Today I want to share a bit about my experience with Star Wars: The Old Republic thus far, including some things that happened before the game fully released as well as some things I'm experiencing currently as I'm playing the game. A warning beforehand that this post may end up coming off as me blowing off some steam, but that's what general blogs are for, right?
Turmoil of the Pre-launch Guild
It was about a week prior to Early Access for SWTOR to begin. I was as excited as I've ever been for a game's launch and was very much looking forward to dominating the scene with my Roleplaying-PvP guild that I had been a part of for the past two and a half years or so, since I first heard about the game. I couldn't wait, it was so close finally after all the hype and anticipation we were finally going to be in the game! If anything were going to go wrong on the guild front, it would surely have to be after the game's official launch right? One evening in this week prior I logged into our forums and my jaw nearly hit the floor. I logged in to find one of the most heartbreaking things for any dedicated guild member to find: a post advising that the guild leader, along with many other guildmates that I had come to know well over the years, were leaving the guild. I was first in denial, telling myself that this thread had to be some kind of inside joke to get everyone laughing... after all, we were only a week away from launch.
Sadly it was no joke. I couldn't believe it. I am certain that I threw my arms up in the air in defeat. I didn't know what to think. I was sad, angry, confused, lost, and alone. The part that made things worse was that this sudden rift and exodus completely blindsided me. I had no idea that something apparently this major was going on in the background, known to only a few members (as far as I could tell). And what makes things worse, no one really wanted to explain publicly. Anytime I asked what the heck was going on, the only response I received was "PM me" or "jump on Xfire and I'll explain". No one would give me a straight answer in the public light. This rubbed me the wrong way also. If it was seriously such a major ordeal, it should have been explained publicly to the entire guild so that there was no humming and hawing behind the scenes as those of us left behind wondered what had just happened. Still to this day I can't believe this happened and even typing about it now is frustrating me quite a bit...
I didn't know what to do. A great number of the people I knew from the guild were just up and gone, without real warning, and I didn't know if I should join them, stay, or leave both altogether. Since a few of the members I really RP'ed with often were staying, one of them stepping in to lead us in our time of great difficulty, I did end up staying. In part at least. I had already put in so much of an effort to the guild that I didn't want to just up and abandon it. So I decided I would stay, for my Empire characters at least, while the Republic side of me roamed elsewhere (even though now that same guild wants to have both an Empire and Republic guild on the same server... *sigh*).
In my travels of trying to find a guild to join in a state of near-panic, I did end up joining up with the Mos Eisley Radio Community (MERC) on the Veela server for my Republic fix of the game. I had been listening to MER for a couple months and was interested in what they had going on. So guild-wise, I'm content for now on both fronts. However, something is still missing.
Lack of friends playing = Lack of motivation
Now that I have a guild for both Republic and Empire gameplay, I should be set right? Yeah... I wish that were the case. Early Access started off great. I started my main, a bounty hunter, on my Empire server and basically played most of the starter planet content with a guildie or two. I had not played my BH's story during either of the beta weekends I was in, so I was excited to see what it had in store. I really enjoyed it. My intention for him was always to be a tank, so when I hit time to choose my advanced class I went with Powertech. That's where some of my troubles started though... it felt like without another person to quest and level with, I had a rough time getting things done, even with my healer companion with me. Not to mention that tanking flashpoints felt hard as hell... I couldn't seem to keep aggro on some targets no matter what I did, even after getting the "tank stance" and taunts. After a while I just got fed up with it... as much as I wanted to tank, I was not having fun in the game and that's ultimately what I am here for. I switched my spec to the Advanced Prototype dps tree and things have been a bit better since, but still feels like I'm lacking, especially on the PvP front. My BH is currently level 40 and geared with one of the full lvl 40 pvp commendation sets.
