The Spirit of Vengeance

Mandalorians. An ever-present community in Star Wars lore, they have seen many iterations across films, games, and TV shows. Few of these interpretations have been particularly interesting, and I feel it has been years since the last time any content featuring or focusing on them has been anywhere near "good".

So it is that SWTOR is now turning back to them now that the war between the Empire and Republic is taking somewhat of a backseat and the Emperor is dealt with. Again. Shae Vizla, the current Mand’alor, is of course standing by our side as an ally and potential companion of the Alliance, but as this story delves into she has a fair bit of opposition amongst the other clans.

This is the focus of 6.2’s secondary storyline. A new faction of Mandalorians, known as the Hidden Chain, has emerged to challenge Vizla’s right to rule. The Chain is made up of a rogue’s gallery of Mandalorian clans – clan Varad return after almost nine years having last been seen under the thumb of Mavrix in Mandalorian Raiders, while both the Ash’ad and Dar’manda were last seen on Onderon and Mek-Sha, respectively.

The three clans are united under Field Marshal Heta Kol, who has a personal vendetta with Shae for turning the Mandalorians into “servants”. We shall have to wait and see whether there is more to it, of course, but for now this is all we know.

This storyline takes place in the form of a new Flashpoint, this being the third such instance to be themed around Mandalorians. 

Joy.

Star Wars: Squadrons' second Content Update

Just under two weeks after its previous free update, Squadrons received its second such update last Friday. This update was, for many, “the big one”: it contained three things that many voices in the community had been requesting pretty much since the game was announced. The A/SF-01 B-wing and TIE/D Defender join their respective navies, and there is now the ability to create custom and private matches of any kind.

There are other things as well, of course, but these are the primary things to focus on.

The Final End [Full Echoes of Oblivion Spoilers]

Usually Wednesday is my posting day, but SWTOR’s newest update deserves some rather special treatment.

SWTOR’s 6.2 update has been an exceptionally long time coming. It was originally scheduled for the summer before Covid-19 hit and caused delays. As a result, BioWare decided to combine both the finale to the Emperor storyline with the next “big” original storyline which will follow the Mandalorians.

Hooray…

I will touch on the Mandalorian story at some point, probably in a week and a half if the new Squadrons update comes beforehand. Today, I shall be focusing on the storyline which we have been waiting to see the conclusion of for months if not years.

Star Wars: Squadrons' first Content Update

Star Wars: Squadrons received its first major content update last week on Wednesday the 25^th of November. While the developers were always treating it as a complete package at-launch as an homage to games like the X-Wing series, they also stated that any if there were to be any future updates they would be dependent on how well it sold.

The amount of pre-orders for the game proved to them that they had a serious audience, and so they arranged to get out not one but two free major content updates before the end of the year. The first contained components for all four ship classes and a new map alongside the expected balance changes, while the second… well, let me just say that fans of two specific ships are really looking forward to December.

Since I have already written about Squadrons in the past, I think that it is fitting that I also cover these content updates as they come. I was always going to write another post about it once December 25^th had come and gone for… reasons… but it is always nice to have extra things to write about!

A Comparison between Star Wars: Squadrons and The Old Republic's Galactic Starfighter

When evaluating how much I like all the Star Wars films, one of the things I often look at is what their sequences involving starfighters are like. Each of the films has at least one, and some are among the most iconic sequences in their respective films.

This is not to say that I feel a decent or even great starfighter sequence automatically makes such a product “good” as a whole. For example, one of my least favourite Star Wars films, Attack of the Clones, has a sequence which I would probably just place outside of my top five. Sure, the film scores more than a handful of points for it (most of which go to the glorious sound design of the seismic charges!) but nowhere near enough to make up for the majority of its flaws in the grand scheme of things.

When it comes to Star Wars games, I tend to view things just a little differently. Unlike with a film, where a starfighter sequence tends be expected as part of the main plot, starfighter experiences in games depend heavily on the game in-question. Either the entire game is built around them (Rogue Squadron, TIE Fighter, X-Wing), they’re a compulsory part of some campaigns (Battlefront II, LEGO Star Wars), or they don’t feature at all apart from maybe some turret sections (Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Knights of the Old Republic, The Force Unleashed). In the rarest of instances, they are present but are so much of a side thing that you can play the entire game however you want without once having to encounter them (The Old Republic).

