Order of the Empire

The Goose merged with another guild a little while back, and we created a new guild called Order of the Empire. Nacharon, our fearless leader, has created this awesome website for everyone. Great work!

Just for Giggles

I don't usually post up other people's stuff on my own blog, but this just made me giggle. :)

Strange Choices

I'm not sure I completely understand the moral choices in this game.
I'm playing on the Republic side, a Jedi toon, and I came across a Flesh Raider baby in a backpack, just lying on the road next to a corpse. Now, wouldn't that be a perfect opportunity for some serious Light/Dark points? But no! There was no choice at all. I was forced to go hunt meat for the stinking little bugger, and the meat of a Greater Guid too. (Oh har har har.) I was seriously surprised that there were no options like: leave the filty beast to die, or kill the putrid larvae right away. I ended up taking the thing to the Jedi Temple to be adopted by some cat-person. Very odd quest.

And another strange moral choice came up a bit later. I was in the Twi'lek village and I was given the choice to become the "sister" of the new Twi'lek Matriarch. Apparently to become her sister is a Dark choice. Well, I took it! I guess the whole idea is that Jedi aren't supposed to have any family bonds or emotional attachments...or maybe we're supposed to have a racial hate for "head-things"? Strange.

Another question: I wonder if that quest is a romance option if you're playing a male toon?

That's a Taxi??

I haven't been playing SWTOR all that much lately due to RL stuff, but I found this pic in my screenshots folder and I thought I'd share. This is what you get to ride as a taxi in some parts of Alderaan. Pretty freaking cool. I call it a Sky Manta. Wish I could have one of them instead of a boring clunky ol' speeder.

Qyzen the Cross Dressing Lizard

Honestly, I only put the dress on him cuz it had good stats! And I didn't think it would be PINK! (That was an added bonus, hee hee!)

But now it makes me giggle to see my scaly friend dashing about with his pretty frock on, fighting evil and being stylish at the same time. I think he likes the way it feels on him. I'm too scared of his big teeth to ask him though.  :)

Too bad I couldn't have put such a girly dress on Big Ugly! That would have been a worthy screenshot as well. LOL

Honestly, the costume designers of this game should be shot...or better yet, forced to wear their ridiculous designs out in public for a week. I know, I know! This is not the Really Real World. But seriously, what kind of Jedi Warrior wants to wear a skirt? Or a FAB-ulous pink housecoat like Mini-Godzilla here?

Okay, enough about fashion, let's talk gameplay. Spiral 2.0 is level 16 now and doing quite nicely. I've noticed that some of the spells/skills on this toon are identical to the Sith Sorcerer side. Lame. They couldn't even give them a new name or icon? Wow. Talk about rushing the game out!

Loads of quests to do, but skipping all the Heroics cuz the server I chose is sooooo empty. I think there were 13 people on the Republic Fleet last night. Super quiet. But it's nice, cuz I'm not waiting for boss spawns or getting too much lag. And it's also cool to just focus on my own stuff for a change, rather than worrying about keeping up with my guildies or whatever. I haven't been playing Huttball at ALL. Totally bored of all the PVPs. Questing is more fun, especially since the developers have done a fantabulous job on the story lines. Very interesting. Better than watching a movie, cuz it's Choose-Your-Own-Adventure!

Private Dancer

My adventures on the Light side continue with an unexpected trip to a strip club, or dancer's den. I went there to find a guy's "beloved", whom he said was kidnapped and forced into dancing. I won't give the plot away though...no spoilers here!
But as I was leaving the joint, I noticed these two in a corner. The girl on the lighted stand was doing the most ridiculous dance moves, with kicking and a wiggling choo-choo thing and all sorts of silly stuff. And I swear the other girl was either laughing or telling her, "No, no, no!" The dance was definitely NOT sexy!
It makes me smile to think that the developers or programmers or artists or whomever have a sense of humour and put these little vignettes in the game for people like me to discover.
So next time you're out galavanting around the universe, so focused on your quests and killling 20 gang members or collecting 14 Bantha hides or whatever, stop for a moment and look around. You might just find something interesting. :)

Good vs Evil

So I got the new Spiral to the Republic Fleet and found it to be quite nice indeed. One of the best features is that there are fountains in the place where, on the Imperial Fleet, there are big gaping holes that an unsuspecting, clumsy and rushing Sith can plummet to her death if she just so happens to jump over a railing in her impatience. Not that it happened to me. No, it was this other crazy girl I knew.  ;)

I'm finding it nice to make good conversation choices for a change, although it can be a bit dull to keep saying, "It is an honour" and "I'm here to help". Gag!
But actually the Sage skills are fun and very traditional. They really make me feel like I'm a Jedi and part of the Star Wars saga. I think I always related more to the Light side when I was a bright-eyed little girl watching these movies, so playing the new Spiral brings back fond memories. And it suits me right now, as I'm feeling tried of being the bad guy, in virtual as well as real life.