For my Republic main character, I rolled a Gunslinger spec Smuggler. Shortly after that, I saw how badass the Scoundrel spec was, and instantly had "Advanced Class remorse"... not the biggest fan of the cover system, especially in PvP. Feels like I can only perform to part of my potential because I am constantly having to move around and can't get off my more powerful skills. The story, like every other class I've played thus far, is good.... but again, still something feels off with him. He's currently sitting at level 18. I haven't spent much time doing anything with MERC because I haven't really had time yet, and I also decided try my hand at a healing class and rolled a Combat Medic Commando spec Trooper. That toon I seem to enjoy a lot more, as I feel like as a healer I am at least somewhat more helpful in PvP, even without doing much damage (which sometimes I do well also). I also tried healing the Hammer Station flashpoint last night and that didn't go too bad either. So at this point, with him now lvl 19, I may be putting him as my main in MERC instead...
I told myself when I started playing SWTOR that I wasn't going to have a ton of alternate characters... I really wanted to just focus on having one main character and possibly one alternate character. (Unlike WoW where I currently have 8 level 85s and a lvl 76'ish...) However, as you can see, this is becoming not the case. I feel that a major part in this is due to the fact that I am not playing with anyone in particular that I have to dedicate my time to. On the other side of that coin is that lately, now that the immediate rush to play the game has subsided, I am not feeling any motivation to do anything specific with my characters. A couple nights I've been finding myself just absentmindedly running around or just doing crew skill missions while I do other things like watch TV or browse the web.
Then there's this nagging at me to go jump on WoW instead of play SWTOR. I had originally thought that once SWTOR launched, I was going to be done playing WoW for good, or if not that, at least a few months while I was busy with SWTOR. But I still haven't cancelled my subscription... I think it's mostly because my friend whom I've played with for the past five years or so still play it, and I still want to play with them, as much as I wish some of them were playing SWTOR with me. My wife can't play right now because she uses a Mac (which may hopefully be resolved soon) and my best friend that I used to play SWG with just seems to be holding out and refusing to do so right now. He has his reasons, but I was just so disappointed when he told me he wasn't going to be playing at all. A lot of wanting to play WoW I'm sure is also due to the fact that in that game I've already got highest level toons and can just jump on and instantly run content with ease. No spamming LFG in chat like SWTOR currently has...
Meh... that's enough for today. Next time I'll have a write about SWTOR in a more positive light, as this post makes it seem like it's almost a bad thing, WHICH IT ABSOLUTELY ISN'T!!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Here we are again... at the beginning...
So I had started a blog a while back, I think it was almost a year ago now, and never really got very far with it. The intention at that time was to blog about World of Warcraft primarily, as Cataclysm had recently launched and I was feeling like I just needed to vent about a thing or two. Now that Star Wars: The Old Republic has gone live, I'm getting that feeling again. This time though, I don't want to focus on just one game, but gaming in general as I have experienced it in my life and as I continue to game into the future. Some days I'm sure will be more focused on one game or another, but for now I want to just keep it broad.
OK so where to start... I guess the best place to start is usually at the beginning right? Well where do you define the beginning I guess... the beginning of my experience with gaming? With FPS games or MMOs? 'Cause as much as I'm sure I'll already be writing a novel in this first post, I really don't want to share my entire life story. And I'm certain if you're not already bored with me, that will surely push you over the edge to stop reading now.
TL;DR thus far: Here's a new blog to replace the old one that I abandoned. This is the intro post, with my gaming background.
If you build it, you will be hooked.
I guess we'll start with where I picked up the tag Psyno. In my freshman year of college, 2004/2005, my best friend's dad had just purchased a new computer as well as the game FarCry. Apparently at some point he got to playing it enough that he was able to get my friend and my friend's brother hooked on it as well. They ended up joining a clan, TAW (or The Art of Warfare), a well-known FPS clan at the time. Then there was me, who didn't really have much of a computer (the only one I had during my first semester was an old surplus one I got cheap from campus. You know, one of those desktop computers with a monitor that weighs about as much as a car). Winter break rolled around and with much convincing from my friend and his assistance, I built my first gaming tower. It wasn't top-of-the-line by any means, but for a gaming tower built on a budget it was the best PC I had certainly ever owned. I picked up FarCry, applied to TAW under the premise of being able to join my friend and his family in gaming, and Psynomrast_TAW was born. Psynomrast being a name I had created for a character in Diablo 2 that really didn't have any specific meaning, it just kinda stuck.
