SWTOR: Legend of Hipstar 3:
Holo-con

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Feb 23, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 53 comments

We’re on planet Tython, home of the Jedi School For the Not Particularly Gifted. I’ve spent our first day at school out enjoying the nice weather around campus, walking through the woods and slowly bludgeoning Flesh Raiders to death with my glowing raver baton. This is not what I thought life would be like as a Jedi.

Easy, young padawan. I know you're eager to learn meditation, self-control, and mental discipline, but first you need to go out and  murder hundreds of dudes in brutal melee combat.
Easy, young padawan. I know you're eager to learn meditation, self-control, and mental discipline, but first you need to go out and murder hundreds of dudes in brutal melee combat.

This Jedi Master wants me to rescue a group of students, who wandered off or got lost in this vast three-acre wilderness. Not the students in cages that I rescued last episode. No, he doesn’t seem to know or care about those guys. But somewhere out in the wilderness are another three students and I need to find them. I’m given a beacon. I need to give the beacon to the lost students and then a shuttle will be dispatched to pick them up. They need my help, because apparently the students here haven’t been trained for combat.

Dude, we have shuttles? I know everyone is surprised to see Flesh Raiders using advanced weapons, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have anti-air cannons. You could probably just fly over and find them in like two seconds.

Also, I know I sound like I’m beating a dead bantha, but you’ve got a lightsaber, man. We’ve got a clone army of Jedi holding the walls. Why are you asking the guy with the safety sword to do this? Your students are trapped in a warzone and your plan is to send other ill-equipped students to rescue them while you stare off into space?

(Again, the platform here has eleven Jedi on it, doing nothing. If BioWare could just demote some of these Knights to unarmed scribes or students it would smooth this right out. It’s bad enough to have gibberish like this in World of Warcraft, where nobody reads the quest text. But if you’re going to spend two hundred million galactic credits making the all-voiced story-driven MMO, then you need to treat your environment design with a bit more care. The environment is just as much a part of the story as the spoken dialog.)

I don’t suppose you have a new weapon for me? I’m not asking for a lightsaber. Well, I AM, but I’m not expecting one. I’ll settle for something sharp and dangerous. A blade? A pointy stick? Anything? No? Ah well. Forget I said anything. I need the XP and you’d probably just end up in a cage with everyone else.

I don't remember the icons used for classes, but I think these are pretty easy to intuit. Noaal is obviously a florist, and Ri'or is a 'high-fiver'.
I don't remember the icons used for classes, but I think these are pretty easy to intuit. Noaal is obviously a florist, and Ri'or is a 'high-fiver'.

I manage to find the students hiding in a small clearing. Someone else is already rescuing them. Actually, there’s a line. You don’t have to wait, but it feels strange to just wade in.

Once the other rescuers depart, I talk to the kids. One of them is injured. Another is completely bonkers and wants to run out (with the injured guy in tow) and get revenge on the Flesh Raiders.

What's holding these swords on our backs? Static electricity?
What's holding these swords on our backs? Static electricity?

So the Jedi haven’t been teaching these kids combat skills. But they apparently haven’t been teaching them any sort of mental discipline, either. What HAVE they been doing with these kids?

This is actually your first chance to accrue light side / dark side points. As in the past BioWare games, this is presented as a series of choices but it’s really only a choice you make once and then re-affirm repeatedly afterwards. There’s gear restricted to the higher and lower points on the light / dark scale, so faffing about with roleplaying will just limit your options.

I can encourage these kids to run off and get revenge – which is obviously stupid, since they have no combat training – or I can tell them to stay put and wait for the shuttle. I don’t want you to think that I’m cherry-picking the derpy dark side options, so I’m going to stick to the light side, which is probably how this area of the game was intended to be played.

I hike back to base and tell the Jedi who sent me that the kids are all right. Provided you can call “useless, under-trained, unbalanced, and ill-equipped” people “all right”.

He gives me some new boots for my trouble. Not a lightsaber, but boots.

One of the layabout Jedi masters calls me on my holocron. (A different Jedi master. Not that you can tell them apart. 90% of the Jedi here are young human males with brown hair in brown robes with the exact same haircut.) On one hand, I LOVE that they’re putting mobile phones into this sci-fi setting and letting us talk to people far away. On the other hand, the writers often forget I have this thing and make me walk halfway across the world to speak to someone.