People diss video games as mindless entertainment, or hopeless addiction, but for me video games sometimes act as a way to delve deeper into my ideas, opinions and feelings. Too philosophical for a blog post?  Ha! Just saying, a game like SWTOR that brings up moral choices, social responsibilities, plus the challenges of playing with a group of real people (hiding behind avatars) can be a gateway to becoming more self-aware.

Now to the Dark side. I just couldn't stay away, to be honest! I made a new toon named Scorned, a very appropriate name for me right now. She is a Sith Pureblood, and on her way to being a bad-ass Juggernaut tank.

Scorned fulfills my need to get pissed at the world and just saber men to pieces. She makes no apologies for her anger. She does not hesitate to tell people what she really thinks. She is my Dark side, full of righteous indignation, self-serving demands and yellow-eyed insensitivity. I'm hoping I can find the right balance between her and the saccharine-sweet Spiral 2.0. We shall see, dear readers, we shall see.

Changes

I've switched servers and started a new Spiral, a Jedi. I've turned my music back on, I'm reading/listening to all the quest dialog, and I'm going to try to enjoy the game for itself.
I will not be renewing when my three months is up. While I enjoy playing, it is not worth the money when other MMOs are FTP.

Always Time for Dancing

Dancing with my devils

Dancing to celebrate Foundry win

Low Graphics FTW

Spiral has a sexy new outfit. And it's actually even sexier than I had planned!
See, when I bought it at the Super Special Secret Shop it showed a preview picture like Spiral on the left, with a nice pink cloth "butt flap" etc. But when I put it on her, it showed up like the pictures on the right, a barely there white bikini! It didn't take long to figure out that it was my low Character Detail setting that was removing my clothes from me.  :)
So I guess having a fail computer does have perks after all!

I think she looks fabulous, btw, and also I really like being different than every other toon running around the Fleet. I turn a lot of heads, that's for sure! I tried to use it as a distraction techinique in Huttball, but they didn't fall for it. <shrug>

Sexy Spiral

Phishing Email

I got my first phishing email for SWTOR this morning, woot! It was the standard "you're trying to sell your account, give us your password and secret question" scam. I didn't fall for it, oh no no. I'm too smartsy for that. :)
So I displayed the message content, which shows the true sender behind the fake, copied that and forwarded it to support@swtor.com. I received this interesting reply within a half hour.

Greetings Spiral,
I am Protocol Droid K8-I6 of Human Cyborg Relations.
Thank you for forwarding us the suspicious mail that you received for us to investigate further.
After looking into this, we can confirm that the email you received was not legitimate. We would ask that you do not reply to it, or click on any links that it contains as doing this may compromise the security of your account.
(*lots of helpful advice here*)
Galactic Support is our Specialty…
Sincerely,
Protocol Droid K8-I6 (aka Andrei)

I had a nice little giggle at the Protocol Droid thing! I thought it was very appropriate for the whole SWTOR theme, plus it meshed with the fact that most customer service emails sound like they've been written by a robot. Well done, Human Cyborg Relations department. High fives and head butts all around!

Foundry Fun

LASERS!!

This is my and my boys in The Foundry, watching lasers and about to DIE. Yup, we got our butts handed to us on a large silver platter by a giant gooey momma-bug who spawned immediately after those lasers hit that tower.

Look how relaxed and calm we are.

We are so confident in our uber-ness.

We're just hanging out watching the stars and drawing hearts in the sand.

And we have no idea that in mere seconds we're going to be coated in noxious spittle that explodes our juicy eyeballs, burns our armor off and rots our flesh from our bones.

Yup, good times.

Ashara

Who is this suspicious-looking woman, alien...womalien? It's Ashara Zavros, whom I have not-so-affectionately nicknamed SquidHead. Honestly, doesn't it look like she has a giant blue and white squid wrapped around her noggin? Poor girl! And I'm truly not sure if her face is covered in clown makeup or if that's her natural pigments. I guess I need to read up more on her species, which is called (Googling....please stand by) Togruta.

One of my guildies last night said that they pass out if you punch them in the "tentacles". Or maybe that was for Vette, the other SquidHead species? I dunno. But honestly, why would you punch someone in the tentacles? And if your tentacles were so sensitive, wouldn't you keep them protected? Like in armor or tucked away somewhere? Hmm, maybe that's why SquidHead looks so nervous and shifty-eyed in this picture. She's watching out for random tentacles-punchers.


