Fifteen Years In

It’s that time again-when I take a look back, and think “Holy spit, I’ve been doing this for FIFTEEN YEARS!?”

Yeah, that’s something, isn’t it?

Anyway, I like to reflect a little on the last year’s worth of posts, a few comments and/or insights I may have, and take a very tentative peek at the future.  However, I have to admit, those peeks are often obsolete in no time at all-for example, I didn’t see the events of this year coming at all, for both good and ill.

Phoenix or Zombie? The jury is still out….

The big shock for the year, as far as I was concerned, was the apparent rebirth of City of Heroes.  Of course, there’s a major caveat attached:  it’s not NCSoft, but rather, rogue servers in the same vein as the emulators that tend to hang around for certain other games-except this wasn’t reverse engineered, but was the actual game code.  Through circumstances I’m not going to get into, it was kept secret until this year, when someone spilled the beans, and the code was released into the wild.  And I found myself unable to resist returning to Paragon City and its counterpart in the Rogue Islands (and Nova Praetoria, of course).  I chose not to recreate old characters, but blaze trails with brand new ones, with new ideas.  And to their credit, the developers in charge of the Homecoming rogue servers have done a good job on implementing the old holiday events, adding a couple of new missions arcs in, and even a few patterns for costumes.

All that said:  it IS still a rogue server, and NCSoft has been making trademark moves lately.  Maybe it’s to prep for crushing the rogue servers; maybe it’s to prep for legitimizing one or all of them.  When all is said and done, the future of CoH is still in doubt.  While I think it’ll be impossible to stamp out the game at this point, the established servers can be driven back underground.  It’ll be an eternal game of whack-a-mole, which will be a pain for both the players and devs, and NCSoft.  Logic tells me that it’d be easier for them to license the game out, but logic’s failed me in regards to NCSoft before.  This coming year could make or break the rogue servers.

On the personal front, I made the slightly crazy decision to level up no less than six characters more or less simultaneously.  While I failed to tie them all together with a thematic storyline, I did manage to get them all to level 50 within about a week of each other (which is to say, the first and last to reach 50 was within that weekly period).  Learning from that, I went back to my Champions Online strategy:  one character at a time, please!

The Final Frontier got smaller.

Star Trek Online had the potential to be the major game to step into the void left by the next game on this list, but got hammered by the fact that CoH came back.  The game didn’t do itself any favors by continuing to focus laser-like on Star Trek: Discovery related stuff, which doesn’t resonate for me at all, and inflicted a major blow by removing the player generated content and the tool used to make it, the Foundry.  With such a linear progression left-one that’d I’ve done heaps of times before-I’ve found it difficult to bring myself to do new character chronicles, choosing only to start wrapping up chronicles in progress.  My Cardassian character got to his stopping point just as the Foundry went away, and I had my Discovery representative continue the new missions that were released this year (there weren’t many) since they were Discovery related.

Going forward, that character will still do missions related to the Discovery-era, although I’ll bet real money we start getting stuff related to the upcoming Picard TV series.  Which, of course, I won’t have any investment in because it’s being aired the same way Discovery was.  Call me cynical.  On the other hand, I am feeling a hankering to do a new character chronicle-I haven’t really done a Romulan-centric one, and I haven’t done those missions to death yet.  So, it’s possible that will be on my list.  Or maybe not.  Read on.

The saga ends-for me, anyway.

Star Wars: The Old Republic found itself a victim of Bioware/EA’s support folks.  Suffice it to say, I had an issue with my account early this year, and after leaving me hanging for about a month, told me “oh, we’re not fixing anything because nothing is wrong”.  Something was still very wrong, it wasn’t made right, so I chose not to favor them with my money anymore.  Too bad; looked like some decent stuff came rolling around, and it would’ve been nice to get the rest of the companions lost in the previous expansions, but I’ve better things to do with my time than supporting a game that didn’t support me back.

This was ALMOST a year for Champions….

Champions Online was almost in the mix.  I had a new character chronicle lined up and ready to go.  It just had the misfortune of being murdered by the return of CoH.  I’ve made no bones about the fact that I view CoH as a better game (that’s my opinion, remember-others view it the other way, and that’s okay), and with it back, well.  CO is back to collecting dust.  I will admit, though, that I will probably come back to it at some point-I hate leaving things completely undone.  If NCSoft kills the Homecoming servers, it wouldn’t be hard to guess that I’d be looking for my superheroic fix somewhere.

Other games:  I took a short return to Azeroth thanks to World of Warcraft throwing me a bone with a free weekend reactivation.  I also did a few log-ins to EVE Online.  I probably did about as much in one of those games as the other-and it wasn’t much.  CoH really did draw me back in.