Thus, while I still look out for them, I do not always include “has a decent starfighter experience” as part of my criteria for evaluating a game. For example, SWTOR’s original starfighter experience is anything but “fun” to me, since it is purely an on-rails shooter. Furthermore, it eventually ramps up the difficulty to an obscene level and thus becomes impractical as an activity. 2014’s mini-expansion Galactic Starfighter, on the other hand, brought in an entirely different starfighter experience which I still am a huge fan of to this day.

I was therefore quite excited to learn that EA would be publishing a new Star Wars game which focused purely on the starfighter experience. Squadrons is basically a massive love-letter to the starfighter experience from the developers, and it can easily be regarded as “the modern X-Wing game”. It also shares several similarities with SWTOR’s Galactic Starfighter mode. As such, I have chosen to dedicate today's post to a comparison between both games.

To some people playing Squadrons, this choice of comparator will be more than a little bit odd. There have been several starfighter-based games across the years, and many of these will be closer in spirit to Squadrons than Starfighter. However, I have not played all these games and it has been well over a decade since I have played those which I owned. Due to changing focus away from the PC to the PS2 and PS3 between 2004 and 2011, I believe that I can say with confidence that it would have been over sixteen years since I played any game which can be deemed “more relevant” for comparison purposes. Thus, even if I were to pick those games up again, I would still refrain from focusing on them as it would be wrong for me to present myself as a voice of experience after a gap of nearly two decades.

This should go without saying, but this is not meant to be a comprehensive review of Squadrons as a game. Any bugs, game issues, or specific story details will not be discussed. This is purely meant to be a comparison between one game and another for the features that they include.

On with the show!

An Overdue Perspective on... The End in the Stars

One of the things which has both surprised and impressed me about The Old Republic compared to the other MMOs I have dabbled in is its consistency with its main menu music. It is not unusual for an MMO to change the music with each major expansion or update, and yet SWTOR maintained Clash of Destiny for almost a whopping eight years.

The reason why this surprises me particularly so is because BioWare had previously given themselves a very appropriate expansion to update the menu music alongside everything else. Knights of the Fallen Empire just changed so much of the game, for better or worse, and it was the first time that they were properly promoting the game’s storyline since launch. It would not have been too surprising to learn that the menu music would be updated as one of the many changes.

Not that I minded the piece remaining in situ for so long. It's a great piece of music, and I am such a fan of it that I am currently using a segment from it as my ringtone. 

With Onslaught, BioWare decided that the time was ripe to replace Clash with a new piece of music. Even while it was on the PTS, the new composition received a markedly lukewarm reception for a couple of reasons. One of the most notable issues people had with it was its lack of a slow build-up meaning that the piece opens immediately with a loud choral chant. Since Onslaught's release, more than a few people have been asking for it to be removed and Clash of Destiny reinstated.

The thing which I always found rather irritating about it was that for quite a long time we did not know its name. It was just “the new menu music” or “the Onslaught music” or some other generic description. Identifying pieces of music is something which SWTOR has struggled with for some time as pretty much every single orchestration bar the ones included as free downloads or on the Collector’s Edition CD have been released months if not years after they were first heard in-game.

Music from expansions has pretty much exclusively been released to celebrate something to do with The Old Republic or Star Wars in general. Five pieces including the Oricon and Yavin themes were released in 2016 as part of the #SWTOR5 celebrations. Pieces of music from Fallen Empire were released in the build-up to Eternal Throne, while pieces of music from throughout 5.0 and Onslaught were released on May 4^th this year.

So, seven months after it made its way onto the menu, we learned what this replacement for Clash of Destiny is called. The End in the Stars.

I am absolutely baffled by this name. While it may yet have some connection to SWTOR's current storyline (possibly 6.2's final (final) end to Vitiate's schemes?), it is too specific to really work for future expansions. Clash of Destiny at least is a practical enough name to work for any period of the game's lifespan. Who knows? Maybe The End in the Stars is intended to be the first of a number of different menu themes, in which case it would only apply to Onslaught. 

I do not really have a lot to say about the actual piece. I think it is decent as a composition and I do quite like its melody, but even I must agree that it is not as satisfactory as hearing Clash of Destiny was. Then again, Clash has had the advantage pretty much since day one. Its numerous variations can still be heard in-game at various points in cutscenes, including in Eternal Throne and at the end of the Republic Onslaught storyline. As such, it has made itself known in more ways than just being “the menu music”. The End in the Stars is so far “just” the menu music, and it has yet to become more than that.

