SWTOR: Final thoughts on the Sith Warrior **THPOILERTH!**

Note: This blog, as well as the videos shown in this entry, will reveal plot info regarding the Sith Warrior's storyline on SWTOR. If you're interested in experiencing the whole thing for yourself, DO NOT LOOK AT THIS CRAP!

You might remember this one from the last entry: This video shows the part where the story gets a little too obvious: My master, Darth Baras, asks me to kill another Sith Lord. The guy he sends to my aid is introduced to you as Baras' 'other apprentice'. It doesn't take a degree in rocket surgery to figure out what it means when a new apprentice appears all of a sudden. Oh and feel free to ignore the space battle and skip right on to the 2nd video.

This one begins with the new apprentice trying to kill me. How completely unpredictable, right? :P And from there you'll see some of the most important cut-scenes, which ultimately lead to Baras' fall. Fat fuck got what he deserved.

As you might still recall, my character is kind of a goodie-goodie. I tried being a Jedi and all, but they're just too damn boring. No emotion, no humping, no raging, they're just like math teachers. Dead on the inside. 

But despite being a really nice Sith and everything (you wouldn't believe the amounts of shocked comments I receive from the guild for this, as it's apparently oh-so out of character for me), I knew I was going to kill Darth Baras the second I've met him. A dumb, fat, arrogant prick, who treats me like his personal lapdog, makes me do all the work and then takes all the credit for it. My old RL job all over again. :P

Naturally, the story gets rather predictable in this regard: You're a fucking Sith. You want your Darth Title. Your master is an annoying pussy. This wouldn't be very satisfying if you couldn't plot to kill the fucker from day 1, knowing full well that you will get your chance at some point. In fact, the game isn't even trying to make a big secret of it, having NPCs in the very tutorial talking about how you're not strong enough to turn against him - yet!

And since the story makes me, the player, the super duper awesome indestructable badass Sith Warrior Rambo demigod type, it doesn't take long until Baras himself figures out I'm about to grow more powerful than he ever was. And I need to be stopped. So, once again, the inevitable happens, master turns against apprentice and vice versa, no one is really surprised there, but nobody needs to be - the motivation lies in plain old revenge. You'll want him dead. I wanted him dead. I've spared every single baddie who begged for their miserable life, forged plans to bring peace to the galaxy from within the Empire, but I knew I wasn't gonna have mercy on Baras. When was the last time you wanted to kill some MMO boss so badly if it wasn't for stupid "epic" loot?

So yes, the whole thing felt satisfying. Even moreso, when I acquired my Darth title before the level cap. And a little less when I realized that every moron on the whole fucking server already has that title, as well. Big surprise, with 850,000 Sith Warriors making them the most popular class on SWTOR right now, even ahead of 810,000 Jedi Knights.

The whole experience, whilst better than any other MMO-plot, was not as moving as some of the most memorable plot moments from Mass Effect, Dragon Age or - obviously - KOTOR, simply because the events happening around my character played on a much smaller scale. In the end, nothing that I did had any deciding factor on the galactic war, I didn't save the world and it was really just the story of how I made my way up from a lowly trainee all the way up to the Emperor's personal asskicker. Who, ironically, is hoping to bring peace, but that's where the story simply didn't go far enough.

One way to make the whole thing even better and more exciting would be adding some actual, real consequences to my good/evil decisions rather than just a couple alignment points. How about a level 50 quest, where I get to turn my back on the Empire and try and join the Republic? Or vice versa for evil Jedi characters? It would make sense with the lore and setting and it wouldn't be the first game to pull this off.

Sure, it would require a tremendous amount of work to implement that sort of thing for practically every character. But is that really unthinkable, now that we have a complete, fully voice-acted storyline for every single class in the game? And if you wanna compete with games like WoW, you gotta think big! Besides - If Anakin Skywalker and Kyle Katarn get to have trouble making up their minds about which side they're on, then my character should have the same privilege. Remember the devs advertising their game, saying, "This is your very own story within the Star Wars universe and you can be or do anything you could possibly imagine"? Well, let's see what you've got!

My job requires me to play my Sith Warriors some more, but now I'm very curious about some of the other classes and their storylines. And maybe I can get some fun out of the Jedi Knight after all. Who is to say I can't be a little vengeful, angry and emotional? Heh...