So, what’s in store for 2020?  After fifteen years, what’s next?  Well, the race to be the spiritual successor to City of Heroes is still ongoing, no matter how the whole thing with the rogue servers turn out.  The devs at STO keep hinting at big stuff incoming, although usually that means they’re getting ready to remove something else from the game.  You can expect the continuation of the current character chronicle in CoH, with another pair in planning stages (meaning, I know what I want to do with them in a big-picture sense).  There may be a chronicle for that aforementioned Romulan character in STO.

And I will offer some thoughts on something I’ve never played before.  How’s that for a teaser?

Here’s to a rollicking 2020!

Fine. One hint.

Fourteen Years In

2018 was a rough year for me, which impacted my playing time in the MMO-sphere.  Still, I was hardly inactive, and it’s time to take a look back on 2018 to see what has come before-and try to guess where I’ll go with the incoming year.

It was a helluva year for the Final Frontier

This last year, Star Trek Online was the major monopolizer of my time.  The first part of the year featured the conclusion of Dathiro’s Ordeal, which pushed him to level 60, thanks to the strength of the Foundry, the Duty Officer system, and the Admiralty system.  By mid-year, we had a new expansion-“Victory is Life” which featured the Jem’Hadar and the Gamma Quadrant, which compelled me to create Jalot’iklar, one of the Jem’Hadar Vanguard.  That was sadly abbreviated due to the fact that the Jem’Hadar started at such a high level, and had a relatively small number of storylines to go through-which, naturally, related to wrapping up the story that had begun with the discovery of the Lukari species and the Tzenkethi protomatter attacks.  Then things got crazy as STO started pushing Star Trek: Discovery content, with a new sub-faction starting in that era, which got brought up to the “present” day much like the “Agents of Yesterday” characters-except they only had two missions before getting kicked to the future.  Despite this, I still kicked off a chronicle related to that content-using an alien character named Jhudsui, who will be dedicated to the Discovery related content.  He hasn’t gotten far with his levels, because of that; I’m sort of counting on the episodes being open to all levels at first, much like most of the new content is when it’s first released.  Finally, I created a Cardassian Starfleet character to take a look at the Foundry from a Federation point of view, with Captain Selak.

In that time, we’ve had a lot of stuff happen in STO that occur independent of my own play.  One of the more significant shifts was the removal of the monthly subscription model, which made things interesting as far as the prospect of vet rewards and the like.  How many people actually cared about that is an open question, as I suspected that most people were sticking with the free model-after all, you got to do pretty much everything for free in STO.  As a lifetime subscriber, this didn’t really impact me at all, as lifetimer benefits still exist.  The “Victory is Life” expansion brought us the Gamma Quadrant, Cardassian ships and species, Jem’Hadar ships and species, and a new level cap (fortunately, this did not include the creation of Tier-7 ships; I’m not ruling that out in the future, though.  The devs have set the precedent).  The “Age of Discovery” publish introduced the newest Star Trek series to the game, and it seems that this will be driving a good chunk of the content coming in 2019.

My personal expectations for 2019 are pretty straightforward.  First, push Selak to level 60-ish; that seems to be a good stopping point for the character-although I don’t rule out further based upon my next big plan.  Before that, though, I’d like to get my main Romulan character caught up to my Starfleet and Klingon mains.  Later on in the year, I hope to do my “Cast List Revival Party”, where I return to a number of my older characters to give them a push through to those 60+ levels.  I’ve got a pretty decent idea of how to tie that all together, too, but we’ll see what happens.  Of course, I plan to continue putting my main characters through new story arcs, and continue Jhudsui’s Journey as the “Age of Discovery” content continues to trickle out (which includes the upcoming pair of episodes being released later this month).  Finally, if I can fit it in, I’d sort of like to do a Romulan character chronicle.  Big plans?  Maybe.  We’ll see.

The war between Empire and Republic begins anew

Star Wars: The Old Republic didn’t get a lot of time from me this year.  A part of this can be attributed to the relatively light amount of new content released that I would actually play.  This isn’t to say there was nothing in SWTOR; but a good chunk of it involved PvP or raiding, both activities that I don’t really do in SWTOR.  We did, however, get a bit more story in the game; the Nathema Conspiracy flashpoint concluded the Alliance Traitor storyline, which also represented an end point to the Zakuul era of the game; and we got the Jedi Under Siege story, which brought back the war of the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic, as well as the return of a number of familiar faces-including one long thought dead.  (I’d be more specific, but I’m still keeping it under my hat, even though the SWTOR website itself spoils it; I mean, sheesh…!)

My time in the game-aside from putting my two primary characters through the new content-was spent concluding the Epic of Anthrandos and Sorshan’s Story, which basically meant “run them through the Knights of the Eternal Throne storyline”.  As one might imagine, this didn’t take all that long.  I’m somewhat hopeful that 2019 will have more to come with the renewed conflict, but my plans in this game aside from that involve catching up my other six “main” characters to the current storyline.  Most of them haven’t even completed the Iokath story that kicks off the Alliance Traitor arc, and I’d sort of like to get them on the same-ish page.