Prior to FarCry, my only real experience with FPS games (on the PC at least), was playing Counter-Strike. (Oh god I'm having flashbacks of playing in the wee-hours in the morning on a dial-up connection >.<) I never had really been in an actual organized clan per se, so being in TAW was a new experience for me. It was interesting to have 'practices' and intera-clan matches between different squads. Basically things you associate with professional and amatuer sports, we were doing as cyberathletes instead. I was certainly excited to be a part of it, and also to be gaming regularly with some real-life friends.
Now that I had a fairly powerful PC though, I was curious as to what other games I could play. One game in particular I wanted to try was Star Wars Galaxies. I loved, and still do love, the Star Wars universe. So how could I pass up the chance to play an MMO with tons of other Star Wars fans? I simply had to. So I bought the game, got in, and was in awe at the massiveness that this massively multplayer online game really offered. It was the first time I had ever played an MMO (I mean sure Diablo2 had a multiplayer aspect, but not to such an extent as to be able to call it an actual MMO) and I had no idea that I was about to be hooked for the long haul into this genre.
The Key to MMO is Community.
To say Star Wars Galaxies was a bit overwhelming for me would be an understatement. There were so many different things to do and so many ways to do it that I honestly had no idea where in the heck to start. One thing I knew right away though is that I loved the space exploration and combat aspect that the Jump To Lightspeed expansion (which I think had been included in my purchase of the game) had to offer. What I loved even more was finding out that players that had the top tier ships could invite others to join them in space and that those players could actually operate the ship's turrets in combat. After finding out that I also got some space combat experience for doing this, I couldn't get enough and wanted to do it a lot more than I could by myself.
Since I had no idea how to really start doing anything else, I chose to just stick to the space content for a while. At least until I had more of an idea of what I wanted to do with my character in the game (since at the time you could only have one character per server). I found myself in one of the more frequented spaceports, on Corellia if I recall correctly, spamming that I was looking for a group for space xp. It didn't take long, but I did end up finding a group. One of the group members had the YT-1300 ship and I was able to man one of the turrets. I'm not too sure on the specific make-up of the group, but I do recall it was our ship and like 2 or 3 others in their own personal starfighters. They invited me to join them on their TeamSpeak server, which I luckily already had because it was required for membership in TAW. So I joined them on voice chat and man, we had a blast. I ended up grouping with them a few more times before finally joining them as a permanent part of their gaming circle of friends. A few of them in particular to this day I am still in touch with and consider to be very close friends in real life, even though we have technically never even met face to face. Who says you can't make real friends in MMOs???
If I had never run into this group or any similar group instead, I would likely not have become as involved with SWG as I ended up becoming. That and I may not have been able to progress my character much beyond the space stuff without their help. They showed me the ropes and really got me playing more with my character on the ground. And like I said, I was thoroughly enjoying playing with them and basically "hanging out" in-game and on voice with them. So much to the point that I spent a lot of that second semester of my freshman year without a lot of sleep.
While I was playing SWG, I also took a shot at The Matrix Online. The game was decent and I did have fun playing it (though I really only played it when the SWG servers were down for maintenance), but it just felt like there wasn't much of a community at the time. So after a few months, I dropped my sub (which was annoying to do because I had to actually call their customer support to cancel my subscription... mainly so they could ask me why and what they could do to improve the game to keep me... again, annoying). I also played some Guild Wars when that came out as we took a short break from SWG, but that ended up just being too repetitive in my opinion and it didn't keep my interest for long. Nor did it anyone else and we were right back into the regular routine of nightly binges of SWG.
Some good things end far too soon...
SWG ended up becoming the purpose for my gaming PC, rather than the FPS game FarCry as originally intended. Don't get me wrong, I didn't stop playing FarCry. I competed on a weekly basis and even moved with my squad as they left TAW to join GeezerGaming, where I became Psyno, a shortened version of Psynomrast that I had become more commonly called. Later that summer when Battlefield 2 came out, I was right in on the front lines for our clan. Switching from FarCry to BF2 came with ease to me and I enjoyed the game a lot more too. I got really into BF2 to the point that I was on one of our ladder match teams and spent a good portion of time practicing and strategizing with my teammates.