I would certainly not be opposed to hearing it in a different setting. Sometimes even a mediocre piece of music can become “great” in the right environment, and SWTOR’s menu is just not that environment right now. This is primarily just because the player-base is so used to its predecessor that several pieces of music would likely have struggled to suit in its place.

~~~

SWTOR has given us a few pieces of music which I believe will be remembered as part of the legacy of original Star Wars video game music. Chief among these is Clash of Destiny. I do not get the impression right now that The End in the Stars will be remembered anywhere near as fondly in the years to come. Maybe things will change, and it will indeed evolve to become as iconic for SWTOR as its predecessor was. 

I sadly doubt it.

For now, though, this is what we have. Whether or not we will see it changed again any time soon is anyone's guess.

An Overdue Perspective on... The All Worlds Ultimate Swoop Rally

"An Overdue Perspective on..." is a new post series intended to allow me to explore the various updates and activities for SWTOR which I had not commented on prior to the blog's face-lift. While a couple of these will be based on post-6.0 updates, this will also enable me to focus on some of the topics which I had originally intended to cover as part of my Thoughts on 6.0 series.

Swoop biking has been a common request among SWTOR’s player base. It is easy enough to see why, as both KOTOR games featured the sport as a minigame and podracing remains to this day one of the most popular and memorable additions to the franchise from the prequel era.

Nine years after SWTOR launched, BioWare created their fifth "traditional" recurring event which was themed all around swoop bikes: The All Worlds Ultimate Swoop Rally, hereafter AWUSR. Its title is a bit of a misnomer, as rather than being on “all worlds”, it is only available on three: Dantooine, Onderon, and Tatooine.

The event itself takes the form of obstacle and time trial tracks on each of the planets, with three swoop gangs asking the player to do different things. As the player gains reputation with them, three story missions per gang will gradually make themselves available.

This event apparently has a fascination with the number three…

Looking Forward to Star Wars: Squadrons

Star Wars features many things which speak to its audience in different ways. Whether it is the characters, the duels, the lore, the settings, the stories, or the weapons, there will be something that everybody will cling to as what “defines” Star Wars for them. For me, this must be the starfighter battles. Growing up, I absolutely loved the space battles at the end of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi and in games such as Activision's Battlefront II I spent so much more time in the space modes than in any ground battles. 

Indeed, long-term readers will have noticed this bias seep through a couple of times in the past. When discussing EA’s take on Battlefront II, I wrote exclusively about its mode Starfighter Assault and compared it to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s own space Player-vs-Player mode Galactic Starfighter. While I have rarely written about GSF itself on the blog, it remains one of my favourite activities in SWTOR to this day.

When news about a starfighter game being published by EA were leaked a few months ago, I was immediately hooked by the idea. It has been an awfully long time since we have had a game focus exclusively on starfighters, the last one being (according to Wookieepedia) Flight of the Falcon in 2003. That said, prior to this point there were quite a few games which were dedicated purely to space and low-atmosphere combat: X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, the first two Rogue Squadron games, and Starfighter and its sequel Jedi Starfighter.

Point being, it has been almost two decades since a game dedicated purely to starfighters has been released. Yet here we are, less than a month away from the release of the newest addition to that line-up, Star Wars: Squadrons. While I can never claim to have had a lot of experience in its spiritual predecessors such as X-Wing, I have at least played them. I was, I feel, too young to have properly appreciated them at the time (7 or 8), and I haven't got around to playing them since. I really should do that.

There are numerous things which have me interested in Squadrons as a game beyond its base principle, so I would like to use today’s post to demonstrate just what I am looking forward to.

Things Left Unsaid

Things Left Unsaid is a story mission in SWTOR which players will only access in one specific circumstance. They have initiated a romance with Koth Vortena, Lana Beniko, or Theron Shan at the end of Chapter IX: The Alliance of Fallen Empire and then a companion who they were in love with beforehand comes back. Reinitiating the romance with them unlocks this mission, which is essentially the “break-up” conversation.

It is something which I have often seen people regard as “heart-breaking”, as this is one of the few times when any of these characters – two of whom have apparently been beloved for years – are genuinely upset.

I have only one experience with this mission myself, but not in the way you might expect.

Fully Operational Again

The face-lift is finished, and so Galactic Antics lives and breathes fully once more. Huge thanks to Shintar of Going Commando for being kind enough to review the changes before they went live.

I hope you like the blog's updated look. I decided that, as I was no longer going to have an official primary focus, the blog’s theme should be similarly generic to match. Besides, as much as I loved the old Defender class corvette header, I cannot deny that it could be deemed a tad “too busy”.

I do of course appreciate that the whole “trying to emulate the series’ main titles” theme has been done to death already, but I couldn’t really think of much else which would be generic and yet undeniably Star Wars.

So, what specifically has been updated as part of the overhaul?

Six Years and Future Developments

It is strange to think that this blog has now been going on for almost a quarter of my life so far. Galactic Antics has seen me through two full university courses and now it is seeing the working world begin knocking on my proverbial door.

When I set out to start this blog six years ago, it was because I had a lot of thoughts on various goings-on in SWtOR and, while I had been sharing them with a former friend of mine, I felt it would be better-served to get them out into the wider world. I had no idea at the time that I would still be here over half a decade later, as most of my personal projects before this would last barely a year.

I feel incredibly lucky. While the prime of this blog has long since passed (2016), I am incredibly grateful for the readership which I have had over the years since then. It feels like I say this every year, but the fact that people still willingly read the words I chuck up on this big scary old internet is still something of an amazement to me.

A little over a month ago, I took a long hard look at things in my life just to gauge where I am at. Not for any particular purpose – I’ve just (unsurprisingly) had a lot of time to think to myself about such things this year. This sort of thing last happened three years ago while deciding what paths were open for me at that time, although that was after pulling out of a third university course that just was not right for me. Unlike in 2017, one of the things which reared its head among this period was the future of the blog.

