Hello, Old Friends

One nice thing about this short break from WoW is that I got a chance to play my favorite class in SWTOR for a bit: The Smuggler.

Oh, I've played SWTOR off and on the past several years, but for some reason I've ended up creating force users instead of a Bounty Hunter or a Smuggler.* My first toon was a Smuggler, and here I am playing a Smuggler once again.

Ah, Coruscant. Don't ever change.
Same goes for the Migrant Merchants Guild.

If you stick with the type of Smuggler I tend to play --the Gunslinger-- it's a pretty standard build. And in keeping with modern MMOs, new abilities simply appear on my bar without me having to go train somewhere. It's a bit disconcerting, but it is what it is.

Having returned to the Republic side for the first time in a while, I can see the bugs and roughness out there that haven't really been cleaned up over the years --or in the case of the companion pathing, bugs added over the years-- but the visuals and the sound are still fantastic. The sound alone makes you feel like you're outside in a city where the skyscrapers create canyons, and there's just that urban sound that you hear when you're walking around a downtown area. The sound at Ord Mantell is also excellent, and really immerses you in the game. 

And those cutscenes. Can't forget the cutscenes.
This one starring Senator Kayl.

The more I've gone into leveling this Smuggler, the more I realize that there's issues where a new player would get confused, such as getting a Training and Skills quest only to find yourself on the Republic Fleet long before you're supposed to arrive there. At least I knew how to get back to Ord Mantell, but if I'd been a new player, I'd have been screwed. 

Oh, and as you can tell from my top screencap above, I turned off that new map overlay and went with the traditional minimap, just like how I turned Corso into the Tank he always was meant to be. 

It was kind of like seeing old friends again, such as talking to Pat-a-K once more:

And Senator Whats-her-name.
Yes, I'm ready to be your Black Bisector, Pat-a-K.

Even when I return to WoW Classic, I have to keep this player going. Not sure how, but I've developed a better tolerance for the pathing issue this time around, but we'll see how long I tolerate it. If I get to Balmorra, that'll be farther than I've gotten in a long time.

*Creating that one Smuggler for the screencaps of the intro quest a year or two ago for a post here doesn't count. I went back and played a Jedi Sentinel instead and got as far as Taris for I grew tired of the pathing issues.