-Cat

SWTOR: The grumpy nice guy

Aw, don't act all surprised on me now!
(Click on the image to get to the full gallery)

Spoiler warning: I'm about to describe my experience with the SWTOR alignment system. If you're just getting started on the game and you do not want to know how your alignment can influence the game, don't read this. You've been warned.

One thing, which has always frustrated me about MMORPGs is how my character is basically just an assortment of gear, skills and numbers. Some games allow you to add a biography, many games have RP-servers, which let you act and talk 'in character' to give your alter ego a bit of a personality, but at the end of the day, it's all really just make-believe. Your characters don't have any real history or motivation, aside from the stuff you make up about them.

SWTOR promised to make things a bit more interesting by giving you light side and dark side actions and dialogue options as you progress through the story and quests. I wasn't expecting the whole system to have a huge impact on my gameplay experience and for the most part on my way through the first 30 levels I was right, some minor dresscode limitations aside - bad guys swing red lightsabres, good guys swing the colourful ones. You get the idea.

But seeing as the really interesting parts of the story are beginning to unfold before me, not only am I starting to feel that I have made the right choice when picking my class and alignment, but I'm also getting more attached to my character than I'm used to from any other online game. Through his story and his actions, that is, rather than meaningless achievement points and purple gear. But I'll get into that in a minute.

If you had asked me what kind of character I would like to play before the beta stages, I would have chosen a Jedi knight without hesitation. You see, the Sith get the fun outfits and the fancy magicks (sorry, force powers) and all, but the way those guys run their business reminds me too much of my old office job at a Korean electronics retailer: Everyone has their own hidden agenda, you only advance by killing your superiours and by taking credit for stuff you haven't actually done.

I have never been a huge Star Wars fan and I'm not familiar with much of that fictional universe, aside from the obvious crap everybody knows from the films. I knew the basic black and white stuff: Jedi = Good, Sith = Evil, that's that. So when I rolled my Jedi Knight, their whole philosophy, their mindset, the starting quests, which are meant to give you an idea of how it all works... it simply put me to sleep.

You see, when I play a character in an RPG, I want him to reflect my personality at least to some extent. And all of that crap about abandoning all emotions, letting go of all anger and passion and wasting every single boner (falling in love will get you booted!), sounded equally boring and cowardly to me. Nobody told me the Jedi were firm Catholics!

Turns out all the fun is with the Sith. They enjoy a good rage. And you know me. I'm all about rage. If I think you're an asshole, and chances are I do, then I'll say so to your face. I listen to my gut, I act and talk first and think later, no matter the consequences. But unlike your typical Sith Lord, I'm not very big on torture and mindless killing and what not. If someone's being a real dick, sure, torture them a bit, but I get no fun out of harming the innocent.

And that's where the alignment system kicks in. I'm a Sith Warrior and I'm enjoying an internship with this really mean prick, Darth Baras. Baras tells me to kill some guy he doesn't like, I just kick the guy's ass and tell him to run to the furthest corner of the galaxy and never come back, then I come back and pretend he's dead and my Master is none the wiser.

Basically, this is what a huge part of my storyline has played out like, so far. I'm being told to do something really nasty, I'm trying to be as compassionate and nice as possible, then act all badass in front of the boss and cash in on cool new titles and rewards. Sweet!

Of course, the whole thing started to get a little stale after a while. Me cutting off a bad guy's hand and telling him to run and hide, then present the hand to Darth Baras, all like, 'Look, this is all that's left of the poor fucker' and that moron is oblivious of what's really going on. It's an alternative way to solve quests, but it's not really all that 'light side'.

But things got gradually more interesting when I was told to kill a promising new padawan or, if I was feeling really hardcore, convince her to join the Dark Side. Naturally, I pretended to play along, secretly trying to save her in the process. And that's when the storytelling finally began to pick up. In order to reach the padawan, I had to talk to many of her former Jedi buddies in order to find out how to reach her. And when you're Sith, you're pretty much labelled a complete asshole, no matter what you do.