She's not a bad companion. She dual-wields lightsabers and jumps into the fray quite enthusiastically. However, she also has all these annoying cheerful sayings, like: "With the Force I can do anything", and "I hope I haven't displeased you.", and "The Light Side will protect me from people who want to punch me in the tentacles." Okay, that last one was made up. But you get the point! She's irritatingly nice and polite and optimistic and totally no fun for my Sithy badness. Except that I like shocking her with my Dark side choices.

I also read today somewhere, maybe Torhead, that she doesn't like any gifts at all from female characters. I thought that there was going to be same-sex relationships in this game, that's what I heard around the General chat, but maybe it hasn't been implemented yet. Or maybe she just doesn't go that way. Or maybe it's cuz I'm a bad-ass Sith. Who knows? But there should be a way for me to gain her affection, in order for her to do Diplomacy missions for me more effectively.
Hmm, perhaps she just needs a punch in the tentacles to motivate her...

P.S. Thanks to Heka for the "womalien" word! It fits perfectly!

Sith Corruption

Just for kicks, I turned on the Sith Corruption option in the Preferences Menu, under Social. This is a pic of the difference in Spiral. She is Dark IV right now. Yeah, the evil one is on the left! LOL

I love choosing the Dark side stuff in conversations, it's so hilarious! Spiral has the most evil voice and she relishes the demise of her enemies. I think the phrase I hear her say most often is: "There will be no survivors."

I keep being told that there is a point to choosing Dark or Light side, but so far I haven't found it. (Other than the intense satisfaction I get from watching those engineers get sucked out into deep space!) I have visited the Dark Side vendor on the Fleet, but I didn't see anything I really liked. Every now and then a mob drops a piece of gear that requires a certain alignment to wear it, but other than that, I haven't noticed a big advantage to choosing one way or another. Perhaps it's something that will be improved upon as the game evolves. I do like to idea of having Dark-specific gear as you level your alignment. I want to have purely evil clothes or jewelry or something. Perhaps a necklace of Ewok tails?

Boarding Party First Try

Dex, Aydenn and I did Boarding Party last night, with Dex's new companion, Big Fuzzy, tanking for us as we didn't have any guildies online who were big tanks. It was a long, arduous trial. We took it pretty slow and did remarkably well. We were kinda shocked, I think!

The first boss went down not too badly, and Aydenn went AFK for a minute before we looted. Dex and I were mucking about, and he accidentally looted the boss and a beautiful orange chest piece came up, all tricked out with Aim for Aydenn. We shouted into our mics, "COME  BACK!" but he didn't come back from AFK before the timer counted down, so Dex ended up getting a sweet piece of gear that he cannot use. <sigh> It was a heartbreaker for Aydenn, that's for sure. But it was an accident, so it's all good.

Aydenn showed us how much he deserved that loot too, when he took down this big-ass robot boss all by himself. Dex and I were taking naps on the floor, while Aydenn danced around the boss and kicked his metallic butt. Rock on, Mazerbeam!!

But in the end, the last fight, there were three bosses at once, and we just couldn't do it. We tried all sorts of strategies and plots and plans and techniques. We tried extra stims and more medpacs and buffs and crossing our toes while whistling "I Will Survive". No go.
I guess it was just that we were underpowered, and also I forgot to mention that I re-spec'd Spiral for DPS. (woot!!) So she was trying to be healer, and the two boys were DPS-ing like mad, and Big Fuzzy tanking, but we just couldn't kill everyone. Finally Dex gave a shout-out and a nice lvl 50 healer named Medicaid came to our rescue. Then the fight was over so quick! We were all shaking our heads.

So a good run with some great guildies and a few choice pieces of loot for all. Until next time!

Spiral Hacks!

Check me! I went into Hutt Ball last night and fell through the floor in the respawn room, before the match even started! I fell and fell and fell, and watched the Hutt Ball court get smaller and smaller above me. I ended up on a black space but the scenery around me was all a beautiful city, lit up with foggy orange lights.
Then it said "Spiral has been defeated". And I died with a horrible scream! You can see in the chat on this screenshot that Heka (Hekette) is saying, "How did you die?" It was so funny!
Except that when I respawned, it did it again. I couldn't play Hutt Ball with my guildies.  :(
I had to exit the Warzone and requeue, but the FoTDG ended up having an awesome time PvP-ing for most of the night. Cheers to my guildies! DRINK!

What Are They Up To?

I went in the cargo hold of my ship the other day and found Big Ugly and Andy hard at work on something. Not sure what they're up to. Very suspicious! Especially since when I went back to the bridge, Andy was still in his usual place, leaning against a wall by the galaxy map, and when I checked the bunks, Big Ugly was still in his place as well. Curiouser and curiouser.

Maybe they know it's my birthday soon and they're making me...a new light saber?

Or maybe they're just fixing stuff that they broke during a friendly arm-wrestling match.

Or maybe that machine is just a big vegetable slicer and they're whipping up some nice Tauntaun stew.

Who knows?

Credits are Meant to be Spent

I've been on a shopping escapade for the last few days in game. I traveled about the universe talking to all sorts of vendors, from Drummond Kaas all the way to Ilum (scary!). It's kinda funny that I'm obsessed with clothes in game, because in RL I don't like shopping at all!

Anyway, the problem with SWTOR is that the clothes with the nice stats all look ugly (so far). There is no skinning option, or color customization, like I've seen in other MMORPGs. Although there is Orange rarity gear that you can mod yourself, but I still think there is some sort of natural stats that you would lose out on. I believe Purple rarity gear is better than Orange too, so you may trick out some pretty outfit with mods, then get a Purple drop and wreck your whole look.

On top of that is the whole Sith hood issue, which I've talked about before. I want to show off Spiral's pretty hair and flashing green eyes. No hoods for me. And I prefer sexy pants or a shorter skirt, or something other than a long, heavy robe. Blah. I was chatting it up with a male sorcerer and I felt bad for him...he has to wear robes too! The conversation turned a bit dirty -- of course, cuz that's how we roll in FoTDG -- and we decided that Force users need to wear robes to, errr, cool off their privates.  LOL

Anyhoo, I found this lovely little purple number on Balmorra. It's actually white gear, so I bought it just to have some dancing clothes! When I need to rend the heavens with intense chains of destructive lightning, I'll put on my work clothes.  :)

Helping a Guildie

Madness & Mayhem in the Tomb of Vodal Kressh

I was up late the other night, puttering around the Fleet, crafting & such, when my guildie, Vinyin, asked for my help with a Flashpoint. He had gone into Athiss and cleared quite a ways in, but couldn't solo the boss. Pretty impressive to get that far alone though!

So I popped on over, brought out Big Ugly, and we had some fun! I have a fancy new AOE called Pretty-Purple-Lightning-Slams-Everyone-From-Above (or something like that), and I got a chance to try it out on the poor low-level mobs in the tombs. It was actually a great place to practice, as it's a new type of spell for me. You can see in the screenshot that there is a red hexagonal target on the ground. I have to click the spell and then place that target to set it off, then channel for the duration of the spell. Agents and Bounty Hunters and such might be used to that kind of targeting, but it's new to me, so it took some getting used to. Totally awesome though, and quite deadly.

Speaking of deadly, there were only a few Zero-HP events along the way. Vinyin died when we were fighting the Big Puppy and the Little Puppy adds came out and chased him into a bunch of unfriendlies. I know I'm healer-spec'ed and all, but there's only so much healing I can do on a shrieking, sprinting sorcerer who is hell-bent on trampling over every hostile mob in the zone!

Then Vinyin's Big Ugly died on the last boss while playing with the fire balls. ("Oooh pretty!! Ow ow ow ow ow ow!" <thud>)

But good times were had by all, and it felt nice to help out a guildie. That's all a part of being a Follower of The Dark Goose.  :)

Andy vs Khem

Staring staring staring

Andronikous Revel is one of my companions. I've had him for a week or so now.
His back story is that he's a merc or pirate or something, and his crew mutinied on him, locked him some stasis chamber or something until he went mad and somehow escaped or was rescued, but then ended up in prison. When he got released, he started hunting down his old crew, and I met him at that point and helped him kill his old First Mate. I'm kinda sketchy on the details obviously! Didn't really care all that much, to be honest. In fact, I chose to kill his First Mate myself, which pissed him off, as he wanted to do it and he said, "You knew I wanted to kill him myself!" Dearest Andy, I think you've mistaken me for someone who gives a flying Jawa!

Anyhoo, Andy stares. I suppose so does Big Ugly, but Andy's stare makes me nervous. I don't like him much, which kinda bugs me as he's the first companion I can romance, but I actually don't even want to romance him.
And to top that off, he's not even that useful to me. He's DPS and he doesn't generate all that much threat, so when it's just the two of us, I end up taking all the damange. WTF? That's when I send him off on an errand to collect Biological Samples, and summon Big Ugly to take care of my squishiness.

Speaking of Big Ugly, I so love him! He's the best. He's grumpy, yet loyal. He says he's going to kill me and eat my soul, and then he says that I'm not safe without him.
And he saved my life. And I don't just mean the infinite number of times I've sent him forward to tank for me. I mean during a cut scene on one of my class quests he jumped between me and a bad person to save me. (I don't want to say too much and spoil for anyone doing Inquisitor.) Anyway, he has really grown on me, "my morose monster".