One of the losers of 2018

2017 was a big year for my activity in Champions Online.  Thanks to STO and TOR, though, I more or less spent virtually no time in CO in 2018.  And given what I’ve written above, it sounds like there’s an excellent chance that CO will end up in the same boat for 2019.  All that said, I do sort of want to run a character chronicle there again; I just need the right concept to motivate myself to see it through, and some way of arranging so it doesn’t feel like a complete repeat of what I did with Willforge in 2017.  Maybe I’ll be inspired by the superhero movies of 2019 to get back into things here.  We’ll see.

Speaking of 2018’s losers

Of the games I still have installed on my system, EVE Online is the one that got the least time from me.  In fact, aside from logging in regularly and logging right back out for the end of the year for some freebie stuff, I didn’t really spend any time at all in the game.  I’ve a feeling that, as far as I’m concerned, this game may well be on the way out of my hard drive space.  It’d be a shame, but it’s hard enough juggling three games.  But I can also envision a time where I just don’t feel like the other games, and want to do something very different-and EVE is as different as they come from those games.

Some of the plans I’d set for myself for 2018 didn’t come to fruition at all; I had hoped to revive the “Images of the Ranger” site, and had kicked around returning to some serialized fiction on the games I play on another sub-site, but Real Life happened, and derailed all of that hard.  2019 might be The Year for it, but who knows?  We’ve wrapped up Year Fourteen of my MMORPG “career”, and almost as long writing in this blog.  You could say that this blog is now entering its High School years!  If we look at it in that way, then we can expect an interesting Freshman Year for the Faces of the Ranger blog!  Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride thus far, and stick around for what’s still to come.

Under Siege: Sounds Like an Action Movie Title

Who IS that guy….?

Well, it’s finally here:  the advancement of the storyline for Star Wars: The Old Republic, “Jedi Under Siege”.  With it comes returning characters, both companions and otherwise.  And…it ain’t bad.

We have a return to form with the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic picking up where they left off before Zakuul came along to kick over the table.  With the Eternal Alliance being substantially less than it was, thanks to the events of the previous storyline, the Alliance Commander is faced with a choice…which, honestly, I feel like they’ve done twice prior to this one already.  I mean, sure, the mess on Iokath was more along the lines of temporary arrangements, but it sort of sets the tone.  Then at the end of the previous storyline.  And now at the beginning of this one.  Sheesh, does everyone think the Alliance Commander is so loony as to change his/her mind every time?

Don’t answer that.  There probably are players who play ’em like that.

In any event, unlike the stories that have been pretty same-old, same-old for both factions since roughly Ziost, we get two distinctly different ones for Empire and Republic.  Unlike the days of Makeb, though, the two aren’t exactly complementary:  after all, it’s possible that certain leaders are already dead.  (Hm, I wonder:  if I went and killed off Acina prior to this arc, and then joined the Empire in this arc, how do they work that in?  Surely the devs have considered this.)  The end of the storyline is also what you’d call contradictory between Republic and Empire; they can’t both have happened.  While I do applaud the effort in separating out the storylines again, I do think that the devs are crafting an unsustainable chain of “what-ifs” here.  At some point, the Republic side of things and the Imperial side of things have to agree on who is in charge at the same time.  Ironically, it’s possible that the beginnings of this might be at hand, based upon some very spoilerish revelations that even I won’t hint at here.  It’s that big a deal.  (I will say, though, that no, it’s NOT the return of Vitiate/Valkorion.  Come on, I know he’s been what TV Tropes calls a Karma Houdini, but he is NOT coming back.  I’m 99 percent sure he’s not coming back….)

Both stories take place on Ossus, and the fact that some Jedi have taken shelter here from the whole chaos of the last few years.  Including, incidentally, one well known to the Jedi Consular.  (There are a couple other companion returns, too.)  The Empire, however, sees a chance to finish the Jedi as a cohesive force, and decides to destroy them-and also loot a library the Jedi have maintained here as well.  The Empire is hobbled a bit by the fact that the Sith Lord in charge is a loony (well, they can’t all be Darth Marr), although that state of affairs gets kicked around by the arrival of that heavily spoilerish thing I mentioned earlier.

I’ve run through the story with my Agent and Smuggler, but I also decided to start up on my other class representatives, so to speak.  I specifically chose to run my Consular to go first, because I continue to have him picking the Dark Side choices (in a futile attempt to get him to the Dark Side alignment; he’s been doing that ever since the whole Zakuul thing began), and it gave me an opportunity to see what would happen if I had a Republic character choose to join the Empire.  I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked by how it was handled-it basically means he gets a few optional missions for the Empire while doing the Republic storyline; there are some cut scenes that help remind people of that; you get some text similar to affection gains that indicate that you’ve undermined the enemy; but it also means no, the new faction will not embrace you with open arms, you can’t go to their fleet, and in every other way that matters you’re still at your original faction.  (I will also concede that the Consular got chosen so I could resolve things with that returning companion-he kind of threw her over for a Sith lady recent-like.)

