Legacy of the Sith, What Do We Really Know?

So, I didn’t cover the few things that were revealed other than the new potential romance in yesterday’s rant post. There honestly isn’t much to say since the devs want us to discover what happens in LoTS for ourselves and I’m okay with that because I’m expecting a few surprise reveals.

In the livestream they introduced a few new characters and confirmed the return of others such as Darth Rivix, Tau Idair, Arn Peralun, and Lana. Why they made a big deal about Lana’s return I don’t know since she has been in every story update so far. At this point it’s to be expected that she will always be part of the story going forward until and unless they write her out.

They also showed new artwork that will no doubt be the new loading screen when the expansion comes out. The style looks different from their usual so I’m not sure what’s up with that. Maybe they are trying out something new. It’s nice, though Lana and Tau’s face look a little weird in my opinion.

The biggest reveal was made in typical Bioware fashion. Keith came onto the stream to briefly troll Eric Musco before announcing a new trailer that was put together using old footage with a voiceover of Darth Malgus. What really made everyone stand up and take notice was a close up of a pair of eyes that is not old footage.

Based on the color of her skin and the markings on her face many are speculating she could be the Twi’lek in the new artwork holding a lightsaber. This Twi’lek interestingly enough was not part of the new line up of characters that were revealed, which means they want to keep her identity a secret. The question is why? What role does she play in Legacy of the Sith? Who is she? And which side is she on?

I am personally hoping she is neither Jedi nor Sith. Her purple lightsaber could indicate she is either a dark side user or someone who tries to balance both sides. My main Jedi carries a purple lightsaber because I like to think of her as a gray Jedi. So, it would be interesting if they introduce a new character who embodies that practice.

I am also very curious about Darth Malgus’ plans. In the voiceover he talks about how the galaxy has been controlled by the Jedi and the Sith and how he wants to break that cycle. This monologue reminds me a lot of Kreia and how she wanted to destroy the Force to end the cycle of war between the Jedi and the Sith. Is it Malgus’ intentions to destroy the Force? I don’t know, but it does sound like they might be taking inspiration from Kotor 2. And somehow it ties into the mysterious Darth Null. This next expansion definitely sounds intriguing and I’m looking forward to whatever comes next!

The Dark Descent

*Minor spoilers for the new flashpoint

Swtor has recently come out with a new story, The Dark Descent and Galactic Seasons. For now, I’m reserving judgment on how I feel about the new Galactic Seasons until I experience it a bit more since I’ve never participated in something like it before. Some of my guildies have said it’s a lot like Battle Pass, something I have heard is in other online games. I can say my first impression of it is that it seems more geared toward players who enjoy pvp and I still haven’t done any pvp because I’m not sure how well my crappy wifi can handle it.

This week one of my dailies for the Galactic Seasons is killing insectoids on Balmorra so I’ve been farming that every day this week. I like doing rampage, so it gives me an excuse to go to a planet that I rarely go to. I’ve been doing it by myself most of the time, but a few players have invited me to team up with them so we’re not competing with each other.

The Dark Descent flashpoint was disappointingly short compared to The Spirit of Vengeance and it came as an unexpected yet welcome surprise that Darth Malgus was not captured at the end. I was half afraid they would try to wrap up his story quickly so I’m glad he’s still at large in the galaxy somewhere. I am especially eager to discover what his plan is after stealing the artifact from Dantooine and a tome from the Ossus Library.

I played the new flashpoint on my bounty hunter and thought the conversation between him, and Darth Krovos was cool. Usually, the antagonist seeks a confrontation with your character, so it was refreshing to see him reach out to someone else, especially given their history.

Darth Rivix is also shaping up to be a potential problem. When he was first introduced, I had a fan girl moment when I recognized his voice as Fenris from Dragon Age. He’s an interesting addition to the alliance and I definitely don’t trust him. He seems too smooth and calm for a Sith. Since my bounty hunter is a saboteur, I’ve been making mostly light side decisions and when I told him to let Captain Meinar go he ignored me and killed him anyway. I found his response hilarious when you confront him about it. He is up to something, so I’ll be keeping an eye on him and make sure he always goes first so he doesn’t stab me in the back.

I haven’t played the flashpoint on light side yet because I want to experience it for the first time on my main Jedi and she’s currently on The Eternal Throne expansion. I’m trying to get her through it as quickly as possible so I can get her caught up. I actually intended to have her caught up with the story before The Dark Descent came out, but I became distracted playing another game.