In fact, how come I had to come back to base to talk to that last guy? And now that I’m thinking about it – which I’m sure is the source of my troubles – why didn’t the kids call for help themselves?

Ah, whatever.

A tiny monk!
A tiny monk!

Master Layabout is injured, which is interesting since I left him on the landing platform where no Flesh Raider could ever possibly reach. He makes up some bantha poodoo about being injured rescuing some padawans, but he specifically sent me here to find out what was going on, and I didn’t see him in the field. I figure his wound is self-inflicted. Wuss.

He says the Flesh Raider attacks are being staged from a nearby cave. Guess who has to go and seal up the cave? I’ll give you a hint: Not Darth Revan.

Still no lightsaber.

And so ends this series, basically when it was just getting started. Are you feeling kind of disappointed that it ended so quickly and abruptly? So was I, when I found it in the archives and read through it. Let’s all take a moment to curse Shamus from 2012 who left us hanging like this. I really want to know what I was going to do next.

You can see that the “Why don’t I have a lightsaber yet?” thing was going to be a running gag. Having played through this content before I wrote this, I can promise that the gag was going to run for a very long time. I think the writers were trying to use the lightsaber as motivation for the player, but it just made everything stupid, lame, and annoying. The lightsaber was dangled in front of the player for far longer than made any kind of sense. (Which means it would have been really cathartic to complain about it. Too bad I quit!)

Ah well. SWTOR is still running, which is more than I would have guessed way back in 2012.

The good news is that I’m going to re-post my Let’s Plays from Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft. Those originally ran at The Escapist, but it’s been a few years and I think they’ve been languishing in the archives to too long. I’m going to repost them here (probably on Sundays) with mouseover text, fixed links, fixed typos, and maybe some additional Tolkien-weenieThis is what you call a Tolkien scholar that’s lacking in the ‘scholar’ department. observations.

Thanks for reading.

 

Footnotes:

[1] This is what you call a Tolkien scholar that’s lacking in the ‘scholar’ department.



From The Archives:
 

53 thoughts on “SWTOR: Legend of Hipstar 3:
Holo-con

  1. ThaneofFife says:

    First!

    Fun series, Shamus. Reminded me a lot of your WoW series. Have you thought about going back to WoW? Draenor was pretty cool, what with the base-building and all. Took me a whole four months to burn out on it.

  2. Incunabulum says:

    “The lightsaber was dangled in front of the player for far longer than made any kind of sense. ”

    Its probably a good thing you didn’t play Smuggler then.

    Since having a ship is as important to the Smuggler as a lightsaber to a Jedi, of course they dangle the ship in front of you early on, snatch it away just before you get to it, then spend the next several hours making you chase after it to . . . end up getting it at the same point as everyone else.

    Smuggler *should* have gotten his ship way earlier, preferably by STEALING it early and they could have used that as a plot complication for the rest of the story instead of the idiocy they went with.

    1. Mintskittle says:

      While I understand mechanically why they held off giving the smuggler back their ship to line up with the other classes getting theirs, it was probably the most infuriating part of the smuggler class quest, and why I didn’t play one for very long.

      EDIT: This is one of the few times where I have been absolutely livid at a game, constantly stringing the player along like that.

      1. Humanoid says:

        Then you get some grand treasure, but of course since this is an MMO you can’t have a smuggler player be any richer than players of any other class, so the treasure is a bit of pocket change.

        1. Tom says:

          You know, there is such a thing as an excessively balanced game.

        2. Mike S. says:

          Even given that they felt bound by balance, give me something. A new ship with a larger and more luxuriously appointed interior would make literally no difference to gameplay, and would require creating one new collection of art assets, once. Or the treasure is time-bound in a way that keeps it just offstage (e.g., you actually get it when that one companion officially takes up their new position, which will happen after your adventures are over and thus after the game), but acknowledge the smuggler’s transition to successful merchant prince in the dialog.

          Or if you must, do the Maltese Falcon ending, so that the treasure isn’t what it was cracked up to be. Anything but completely ignoring the fact that you’re supposed to have gained vast wealth two thirds of the way through the game.

    2. Peter H. Coffin says:

      You know, they probably smiled and patted themselves on the back at how much simpler all the scriptwriting was once they figured out that they could give everyone gear at exactly the same points. Never even gave a thought to how much more interesting it would be otherwise.

      1. Humanoid says:

        Though interestingly one area where they depart from every class mirroring each other is the timing of when new companions become available. I was playing a consular and my co-op partner was playing a knight, and I noted they got their second companion pretty much straight away (Coruscant) while I had to wait another two full planets to get mine. That was weird.

        1. Tom says:

          It’s called “nuance.” Enjoy it while you can, it’s out of fashion these days.

  3. Mike S. says:

    There's gear restricted to the higher and lower points on the light / dark scale, so faffing about with roleplaying will just limit your options.

    Not all that much gear, and it’s generally dispensible or can be substituted for. (At least in PvE. I know nothing about PvP.) My primary characters were a Smuggler who hovered around neutral and an Imperial Agent who averaged Light 2, both due to roleplaying, and neither was especially hindered by it.

    (The Smuggler was by far a better person than the Agent, but he had this inexplicable habit of actually wanting to get paid for stuff and not being morally offended by, you know, smuggling. But the Empire grades on a serious curve.)

    1. Incunabulum says:

      Well, you know the law’s the law. And even though the Empire’s a corrupt, brutal, fascist state all good people know that smuggling life-saving medicines and technologies, in addition to recreational pharmaceuticals, is something only a person worse than Darth Vader would do.

      don’t do drugs, m’kay?

      Just another reason to get rid of morality scales.

      1. MrGuy says:

        Now I want to see a video game where you actually make video games.

        You have a limited amount of capital, and can invest in hiring good writers, competent programmers, good testers. You can decide how much to invest in playtesting and bug fixes. You can choose to develop new IP, license external IP, or write sequels to your existing IP. You can decide whether to add elements from different genres (RPG, RTS, Cover-based shooter mechanics, etc.) to widen the appeal, or focus on a core group. You can spend a ton of money promoting the game, or instead invest more of the money in fixing bugs from the playtesting. You can be Valve, releasing meticulously polished games infrequently that are beloved by a small group of core fans. Or you can be Activision, exploiting every drop of goodwill by churning out every possible game for every remotely profitable bit of IP, and who cares if the critics hate us? If you want to get really fancy, make this a multi-player game a la Civilization, where you compete against other studios, racing to be the one who creates Fallout. Or HL2. Or (god help you) WoW.

        I want this game to exist for one simple reason, and that’s so that there can be a morality system that punishes game studios for putting morality systems in their games.

        1. Aspeon says:

          Not sure if Game Dev Tycoon has a morality system, but it does that. If you pirated it, you’d lose all your business to piracy: http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/

          1. WJS says:

            Wow. “Game dev puts game up online for free; whines when people download it”. Hundreds of games companies have gone under over the years; has there ever been credible evidence that pirates have been a major cause? Not that we should expect mere facts to stop game companies from pushing their “pirates are killing gaming” spiel. I mean, we all know what home taping did to the music industry. Oops.

    2. Cognimancer says:

      Shamus doesn’t give SWTOR enough credit with its morality system. The light side/dark side gear stats are negligible, especially if you’re just playing for the story and not raiding (unlike how Mass Effect put huge, important decisions behind the morality-point wall). In fact, SWTOR goes out of its way to reward you for thinking through each decision instead of blindly chasing morality points. The neutral paths that don’t grant any points are often worth exploring.

      I can think of one memorable encounter where the Agent is up against a boss and his mercenary goons. Light side option is “we don’t have to do this”, dark side is “I’m going to kill you all” (I don’t know how either of those play out), but the neutral choice let you inform the goons of some dirt on the boss, causing them to abandon him and earning you a substantially easier boss fight.

  4. Content Consumer says:

    Thank you for posting these, and thanks for posting your Escapist stuff here too, it’s been a while since I’ve read those.
    It was things like this that really gave me the impetus to start writing this kind of thing myself (specifically, Rutskarn’s In A Hostile Country (morrowind) series and the Adventures of ElfMan the Man-Elf).
    Anyway, I’m looking forward to enjoying more, thank you again!

  5. Tuskin38 says:

    The game is a lot more enjoyable now (IMO) then it was at launch, or even a year or so ago. Though only if you’re subscribed.

  6. Ninety-Three says:

    The environment is just as much a part of the story as the spoken dialog.

    That is a much more concise statement of my critique of the Imperial Agent storyline than the one I left in some previous TOR discussion. The spoken dialog is all “You are a stealthy spy!” and the environment is full of dozens of MMO minions you have to loudly murder in the course of completing your stealthy spy mission. I just could not get over the disconnect of being told I was on a discrete assassination mission when my methods consisted of blazing a trail of grenaded carnage through the dozens of mooks between the mission entrance and my target.

    Speaking of environment problems, was it just me or did TOR have an especially bad case of the silly “Group of enemies A stands around staring directly at you while you murder their friends Group B, because you haven’t yet violated the personal space of Group A to aggro them” problem? Every MMO has that problem to some extent, but it felt like TOR had it especially bad, placing lots of separate groups into one room, with very little space between groups, and a very small aggro radius on those groups.

    1. Mike S. says:

      When I first started, with no MMO experience except a few weeks of City of Heroes, I was mystified how I was supposed to get through this huge, warehouse-sized room filled with enemies. I don’t know how long I tried to figure out a way around them before it became clear that I could fight them two or three at a time without the others being discomfited by the firefight going on twenty feet away from them.

      1. Humanoid says:

        When I first started WoW, I thought I would be clever and attack a boar from behind a fence with throwing knives, so that I could get a lot of damage on it while it pathed around the fence.

        Of course, the boar proceeded to just walk straight through the fence to get to me, and in that instant I learned how MMOs roll.

        I do intensely dislike that there’s almost no such thing as a single mob pull in SWTOR though, almost everything comes in packs of at least three. And while they’re trivial, they kind of force you to play in a dumb way, spamming AoE attacks and then finding you have no idea what skills to use when the genuinely tough enemies show up.

        I actually did have some success playing a stealthy Sith Inquisitor ….during the double XP event. Once the event ended and I tried to push on, I rapidly discovered what a random mook 5 levels higher than me could do to my face. Haven’t played that character since.

    2. Ninety-Three says:

      Late edit: Discreet*. I blame auto-correct. I’d joke that it was of course also a discrete mission, but frankly with TOR’s “Go into this area and resolve four missions at once by murdering things X Y and Z”, things actually tended to blur together.

      1. Matt K says:

        You may have been right the first time

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B83k1GK3rVo

    3. Thomas says:

      This is probably ultimately the reason why I’ll never fully love an MMO, unless it really breaks the mould.

      The Old Republic is the MMO which I’ve gone the furthest in (well apart from Runescape when I was 13, which I remember as being very unlike the standard WOW knock-off), but whilst I kind of enjoyed myself, I was always enjoying myself in spite of the game. I’d make characters and pretend that the base I’d ‘blown up’ wasn’t still blatantly standing there in the background.

      It comes back to, for me, playing an MMO involves sticking your fingers in yours ears and trying to run through as much of the game as possible, before all the boring contradictory MMO nonsense catches up with you.

      1. MelTorefas says:

        “It comes back to, for me, playing an MMO involves sticking your fingers in yours ears and trying to run through as much of the game as possible, before all the boring contradictory MMO nonsense catches up with you.”

        I completely agree with this. I actually really dislike story-based MMOs for this reason, and I really wish someone would make a more modern version of EverQuest where you just get to run around murdering things for loot and EXP. At the very least, if an MMO is going to insist on having a story, I wish they would make the player character someone who is literally one of many, not someone super important. And especially not “the chosen one” (I’m looking at you, ESO).

        1. MrGuy says:

          I feel like GuildWars 2 came really close to this (especially at launch). For those who haven’t played it, there were “events” that would happen in the world, like a bunch of trolls trying to overrun the wizard academy. If you were nearby, you could join in helping defend the wizard academy. You didn’t have to join a group or take a quest – you just showed up, and everyone who participated in beating back the attack got some XP and lootz. Eventually, if not enough people defend the wizard academy, the trolls take it over, and then there are missions like “take back the wizard academy!”