All that said, the characters I’ve run through the content still sound like who they are; the Consular is acting like the Jedi he was (puts on a good act, even though he does some jerky things with the choices I made), the Agent is still a face that looks familiar but nobody can really place, and the Smuggler’s still a smartass.  They may not be class stories, but at least the personalities of the classes still shine through.  Next on the plans is to catch up my Sith Warrior.  (That said, the holidays are coming, so things will likely go dark here until the new year-and Star Trek Online has the Foundry back up, at the moment, anyway, so there’s likely to be split time here.)

Winding Down 2018

Traditionally-although never planned to be that way-I seem to do a slowdown at the end of the year.  This year’s probably no exception.  Still, there’s at least a couple things that will likely make an impact on the blog posts as we warp up 2018.

First, we’ve got a new Star Wars: The Old Republic publish coming soon, which will actually have content I’m interested in playing.  I still remember when Bioware kept hyping the “fourth pillar of story” for the game, and that was one of the big draws for me.  (The other being, duh, Star Wars.)  It’s been a long drought since I’ve been online there for any real length of time, and I’m hoping to have a return to the game in the reasonably near future.

Second, which is sort of over to the side, is an upcoming delivery of a new computer system, which is sort of long delayed.  I’ve had my current system for more than half the lifetime of this blog, which in computer-years is Methuselah-like in scope.  It’s hard drive is begging for mercy, and the graphic card struggles at times, particularly when newer graphical stuff get thrown in; I haven’t ever actually seen the “Lighting 2.0” in Star Trek Online because my system can’t handle that.  The new system, on the other hand, if all goes according to plan, should be able to handle maximum graphics settings on the games I’ve got and maintain a high frame rate.  We’ll see.  Some of my screenshots will hopefully look a lot better when that time rolls around.

I was this close to getting ready to pick up the character of Selak back in STO again; the Foundry came back online, but I’m not sure the kinks have been worked out.  I chose a Foundry Spotlight mission, which indicates that this is a mission that should be working just fine, and it wouldn’t let me advance past the first map.  So, his chronicle stalls a bit longer.

The winter festivities have begun in STO, and although there aren’t new activities, there is a new ship for those interested in putting the time into doing races every day, and a few new other wintry related things.  No winter festivities have started in Champions Online yet (to my knowledge, anyway), but SWTOR is set to kick off its Life Day festivities on the 11th (amusingly, the same day the Republic/Empire war re-ignites.  Happy Life Day!).  I imagine the other assorted MMORPGs have also either started or are getting ready to start their winter events.  I usually don’t go all-in for these events, but I do enjoy doing some of the stuff.  Whether it’s throwing snowballs at Sith at Vaiken Spacedock or engaging in combat with caramel-throwers against snowmen (or most recently, taking my Jem’Hadar, arming him with a candy swordfish, and hacking away at Krampus), it’s a nice break from the usual storylines of the games I play.  After all, games are meant to be fun-and if you don’t take them too seriously, this season is big on fun.

(Except Ewoks on Valentine’s Day.  That was just wrong on so many levels.  Long story.)

Wait, This Isn’t a Star Trek Online Post!!!

You could be forgiven if you thought, over the last few months, that I only played Star Trek Online.  And to a certain extent, this is true:  STO has dominated the blog a bit lately, with the “Victory is Life” expansion rolling out, followed not long after with the “Age of Discovery” patch and the dev plans to advance the storyline based on the Star Trek: Discovery show.  So it’s kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the room for a while now-especially since I have a pair of character chronicles on standby in that game who can’t really advance until said Discovery-related episodes get released or the Foundry gets restored again, or the devs finally get off their hindquarters and fix the so-called “streamlining” of their mission journal so my Cardassian can do the Lost Dominion arc at a time when it actually makes sense.  (I’ve ranted on that subject enough.  Moving on.)

It also hasn’t helped that the other pair of games I mess with regularly, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Champions Online, haven’t exactly put out the kind of stuff I mess with lately.  CO is CO, with the iffiness of its content releases, and SWTOR has been focusing on its raid stuff a lot lately.  And even though I’m an avowed altoholic, there comes times when I’ve burned through the same storylines enough times that I just need a break-one of the reasons why STO and its Foundry have been invaluable in giving me an excuse to indulge the altitis.  The Foundry gives me stories I haven’t played through ad infinitum.  I can’t say that about SWTOR, where I’ve done most of the class stories no less than three times each, and the subsequent “shared” content at least twenty times.  And I can’t say that for CO, whose leveling path for most characters is nearly identical, with minor variations with Canada and the Desert.  So I find it’s easier to wait until the new arrives for those games, or when I feel a craving to get my lightsaber or cape on.

