The Ironforge Mountaineers: Protectors of the Innocent, Guardians of Dun Morogh, Slayers of Wild Beasts, and apparently were never told that fire was bad.
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Interviewer: How is [being a broadway actor] compared to being a DJ?
Radio Disney DJ: *surprised voice* It’s SO different!
Vry: /facepalm
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A cactus is apparently not a plant.
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Some believe the Jedi originated as a secular cult of humanists pushing Eastern religious beliefs on unsuspecting Christian children in hopes of corrupting them and bringing their souls closer to Satan, who they did not believe in because they were secular humanists. These people are morons. However, here at the Land of Odd, we have discovered new and shocking evidence that proves within a reasonable proximity to the proverbial shadow of a doubt, that Jedi originated not from some cult, or whatever the heck the Expanded Universe has blabbed on and on about. No, you see, we have discovered from ancient Jedi statues scattered across the galaxy that the original Jedi were in fact… GNOMES.
As you can see, this ancient Jedi statue depicts not a kneeling Jedi, but a very, VERY, short Jedi. With cartoonishly large feet and a ridiculous hairstyle. And who else do we know that is short, has ridiculous proportioned body parts, and has really weird hair?
That’s HARE, you dolt. No, I am of course speaking of World of Warcraft’s own gnomes. You see, the original homeworld of the Jedi wasn’t Tython. That’s just where the order was created. The first Jedi originally arose on Azeroth! But of course they just called it magic. They didn’t know what the Force was, or anything about the M-words your blood stream. They just thought it was hocus pocus. Just like the Jawa “shaman” on Tattoine. Want more proof? Gnome warriors get a lightsaber at level 3!
Of course, both the Jedi and the Sith will seek to suppress this powerful new knowledge for their own reasons. Mostly because everyone hates gnomes, regardless of what galaxy you live in.
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I would like to blame my lack of writing on SW:TOR. Just saying. That game has its hooks in me right now. So much so that I can happily say that without space bar skipping, I’ve already got my bounty hunter to level 50, and my Jedi knight and Sith inquisitor well into their chapter 1 story lines. The game has just been really enjoyable, and I like doing different things in different playthroughs. My professional bounty hunter didn’t do nearly as much sadistic crap as my inquisitor has, and sure as hell didn’t flirt as much.
I can’t say the experience has been downright fantastic though. It has made me miss some things like the Dungeon Finder, a tool that I honestly never really had many problems with. But the fact is that in my time playing several characters in TOR, I pretty much always run the Black Talon or the Esseles, and that’s pretty much it for flashpoints. For me, it’s just not worth sitting around in the fleet and looking for a group for some of these things. The only other time I’ve run a flashpoint was when I stumbled on a group for Hammer Station that just happened to be looking for a tank the same time I was meandering toward the space station on Balmorra. While the comparisons of a single player game with a chatbox tacked on are usually meant to be insulting, I honestly found that mentality much more enjoyable. Because honestly, looking for a group right now has SUUUUUCKED. Maybe it’s just my server. Who knows, when I wander over to the server my Inquisitor is on (Space Slug) there are a LOT of people looking for groups… for Level 50 hardmodes. And ONLY hard modes by the way. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone looking for a group for regular False Emperor or Battle for Ilum. Hopefully, this will change as people continue to push toward max level and I know Bioware is exploring options for a more robust LFG tool (or at least I hope so. They said they were working on one.)
Either way, my card has been charged and I’ve got my founder title. Now Bioware has six months before I decide what I’ll be doing next. In that time, you can bet I’ll be leveling a ton of alts and hopefully making friends in new guilds. I hope at least. I have almost as much of a hard time socializing on the internet as I do in real life. Which means I have a hard time /whispering people I’ve never met before. So finding a guild is hopefully my chance to meet some people to actually do stuff like flashpoints with. (Speaking of which, if anyone is on Begeren Colony or Space Slug and knows of a friendly casual guild that I can enlist with, let me know. I’m trying to keep with West coast servers.)