SWTOR Drinking Games

So last night in SWTOR was fun...what I remember of it! :)

Met some cool new guildies, Dex and his bro Nith. When I logged on, Dex & Heka had made "baby toons" to play with, two Imperial Agents, so I joined them on my alt, Impure, who was a level 4 Bounty Hunter. We began to ravage the unsuspecting residents of Hutta.

And we began to drink.

The SWTOR drinking game goes like this:

Gain a level...DRINK!

TeamSpeak crash...DRINK!
On an elevator...DRINK!
Near an elevator...DRINK!
Thinking of an elevator...DRINK!

Hmmmm...I think you can see why the rest of the night is a blur.
I believe I may have missed out on some pretty interesting Bounty Hunter storyline too. I vaguely remember giving some woman her husband's head. She was not impressed. DRINK!
Dex, Heka and I also did some Heroics, and got some loots, and, um...did some things, shot some guys...what else? Hmmm, maybe I should one of them to blog today? Apparently I can't hold my liquor. Probably a very good thing the bottle got all empty and such, and I crashed into my comfy bed at 1:30 am.
Fun night! Thanks, guys!

Anyone Else Start Singing U2?

I found the Object That Has No Name. It is mysterious. It is mythical. It is shining with a pale blue light and looks like it could make a mean cappuccino or perhaps slice my bagel for me or maybe tell me my blood pressure. Or all three.
If I didn't already worship The Dark Goose, I might worship the Object That Has No Name.

Another Spiral Fail

Why can't they just have a nice enclosed gondola?

People who know me aren't going to be surprised at this one.
Check out the photo. Yep, see that glowing bluish light down there? That's a Datacron. Found it all by myself, no cheating.
But how do I get to it?
Oh yeah, there's a teeny tiny mechanical doo-hickey riding up and down that set of wires there. It passes slowly by the platform where I'm standing, pauses at the top, then goes back down to the island.
And the whole idea is to jump on to it.
Yeah, right.
Do I even need to tell you that I tried and failed? Took a nice swan dive into the rocks below, with Big Ugly reluctantly following and staring at me in a most disapproving way.
Gave up pretty quickly. There's some things I just don't have the time for, and one of them is skipping around rocks like a freaking mountain goat on crack just for a +2 to whatever dumb stat is there. It better not be Willpower.

Typical Spiral Move

So I was gaming all by my lonesome tonight and thought I would go to Alderaan and do my class quest. I had to infiltrate the House of Rist, some assassin place, to find some chick to get her to call up her ex-boyfriend and set him up for me. Not "set up" as in get me a date with him. No no no! Set him up for me to take his artifact and kill his pasty-white Jedi butt. (Most likely anyway, I haven't gotten that far in the plot. But that's the plan.)

Anyhoo, I found the house with no problems and started merrily killing my way through the halls. Got to the first objective, disabled the security, killed an elite with the help of Big Ugly, and then proceeded on my lightning-scorched way.

The only problem was that I went the WRONG WAY. I only realized this when I found myself outside again, staring in confusion at the trees. Doh!

Here is a map of my path. Basically follow the red line from the Start to the --- nope, not to the Finish! Fooled ya! Go to the big X and then turn around like a DOOFUS and go back the way you came, all the while killing more mobs and feeling all uber that you're doing so well on your own.

Sigh.

This foolish little adventure made me miss Heka tonight. He never gets lost. The guy is a genius with maps.
Me? I'm a genius with, um, spelling. Yeah, that's it. Sooooo helpful, aren't I? Anytime you need a document proofread, I'm your girl. But give me a map and an objective highlighted by a neon green arrow, and I'm more useless than a drunken Ewok!

Our Own Guild

We are now the Followers of The Dark Goose.



What's In A Name?

There was a lively discussion on TS the other night about choosing a Legacy name. It's actually quite an important decision, as that name is permanent and applies to all characters your create across the server you're on.

We pondered many things:
Should it be silly or clever or ominous or intriguing or sexy or personal or serious?
Does it fit for both male and female? (Jennifer StiffSaber is not so cool.)
How would it sound after my current toon's name? (eg. Spiral McFailful?)
How can I make it apply to both Light & Dark characters?

I Googled name generators and came up with a few:
http://www.dimfuture.net/starwars/random/generate.php
http://swg.stratics.com/content/gameplay/characters/name.php
http://starwars.namegeneratorfun.com/
http://homepage.mac.com/bruno_andrighetto/JavaScript/StarWarsNameGen.html

But the most interesting one is the manual name generator. It's like those silly thing they put on Facebook on in chain mail. I've seen a few variations, but this one turned out funny for me. I surely wouldn't use it for my Legacy name though!