I have come close to considering stopping outright a couple of times, but partway through June I was this close to pulling the plug for good. I cannot remember the exact reasons, and I do not particularly wish to try.

This is the main reason why I had not been posting that much despite having things to write about. I was not sure whether it would be "worth" posting if, ultimately, I was going to pull the plug soon after anyway. This anniversary and the direction my life is hopefully going to be taking have both helped me come to some conclusions about what I want this blog to be. I will not be stopping, but things will certainly be different. 

From this point forth, I will no longer feature Star Wars: The Old Republic as the primary focus of the blog. Instead, I will shift its focus to having a more generic Star Wars gaming theme. This is because I have been spending proportionally less time in it compared to other games for the past couple of months for various reasons and this will only continue as time goes on. This change is intended to hopefully increase its longevity by giving me more things to "officially" focus on.

SWtOR will still probably feature the most out of the games which I intend to cover because it'll be the one which has the most frequent and varied updates so, practically, things won't be changing too much besides some occasional variety.

I am not going to be changing the name. Galactic Antics is probably the best name I could ever have come up with in hindsight. I certainly do not think Smuggling with a Cool Head or Blaster-Whipped Cream could transfer across anywhere near as successfully!

I don't know what the full extent of the changes is likely to be yet, but I certainly intend to have the face-lift finished before October as I already have a post mostly-written which will go live during that month. Fair warning, though: it will be a long one. Seriously.

One thing which I do know is that the long-postponed Thoughts on 6.0 series is now officially cancelled. Back in April my computer mysteriously malfunctioned and with it I lost all the videos and screenshots which I had so diligently been recording throughout Onslaught's story. I feel it is better to just cut my losses and move on.

I have other things to work on alongside this face-lift, namely a potential career to get off the ground which will require its own website. I am curious to see what lessons I learn in the process which I may be able to transfer over to this site in terms of potentially improving its aesthetic. I'm going to be a bit busy with this sort of thing, that's for sure!

I will be pulling the blog down from public viewing on the 16th of August at 13:00 BST, exactly one week from this post's publication date, to begin work nice and early on the changes. If you have this blog linked via your blogroll or website, be sure to remove the link until it is back live. 

All that remains is to thank you all so much for your patience over the past six years. 

See you soon!

Inquisitorial Catch-Up

Having been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic since it launched back in 2011, I find it quite fascinating to look back at how my playstyles have changed over the years. What I used to do but no longer do, things I wouldn't have dreamed of doing at one point but now will willingly do nowadays, that sort of thing.

For example, I started on the endgame scene with a Scoundrel healer, then a Vanguard tank, and finally a Commando DPS. I remember typing in Guild Chat one day (while en-route to kill Needles as the aforementioned Vanguard) something about how DPS at endgame seemed like it would be boring, but at least as a Tank or a Healer you would actually have something meaningful to do.

I now have a cast of purely-DPS characters, so make of that what you will.

As for what I wouldn't have dreamed of doing (okay, maybe pushing it there) when I started out but now do on pretty much every character involves questing. Like most people, I'd imagine, once I'd finally worked out how to level 'properly' (let's not talk about my very first character, a Commando) I would completely stop doing quests beyond my class stories once I'd out-levelled them. Exploration was entirely incidental and was rarely ever deliberate.

I forget exactly what caused this particular switch to flip in my brain, but at some point I decided to completely reverse this decision. Map-exploration became a lot more deliberate, to the point where the majority of my characters have every single planet fully-uncovered with as many lore objects as possible discovered. Quests, regardless of how out-levelled they were, were all completed - bonus points as I would eventually find myself taking three of my max-level characters back to various planets throughout 3.0 and 4.0 and picking up where I left them off at.

Of course, as with everything, there has to be at least one outlier.

An End, Once and For All!

This has been a day I've long been anticipating.

Throughout the past two days, I finally managed to drag my Powertech through her remaining chapters of Fallen Empire, completed Eternal Throne, slogged through Iokath and the Traitor arc, and took a breath of fresh air on Ossus and Onderon.

This may not seem like much, particularly to the more altaholic readers out there, but I have very specific reasons to be celebrating this.

I'm done. 

Never again will I have to sit through Fallen Empire and its subsequent storylines. At long last, I have all characters from each base-class caught up to one another again, a feat that hasn't been accomplished since partway through 3.0 - almost, if not over, five years ago.

Appropriately, since Phirella is the last of my characters to be going through these storylines, I thought I'd shake things up somewhat just as a "last hurrah". I hatched the idea of maybe making her my saboteur while she was finishing up her class story at the start of 6.0 and the threat of Fallen Empire et al. loomed ever nearer. So it was that when she started Iokath and eventually Ossus, she became my first and only character to support a faction opposite to her own.

I didn't look up any videos of saboteur activity pre-Onslaught as I had heard second-hand that some of the choices made by a saboteur, particularly during Hearts and Minds, were absolutely hilarious. Having now seen the speech given to Imperial troops with a character who deliberately flubs the speech, I can confirm that part of it caused me to burst out laughing. Grey Griffin's voice-acting certainly added to the hilarity, so I'm curious to hear what the other Imperial VAs sound like when delivering their own flubbed speeches.

As for the other saboteur-specific stuff? Well, it means I finally got to see Emperor Vowrawn at last as well as properly meet Jedi Master Sal-Deron first-hand rather than through someone else's recordings, so I'm happy about both of those. It's a bit too soon to gauge how other choices will impact things, especially as with letting the Republic fleet escape I proceeded to choose the Dark Side option in the subsequent conversation with Malgus. No spoilers for people who haven't done or seen the saboteur storyline yet, of course.