But overall, looking back from level 50, I really enjoyed my bounty hunter. The end of Chapter One was immensely satisfying. Like ‘Beat the Lich King’ satisfying. Chapter Two felt a bit meh, as most middles do. It mostly spent time setting up the Second Act Turning Point that launched me into Chapter Three. The bounty hunter story definitely took some settling into though. At first I honestly didn’t ‘get it’. I just rode around space. Caught some dude. Rinse and repeat. It wasn’t till someone on the SWTOR forums mentioned that the story isn’t about capturing bounties – it’s about THE HUNT. That made it all click. The class missions became much more enjoyable as I learned to appreciate the tactics of hunting prey. I had honestly expected something a bit more like Hutta on every world. Collecting lots of bounties for warlords, hutts, the Empire… whoever. But as I settled in, I really enjoyed the long drawn out hunts and luring them out. This especially becomes prevalent during Chapter Two when you reach Taris. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but prepare for some Predator stuff.
The other thing I really enjoyed was how my reputation as a bounty hunter grew throughout the galaxy as the story progressed. I land on Hutta as just some merc looking to make some creds. At the end of the prologue, you start to see people recognizing you. “Oh you’re that bounty hunter.” and what not. This becomes really noticeable on Nar Shadaa where you really feel your reputation grow as you get passed around from Imperial officer to Imperial officer around the massive city. By the time you get into Chapter Two, you are a freakin’ VIP. That’s not an exaggeration. You literally get called a VIP by one of the Imperial troops. You work your way up to becoming the Empire’s “go to” bounty hunter by the end of the story. Which, really, is up to you how to proceed with that. Personally, I blew off the Empire. I’m no one’s lackey. You want me, you can hire me.
Overall, the game is a blast thus far. Time will tell how fun it stays. But I don’t regret putting my money down for six months of game time. Can’t wait to see what the Legacy system brings in March!
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Yarrr, me maties! Today be the day that those reality-lovers out there in meat space be trying to cut down on our Cheese given right to plunder and pillage the cyber seas to our hearts content. Truly, these government dogs have allied with the Neo-Queen’s Navy to sink our days of plenty with their evil creation! And what else could defeat a smelly, greasy, dirty pirate quite like that foulest of the devil’s creations… SOAP! This SOAP would threaten our free movies, our ill gotten cracked games and worst of all, my hearties, they may even go for teh PR0N!Join me my pirate brothers and sisters! And hoist the jolly roger! Stop these scallywags who want to sail into our cyber-sea – OUR DOMAIN – and try to take our booty! (and our pirated goods!)
Okay, okay, okay. I always said I would never get into politics on this blog. So I’ll just say this. I am a libertarian at heart. I generally abide by the idea that if someone says ‘There should be a law’ there probably shouldn’t be. So this entire SOPA/PIPA thing? It can go rot in the Styigan Abyss for all its worth. It’s stupid, unnecessary and ill defined. Some of the worst possible qualities any law can have. But, if I was going to post something about SOPA on here today. I was going to do with a joke. Download me hearties, YO HO!
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Recently, I’ve been indulging in my alt-itis and playing lots of alts up to level 10 to leave their starter planets in SW:TOR. It gives me a bit of fun in exploring each classes nuance, checking out new servers where potential new guilds reside, and generally exploring the different options in dialogues. It’s interesting how some choices are purely superficial and others can actually add or skip additional objectives. It’s neat to find out that ‘Hey, if I choose the Light side option here I won’t have to fight those guys’ or ‘If choose light side I have to go report this to a guy way back there or if I do dark side I get to run around and collect some doodads really quick’. Mostly, I’ve just been going with whatever my character does. I don’t think I’ve played a single character thus far that hasn’t racked up some mix of dark or light points. Most lean one way or the other, with a dash of the opposite tossed in for flavor.