First Name: take the first 3 letters of your first name and add the first 2 letters of your last name.
Last Name: take the first 2 letters of your mother's maiden name, and an apostrophe, then add the first 3 letters of the city you were born in.
Title: take the last 3 letters of your last name and reverse them, then add the first 3 letters of your favorite food, then put "of", then take the name of the last person you spoke to today and reverse it.

My result: Crigu Sn'sau, the Nnucho of Ekim

Post your results! I'd love to see them.  :)

The Lovely Jaesa

Isn't she pretty?

So the funniest thing happened on the way to the cantina tonight...
Heka got his new companion, a Jedi woman named Jaesa something-or-other. He started going on and on about how beautiful she was and how he was going to flirt with her and how she was his new favorite...and he made poor Vette actually "nauseous".
So then he goes to the auction house to buy her new gear and get her all pimped out, and he gets her a helmet for the stats, and then realizes his mistake: there is no "hide helmet" option for companions!
And all of a sudden he's saying she's ugly and he doesn't even want to be seen with her! I flipped out on him in TeamSpeak and called him "shallow". (All in good fun, of course.)

The best part though was when I finally saw her face, I said, "Oh, she looks like me" (referring to my toon).
And Heka replied, "You're in-game beautiful too."
WTF??? OMG!!! I laughed my ass off at that one!
He started backpeddling right away and stammered out some garbage about how I was beautiful in real life too...but I was too busy cracking up to notice.
Guys are so silly.  :)

P.S. As for Spiral's love life, she finally lost her SWTOR viriginity! She got it on with a Sith guy on Alderaan. I said, "Geez, it's about time. She's level 30. She's practically an old maid."  Hee hee!

Cademimu Flashpoint Fun

The other night we went for our first run through Cademimu...that's fun to say! Ca-dah-mee-moooooooooo! Ca-dah-MEEEEEE-moooooooo!
<ahem> Excuse me.

As I was saying....
Heka, Maze (Aydenn) and I were joined by our new guildie and all-around bad-ass, XorFox. The boys were supremely confident that we'd kick butt, but I was hesitant. I knew Heka could handle it cuz he was an uber level 30, but Maze and Xor were only 25 and I was sitting in the middle at 28.

As it turned out, we blazed in and ended up dead all over the place! So very dead.  :(

We regrouped after several unsuccessful attempts at taking on EVERYONE at once, and decided to play it a little cooler. We started utilizing our demobilizing skills, which we called "putting up". I think that's because my Whirlwind skill actually puts the target up in the air in a pretty purple tornado for a whole 60 seconds. And the Bounty Hunters' skill (not sure what it's called) could take out another target for 60 seconds as well.
So taking two big mobs out of the picture for a minute, gave us all time to beat down the smaller mobs, and then take out the rest when we pleased. It was most excellent crowd control and worked very well.


Fang of Cademimu



Somewhere along the way I acquired this cute little bugger. He was locked up in a cage and I got him out using my Bioanalysis skill. He followed us around for a while and fought bravely, but died in the heat of battle.

A lot of the flashpoints have little things like this, where you can use your Crew Skill to get a helpful NPC or create a shortcut or get a buff. I like it! It's something I've not seen in other MMOs and makes your crafting skill a bit more useful.



Anyway, the rest of the Cademimu run is a bit of a blur to me. We were successful in the end, I know that much, and actually ran it again last night with even greater success.

The bosses were interesting, which is fun. Not just the regular tank-and-spank. The first guy had a robot that woke up and "arrested" Xor. The second boss was a wookie that brought some evil mini-wookies that ran around like crazy dwarf wrestlers. The last boss tried to fry us like space bacon with his rocket ships and we all had to run around to stay out of the way of the flames. Pretty cool instance!

Capes are Cool

Is that a cape on your back, or are
you just excited to see me?

A little while ago, Heka got a chest piece that had a cape attached. He was super excited to run around like -- well, like Superman!

And the best part was when we took an elevator and his cape flew up in the air! The in-game physics are a little bit strange.  :)

My outfits have been a bit of a disappointment so far. If any of you have followed Spiral when I played on Runes of Magic (my old blog here), you'll know that I'm a big fan of personalized fashion on my toons. Not so much in real life. In fact, most days I'm in my comfy PJs all day long! (The joys of working from my home office.)

But Spiral's outfits in SWTOR have been kinda boring. I guess it's part of being a lowbie; the gear is bland now so that when you level up, you're really impressed with your new clothes.

Heka mentioned that you can take orange quality gear that you like the look of, and un-mod it and use it like a "skin" for a higher level character by adding new & better mods. Not sure if that actually works or not. It seems odd to me to have "blank" gear. Shouldn't it have at least some native stats? I'm going to look into that more. I really want Spiral's end game gear to have a gorgeous look as well as gorgeous mods.