Fortunately, at least for SWTOR, newer content is coming in December-on the 11th, to be precise, barring surprises.  The Republic/Empire war is getting ready to reignite, and an old Jedi stronghold on the planet Ossus is the flashpoint (which may or may not actually include Flashpoints; I haven’t been keeping up).  Ossus is from the long-ago days of what is now known as the Star Wars Legends era as an important site for the Jedi, which means we’re likely looking at more Jedi-centric content.  Well, I guess I can’t complain horribly much.  The last major storyline was intrigue and treachery and didn’t focus so much on the Force except in a roundabout way-it didn’t forcefeed that kind of thing at you like the previous big storylines.  And I get that the Force is going to be centric in any Empire/Republic storyline, because the Empire is the Sith Empire, which means the Dark Side of the Force, which means it’s opposed by the Jedi Order, but still.

It’s just my perception.  I feel like we just got out of major Force-related stories, even though it’s been a couple of years now since we wrapped up Valkorion and his family issues (man, has it really been that long?), and we’ve got another one likely on deck.  I will admit that I haven’t done much reading up on what’s upcoming with the plot-I like surprises-but the fact that it’s Ossus screams Jedi vs Sith stuff, and that’s just the way it is.  I guess it’s a hazard of the “all classes are one” story prospects now, although it sounds like we’ll be separated into Republic and Imperial sides once more (and intriguingly, not necessarily the sides your class may have started out with).  But there are times I really miss the class stories, where bounty hunters could be bounty hunters, troopers could be troopers, agents could be agents, and smugglers could be wiseasses.

But it’s coming, and I expect to play through the content upon its release.  There are companions who will be making their returns (most of which, I believe, only for the classes they worked with in the past); significantly, one of them is an individual who could’ve been a Dark Sider or Light Sider depending on choices made, which was a big question mark for a while.  One more note of interest:  upon starting the new content, at least one Alliance Alert for a companion may be automatically completed (which may or may not matter, depending if you got him as a companion during the previous storylines).  It probably means it’ll happen regardless if you actually started that Alert-I’m guessing it’s considered “started” if it shows up in your list of Alerts.  We’ll see.

It’s been a quiet time in a galaxy far, far away, but it might be time to revisit it very soon!

SS: End of an Era

 

“At the last, victory is mine.  Vaylin is dead.  Vakorion is dead.  And now, I rule the Eternal Empire.

Yet, I cannot help but feel a stirring of pity for Vaylin.  My time on Nathema gave me insight on how Vaylin came to be so twisted.  Would I have held up against years of experimentation by Jarak?  Now, there’s someone I didn’t mind seeing die.  I’ve seen Inquisitors torment victims far beyond what I would consider rational, but when I think about what he did to Vaylin…well, it’s probably for the best that I didn’t have the opportunity.

Valkorion, however, acted exactly as I expected he would.  My only regret was that I had underestimated his full strength.  But in the end, his own arrogance was his downfall-virtually his entire family came to contribute to his downfall.  Just like that, my war is over.

And I have won the throne.  I am now Empress.

Not an ‘Eternal’ Empress.  I don’t have that level of conceit.  But Zakuul is mine now, and the Eternal Fleet is mine.  The Gravestone is mine-although Koth still debates me on that score.  Arcann, the former Emperor, has pledged his allegiance, as has Senya; I believe the two will make excellent commanders for the Knights going forward.

Now, I have a place where I can stand as I prepare to change the galaxy.  The Republic is in shambles, and the Sith Empire is reeling from the Fleet’s attack.  My Empire is stronger than both combined, and this puts me in a position where I can change the destiny of both.  This is the moment my life has been leading to-from my days as a slave to my ascension to the Eternal Throne.

I am ready.  With my allies at my side, I will bring about a new age.  And so I close the book on this story, realizing that the next one awaits.

May the Force ever serve you.”

-from Sorshan’s Story

And done!

With the completion of the last episode of the Knights of the Eternal Throne story in Star Wars: The Old Republic, I also complete Sorshan’s Story-and also complete the journey of the two characters I’d created for the Light vs Dark event a couple years ago.  It took me a while to get here-mostly because of the other characters I had to get through the KotET storyline-but I’ve finally gotten it wrapped up.  Like Anthrandos before her, she’ll be sitting on the big chair and ending there.  I did do one little bit of extra work:  getting Andronikos and Ashara back in the fold via the Alerts.  But beyond that, I feel I’ve gone as far as I need to with this character.

Players who have gone through the post KotET content, of course, know that Sorshan’s grand plan is doomed to failure.  But hey, let’s have the relatively happy ending here.  Speaking of which, I took her only second Dark Side choice:  to rule the Eternal Empire instead of doing the whole “I’m no Empress” thing.  I always felt that her story arc was to try to change things by being the woman in charge, and dammit, if that’s a Dark Side choice, then she’ll do it!  (And given all the Light Side choices she’s made in her career, it took exactly the two companion missions to erase the Dark Side points entirely.)