Back to the point! I recently started leveling a trooper. She’s a bald, Asian cyborg with a huge gun. I love that I can say that with a straight face. It’s like an utter indulgence of my love of cyberpunk gushing out through ever slider on the character select screen. Early on in the trooper’s story – the second class quest I believe – you are quickly introduced to Aric Jorgan. He’s one of the guys ordering you around. He’s a big bald Cathar. Which are cat people. So if you hear “Tough-as-Nails Cat Person Named Jorgan” and immediately think of this:
I like the way you think! But sadly, he instead looks more this:
Anyway, he’s one bad ass kitty and channels a serious Panthro vibe. He doesn’t mess around when the safety of the Galactic Republic is at stake. But when I first met Mr. Jorgan, I got a slightly different version instead. Apparently, the game glitched during the cut scene and instead I got introduce to Mini-Aric instead:
The whole cut scene was like that. It was AWESOME. I couldn’t stop laughing. The best part is when my trooper is supposed to look at Aric in the cut scene, she actually looked down at the ground. So apparently the animation was designed to lock on to him or something. Even the cameras repositioned themselves to include Tiny Jorgan!
Sadly, after the cut scene ended he returned to his regular size and has stayed that way since. Still, for one glorious and hilarious moment I got to watch Chibi Jorgie try to be an imposing bad ass superior officer. I will never be able to respect him. EVER.
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This is how I think slicing works… This week a patch rolled out on The Old Republic that set the forums ablaze with rage and cheering and cherry soda. Okay, there was no cherry soda. Well, there was. But I am fairly certain that was just at my desk. Not a feature. Along with that cherry soda, I can confirm I was definitely not in the camp that was cheering. However, readers beware! Those of you seeking an outlet for your rage and confirmation that this change was a foolish action that proves that Bioware doesn’t know what they are doing will find themselves sorely disappointed. For I was not in the raging camp either. I am actually fine with this change. My bounty hunter with 400 slicing is fine with this change. Just fine. Not happy, not mad. It’s a middle ground. Like Ohio.
Wait! Come back! I know that’s not what you wanted to hear! You wanted to be mad. You wanted vindication. I understand that, but please come back here and I will tell you why I think that this is so not the change worth abandoning your slicing skill for. For I am here to tell you that – yes, Virginia – slicing is still profitable. Just maybe not in the way you were doing it before.
HunterGatherer SocietyThe first and most important thing to understand before we go any further with this is that slicing is a gathering skill and not a mission skill. That means we need to think of it in terms of things like scavenging and archaeology. What does that mean? Well for one, you can send companions out to do scavenging missions. They’ll come back with a handful of whatever material, and it will probably not be as much as a quick trot around Coruscant will get you for no cost. It’s a bad investment. Really, I think it’s only worthwhile if you’re stuck on the fleet, need just one or two more items to finish crafting something, and the GTN is ridiculously priced. That’s about the only time I can think of it to use those missions. If you can think of another, that’s good. I still don’t think it’s really worth it.
So how then, when lockbox missions are only returning a portion of their initial cost and putting you in the red, is slicing suppose to return a profit? Simple. You do the exact same thing you do with any other gathering profession: Do it yourself. Throughout your adventures you’ll find slicing nodes. There’s locked safes, holographic computers, data terminals… all sitting around in completely random and nonsensical places. ‘Cause the radioactive swamps of Taris are exactly where you wanna leave your laptop. These slicing nodes provide you with lockboxes. The same lockboxes you can nab from missions, only these don’t cost you anything. That’s pure credits with no cost.
In this way, slicing is still profitable but it actually requires you to go out and do stuff, not just sit in the cantina and rake in cash. I’ve been able to find slicing nodes in large clumps around inhabited areas. Why just running around a quick area on Taris the other day netted me a quick 5000 credits. That’s in 5-10 minutes. Sure, I’ll go without for a while and not see a single node, but overall it’s still a steady flow.
