story worthwhile.

• I’ll have more to say on the Revan story, but I like the Empire’s version better.

• I really like Darth Marr, and I felt the Republic treated him like crap.

• Overall I thought the Republic was far more distrusting of the Empire.

• Satele Shan, who is Marr’s  counterpart was treated with much more respect in the Empire’s version of the story.

• I liked the Revan story better than the Makeb story, but I thought the Makeb story was done better.

• Without giving too much away, Makeb was two parallel stories surrounding the same circumstances.

• Revan is just one story with a version for the Empire and the Republic.

• It’s up to you to decide which version of the events really happened. There’s no way for both to have occurred.

• I’m choosing to believe the Empire’s version, because I liked it better.

• I though the ending of the Revan fight was told better on the Empire’s side than it was on the Republic’s.

• I didn’t think I had and Imperial bias, but perhaps I do.

• I know there have been other stories where the Republic and Empire have the same story. The recent Dread Masters storyline comes to mind. Still I prefer the way they did Makeb and wish they would do that for these major stories.

• I get that it would suck if only one faction got to face off against Revan. Having two different Hutt villains worked, but two different Revans? Actually…

• I also don’t care for these the enemy of my enemy is my friend stories. It’s okay once in a while, but I much prefer it when the Republic and Empire are fighting one another. We need to get back to more of that.

• Given how Revan ended, we may have to wait a little bit until that happens, but I’m hopeful they’ll be back to mortal enemies before too long.

• Well that’s the end of this story for now.

May the Force Be With You!