~~~

I don't begrudge anyone liking the Chapters as a means of storytelling. Heck, I myself can appreciate the theory behind them and some of the stuff that's been in the Chapters have been among my favourite story moments in the entire game. However, as time went on and as more and more characters of mine reached the point where Chapter I: The Hunt became their next mission, I began to feel very disillusioned with them.

More than anything, this is simply because of the sheer onslaught of cutscenes that is presented to players nowadays. When 4.0 launched with its Chapters, The Alliance was the break-point, and it made good logical sense. With each addition to the story, however, the break-point got extended further and further to the point where, unless you stop yourself deliberately (while making sure to do so in an area that doesn't launch you straight back into a Chapter the moment you enter the phase), you will be presented with all twenty-five Chapters back-to-back. At least as they were coming out we had the means to start them deliberately at our own pace!

I know, I know, people will say "you know you can stop at whatever point you like, right?" but I feel this is still indicative of the issue I have. Yes, I know I can halt a chapter after it starts and take a break, but you still can't prevent any chapters from starting outright. Once you initiate the final cutscene of any given chapter, hey-ho, it's another cutscene and possibly an entire loading screen that greets you afterward. At least with the subsequent storylines, while you mostly get given the missions automatically, you can start them from scratch whenever you desire.

I'm pleased BioWare indulged in experimenting with the Chapters as the content we're seeing now feels like a BioWare making use of the experiences they picked up from writing them while merging them with the more traditional open-world story content of the base-game.