By the time I got back to college I had 3 current SWG accounts (so that I could play as 3 different characters, sometimes simultaneously via running multiple instances of the game) and was fairly heavy into competitive BF2. I also no longer had a job back home, so wouldn't be needing to go back every other weekend to maintain my position there, which had been quite the pain in the ass the previous year. Since I was actually going to be spending more time on campus, I advised my FPS clan that I would be taking a break from BF2 for a while to try to make some more friends at school. I did go a bit out of my way to make some new friends and try some new things and am very glad I did so, as I met my girlfriend whom is now my wife in the process. With the fall also came the looming New Game Enhancements for SWG though, a change that was protested by many. When the NGE did finally go live despite outcry from the community, the game that my friends and I had come to love was changed so drastically that we just left, rather than try to salvage the pieces.
WoW - The Giant Elephant in the Room
SWG was dead to us, and I wasn't really involved with my FPS clan anymore. I tried going back to it, but just didn't have the time that they were asking me to commit to anymore. My friends from SWG wanted to find a new game to all start playing, but couldn't really decide on anything. Some of us tried out City of Villains for a while, which was pretty fun. Then one of the guys asked us to all download the World of Warcraft trial to see if we could possibly get into it as our new home. I was very hesitant at first... WoW was a game that I had sworn I would never play, as I viewed it as being "too cartoonish" in regards to graphics. But alas, this was where my friends were going and like a puppy without a home, I had to follow. It wasn't all bad though. I already knew someone in real life who played the game and had helped them build their gaming tower to do just that... despite me trying to get them to play SWG at the time. And heck, if my friends from SWG were going there, why shouldn't I?
I played the trial and was instantly hooked. Almost moreso than I was to SWG when I initially played that. The game was easy to play, not overly complicated, and I again was having a good time with friends. That Christmas I traded in the City of Heroes game I had asked for originally and got World of Warcraft instead. I've been playing WoW ever since and have no regrets about it. Since then I was able to get my best friend to join, who became instantly hooked, as well as my wife, who still plays with me to this day. Later along the line we also picked up an old SWG friend that had been left behind as well as a few new friends.
It's now been 6 years since I started playing WoW. I could go on forever about the good times I've had and shared with others in the game, as well as bad times, but that's not why I'm here. We'll just leave it at this for now: I have been in WoW for a long time, through every expansion thus far. I've played numerous other games briefly during this 6 year span, but something keeps me tied into WoW and I quickly lose interest in the other games. I really, honestly haven't been able to put a definitive finger on the reason, but many signs point to the fact that this is what my friends and wife play, therefore that is where I'll be staying.
A New Horizon
Now I've finally begun playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, a game I hope to play as long as WoW, if not longer. I am sure a great number of my posts after this initial post will be directly related to SWTOR, so be prepared. I already have a number of things I would like to say about it, shares some things that happened leading up to the launch, as well as some thoughts and issues that I am having with the game (well not with the game itself, but moreso me playing it). But considering how much I've already written for today's post, I need a break!
P.S. Feel free to follow me on twitter, @psyno86, though if you're reading this now it's likely what brought you here...
OK so where to start... I guess the best place to start is usually at the beginning right? Well where do you define the beginning I guess... the beginning of my experience with gaming? With FPS games or MMOs? 'Cause as much as I'm sure I'll already be writing a novel in this first post, I really don't want to share my entire life story. And I'm certain if you're not already bored with me, that will surely push you over the edge to stop reading now.
TL;DR thus far: Here's a new blog to replace the old one that I abandoned. This is the intro post, with my gaming background.
If you build it, you will be hooked.
