Thoughts on 5.10: The Good, the Bad, and the Eeehhhhhs [Full Spoilers]

Fun fact: since Manaan was used to represent Copero, Ossus is the first actual new planet seen from space since Umbara.

Happy new year!

Now that that's out of the way, it's finally time for me to turn my attention to going over as much of what came with 5.10 as possible. Since this was a fairly major story patch, the most significant we've had since 5.0's nine Eternal Throne chapters, I decided to enact my "one-month spoiler-free" safety window, hence why it's taken me so long to get around to posting this.

Of course, as is the way of things, this 'safety protocol' was rendered somewhat nullified as BioWare promptly began churning out full spoilers for the appearance of a certain character on their website and social media channels. I can't say I blame them, as this move will undoubtedly attract several long-gone veterans just for this update alone.

Anyway, on with the stuff. 

5.0: Another Year Later

So here we are. The 5.0 patch cycle has now started its third and hopefully final year of life. This is the only expansion in SWtOR's nigh-seven-year history to have completed two full years, and it's certainly been an interesting ride.

As some of you may recall exactly one year ago I published an article looking over 5.0's then-present history. As I described, the first year of 5.0 resulted in nearly every single game activity or function receiving something new. Has the second year managed to accomplish a similar feat or does it feel severely lacking in comparison?

Let's find out!

Re-Exploration

Certain Missions have had a lot of tweaking since 4.0. This has had a set number of side-effects, but none more notable than the side-effect of every single Exploration Mission having been reset, even if you'd already completed them.

Of course, you wouldn't know this if, like me, your characters as of Fallen Empire had already progressed up to that point and had no reason to turn Exploration missions on in the first place. Characters who still needed to Level, of course, had far greater precedent to encounter this.

I myself had only just allowed Calph to access her Exploration Missions for the first time a couple of weeks ago - the exact reason for doing so eludes me - and had found myself baffled by the amount of missions which she apparently hadn't yet done. Sheriff Encot's hostage rescue is a mission I've always done, and yet she hadn't done it?

Eventually I realised why this was so, but it's still something which caught me off-guard.

Funnily enough, I had actually been looking for an excuse to go back to certain planets and finish off the missions which I had never done - either on Calph or on any of my characters - so this seems like a good time to start doing so.

By the time this game is done, I would love to turn around and say that I have completed every single mission which the game had to offer. I really do like a lot of the Exploration Missions, so I wouldn't mind completing them again, and I know that Voss and Corellia have literally dozens between them which I have never ever done simply because most of my characters hit 50 on or before Voss itself.

This re-questing has also had the nice side-effect of allowing me to catch changes which I wouldn't have thought to be a logical change. Most notably, the overarching mission for the Tatooine Bonus Series actually has similar rewards to a Heroic Mission nowadays.

So, yeah, just a short post today. Inspiration has been somewhat lacking due to hectic goings-on in real life, but hopefully things should settle down to normal shortly.