Imagine you walk in on some cranky old Jedi and the first thing he does is draw his lightsaber, threatening to kill you. You can stay cool, leave your weapon where it is, tell him you mean no harm to either him or the padawan and that you only want to talk. They don't give a shit. And they most certainly don't believe you. And whether you like it or not - in most of these situations you simply cannot avoid a fight. You may, however, choose to let your opponent live when you beat them, which usually gives them something to chew on for a while. It really is quite, funny, actually. "But... you guys are supposed to be evil! You're supposed to kill me! Maybe the Dark Side isn't so bad?"
-"Dude, it's awesome! We're allowed to get pissed off at stuff, we have comedy night on Fridays and best of all, we get to shag!"

I might be paraphrasing a bit here, but you get the idea. After 20 or so levels of goodie twoshoes I was actually attacked by my own mirror image, freaking out on me for being too nice. A very interesting touch, seeing as my own dark half told me how I was weak and how the Dark Council would eventually find out and plot to kill me and all kinds of stuff about me not being a proper Sith.

When I finally managed to get a hold of that fabled Padawan, her master would attack me relentlessly, trying his hardest to kill me, no matter how many times I told him I meant no harm or how many times I avoided dealing the killing blow. As the fight raged on, he started to show more and more signs of Dark Side corruption, i.e. his skin turned pale, his eyes turned red, his face turned into an 80 year old scrotum and all that.

After defeating (and sparing) both him and his padawan, she had to realize that it was her own master, who was being the dick here and that I was being nice about it all along. And in the end, she joined me, pretending to become my Sith apprentice, so together we could try and restore peace from within the Empire.
What's so interesting about this turn of events is how, up to this point, my character had always been a bit difficult to read. So I could spare and save people's lives, show compassion and empathy, but to what end? By the end of the day, I was still a Sith, right?

But that's where the elephant in the room had been addressed. It's all for show. We play along, do what we have to do in order to limit the damage done by the Empire as much as possible. It's the only logical explanation to a 'Sith' character, who spends all day saving lives and being nice to people. But unlike those boring Jedi dudes, I'm allowed to get angry. And I get to shag!


Speaking of which - one of my crew mates seems to be wanting exactly that. Sweeeeet~♪

Below you will find images of cutscenes and dialogue involving some of the events described in this entry. Click on an image to enlarge it and read the dialoge. Be sure to read the name at the beginning of a line of text if you're not sure which character is talking.

-Cat

The Force ain't strong enough to kill WoW

Lemme get two things straight right away:

1. This is merely my opinion. If I always had a clue what the fuck I was talking about, do you think I'd waste time writting shitty blogs all day?

2. To kill it before it comes up - I'm not a massive WoW fan. Not gonna piss on its grave when D-day finally arrives, not gonna put down flowers, either.

So. That game with the lightsabres and aliens and stuff is out. The majority of people will join six days from now, pre-order customers and the press (aka me) are already taking part in the headstart event. And as most of you probably know by now from beta and stress test events - the game is pretty damn good. I mean it. I'm having fun. Is it gonna be the next big thing? I don't think so.

To me, SW:ToR's biggest selling point is also its biggest flaw. It's the bastard child of Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) and World of Warcraft. You're supposed to get the best of both worlds, but I'm not fully satisfied in either department.

I love offline RPGs. I liked KOTOR a lot. You're the main hero, the most important character, the entire world revolves around you. If you screw up or do something you'd rather undo again, it's as simple as loading your savegame. Most of all, you get to play at your own pace. Nobody calls you a pussy if you secretly pick the lowest difficulty setting (between us, though, I pity you). Nobody knows if you cheat. Yeah sure, we've all downloaded GateKeeper for testing purposes and nothing else, right? :P

Yesterday, I teamed up with one of those typical singleplayer folks. A guy, god bless him, who usually stays away from MMOs and only installed SW:ToR, because it's Star Wars and it's Bioware. We were planning on doing the heroic group quests, which you face towards the end of the tutorial zone. Not a big deal, two semi-talented players can finish them together just fine.
So I waited at the dungeon entrance and the guy never reached me. Said he just had to fight his way through. And he died to a bunch of level 6 baddies. Again. And again. When I came to help him, it turned out he wasn't really using any abilities or special attacks. God knows whether he ever figured out how to learn new skills at his trainer.

Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to make fun of him in any way. The poor guy has probably never touched an online game before. He had no clue what he was doing, got his ass kicked by monsters 2 levels below him and there is no difficulty slider, no cheats, no savegames. Chances are, he's gonna get frustrated and he'll give up on the game if he hasn't done so already.