The Mission Gamble
So where does that leave missions? Why have them? Well, as I said, they hold about the same value as the scavenging missions or bioanalysis missions. Not much value. But wait! Don’t those missions at least give you something? Well yes. So do slicing missions. But it’s a bit of a gamble. Really, I like to think of slicing lockbox missions as a scratch off lotto ticket. You spend money to send out a companion, then you’ll get a lockbox. This lockbox will probably only contain maybe 75-80% of what you spent to send them off (those numbers are in no way legit. This is just an example.) Now that’s no profit, but sometimes you might get more and make a little profit. You also might get a cybertech schematic or a mission item (that unlock a bonus mission for a profession, usually with excellent rewards.) So you might actually get quite a bit, but it’s a chance. A gamble.
There are also augment missions. These mission you don’t get ANY money back, but the trade-off is a guaranteed augment. In fact a trade-off is probably the best way to describe how slicing works now or at least a better term than gambling.
So that’s all I really had to say. It’s really just a matter of perspective in my opinion. If you treat slicing like any other gathering profession, I think it’s still a pretty good crew skill to have. It’s just maybe not THE crew skill to have and that’s fine too. If you HAVE to take something, then that’s less fun and interesting that something you can choose to take. Then again if something is pointless, there’s no reason to have it in the game in the first place. I don’t think slicing is pointless. My bounty hunter with 400 slicing is still making good money as he levels with it. I’m just glad my Jedi knight can do something else now too.
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I was going to write about the SW:TOR slicing nerf. Actually, the post is already done. But I decided to hold off a day or two to post it because A) I wanted the inital net rage to die down a bit and B) I’ve posted a lot of SWTOR related stuff recently. So today I’m going to tell you about a close friend of mine that recently passed. She was brave, attentive and helpful. She was always at my side, until one day she was taken from me. Her name was Lydia, and she served me when I became the Thane of Whiterun.
Oh what? You thought I wasn’t going for some kind of joke? What blog have you been reading? Honestly, it was indeed a shocking moment in the game. I didn’t even know that she could die. Every time she got beaten up she had always simply fallen over and moment after the battle ended, she stood right back up again and ran up to my side, ready to go off on our next adventure.
But lo, did the day come that I faced off against some crazy wizard elf dude in the college at Winterhold. There was a flash of light and it knocked poor Lydia to the stone floor. I leaped into the battle with my wizard staff and daedric blade in hand. Through my mastery of both sorcery and blade, the foul elf was struck down, and I turned to Lydia with a grin. “Get up, time to go!” I exclaimed at my monitor. But Lydia did not move.
I waited. I waited for five minutes. I exited the area and returned. Hoping that Lydia would be there as she always had been. But no, her lifeless and lootable body lay on the stone. My heart sank. No, not my character’s. Mine. It’s rare that I form bonds with random NPCs in games. Oh sure, when they’re big characters in a very narrative driven plot I tend to grow fond of some of them. The companions in SW:TOR, the main characters of Kingdom Hearts, even various cartoon characters are very near and dear to me. Seems silly, especially from a grown man, but that’s the way it is. But I don’t think I can ever say that I felt that way in a big sandbox game like the Elder Scrolls or Fallout before. So when Lydia didn’t stand up, I was sad. Honestly sad. It was weird to feel bad for a lump of polygons and pixels, but I did. I saved, quit the game, and didn’t play it again for a while after that.
Oh, if I took an arrow to the knee I could just become a guard. But an arrow to the heart? Well, that’s a bit harder to come back from. This post is for you, Lydia I’m-Not-Sure-If-You-Have-A-Last-Name.
(P.S. If you can’t tell, I’m really enjoying Skyrim.)
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If there has been one complaint I’ve seen more than any other as I’ve been leveling through The Old Republic during early access, it was Mako. Mako is the very first companion and pretty much the only companion you have for the majority of your class’ prologue and chapter 1.Mako is, in simple terms, a total bounty hunter fan girl. She knows the names of every Great Hunt winner, and has a dream of working with a real bounty hunter i.e. you. The problem comes when you play a bounty hunter that doesn’t match up to her fan girl fantasy of how the job works. You can kill, you can enjoy doing it, and there are plenty that do. And your affection with little Mako will suffer for it.