I expect I’ll do another full chronicle soon, but I’ll need to decide what game to mess with.  As I tend to fiddle with this one, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online, I’ve got no shortage of options.  I’ve got some vague ideas for all three games, so odds are that I’ll pick one out of a hat and let Fate decide.  It helps, of course, that there’s not much in the way of new content that I’ll do in any of the three (having completed the “Victory is Life” stuff in STO, and CO being CO, and SWTOR focusing in the PvP arena for now).  In the meantime, the next post or two might contain new entries to the Cast List; it’s been a while since I’ve put up entries for other characters.

SS: Halfway from Iokath

 

“The discovery of Iokath and the conflict with ARIES has at least resolved our issue with SCORPIO and its betrayal.  I suppose, in the end, I could empathize with its desire to grow into something more than a slave.  It is the story of my own life.  Now, I can reflect on recent events.

The summit with Empress Acina of the Sith Empire proved fruitful.  My return to Dromund Kaas was tinged with regret.  I had been made a part of the Dark Council, after all, and I believed that there was a chance that I could sit upon the Empire’s throne one day.  That goal is gone now-and events push me to a greater one.  I searched within myself for any signs of resentment towards Acina, and found nothing.  I am at peace with where I am now.

Is this how the Jedi feel all the time?

A greater regret is the loss of Iokath.  The radiation makes it impossible to explore it-and its store of advanced weapons-for the foreseeable future.  I need a counter for the Eternal Fleet beyond just the Gravestone.  They can be many places at once!  The Gravestone can only be in one-and it remains vulnerable, as Vaylin’s gambit showed.  I must accept the truth:  I will have no other assistance against Vaylin.

Senya remains comatose.  I’m still wondering why I let her live.  I’m still wondering why I let Arcann live.  Perhaps because I can use them against Vaylin?  But can I?  Will they?  Should I even locate Arcann again, who is to say that he will be willing to attack his sister?  More, who is to say that he won’t attempt to reclaim the Eternal Throne?  Is it because I can’t believe the only way forward is a path filled with corpses?  A trail of blood that follows me wherever I go?  No.  The Sith Code does not speak of slaughter.  It doesn’t speak of mercy, either, but since being merciless has proven to serve the Sith Empire poorly, what is the harm in trying another way?  I’ve been betrayed before, but I’ve also been surprised.

Valkorion continues to haunt me.  I’ve tried to find a way to bind him to my will, as I did with the ghosts of Sith past against Thanaton, but I’ve failed.  He is…too strong.  Or I am too weak.  I cannot control him, so he continues to be a problem.  He clearly wants me on the throne, but I would be naive to think that is the end of his ambitions.  The Sith ghosts tried to make me dance on their strings before I remade myself, body and mind.  Valkorion is worse than all of them-can I expect any less from him?  No.

I am Sith.  And despite his babble about the Force being “more than Dark or Light”, so is Valkorion.  And that means I live only until he gets what he wants from me-and then he will turn on me.

Unless I turn on him first.”

-from Sorshan’s Story

I’m at the halfway point of the “Knights of the Eternal Throne” story in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Sorshan’s advancing nicely.

It took me quite a bit of effort to get used to using her abilities again.  It’s been long enough that I’ve lost any muscle memory as to which of her abilities work together.  I tend to be fairly consistent with how I set up my action bars in a general way, but that only gets you so far.  On the other hand, I haven’t been killed off at any point, so I must be adapting pretty quickly.  Or maybe it’s because I try to be smart with giving companion gifts so that they can bail me out of bad situations.  (It could well be both!)

There really isn’t much to add as I go along here.  I’ve commented on this story before, and the stuff I’ve said in the past probably still applies.  I do admit to being a little disappointed with the interactions between Acina and Sorshan; we’ve got a pair of very ambitious ladies here, both of whom have managed to rise beyond their status as Sith to become effective rulers.  Plus, I like that Acina’s not insane, like so many other Sith.  She’s more moderate than Darth Marr was; but she’s not exactly a nice lady either (poor Lorman.  “That’s MINISTER Lorman!  MINISTER!!“).  Of course, she is still Sith, which gets demonstrated amply in the post-KOTET story, but that’s beyond the scope of this particular story.

Still doing the Light Side as primary choices.  Let Senya live and blow it with Arcann, didn’t kill Lorman, and didn’t kill off Suresh.  Sorshan’s still trying to make her choices with careful thought instead of instinct.  (I did take Sorshan’s first Dark Side choice here, though.  There was no way I wasn’t going to try to break Suresh’s jaw for that stunt on Odessen….  Let her live, though.)