Sure, nobody forces him to do the group-based stuff. He can keep doing solo quests, grind baddies whenever he runs out of stuff to do from avoiding dungeons and heroic quests and just play this game like a single player RPG with lots of Chuck Norris jokes in global chat going on all the time. Right. Like that's gonna happen.

Naturally, not every passionate RPG fan is a complete MMO-newbie. Some of them know what they're doing and they enjoy a good story. And that creates a whole new problem once you get into Flashpoints - the instanced dungeons in SW:ToR. Chances are, you'll spend half as much time in there chatting with NPCs as you do fighting baddies. Now, if you do care for the story, that's a great thing. It's not so great when the rest of your team already knows all the dialogue or simply doesn't care for it and urges you to skip it all. If you're the one guy to slow down your entire party by wanting to enjoy all the dialogue, you'll have to be ready to get booted. Yes, it does happen.

Of course this also works the other way 'round. Maybe you've finished the Flashpoint before. Maybe your last team failed at the second last boss and you're starting over with a whole new group. Maybe they all want to see all the dialogue which you already know, meaning you'll spend ages listening to the same crap all over again.

Most of all, as it is entirely randomized which party member gets to act and respond to dialogue, your group might not always do what you would want them to. They might kill an NPC you would have left alive or vice versa. It's not a deal breaker, but anyone who likes to be in charge and have full control over what's going on is not going to enjoy this.

And here's another thing: Those players, who intend on playing SW:ToR like it was some kind of offline RPG will eventually reach the level cap. They might roll a different toon, go for some different dialogue options, but that's where the fun stops. They're not gonna raid. They won't care for the PvP. And ultimately, they're gonna quit, at least until the first expansion or massive content update. Oh, did I mention that Bioware are working on Mass Effect 3, they wanna crank out a 3rd Dragon Age and they just got the license for Command & Conquer? Good luck getting a whole lot of new quality content!

Surely, the vast majority of gamers on there love their MMOs and they're gonna enjoy raids, pvp and whatever the devs throw at them for their endgame experience. But the magic of lightsabers and Jedi-lore only lasts for so long until they're gonna realize that, below the surface, this game does absolutely nothing new. Yeah, yeah, fucking companions, light side, dark side... it's still just WoW with lightsabres. The classes, the combat, the skill trees, the whole thing is *so* much like WoW, the one good reason to play SW:ToR is because you don't know every fucking quest in your sleep. Yet. Wait another month. Maybe two. The setting won't feel all new and exciting anymore and you're paying for yet another MMO, which feels and plays just like... well, you know where this is going. And then what? Well, see ya in Pandaria.

Seriously. If you're looking for another kickass Bioware-esque storyline and an awesome solo-experience, this is not it. And if you want something "better than" or at least different to WoW... well, move along.
I'm not saying this game is bad. Heck, it's pretty damn good, really! But it's not hurting WoW anywhere near as much as the fucking pandas.

-Cat

I AM BURGER KING!

I berserk meat with all my might (dramatization)

So I went to that new Flame Grill Pub thingie with the family tonight and they offer the usual suspects you'd expect to find at that kind of place: Steak, burgers, chicken, chilli... you get the idea. And since the whole world has to go fucking American with absolutely everything, they also have their own silly little challenge thing. That one.

And since I wasn't paying, I thought what the heck and went for it. And finished it. BECAUSE I'M A MAN!
And then everyone freaked out, saying I was the first one to ever finish the whole fucking burger and everything that goes with it and they took my picture for their wall of fame and I got badges and then I had to take a second picture because on the first one I clutched my chest and pretended I was having a heart attack and the manager didn't like it.

So yes. My angry, fat, hairy face is now decorating a pub in Carlton. Because I don't eat like a pussy. Give me a month and they'll name the whole fucking restaurant after me.

-Cat

WoW is for chicks now. Also, I'm a tank.

(You could see a prot warrior DPS peak of 37.3k on here before Youtube raped it of all detail and quality - try watching it in FullScreen 720p)

People are, once again, proclaiming the end of WoW - this time because of Star Wars: The old Republic. Since that's so incredibly different and innovative and totally not WoW with lightsabers and too much fucking dialogue. And I'm not revealing any secrets when I say that all critics are once again preparing to learn every single detail about the next WoW killer, hoping to crank out as many articles as possible and milk this upcoming new cash cow until its wrinkly teats will produce nothing but dust.

I'm not going to make any predictions here. Every single year, everybody is absolutely sure that some upcoming MMO is gonna be the next big thing and that nobody will play WoW anymore and two months later everyone is back in Azeroth. Well, not entirely everyone - they're down to what now, 9 million active subscribers? Yeah, I can totally see how WoW is dead.

At the end of the day, it doesn't fucking matter whether a game has 20 billion subscribers or just 5000. I have to find it enjoyable. And that's my problem with WoW right now. They have added those bouncy, swingy little playground pony rides. They stand for everything I hate about WoW and Pandaria right now. I'm a big, mean, scary warrior with flames coming out of every orifice, I have torn demons and dragons apart with my bare hands. And I'm riding a sandbox pony. "WHEEEEEE!"

Imagine you're cooking a great dinner. And to make things just a little more fun, you add a pinch of salt. And it tastes better, so you add a little more salt. And a little more. Until at some point you taste so much fucking salt, the whole damn dinner is ruined. And that's how I feel about all the "fun" and cutesie stuff on WoW. Yes, they've always had their whacky humor and yes, Warcraft 3 had fucking pandas as some kind of little side joke. But, for whatever reason, the whole experience was still immersive enough to me and still felt mature enough to not completely water down the WAR part of my warcraft experience. War isn't fun or candy-coloured. And there are no ponies.

Interestingly enough, the vast majority of my friends, who actually look forward to the silly little pandas and who get a kick out of the new Darkmoon Island and all the fun shit that goes with it, are female. The moment I moan about the upcoming expansion on Facebook, I'll get at least three fellow writers, all of them female, who will quite happily cram a whole panda up my ass for it.
My guild mates? Girls, every single one of them! Technically, you could say one of them might be male, but he's into cosplay, karaoke that whole 'some of my best friends are gay' thing. He's the biggest girl of them all.

Personally, I tend to wear my testicles with pride. They're awesome. They're what makes me ME! Erm... well, partially, I suppose. They're what made me quit WoW for nearly two months now. But now I seem to be growing an inner vagina. And it's all Bulwark of Azzinoth's fault!
That stupid ass shield has been mocking me ever since they first added it to the game!

Think about it. They put a shit ton of effort into making all the weapons look super powerful, shiny and ridiculously oversized. And then you get shields, which look like the lid of a fucking trash can. You get so many shields on WoW whose names contain "tower" or "bulwark" and they're ugly, pixellated and ridiculously tiny, unless you happen to be a male Tauren. But for some fucked up reason, shields don't scale up on male Worgen, so you'll have to look twice to even see a shield on them.

Sure, there were no Worgen back in BC and Wrath, but my point still stands. Look awesome using Titan's Grip or look dumb wielding part of a garbage can? Total no-brainer. Wrath came out and there it was again. That fucking monster of a shield, on the NPCs in Zul'Drak. The mother of all shields. The one shield that ends the world.

When you look at traditional tanks, you get skills titled shield slam and shield wall. Stuff that suggests your shield is a mighty, powerful tool, a weapon, something to save the lives of your party, something to ends the lives of your enemies. You think Bulwark of Azzinoth. Looks a bit like an industrial-size refrigerator with massive spikes coming out of it. Back then, I probably would have chosen that shield over sex. Possibly even pizza. But the level cap had just changed to 80, the shield is only level 70 and with Titan's Grip still feeling new and exciting, Mr. Fridge was something nice and spectacular to fantasize about, but not really worth the trouble.

But now they've fucking added transmogrifying. It changes everything. Visually, anyway. That epic shield, that one cool item I always wanted more than any other thing on WoW has suddenly become a valid option. Damn those bastards to hell!

Long story short, I'm tanking now. Haven't touched a shield in over two years, I've always enoyed fury more than anything and every idiot is already running around with that damn shield, anyway, but I don't care. The worst part is how tanking feels all nice, new and different now, so instead of doing something fun, something useful, I'm wasting even more time on that stupid, soon to be panda-infested game I hate so much. All for the sake of looking sexy. I'm such a girl! >.<

-Cat