I guess we'll start with where I picked up the tag Psyno. In my freshman year of college, 2004/2005, my best friend's dad had just purchased a new computer as well as the game FarCry. Apparently at some point he got to playing it enough that he was able to get my friend and my friend's brother hooked on it as well. They ended up joining a clan, TAW (or The Art of Warfare), a well-known FPS clan at the time. Then there was me, who didn't really have much of a computer (the only one I had during my first semester was an old surplus one I got cheap from campus. You know, one of those desktop computers with a monitor that weighs about as much as a car). Winter break rolled around and with much convincing from my friend and his assistance, I built my first gaming tower. It wasn't top-of-the-line by any means, but for a gaming tower built on a budget it was the best PC I had certainly ever owned. I picked up FarCry, applied to TAW under the premise of being able to join my friend and his family in gaming, and Psynomrast_TAW was born. Psynomrast being a name I had created for a character in Diablo 2 that really didn't have any specific meaning, it just kinda stuck.
Prior to FarCry, my only real experience with FPS games (on the PC at least), was playing Counter-Strike. (Oh god I'm having flashbacks of playing in the wee-hours in the morning on a dial-up connection >.<) I never had really been in an actual organized clan per se, so being in TAW was a new experience for me. It was interesting to have 'practices' and intera-clan matches between different squads. Basically things you associate with professional and amatuer sports, we were doing as cyberathletes instead. I was certainly excited to be a part of it, and also to be gaming regularly with some real-life friends.
Now that I had a fairly powerful PC though, I was curious as to what other games I could play. One game in particular I wanted to try was Star Wars Galaxies. I loved, and still do love, the Star Wars universe. So how could I pass up the chance to play an MMO with tons of other Star Wars fans? I simply had to. So I bought the game, got in, and was in awe at the massiveness that this massively multplayer online game really offered. It was the first time I had ever played an MMO (I mean sure Diablo2 had a multiplayer aspect, but not to such an extent as to be able to call it an actual MMO) and I had no idea that I was about to be hooked for the long haul into this genre.
The Key to MMO is Community.
To say Star Wars Galaxies was a bit overwhelming for me would be an understatement. There were so many different things to do and so many ways to do it that I honestly had no idea where in the heck to start. One thing I knew right away though is that I loved the space exploration and combat aspect that the Jump To Lightspeed expansion (which I think had been included in my purchase of the game) had to offer. What I loved even more was finding out that players that had the top tier ships could invite others to join them in space and that those players could actually operate the ship's turrets in combat. After finding out that I also got some space combat experience for doing this, I couldn't get enough and wanted to do it a lot more than I could by myself.
Since I had no idea how to really start doing anything else, I chose to just stick to the space content for a while. At least until I had more of an idea of what I wanted to do with my character in the game (since at the time you could only have one character per server). I found myself in one of the more frequented spaceports, on Corellia if I recall correctly, spamming that I was looking for a group for space xp. It didn't take long, but I did end up finding a group. One of the group members had the YT-1300 ship and I was able to man one of the turrets. I'm not too sure on the specific make-up of the group, but I do recall it was our ship and like 2 or 3 others in their own personal starfighters. They invited me to join them on their TeamSpeak server, which I luckily already had because it was required for membership in TAW. So I joined them on voice chat and man, we had a blast. I ended up grouping with them a few more times before finally joining them as a permanent part of their gaming circle of friends. A few of them in particular to this day I am still in touch with and consider to be very close friends in real life, even though we have technically never even met face to face. Who says you can't make real friends in MMOs???
If I had never run into this group or any similar group instead, I would likely not have become as involved with SWG as I ended up becoming. That and I may not have been able to progress my character much beyond the space stuff without their help. They showed me the ropes and really got me playing more with my character on the ground. And like I said, I was thoroughly enjoying playing with them and basically "hanging out" in-game and on voice with them. So much to the point that I spent a lot of that second semester of my freshman year without a lot of sleep.
