The Six-Hundredth-and-Third Day

As mentioned back in May 5.0 was set to cross the threshold of longest-lasting expansion in SWtOR's six-and-a-half-year history on the 24th of July, and today is that day. We still have no exact idea when 6.0 is going to hit, but it is heavily implied to be out sometime next year meaning that it will have lasted well over two years in its entirety.

Certainly time for me to start preparing to write '5.0: One Year Later': One Year Later at any rate. I've got four months, that seems like the right amount of time for an article to get written on this rustbucket of a blog.

Indeed, compared to last year 2018 is currently proving a very slow year for SWtOR. We are getting more Companions back over the course of the next few months and of course we'll be getting some PvP updates and another new Stronghold on the 7th of August, but things are trickling at a far slower pace than several members of the community like.

Granted, this is mainly because a lot of the 5.0 content was built on pre-existing story ideas that were supposed to be seen in the unreleased full Knights expansion(s), so it's logical that once this was done fresher content would take a lot longer to produce with no pieces left to pick up. While this does of course buy them time to work on 6.0, which is a good thing in my eyes, the uncertainty is still sadly quite unnerving.

It doesn't help matters that when 5.9.2 was launched on the PTS new Achievements for Gods from the Machine Master Mode were included within. Yes, sure, these could just be remnants of an old closed-PTS Patch that bled through to the public PTS - similar to the Master Mode Trophies which can be found for each Boss in the list of Decorations on Live - but it's still worth highlighting that it's possible that we'll yet see Gods get a final update before 5.0 is done.

EDIT: It is worth noting that with the latest PTS build these Achievements have vanished, confirming only that they were there in error.

Regardless of what the rest of 5.0 brings, it's certainly been an interesting expansion. I'm especially curious to see how certain things develop from one expansion to the next, notably Galactic Command and all gear being the same across PvE and PvP. We of course don't know how many things will be identical and how many things will be radically different, but one thing's for sure; 5.0 has surely taught everyone some interesting lessons over the past 603 days.

Here's to the next 246 or 323 or however many days this particular expansion will last.

Returning to Tamriel (or Skyrim: Five Years Later)

As mentioned before, 5.0 will become the longest-running expansion of SWtOR's history on the 24th of July. Thus, it's little surprise that a lot of people in my Guild, both veteran and relative newcomer, are starting to feel a little... burned out. Indeed, a fair few people have begun talking of finding other games to play together - not to replace SWtOR, but just to do alongside to help alleviate the boredom.

It isn't just people within my Guild who I've been around while other games are being talked about. On the final day of my first year at my new University while myself and several others were eating in the canteen before a Biology exam, talk turned to games; one chap was very much looking forward to getting home that evening as Jurassic World Evolution was to be released this very same day.

Of the four or so games that were discussed was the fifth and probably most well-known game from the Elder Scrolls series. Skyrim has crossed a lot of people's radars for some reason or another, myself included, to the extent that they've only just now announced Elder Scrolls VI seven years after Skyrim's release!

Anyway. It was about a week after this discussion that I decided that I should give Skyrim another run - it had been approximately five years since I had last touched it, after all.

So, if you'll permit me to indulge myself, this is a recording of my most recent dive into the land of Skyrim.