Thursday, November 19, 2015

Heads, I play SWTOR, and tails... Hmm... Maybe best two of three...

I've found myself strangely reluctant to make that leap and take a character into the new SWTOR expac.

Whenever I get on the servers, I putter around with checking out the companion stories I never completed, goof off in the fleet, and buzz around Taris and Hoth.

I can't really explain it, since there's no good reason why I couldn't take my Inquisitor into Knights of the Fallen Empire; she'd completed all of the questlines up through Shadow of Revan, and I wasn't doing much of anything with her.*

The auto-leveling that goes on now in the low level zones means that while I can go there, I can't just zoom on by like before. And yes, I do approve of the auto-leveling for low level zones, but I will have to pay more attention when clowning around in Tatooine, for example.

It could be my concern that keeps me from reading novels these days: I won't know when to quit. I have that problem when reading a good book; I'll be reading in the evening, and I'll finally start to get tired, look around and.... It's 4:30 AM.

Whoops.

I could see myself doing that with Knights (and Dragon Age, if I'm being honest). After all, I did it with regular class stories in SWTOR, the WoW leveling experiece, and in other games (such as Age of Conan or Star Trek Online). Hell, I've done it with Civ IV, and that doesn't exactly have an externally defined story at all.

My problem is that I'm no longer a spring chicken, and being up most of the night, consumed in a book or game, will take a much harder toll on me now.

***

While I dither about SWTOR, I've continued to play Wildstar.

I've finally grown to a kind of mental truce about the post-apocalyptic cartoon sexy style that is the toon character design. Part of that is because the questlines and the overarching story don't make a mention of the semi-skimpy nature of the toon and clothing designs, and part of it is because I've actually grown fond of the absolutely goofy design. Right now, my Stalker's headgear makes him look like The Tick's weird younger brother, and so I have this running commentary in my head when he's jumping around:  "SPOOOOOON!!!!!"

As far as the World Story goes, hmm..... I'm up past the third World Story part, and I will freely admit that I wasn't expecting Wildstar's world story to move in the direction it did. It now seems more conventional than at first glance**, but right now it wouldn't shock me if the story took another sharp turn towards the unknown. I do like what I see so far, and I'm still hooked, but I'm still on the fence as far as the story goes.***

***

And to nobody's surprise, I've not progressed much at all in NaNoWriMo, and the youngest Mini-Red has already far outstripped my word output.

One of these years I'm going to get into a situation where I can take a couple of days off in early/mid November and spend it just writing.

Okay, who am I kidding? That's not gonna happen.






*I don't even do anything with housing with her, because a) I haven't bothered getting a place on Dromund Kaas and b) I tend to be a lousy decorator. I know beauty when I see it, but actually creating a beautiful environment? Well, I don't have that touch.

**If you play WoW, think of some of the things associated with Twilight's Hammer and a lot of the Old Gods type of stuff and you've got the idea.

***See? I could talk about something like this without spoilers!

4 comments:

  1. I'm afraid it's definitely true that the new storyline can really suck you in; I stayed up later than I should have every evening for several days. My favourite comment on it was someone on the forums who admitted that they had pulled an all-nighter, playing something like 14 hours straight because they were so immersed... and then they proceeded to complain that there wasn't enough content. :P

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    1. The person who complained that there wasn't enough content ought to take a good look in the mirror and ask whether playing SWTOR (or any game) 14 hours straight is a smart thing. And really, considering that the game is free to subscribers (as opposed to WoW's expacs, which you have to pay for on top of the price of the sub), he's getting the new content without having to do anything extra.

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  2. It was the cartoonish nature of the characters in Wildstar that put me off ever trying the game.

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    1. I figured that if I could stomach WoW's caroon-esque toons, I could stomach this.

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