While I was playing SWG, I also took a shot at The Matrix Online. The game was decent and I did have fun playing it (though I really only played it when the SWG servers were down for maintenance), but it just felt like there wasn't much of a community at the time. So after a few months, I dropped my sub (which was annoying to do because I had to actually call their customer support to cancel my subscription... mainly so they could ask me why and what they could do to improve the game to keep me... again, annoying). I also played some Guild Wars when that came out as we took a short break from SWG, but that ended up just being too repetitive in my opinion and it didn't keep my interest for long. Nor did it anyone else and we were right back into the regular routine of nightly binges of SWG.
Some good things end far too soon...
SWG ended up becoming the purpose for my gaming PC, rather than the FPS game FarCry as originally intended. Don't get me wrong, I didn't stop playing FarCry. I competed on a weekly basis and even moved with my squad as they left TAW to join GeezerGaming, where I became Psyno, a shortened version of Psynomrast that I had become more commonly called. Later that summer when Battlefield 2 came out, I was right in on the front lines for our clan. Switching from FarCry to BF2 came with ease to me and I enjoyed the game a lot more too. I got really into BF2 to the point that I was on one of our ladder match teams and spent a good portion of time practicing and strategizing with my teammates.
By the time I got back to college I had 3 current SWG accounts (so that I could play as 3 different characters, sometimes simultaneously via running multiple instances of the game) and was fairly heavy into competitive BF2. I also no longer had a job back home, so wouldn't be needing to go back every other weekend to maintain my position there, which had been quite the pain in the ass the previous year. Since I was actually going to be spending more time on campus, I advised my FPS clan that I would be taking a break from BF2 for a while to try to make some more friends at school. I did go a bit out of my way to make some new friends and try some new things and am very glad I did so, as I met my girlfriend whom is now my wife in the process. With the fall also came the looming New Game Enhancements for SWG though, a change that was protested by many. When the NGE did finally go live despite outcry from the community, the game that my friends and I had come to love was changed so drastically that we just left, rather than try to salvage the pieces.
WoW - The Giant Elephant in the Room
SWG was dead to us, and I wasn't really involved with my FPS clan anymore. I tried going back to it, but just didn't have the time that they were asking me to commit to anymore. My friends from SWG wanted to find a new game to all start playing, but couldn't really decide on anything. Some of us tried out City of Villains for a while, which was pretty fun. Then one of the guys asked us to all download the World of Warcraft trial to see if we could possibly get into it as our new home. I was very hesitant at first... WoW was a game that I had sworn I would never play, as I viewed it as being "too cartoonish" in regards to graphics. But alas, this was where my friends were going and like a puppy without a home, I had to follow. It wasn't all bad though. I already knew someone in real life who played the game and had helped them build their gaming tower to do just that... despite me trying to get them to play SWG at the time. And heck, if my friends from SWG were going there, why shouldn't I?
I played the trial and was instantly hooked. Almost moreso than I was to SWG when I initially played that. The game was easy to play, not overly complicated, and I again was having a good time with friends. That Christmas I traded in the City of Heroes game I had asked for originally and got World of Warcraft instead. I've been playing WoW ever since and have no regrets about it. Since then I was able to get my best friend to join, who became instantly hooked, as well as my wife, who still plays with me to this day. Later along the line we also picked up an old SWG friend that had been left behind as well as a few new friends.
It's now been 6 years since I started playing WoW. I could go on forever about the good times I've had and shared with others in the game, as well as bad times, but that's not why I'm here. We'll just leave it at this for now: I have been in WoW for a long time, through every expansion thus far. I've played numerous other games briefly during this 6 year span, but something keeps me tied into WoW and I quickly lose interest in the other games. I really, honestly haven't been able to put a definitive finger on the reason, but many signs point to the fact that this is what my friends and wife play, therefore that is where I'll be staying.
A New Horizon
Now I've finally begun playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, a game I hope to play as long as WoW, if not longer. I am sure a great number of my posts after this initial post will be directly related to SWTOR, so be prepared. I already have a number of things I would like to say about it, shares some things that happened leading up to the launch, as well as some thoughts and issues that I am having with the game (well not with the game itself, but moreso me playing it). But considering how much I've already written for today's post, I need a break!
P.S. Feel free to follow me on twitter, @psyno86, though if you're reading this now it's likely what brought you here...
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