However, I'm even more pleased - in fact, I'm going so far as to say that I'm thrilled - to have finally escaped them at long last.

Since I haven't been updating my blog in the past few months (because... reasons...), I should also follow up on my Vanguard, whose progress I also last briefly touched on back in Tasks and Signals. Like my Powertech, I've only just got my Vanguard up to all the story content within the past week, so this has been too long I've spent on Iokath this week alone.

Still, at least it meant that I finally got to see the Trooper's conversation with Elara Dorne as well as the Hunter's reunion with Torian and Mako this week. Extra rewards to be reaped for having to put up with all that other nonsense!

Decoration Documentation: Rishi Hideout

Yes, yes, I know it's been almost two years since this Stronghold was released, but I realised while writing Saturday's Decoration Documentation post for the Alderaan Noble Estate that I had never published a similar post for Rishi despite its being complete all this time.

I actually had written a post for it but it ended up being deleted when I was clearing up some old drafts I wasn't happy with, but I figured it was worth giving it another go now I'm back in the mood for writing about decorating.

When speculation about future Strongholds was in its prime, I was always fairly baffled by the number of requests I was seeing for Rishi as a location. I mean, sure, it's an okay planet but it's almost certainly the most unruly planet BioWare has yet released. Setting up permanent residence on Rishi, to me, seemed like presenting the worst pirates a great big target to raid. 

This feeling is hardly lessened by the fact that this Stronghold is literally a truncated form of Coratanni Town (formerly Ruugaria) from The Ravagers, AKA formerly one of the most notorious pirate lairs on Rishi. Regardless of whether or not it's actually the same location, having a Stronghold be visually identical to an Operation area that gets infiltrated relatively easily really doesn't do much to make one feel "secure" within its confines. 

With that introduction, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that I don't use this Stronghold for one of my characters. As a matter of fact, this Stronghold is where my Gunslinger Cal calls home. Ever since Manaan released and was 'given' to my Guardian, I've been trying to give some of my characters their own distinct homes. In the lore I've written up for my Gunslinger, she was born and raised on Coruscant, but since that Stronghold is currently dedicated to... other matters... I couldn't really use it. I'm not a fan of the Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace so I wasn't keen to use that although it would also work for Cal's smuggler background.

Rishi thus seemed like the most logical option remaining to investigate for this purpose. 

Decoration Documentation: Alderaan Noble Estate

Oh, joyous occasions!

Ever since Strongholds have been a thing I've been voicing a wish to get an Alderaan Stronghold at any given opportunity. Alderaan is still my favourite planet in-game all these years later because I find it to be absolutely gorgeous, so I was keen to have any excuse to park at least one of my characters there on a nigh-permanent basis.

So when BioWare placed a teaser for the newest Stronghold on Fleet in 6.0.2 I was absolutely thrilled to discover that it was to be an Alderaanian one. I loaded up the PTS as soon as it became available to check it out and I loved what I was seeing.

Since it was announced, I planned to 'give' it to my Sage, Vihala. My Gunslinger has Rishi, my Guardian has Manaan, my Imperials have a half-finished Dromund Kaas, and my Trooper (and until now, Vihala) just has Tatooine by default.

Funny to think that the Stronghold I had put the most effort into first is now something of an afterthought...

As a result, this estate has been turned into a Jedi Academy of sorts, so expect to see more than a few Jedi themed decorations, including the occasional Jedi NPC, in the following images.

Tasks and Signals

I haven't forgotten about my Thoughts on 6.0 series. I wasn't very happy with the post I had drafted up for the Onderon story so I kept it back for a bit until I could improve it to match my expectations. However, I haven't had a lot of time to go back to it with college work and such, so it's still in limbo.

Until then, I'm going to use recent goings-on in SWtOR to re-jigger my blogging capabilities and hope that that finally gets the Thoughts post up to standard.

6.1 brought with it three things which I intend to touch on in posts at some point. The first, something which I had been hoping for ever since Strongholds were introduced, is the Alderaan Noble Estate. The second, the subject of today's post because it's the easiest to write about at short notice, is a small story update, The Task at Hand, which focuses on either Task Force Nova or the Empire's Hand before setting up the 6.2 story in Signal From Noise. The third and final notable change, from my perspective, is the removal of Veteran's Edge in Master Mode Operations.

For now, though, it's time to analyse the little story update and see what happened!