So how do you fulfill your slicer assistant’s fantasy? Well, from playing around with it a bit it seems to be based entirely on following the bounty hunters’ creed in Star Wars. What? You didn’t know that the bounty hunters had a code? I’m not surprised. From Wookiepedia it doesn’t seem to be referenced in a lot of material, and the world’s favorite bounty hunter Boba Fett doesn’t seem to follow them. But it exists, and if you follow it, you’re probably gonna end up a gray to light side bounty hunter with massive affection with Mako. Let’s take a look:
The Bounty Hunters’ Creed
No Bounty is Worth Dying For
This is a simple rule. If you are presented with a choice: Your life or your bounty. Choose your life. There will be other bounties, there is only one life. Naturally, this doesn’t apply to in-game mechanics, and I haven’t come across such a choice in game yet (doubt I will to be honest). But it’s good to keep in mind.
People Don’t Have Bounties, Only Acquisitions Have Bounties
The wording on this is a bit strange, but its intent is not. When someone has a bounty on their head, they are no longer people, they are your acquisition. Thinking of them as people breeds compassion, which can cause you to do foolish things like letting them go. If you want a good example, watch Cowboy Bebop. There is a reason they only eat peppers on that ship, and lack of opportunity is not one them.
Capture By Design, Kill By Necessity
This is a big one. A really big one. Probably the biggest one when it comes to making Mako happy. Only kill by necessity. What does that mean? If you’re supposed to kill your bounty, kill your bounty. Otherwise – DON’T KILL PEOPLE. Sure, you can threaten and intimidate them. But don’t kill them unless your job says to kill them. If there is a peaceful non-killing solution that does the job, take it. If your employer did not specify whether they preferred them alive or dead, assume alive.
No Hunter Shall Slay Another Hunter
This is actually a central plot point to the bounty hunters’ storyline. You have a rival. He can’t kill you, and you can’t kill him. Not until you square off in the Great Hunt. The Great Hunt is of course, the exception to this rule. You’re supposed to kill the other bounty hunters. They are one of your targets. Otherwise, don’t kill other bounty hunters!
No Hunter Shall Interfere With Another’s Hunt
This one is also exempt during the Great Hunt. Because that’s part of the point is to eliminate the other hunter going after your bounty. But again, that’s the exception and not the rule.
In the Hunt One Captures or Kills, Never Both.
The general idea behind this is that you should never kill a defenseless target. You can’t capture your bounty, tie them up and then kill them. I mean, you can. But that’s not really hunting, is it? The hunt is an important part of being a bounty hunter. It’s what separates you from being a mercenary or a soldier. Honor the hunt. You either capture the target, or kill the target. You do not kill a captured bounty. You do not capture a killed bounty (which, for the record, is gross.)
No Hunter Shall Refuse Aid to Another Hunter
Another simple one. If another bounty hunter requests your assistance, you are obligated to help them. However, the twist on this is that they are also in debt to you for it, be it for credits or just a favor back. Again, I think this might be overlooked in the Great Hunt, but who knows? I haven’t won it yet.
So those are the rules to being a bounty hunter. Their code of honor. Does this mean you should or have to play your bounty hunter this way? Oh heck know. Plenty don’t follow these at all, and as I said at the beginning of this post I’m pretty sure that even Boba Fett violated a few of these. But in general it seems that this code is what Mako thinks you should strive for. I try to follow it myself, with a few exceptions. Even if there are ‘peaceful’ resolutions available, if my employer said kill then I will kill.
However this has led to more than one funny conversation with the Imperials during my adventures:
“There were some cultists worshiping this thing.”
“Oh? I assume you killed them all?”
“No.”
“What? WHY?!”
“You didn’t pay me to kill them.”
“Yes… well I suppose I’ll have to be more specific next time.”So there’s some entertainment value to go along with getting the girl. Don’t worry if you’re a violent bloodthirsty bounty hunter though, you’ll find some companions that agree with you. They’re just not the pretty ones. And just remember, a bounty hunter without his honor is just an assassin.
Happy hunting!
VRYKERION 