I’ve been playing the expansions on vet mode for the first time and it’s not nearly as hard as I expected it would be. Some of the boss fights are different, though pretty easy to figure out. I honestly expected the fight with Arcann to be harder. In spite of his new moves, I still finished the fight very quickly.

I’m hoping to have her finish the rest of the expansions within a week so stay tuned for my thoughts on the flashpoint from the light side.

Which Server Is The Conquest Server?

As I’ve mentioned before, lately, I have been taking an interest in conquest and guild invasions in general. The concept of guilds dominating and controlling parts of the galaxy was an interesting idea that the devs came up with. I have no idea if they got this idea from other mmo’s or if this is a unique thing.

When I first started playing Swtor on the Ebon Hawk server I vaguely noticed that each planet I went to would be controlled by the same two guilds, but since I was only interested in playing the stories at the time I didn’t think much of it. When the servers merged and the bulk of my toons were moved to Star Forge, I again noted those same two guilds dominating the galaxy, although other guilds joined in from time to time. Then something changed and the galaxy seemed to be dominated by the same four guilds no matter where I went — week after week. It wasn’t until much later I learned that The Sanctuary maintained four guilds they used to invade every yield and thus control every planet.

It remained that way for some time until other guilds began taking an interest in conquering planets. What’s interesting about my server is that nearly every week the medium and small yields change hands depending on who goes after them. The Sanctuary still has control of the most planets, but because the competition has become so fierce they are unable to use all four of their guilds to control the galaxy. At first their two smaller guilds began losing ground and they lost all those planets to other guilds. Now their larger dark side guild is rapidly losing ground and only controls one planet right now. They’ve had to fall back to their main light side guild in order to continue invading planets and have all but given up on their two smaller ones.

Eventually, a pattern began to merge and there were three large guilds and three to four smaller guilds that came out victorious week after week and it was that way for some time until another mando guild began eating their way through the medium and small yields so that they now control four different planets and by the look of things will have five planets by the end of the week.

In just six months the guilds that invade planets have changed so much on my server that it has made me curious about the other servers. Are guild invasions as fierce and competitive on the other servers as they are Star Forge? I have a couple characters on Satele Shan that I rarely play, but for the past two months I’ve been monitoring the guild invasion process, and it would appear there are two guilds that dominate that server. Judging by the names it’s a light side/dark side guild run by the same people who go after large and medium yield. There are three other smaller guilds that fight over the small yield planets every week. What’s even more interesting is the numbers. Almost every week the two large guilds seem to average between 40 to 60 million conquest points by the end of the invasion, while the smaller one’s average 20 to 30 million points.

On Star Forge, the two large guilds who often compete with each other average 120 million to 250 million, depending on how fierce the competition gets between them that week. Even my guild averages between 80 to 100 million and that’s when we’re not even trying to win. The new conquest system has made it easier for most guilds to double their amount of points every week and on Star Forge you definitely want to be careful if you’re traveling in the pvp instance. It’s become popular for a lot of guilds to do rampage and some of them don’t see how it might be unsporting for a group of 24 players to surround and kill one lone player.

Even the guild my siblings and I created, accidentally made it on the leaderboard for small yield recently. Though that was probably through a combination of things, mainly my stronghold bonus and the conquest perk I bought for us. Still there are only three of us and without even trying we stayed in fifth place for three days until I noticed we were getting way too much attention as everyone was wondering where our guild came from and if they could join. After that I stopped playing my characters and let us drop off the leaderboard back into obscurity.

So, what I’m wondering is why hasn’t the Satele Shan server caught on to how easy it is to make a lot of cq’s for guild invasion? It’s possible that the two guilds have been dominating the galaxy for so long that everyone has accepted it as inevitable or perhaps not many are interested in guild invasions on that server? From what I’ve been given to understand Satele Shan has a slightly higher pvp population. Both North American servers have a fairly good amount of pvp players, but I’ve also heard that more people do raiding on Star Forge than Satele Shan, which may contribute to their slightly higher pvp populace. It’s also possible that their guild invasions status hasn’t meta morphed yet like Star Forge and could become just as fierce and competitive sometime down the road.

As far as the other three servers, I haven’t created any characters on them, so I have absolutely no idea what the guild invasion conquest is like on their end. I doubt I’ll ever create toons on the French and German servers. Unfortunately, the only language I know is English. As far as Darth Malgus, I may make a character on that server someday so I can monitor what conquest is like for them because I really am curious to know which server is the conquest server.