Dark vs. Light: Grindy, Grindy Grindy!

Two posts in one day! This is what happens when they announce details of a new Event on the same day as a pre-scheduled post. :P

Events in Star Wars: The Old Republic have been a mixed bag. The most well-known ones have been the Rakghoul, Gree, and Bounty Events, as they occur at various times throughout the year - whilst it used to be much rarer the Rakghoul Event now occurs once a month - whilst only two before this point have been utterly unique in of themselves; these were the original Rakghoul event and the long-gone Chevin Grand Acquisitions Race.

Since the Developer Stream on June 3rd, a new one-time event was mentioned: Dark Side vs. Light Side.

From what we understood at the time, it was a case of getting through various 'tiers' to unlock rewards whilst the overall number of Dark/Light points pooled decided on what a new Companion (pictured above) would look like.

Now that more details have been announced earlier today, it's far more complicated than anyone could have anticipated at the time.

A New Inmate in the Madhouse!

The Bounty Hunter Class and I have had a bit of a vast history.

Not as vast a history as Troopers (I've had eight of those!), but still; six Hunters have all come and gone during my time in-game, with each one being discarded simply because they did not resonate with me one bit. As pointed out previously, I can tend to be really rather fickle when it comes to deleting characters, with reasons for doing so ranging from not enjoying the class (more so for Powertechs) to simply not being able to come up with a good outfit/story/whatever for them (more so for Mercenaries).

So this brings me to Phirella, the fresh-faced 'baby' Hunter I started last Sunday afternoon.

4.0 Catch-Up: Star Fortresses

A long while ago (on a blog quite, quite close), I made a series of posts looking over aspects of 4.0; this covered the characters, a brief summary of the KotFE story, and just general universal changes.

Things I never got around to covering included the Star Fortresses and the Alliance system. Whilst the latter will only be written when the final Alliance Alert of this season is released, I see no reason to delay the summary of the Star Fortresses.

NBI 2016: Comfort Zones and Self-Confidence in MMOs

The New Blogger Initiative has come and gone once before during this blog's overall lifespan, and yet I just largely ignored it last time, mainly because I couldn't think of anything to say. This time, however, I'm determined to make an actual attempt and come up with something to say. This was supposed to be one of next week's posts, but I feel as if it's in a better place to send out now than what today's post was supposed to be.

This first piece is actually something which I am incapable of in one very particular area: creating comfort-zones in the games you play and using this as an aid to increasing self-confidence. Self-esteem is, after all, hard to gain but comparatively very easy to lose.

In MMOs, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed and that you don't have a 'set' place more than in any other game - NPCs in single-player RPGs cannot judge you to the same extent other players can, after all. This is not so much to do with blogging, but feeling confident in your gaming prowess is a very big plus for any gaming blogger.

This post will take the form of six tips, ranked in no order of particular importance, which will hopefully be of some use to people new and inexperienced with MMOs in general.

Flashpoint Craziness: 5 Least Favourite Flashpoints

It's time to draw this series to a close.

This post will return to the more general overview of the Flashpoints, including a summary of the included story and a brief look over of the boss fights.

Without further ado:

Flashpoint Craziness: The Flashpoint Story-Arcs

Continuing the series looking over Flashpoints, today it's the turn of the dual-Flashpoint arcs to receive the spotlight.

This will work a little differently to the previous one; whilst that was a more general overview including a brief summary of the bosses, this post will purely be looking at the story of the arcs. Because there are a few Flashpoints from the favourites list present in this one, I thought it would make sense to interpose it between the positive and negative summary lists.

As mentioned previously, this will not be looking at the four Flashpoints which form the structure of Forged Alliances. Because that has four Flashpoints and actually leads into an entire Expansion, it's very much a different beast and in a league of its own compared to these ones.

So, without further ado:

Flashpoint Craziness: Personal Top 5 Favourites

It's time for another Top 5 post series!

It's been a while since I've done one of these; the last series touched on Operations, and now it's time to turn to their lesser PvE partners the Flashpoints.

As per usual, this will be in parts. This post will focus on the my personal favourites and the follow-up will focus on those which I absolutely despise. There will also be a third post covering the Flashpoint story-arcs consisting of two back-to-back Flashpoints; the Forged Alliances arc is its own beast when it comes to this as they're a part of the overall Shadow of Revan story rather than its own independent little section and thus it wouldn't be 'fair' to compare it to anything else.

So, without further ado: