Incursions on a very remote planet

Hello there!

It has been a while since I've last posted here. This is due to various reasons, ranging from real-life making it difficult to blog consistently (February, for example, was devoted entirely to work-experience) to not really knowing exactly what to devote a post to next. I have quite a few drafts which I've started, at least. 

Today, BioWare have announced details of the next-but-one patch, 5.10.3. At long last, after several years of it being requested by the KotOR crowd, the planet Dantooine is making its SWtOR debut. 

This is not the only glad tidings, however, as Dantooine will bring with it the first in-game event since the Rakghouls resurged in January 2014. That's well over five years since a new event! That said, there's actually a fair amount of familiarity to this event; the main villains of the piece are the Nova Blades from Rishi, this time sponsored by the Imperials to attack Republic settlements.

Of course, because this event needs to cater to everyone, the Nova Blades just attack anyone that happens to get in their way. Pirates; who can trust them?

Since this event is going to be the first one which has any real significance to the story, this implies that there will be a very small story update to go with it; I'm guessing this will continue the rather superficial loyalist and traitor choice from Ossus rather than expand on it or allow a faction-switching mechanic like Iokath did. It's a very safe option for them at this juncture, as then they can save the expansion itself for any bigger developments on that part. 

In the meanwhile people who actually want to defect will likely need to put up with more forced-pretending, which I can't imagine to be very fun for them. 

While I am of course ecstatic to see both a new event and one of the final two missing planets from the original KotOR at last, I have to admit I'm somewhat saddened by the implication that Dantooine will only ever be an event planet. Since it is an actual planet at least that should at least mean that we won't be restricted from travelling to it at any point like the Rakghoul tunnels. 

I would have definitely loved it to have been more significant that it is seemingly going to be, but it's not the end of the world. They may yet create more separate areas on various planets, akin to Black Hole and Section X, which I would absolutely love to see for many planets across SWtOR. 

April is going to be something of a month of information for SWtOR; we'll hopefully be getting info pertaining to 6.0 next weekend from Celebration in Chicago but we definitely know that they intend to give us more information for 5.10.3 later this month, presumably when 5.10.2 has launched. 

I genuinely can't wait to hear what BioWare has to say.