Only a few more episodes to go, and then it’ll be time to figure out what’s next on my MMO agenda!  We’ll be all clear for a new chronicle, and the only question is where I’ll spend it.  Decisions, decisions!

SS: Back Again, Back Again….

“This war has dragged on for longer than I care to imagine.  Arcann has been dethroned, but his insane sister has stepped into his place, with the treacherous SCORPIO by her side.

Better by far if Arcann still controlled the Eternal Empire.  Damn Senya for failing to deal with her daughter on Arcann’s flagship!  And damn SCORPIO for her games!

For this, I abandoned the Sith Empire for this rag-tag Alliance?  The anger fills me, sustains me.  It doesn’t last-and perhaps that is why I have been unable to make much headway against Vaylin.  I’ve spent so much time mixing the Light with the Dark that I cannot be purely either anymore.  Damn Marr and Shan, too.  And damn Valkorion for freezing me in the first place.

And if I take it far enough, I should damn Zash and Harkun for bringing me into the Sith in the first place.  Enough.  I need to examine the situation beyond my own personal issues.

The Empire has fallen silent; I don’t know what is going on with the Sith, although Theron assures me that Acina is still in control.  The Republic…watches.  And since they do nothing, I gain more Jedi to my cause.  Jedi!  It’s unbelievable to me.  Master Ranos was only the latest to join the Alliance, and I have spent much time talking with her; she’s an acknowledged maverick among the Jedi, but that means she and I have been able to do something that no Jedi and Sith Masters have been able to do for as long as I can remember:  speak without resorting to insults or violence.

There may be something to the Jedi beyond what I have seen in the past.  Can Sith and Jedi leave each other in peace?  I’m forced to admit that the answer is still no.  We two are hardly average representatives of our orders.  And how many Sith would be willing to use calm and serenity to touch the Force?  How many Jedi would let their passions be their guide to the Force?

Not many.

In between such moments, the war continues.  Reports are coming in from Voss that a scouting force from Zakuul has been sighted.  I dispatched Theron to investigate, and I fear that we will need to mobilize our own forces to defend Voss.  We cannot afford to let the Voss be used by Zakuul.  Their mystics can swing the war against us, if Vaylin gets her hands on them.

…Why now?  Voss has been vulnerable since the very first days of the Eternal Empire’s thrust into this part of the galaxy.  Why go after Voss now?”

-from Sorshan’s Story

It’s the pregame show for Sorshan’s Story in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  I’m getting ready to plunge right in with Sorshan, but there were a couple other details to take care of first.

The most significant details were making sure that I had gotten all of the available Sith Inquisitor companions still outstanding and available pre-Knights of the Eternal Throne, plus the other companions I’d effectively “earned” through subscription loyalty rewards and such, including Master Ranos, who I decided to incorporate into the little fiction above.  It had occurred to me that Ranos was literally the first Jedi Knight (outside of Master Satele Shan) who didn’t try to kill Sorshan on sight, and the only one who could be used as a companion-at least, in non-story related content.  I mean, sure, there was Ashara, but Ashara was hardly a Knight, much less a Master.  Andronikos, of course, has to wait until the end of the storyline, and I’ll probably do that as a wrap-up for Sorshan’s Story.  Naturally, the last thing I did in the leadup was to do the HK chapter and get yet another companion.  I wrapped that set by also making sure to pick up Shae Vizla, since I hadn’t gotten around to adding her to the roster.

So now, I’m on the cusp of closing out Sorshan’s Story, and the plan is to continue her generally Light Side choices, although I do have a Dark Side choice planned.  Let’s see how far we get before I get sidetracked by something else!

Calm Before Victory

I’ve hit a quiet moment on the MMO front recently.  I’ve taken a brief pause in Star Wars: The Old Republic, after completing my work on Anthrandos, before I pick up with Sorshan and get her wrapped up.  On the other hand, I’ve kind of held back on any major activity in Star Trek Online, because the “Victory is Life” expansion is coming up in a matter of a few weeks (no, I don’t have an official release date for it as of yet, except “June”, so playing the odds here.  I’m a bit dubious, since the last time I was on the test server, the lighting in DS9 was pitch black and it still hasn’t been fixed to my knowledge unless you’re using the more machine-intensive “Lighting 2.0”).  As a result, I don’t want to start a new chronicle when I’m already expecting to do so with the Jem’Hadar (which will probably be a very, very brief chronicle due to how they’re being handled).  I’ve spent a little bit of time with Captain Rick Masters there, my Temporal Agent, who I figured could use some reputation ground gear, and since he had maxed out his Temporal Agent reputation, it seemed sort of obvious.  So, I figured the best way to get temporal marks would be to hit the Badlands adventure zone.  I never covered it with Dathiro, because, well, it’s a max level zone, so by the time he could go there, I was done with him.