Beautiful Places of TOR #1

Tatooine

Sexxxy Time

We were so excited that Maze came back from the Bush, that we had a sexxxy dance party!

Maze, Me, and Heka

Speedos on Speeders

I finally got my speeder. Cost me a good chunk o' credits. You have to pay 40,000 just to learn how to ride the thing, and then the cheapest newbie bikes are 8,000 credits.

I totally love it though! It makes getting around sooooo much faster, even though mobs can knock you off your bike and make you fight.

To me, it very much looks like we're riding jetskis, so Heka and I put on our bathing suits and posed for a pic. Look how brawny Heka is. Mreow!

I kept my hood on. Not proper for an Inquisitor to go around hood-less. (Although, I wish I could get rid of the damn thing. I unchecked "show helmet" but it doesn't get rid of hoods that are attached to chest pieces. Go figure.)

Sith Flirting

There's a lot of talk around this game being so story-driven, and it's totally true. To be honest, I find it a bit bothersome to have to watch cut scenes for almost every quest. Sometimes I just want them to get to the point and tell me, "Go collect 10 High Tech Whatsits for me" or "Take this package of blue cheese to Joe in the Cantina." I've actually turned on the subtitles for my conversations so that I can read what they're saying and skip through them faster.

But the other day I discovered the perils of going too fast! I was doing a quest on Balmorra and I thought that it was the one where I got a new companion. So when the cute guy I was supposed to rescue started saying he wanted to fight me, I thought he was flirting! He even pulled the old Matrix taunt on me, putting out his hand and gesturing with his fingers to "Bring it on." I was like, "Oh no, you didn't!" So I attacked.

I honest to Yoda thought he would surrender at some point in the fight. I thought it was some part of the plot and he would fall to his knees and say he would serve me and my Sithiness. The dude was actually tough enough to take out Big Ugly (although to be honest I was being a slacker and not watching his health) but in the end he succumbed to the awesome power of my lightning and fell dead.

I was a bit shocked. I was in TS with Maze, and I told him, "OMG I think I just killed my new companion!" So I quick Googled the quest and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized it wasn't the one I had been thinking of. But I wasn't supposed to kill the dude either. His father had sent me to rescue him. Errrr....

I went back to the Dad and started the convo. He was pissed. Really pissed. He said, "Why? Why did you kill my son?" I tried to be all nonchalant and replied, "It's the Sith way."
And then the father screamed, "I'll kill you!!"
He attacked, and I attacked back, and Big Ugly had a nice snack of his soul.
Sigh.
All of this cuz I thought a guy was putting the moves on me. 

First Try at Spaceship Combat

Yeah, my ship is on FIRE.

Apparently, I suck at flying my ship. I laughed the whole time I tried to do this mission! Gawd, it was hilarious! I ran into stuff, got shot, caught on fire, and eventually blew up. Not bad for my first try!

Oh, except I was supposed to be blowing OTHER ships up. Ah. Hrmmm, maybe next time.  :)

Look Out Galaxy, Here I Come!

That's a tiny Heka dancing on top of my ship.

All three of us have received our spaceships!

It's part of the main quest line. I received mine from Darth Zash, my scheming blonde bombshell mentor, when I retrieved some doo-hickey for her. Whatever, beyotch. I'm gonna slay you one day, I hope you know. <evil laugh>

Heka and I got the same style of ship, called a Fury. Maze got something else, as he's a bounty hunter. I haven't been on his ship yet, but I'm looking forward to checking it out.

We also got a droid companion with our ship. He is called 2V-R8. He's irritatingly polite. My Sithiness boils when he talks. But he is useful for crafting and Diplomacy missions.

Progression

Things are moving along quickly in the World of TOR. I'm level 18 already! Heka is level 21 and poor Maze is stuck in the remote wilderness of northern Canada and can't play as much, so he's level 19. (We miss your blasters, Maze! Come home soon!)

At level 10 we got to choose our specializations. I went with Sith Sorcerer, cuz I love to roast people with fire and brimstone...or in this case, purple lightning. I truly feel like Emperor Palpatine! Although, I must say I'm a wee bit prettier.

Heka went Juggernaut, as he's our tank. He still does some serious damage though, as well as take some serious damage, and his charge is fearsome to behold.
Maze is Mercenary, I believe. He's the DPS of our group, blasters and explosions and all that stuff.

That makes me the healer, a role I never intended to take, as I meant to be DPS. But of course we have to obey the Holy Trinity of MMOs with tank/healer/DPS so I'm settling into my role. It's not so bad, really, cuz we all get heals of some kind on our toons, and Maze's companion, Mako, is a healer too. And it's nice cuz when the boys aren't on to game with me, I can self-heal and survive a lot more battles.