          It would be awesome to really build a game around this sort of mechanic, a game with no “story quests” but instead the story is something that happens around you, and you can choose to get caught up in it or not. You could “write” somewhat continuously – the evil creatures are seeking revenge on the King of Nonesuch, and so the early missions are around defending the king and his lands. Over a long period of time, they might capture the king. Or the king starts winning too much, and eventually becomes mad with power, and so a new band of rebels springs up to fight the king. Or a new evil race of The Beige Walkers spring up, and cause humans and trolls to put aside their differences to avoid being swept up.

          GW2 didn’t have the courage of their convictions on this being enough to carry an MMO. Rather than make this “the game,” it’s sort of a side distraction (albeit an awesome one), and there’s still a central (and IMO sort of nonsensical) plot about assembling the Lost Guild of Heroes Who Can Save Us All, because the player (EVERY “the player”) is the One True Hero Who Can Reunite Them.

          1. Lachlan the Mad says:

            But the player (every player) ISN’T the True Chosen One. They’re the True Chosen One’s sidekick, who is destined to do all of the True Chosen One’s shit for them.

            1. Mike S. says:

              That part sounds an awful lot like Oblivion.

              1. The Rocketeer says:

                Dammit, Krellen, you’re going to end up with Dutch Elm Disease!

              2. Peter H. Coffin says:

                Shows how much you play… *grin* Trahearne’s so 2014. You run around following a Silvari named Canach this year. Totally different.

              3. Mephane says:

                May he die a most gruesome death. Amen.

          2. Falterfire says:

            Guild Wars 2’s dynamic events were interesting to me for the first little while, but if you spent too long in an area – which is made pretty easy by the forced level scaling preventing you from ever feeling so powerful you have to move on – the artifice quickly becomes clear.

            The first time I wandered through an area and had to take back the outpost from the Centaurs, it was cool. The fifth time I defended the same outpost from the centaurs, only to see it taken back (again) a little while later, it went from being a novel concept to feeling like a more in-your-face version of the same old stuff.

            In some ways it was worse, since the game actively drew attention to the recurring event, whereas respawned enemies just silently re-appear.

            1. MrGuy says:

              Right. I don’t think GW2 nailed their implementation here – as you say, the events they included got repetitive. However, I think what they did accomplish here is a glimpse of what a new generation of MMORPG’s could in theory look like.

              If, instead of being “flavor,” the scripted events were the core of the game, they could be more varied in timing, scope, and approach. Rather than the same group of 50 trolls rolling out of the same cave every time, they could come from different angles. Sometimes they have siege weapons they’re setting up. Maybe damage to fortifications could be permanent (though repairable).

              And, most importantly, you could make the events goal-based rather than constantly repetitive. The trolls attack the wizard academy because it’s part of an overall troll assault on the province. If the trolls are turned back, that scripted event stops happening, and “the action” moves elsewhere, with different events. It would take a lot more work on behalf of the writers (and, I’d argue, it would involve CONTINUOUS writing, because they’d need to be adding new scripting when it becomes clear that the Trolls aren’t winning this one and need to move on…)

              If (as was posited earlier in this thread) players might want an MMORPG where the player is a cog in a machine, as opposed to each player individually (albeit privately) being the Mary Sue that the world revolves around, I think GW2’s group events are a plausible mechanic that would lie at the core of that game.

              1. WJS says:

                For a long time, I’ve thought about how cool it would be to have an MMO world that was kind of a giant version of the node-based maps a-la Battlefield. Imagine if the undead scourge, or the demon legions of doom, or the orcish horde could corrupt/conquer areas permanently, and players had to assist NPC soldiers in taking them back. Or defending them in the first place. Or pushing deep into enemy territory for the high-level players. Or just ignoring this macro mechanic and just fucking around doing their own thing. I’m pretty sure that if a decent amount of effort was made, the game could tell the players the story that was developing organically pretty much as well as they currently tell them the pre-scripted story. It’s not like that’s ever a particularly high bar. Imagine if you could tell other players about the time you fought in the defence of Ironfang Hold, or the time they joined in the purge of Bloodguts Fort and other players wouldn’t be thinking “Yes, we know, everyone does that at level 30″?

        2. Mephane says:

          At the very least, if an MMO is going to insist on having a story, I wish they would make the player character someone who is literally one of many, not someone super important. And especially not “the chosen one” (I'm looking at you, ESO).

          I have come to hate any form of chosen-one storyline, not just in MMOs. It’s just so utterly uninspiring and bland to me. And also, does it also have to be about saving the whole world (or galaxy, or even the entire universe) from certain doom?

  7. nm says:

    You know, I played quite a bit of SWTOR and never bothered to go through the republic side content. I think I made 1 smuggler and got to the main station with it. That game, like many games that purport to have good RP content, was really bland. However, the PvP game hidden inside it was awesome.

    The community on the server where I played was small enough that I got to know most of the PvPers and we’d organize game nights and keep high score lists on the forums. I had the best protection numbers on the server for a while before quitting.

    WoW battlegrounds (way back around WotLK) were fun, but I got no sense of community. I probably leveled 8 characters to the cap in SWTOR just through the warzones.

    Anyway, they changed things and my guildies all moved to different servers or switched games (all 3 of them). I wish someone would make an MMO-style 3rd-person-hotbar game without all the grindy MMO garbage.

    1. Ninety-Three says:

      I remember Guild Wars 1 doing something like that. There was a checkbox that let you create a PVP character, which is a character that’s not allowed to do any PVE content, but is automatically max level and gets awarded max level gear so they can jump right into PVP without grinding.

  8. As far as I can tell, the only way to play as a semi-sane, semi-rational person in SWTOR is to go Sith and play LIGHT side. It feels weird to have people alternately congratulating at you and yelling at you for NOT being a crazed psychopath, though.

    The really funny thing is that the same action (demanding money, usually) will get you Dark Side points if you’re Republic and Light Side points if you’re Sith. Apparently the Force is a moral relativist.

    1. guy says:

      Yeah, lightside Inquisitor is pretty decent. But then you don’t get to zap people for pissing you off in conversations.

      Okay, so you can do it a couple times and keep your halo. And it is pretty fun sometimes to run into someone asking what you’ll do to them if they don’t help you and responding with *electrical crackling*.

      Also when people give you backtalk you can threaten them while also getting the quest and they speak to you with more respect.

      1. Hector says:

        It’s slightly odd, because the “canon” Inquisitor is Dark Side incarnate. Yet it felt like going Light-side was almost intended. The Dark Side Inquisitor gets to shoot people with lightning, but the Light side is a cunning manipulator who turns madmen against one another and uniting sane people under one banner. It also felt more sensible for a former slave worker who had seen the Dark Side’s results.

        1. Wrong. Because (s)he’s been a slave he’s bound to be even more cruel. You make that conclusion from a mere logical point of view forgetting the emotional and irrational sides of behavior. In Spanish we have a saying that goes “no sirvas a quien sirvió” (don’t serve somebody who served”, because they tend to be the worst bosses. Someone who’s been in a position of servitude, when lifted to the other side, will often take the chance to compensate for all the times he had to submit to somebody’s command and will take every chance to assert his dominant position over his servants. He will be more demanding, more demeaning and more harsh in his treatment of his servants. Now it’s his turn to be a tyrant. Of course nothing is universal and not everyone reacts the same way, plus I don’t know whether there’s any study made about confirming or denying that, but I’m willing to bet a former slave is more likely to be the harshest tyrant than the kindest master.

      2. Mike S. says:

        “Mercy is the mark of a great man.”
        *crackle*
        “Guess I’m just a good man.”
        *fzap*
        “Well, I’m all right.”

      3. Metal C0Mmander says:

        Oh yeah light side sith inquisitor works very well since you play as a guy with very little oversight from the rest of the empire and the story even takes the time to explain where your dark side powers come from even if you’re light side. But playing a good guy sith warrior really feels like you’re waiting for the empire to turn on you so you gotta do some pretty fucked up shit to cover your ass.

