Seven Years a Blogging.

I may not be blogging consistently anymore, but that doesn't mean that I can ignore when the blog's anniversary rolls around.

So... that refit from last year aged well, didn't it? After all the intention to start writing about other Star Wars games as much as The Old Republic, it's kinda just... boiled down to still being about The Old Republic. Most of this is because I had high hopes that Squadrons would provide more writing material beyond my four posts about it last year, but then that just went nowhere. Motive moved away from providing patches for the game after December, and on the 4th of May this year they delivered their final intended server-side update.

I don't mind them doing that - indeed, I actually admire them for releasing a game as "finished" (barring the annoying glitches, of course) and only providing updates as a way of thanking the players for their dedication - but in terms of writing... there isn't a lot to really talk about with the game that I haven't already touched on in some form!

While that is a bit disappointing, I do think the refit itself looks nice, and it at least gave me the excuse to cull a couple of pages which were just becoming more and more impractical to keep up-to-date. Ultimately, I'm still happy I've done it, even if I grumble about the intentions not working out as well as I had envisaged.

But anyway, enough moping about the past.

For the rest of this year, I intend to focus on the past ten years of The Old Republic, since this year is of course its big tenth anniversary! I have a series in mind to focus on several things which BioWare have included within the game across the years, as well as to provide some introspective thoughts about my own personal history within the game. Ten years is a long time to stick with anything, and I have made some really great friendships and learned some lessons about myself over the years thanks to this game.

Plus of course, there will be the continued look at the PTS updates. I haven't touched on it here for some time, primarily because the most-recent update was for a combat style I don't intend to play. However, one thing which is also apparent is that BioWare's new philosophy for things like class defensives can't really be gauged until the group content is properly scaled and all changes have been revealed. Right now on Live, we often need several of these defensives in many fights due to the general tuning issues, and this heavily-influenced my gut reactions when I saw the plans for Guardians before BioWare stepped up to the plate to say what was what.

That's not to say that I still don't have some concerns, but I don't want to make any further PTS posts until we know more about exactly how Legacy of the Sith is going to be. The current PTS state is just a bit too barebones for my liking, but I certainly do have to praise BioWare for making it clear for Sentinels what their ability / passive choices would allow them to do for all three specs, which is far more than Guardians had access to at the start. They are at least improving on communicating more than the bare minimum, but at the same time I don't think that should really be something that I would have needed to praise...

We'll see how it all pans out!

For now, though, thank you all once again for reading this shambling husk of a blog. There hasn't really been a lot to write about over the past few months, but I do have plans to pick things up a notch!