Part of our character progression has also been making Dark side and Light side choices. Being Sith, I thought the obvious thing was to choose all options that gave me Dark side points. I'm pretty bad-ass and it's so great to see my little toon backtalking to everyone!
Heka, being the difficult man he is, chose Light. Maze calls him the Sith with the Heart of Gold! It makes for interesting NPC conversations when Maze and I are like: "Kill everyone! Death to All! For the Empire!" and Heka is politely interrupting, saying: "Perhaps we should refrain." Totally funny!

Now our next goal is to reach 25 and get our own speeders. Saving my credits!

Joined a Guild

I was wandering around Dromund Kaas, by myself, when I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of guilds were out there. I went a-Googling and came upon a few interesting choices. I was specifically looking for a guild of mostly adults who were casual, fun, helpful and not averse to goofy Canadian girls.

I decided upon Carpe Noctem, and was super excited to be accepted. The guild leader is a wonderfully cheerful woman named Marishaten, and her co-leader is a potty-mouth guy named Ricktur. The guild has been very welcoming and fun so far. The Vent chat is hilarious! I'm hoping to spend more time with them as the days go on.

My First Companion

Big Ugly

This is Big Ugly, also known as Khem Val.

He is my first companion, which means he follows me around and does my bidding. I like that.  :)

I got him from a quest where I was trying to find some whatsit for Zash, and I found him all bound up in some enchantment, and he tried to kill me, but of course I kicked his leathery butt, and therefore he had to submit to me and be my slave. Something about an Honour Code or some BS. Whatever. (Notice my awesome Sith attitude? I'm loving being on the Dark side!)

Big Ugly gets in the way. His massive, muscled frame takes up my whole point of view and I click on him more often that I want.
But he's useful. I send him on Diplomacy missions, which I find hilarious. I think his form of Diplomacy is smashing heads. He also collects biospecimens for me, for crafting. And he sells my grey trash from my bags. And he amuses me with such comments as, "Hakka makka ich mergen blarg" or something like that. He doesn't speak English, silly demon. Most of his comments translate to "I'm hungry."  I guess a dude that size has quite an appetite.

He also refers to me as Little Sith. I kinda like that. <blush>

Oh yeah, he also is a very awesome tank and protects my skinny Sorcerer butt from nasty mobs. I guess that's his real purpose!  :)

A New Hope

So I did it. I bought STAR WARS The Old Republic (SWTOR or just TOR). I wasn't planning to. I couldn't afford it. I wasn't even sure if it would run on my ancient computer...but my online friends, Heka & Maze, were doing it so I decided to be a lemming and jump off the cliff with them.

My first day playing TOR was good and bad. The download took for-EVAH! While I was waiting, I Googled like a madwoman to find out if I could actually run the game on a single-core Pentium 4. And just to be on the safe side (and to spoil myself) I ordered a new dual-core CPU online to upgrade my saggy processor.


Turn on the lights please!

The good part was that the game started up and ran fine, albeit on the lowest possible graphics settings. I was impressed! I didn't meet the minimum specs and the game ran! Woot! The main thing I noticed was that loading screens were super long, and also that sometimes in high population areas it would look like someone turned off the lights. That was actually kinda fun, running around in the dark shadows. I found out later that Heka was having the same issue, and he was running the game on a snazzy Alienware laptop. So I was glad I wasn't the only one.

We decided to go bad-ass and chose Empire instead of Republic for our first toons. I made a Sith Inquisitor, Heka became a Sith Warrior, and Maze chose Bountyhunter. We all chose humans as our race. Not sure why. I don't even know if there is a race bonus to any class or not!

Actually, as I'm writing this, I realize that I don't know much about this game at all! This blog might be all about me trying to figure what the heck I'm doing.  :)
For example, I had to have Maze explain to me why he wasn't Sith. I thought all Empire were Sith. And then I was confused cuz I thought Sith was a religion, but it turns out there are Sith Purebloods, who are a race. I think.
I'm very careful to keep my mouth shut about this in game with other players. There are some really hardcore SW fans out there who get on General chat and start sabering each other new buttholes when someone screws up a "historical" fact about the game...er, world. They take this all very seriously!

I can't say that I'm NOT a Star Wars geek though. The sound of the original score music played in the game's opening scene brought a huge smile to my face! I remember playing Star Wars with my next door neighbour when I was a wee kid. I had a Star Wars lunchbox, Star Wars bedsheets, and last year I finally sold my Star Wars figurines to a very excited toy collector. They were original 1974 figures, and right now I'm kinda sad they're not standing on my desk admiring the power of my Force.

So I've been playing for a few days now and have lots to blog about, but I'll save that for another post. That is, if I can tear myself away from Hutt Ball for a few minutes!