[SWTOR] Return of the Jedis

My son and I are still happily playing Star Wars: The Old Republic with our Jedi characters. We have reached level 14. We’ve tried a few Heroic quests and a Flashpoint but most were a little too difficult for us at the level we attempted them. Regardless, there are a lot of quests to do and stories to play out and we are loving every minute of it. It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that I had fun with and was in no rush to finish. I feel no need to hurry up to catch up with friends, no big item hanging in front of me to rush towards. Just plain fun play.

My Bounty Hunter is my solo guy and he just reached level 19 last night. I tried some of the space battles for the first time and despite them being on rails (for the most part you do have a decent range of movement on those rails, don’t want to run into space debris) I ended up running 3 different battles 3 times each. I even added some gear to boost my ship – I really wanted more missles. I enjoyed the balance between shooting at small enemy fighters with my lasers while quickly veering off to launch a salvo of missles at the turrets on the huge battleships. It was hectic, but not too hectic.

One thing I’d like to highlight is the travel system. At first I thought it worked like World of Warcraft in that there are terminals you can “bind” to and I figured you could then recall to the last one you used. In reality, when you are using these bind terminals you are enabling it as one of many possible recall points. When you use the quick travel action, it gives you a map of all the stations you have used and you can choose which one to recall to. Then it “sends a shuttle” to pick you up (which I find somewhat silly when you are deep in a cave). On top of that there is the usual flight path system typically found in modern MMOs. Both classes I play have run speed boost skills and I’ll just assume all classes get one until I’m told otherwise. Then of course there are personal speeders which you can buy at level 25 if you have enough credits. Finally there is your ship which is used for space battles as well as travel between planets.

Now to see if I can get my wife interested. She has not played World of Warcraft in maybe a year. Should be ready for something new.

– Ethic