    2. Mephane says:

      Light-side bounty hunter worked pretty well for me, but it made me always wonder why I am working for the Empire and not as a hired gun for the Republic, as that would have made much more sense. The good thing, on the other hand, is that you get to undermine lots of atrocities, especially those of the silly and useless, cruel-for-the-sake-of-it kind, and since you are just a hired gun, there is no need to feel any genuine loyalty to the Empire.

  9. Joshua says:

    “The good news is that I'm going to re-post my Let's Plays from Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft.”

    You really should go back with a new character into LOTRO and re-experience the Newbie area for humans. They completely revamped the plotline, almost like they had read your series and took every criticism to heart. For example, no longer fetching bilberries for Calder Cob, the traitor.

  10. Taellosse says:

    Wow. Yeah, curse you, Shamus-2012! I was really hoping for more than just the opening mission. I actually remember the Jedi Guardian missions from Tython – that was one of the classes I played most back when I first bought the game at release. Foolishly, I paid for 3 months of subscription when I did. So even though I found the game lackluster and disappointing after 2 weeks, I had 14 more weeks that I felt obliged to use, since I’d paid for them in advance.

    My main was a Consular, that I played to somewhere around the end of the first act of that story – can’t remember whether I actually finished it or not. My first alt was a bounty hunter, which was theoretically dedicated to playing with friends, but in reality I also played mostly alone because we were all seldom online at the same time. I think I got around as far with that one. Those two took me about 6 weeks before I was too sick of the gameplay to keep going, and largely quit for around a month. As the end of my pre-paid subscription started to approach, I decided I ought to give the game as much of a try as I could, in case one of the other classes really grabbed me, so I started a character of every class. Spent most of my time with the Imperial Agent and Jedi Guardian, completing the starting world with both of them (only did the first few missions of the other classes, though I think I got much of the way through Korriban on the Sith Inquisitor as well). I was actually interested in where some of the stories were going to go, but the gameplay was so stultifyingly dull that I couldn’t justify continuing to pay for it or investing the time necessary to see any of it, and let my subscription lapse anyway.

  11. Joe Informatico says:

    What’s holding these swords on our backs? Static electricity?

    THE FORCE, Shamus.
    /eyeroll

  12. Rosseloh says:

    Tolkien-weenie

    I always knew you were one of us. I’ll be happy to see LotRO again, considering I STILL PLAY THAT GAME HOLY SHIT….It’s been eight-and-a-half years!?

    Although more surprising is that I STILL PLAY SWTOR….. And I couldn’t tell you why. Despite all its failings, it scratches my MMO itch in a way that only one other game (LotRO) did.

    1. RTBones says:

      You are not the only one. I still play LoTRO as well, though not like I once did.

      On another note, I’m sad this is all there is of this Lets Play. Now we’ll never know if you got your lightsabre or not. I’ve enjoyed the series like this you have done in the past, Shamus – its a different way to pick apart the game(s) and a refreshing read; the internet is full of *this* sucks or *that* sucks which is often dry, banal, and boring. Your LPs arent. Besides, the silliness and absurdity that inevitably creeps in is always good for a laugh.

      Now, can I have my lightsabre?

      1. Metal C0Mmander says:

        I fail to see how he’s not telling exactly what sucks when he goes on about how the quest about saving students doesn’t make any sense?

    2. swenson says:

      Shamus is the guy who wrote an entire webcomic about LotR as a DnD game, so I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that he’s a Tolkien fan. :)

  13. Warclam says:

    “repost them here… with mouseover text”
    *Searches for comments mentioning, in an offhand sort of manner, that they personally do not feel that that would be a worthwhile use of your time, at least from their own personal viewpoint.*
    *Results: none.*

    I feel so alone… I guess everybody else likes mouseover text? I guess my self-centeredness is showing, it never even occurred to me that it was physically possible to like it. Ah well.

    Yeah, it’s a shame it cuts off so abruptly. Ah well, if we need more Shamus-brand snark at nonsense, we can always re-watch spoiler warning and re-read the Fallout 3 series while waiting for the triumphant return of Dethbringerr.

  14. Daemian Lucifer says:

    This brings up an interesting question about mmos(especially futuristic ones):Why have hubs?Why not have a mobiel phone/hammerspace of sorts that allows you to get quests AND loot in the field?

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