The general conceit is this:  the Terran Empire from the Mirror Universe is attempting a foothold in the Badlands, and you (along with everyone else in the zone) want to kick them out.  It’s pretty similar in nature to the Undine adventure zone, where your ships are attempting to capture sections of the zone, which has one of three possible minigames; those minigames make a reappearance when all the sections are captured, as three starbases from the Mirror Universe appear-including the Mirror DS9-which require you to pretty much do all of those minigames to shove them back to their universe.  After that, if you manage to push out all three, you get the big fleet battle as Mirror Universe ships assault, including the I.S.S. Enterprise.  For the most part, it’s pretty much the Undine zone with a Mirror Universe paint job.  It seems to still be reasonably popular, though; there were usually about 8-15 people in one instance, which is enough, with some effort, to do the job.  Thus, I’ve gotten Rick two thirds of the ground rep gear, and the third may get enough marks any day now.

But that’s pretty minimal activity needed on my part to log in, do a capture of a section to get the marks, and log out.  And since the expansion could be landing at any time, I’m not sure about starting something new and having it get interrupted almost immediately.  One possibility is a new Champions Online chronicle, but my concern is that it’ll wind up too similar to Willforge’s; while CO isn’t as linear as SWTOR and STO, it’s still got a fairly repetitive path.  Another is to commit myself to pushing Sorshan in SWTOR since I need to get her through anyway-although I’m not greatly concerned about timing on that, since it seems the next story content is months away.  EVE Online isn’t the best choice, since it really does require a certain level of commitment to the game that I’m not prepared to give.

So, decisions, decisions.  We’ll see what develops.

EoA: The Eternal Commander

 

“At the last, the Eternal Empire is gone.  Zakuul is free.  The Republic is free.  Even the Sith Empire is free.

The only one who is not free…is me.

Valkorion’s manipulations were masterful.  I never wanted the Eternal Throne, but I found myself forced to sit in it in order to stand down the uncontrolled Eternal Fleet.  If Vaylin hadn’t somehow managed to regain control of the GEMINI droids that SCORPIO had freed, would things have been different?  Maybe.  Maybe they wouldn’t have been bound to destroy everything, and I might have been able to step away from this burden.

But I cannot.  The Throne needs an occupant, and this is the path the Force has led me to walk.  Someone must maintain the control, and it is better that I do it than Empress Acina, for example.  It had to be me.

But I will not rule.  I am no Emperor.  I am a Jedi-and until such a time as we can find a way to free the GEMINI droids from the Eternal Throne, and defang the Fleet’s ability to destroy autonomously, I will command the Eternal Alliance, free beings from the Empire and from the Republic, who chose to fight for freedom rather than live under the boots of the Eternal Empire.

Eternal.  I objected to the name.  Nothing lasts forever.  I don’t know how long this Alliance will last.  The Force has offered no guidance beyond this moment.

But as long as I follow the dictates of my teachings-as long as I behave as a Jedi Knight-I believe that the future will be brighter than the past.

Until I am free of this burden, I will depend on my friends…and the Force.

May the Force be with you.”

-from the Epic of Anthrandos

It took me heaven-knows-how-long, but I’ve at last finished the Epic of Anthrandos for Star Wars: The Old Republic.  I wrapped up the last of the Eternal Throne chapters, and I’ve chosen to use this as the end-point for the character of Anthrandos.  After all, I have a heap of other characters who have higher priorities in SWTOR, and of them, few have gone beyond the end of the Eternal Throne storyline (two because I consider them my mains; others got to go as far as Iokath because some of their old companions were tied to it).  I did wrap things up by doing the available Alliance Alerts to get the last available companions for Anthrandos (which, honestly, consisted of solely Darth Hexid), but that’s been about it.

That leaves me with but a single character left to run through the Eternal Throne expansion.  After that, who knows?  Will the next big SWTOR patch of content land before I wrap that up?  That would make a big difference as to what my next move here is.  All that said, with the upcoming Star Trek Online expansion about to occupy a chunk of time, it’s possible that it may be some time before I can get to that point.  Or maybe not-it depends on just how much is there to work with in that expansion.

Another possibility is doing another chronicle such as this one, but for one of the other classes.  I’ve mentioned this before; I’m disinclined to do a Jedi or Sith, because I’ll have just finished a pair of them.  So, could be an Agent, Smuggler, Hunter, or Trooper.  I won’t likely go as far as the Eternal Empire with them either-in fact, I’ll probably only get them to the end of their class stories, which includes Rishi for the Revan storyline (and honestly, that’ll probably be a little postscript).  I just like to make remarks on the class stories, and I feel that I’d be treading over the same ground over and over again beyond those; that’s the cost of having stories that aren’t class-specific anymore.  It’s certainly more cost-effective for developers to make content, but it does rob the assorted classes of what make them unique-especially since the leveling path is pretty linear in SWTOR.

Until then-one more to go!  Sorshan’s Story continues…soon!