So.. overall, I enjoyed my time in the game, but the very “balance” that so many gamers claim to seek is what made it stultifying for me.  And even though I have capped level toons, as is my wont, they hit cap and then didn’t get played again.  I’m just not into daily quest grinds and gear grinds, so once a toon hits cap, it tends to fall by the wayside, but then since the “balance” was so perfect, the game didn’t really feel different from class to class, so only the “4th pillar” could keep it interesting, but that story was sprinkled far too lightly between all the planet/side quests.

Now, I’m moving on to TSW.

It doesn’t help that my Vanguard is in a 3-person guild where the other 2 people have now unsubbed either, while the Assassin is in a rather active guild on the Imp side.  How active?  Active enough to run 16-man ops and almost nightly guild events.  Though since most of those tend to be pvp and I just can’t for the life of me get excited about pvp, well. . . . . yeah.

That said, the +10 holocron run was kinda fun.  We had enough sorcerers along that they could go pre-position with the MGGS devices, then yank everyone else to the door in a 2-step yank process.  Went fairly quickly.

I’ve worked a bit on some lower-level toons as well, but what can be said other than that I’m enjoying their stories and looking forward to (eventually) finishing them all?  I’m still enjoying the game immensely, and I’m not even finding the grinding out of the daily missions to be especially onerous either.  That will probably change soon, but for now, I’m still having a ton of fun.

Headless Horseman Bug in Action

Even so, my Vanguard’s level 48 now and working through Voss.  At the rate I’m going, I think I may just make level 50 before leaving Voss.  Considering I’ve done no flashpoints, no warzones, only a couple of space missions right after I got my ship, and have skipped 2 full planets, half of another, 3 bonus series, and was actually “at level” when I got to Hoth at 38, the fact that I’m now 2-3 levels “high” and might hit 50 before even getting to the last world should tell you that there’s a metric ton of XP out there in this game (as evidenced also by other characters who I haven’t skipped anything with being 4-5 levels “high” while in their 20′s and 30′s), and yet one of the more common threads in the New Player Help section goes like this:  “I’m too low for this planet I’m on, but I’ve done every side quest on every planet.  how can I get more XP?”  When I bother to respond to threads like that I tell them to actually go back and do every side quest, since they’ve obviously missed quite a few. . . . .

I decided to work a bit more on my “Tankassin.”  Sent her some cash from my vanguard to afford the obscenely priced Imperial Trooper armor off the CE vendor.  You can see the results above.  I am using a mod-able level 19 player-crafted helm, though, since I like being able to see the toons’ face during the cutscenes.

Still enjoying the game, though I’m a tad burnt out too, which is why I didn’t do the push to 50 on the Vanguard yet and went for the different playstyle and story of the Assassin for now.

My only comment about the 1.2 patch is:  I like that I can send mail between all my alts regardless of faction now.  Other than that, I’ve not noticed much difference in the toons I play.

****

I’ve re-subbed to Vanguard for a bit for a change of pace also.  I’m only really playing it on Saturday mornings for a couple of hours, so don’t have much to report other than it’s kinda nice to have the slower leveling pace of that game to relax with.  I’m trying out several classes I never did before — blood mage, necromancer, shaman, dread knight — to see if something appeals to me more than I thought it sounded like it might.  I love my disciple and paladin, the druid’s interesting, but hasn’t truly grabbed me, etc.  Overall it’s fun to try the new things out and see how they work together.  After SWTOR it does feel a little odd not to have a companion.  Kinda weird how expectations need to change from game to game, no?

***

I did the Tera Online beta this past weekend in place of my normal Vanguard play session.  I made a sorcerer for my 1st character to figure out the controls and such.  For all that it says “you gotta always move” any time you cast anything, even your instant-cast spells you still stop cold, yet the sorcerer is listed as tied with the Archer class for “easiest to play.”  Go figure.  I made that character a high elf female, and while I thought the breasts on it were grotesquely over-sized and the standing pose of the character was quite overdone, the sexuality of that race didn’t bug me.  The world chat was full of people saying that the Elin race was for pedophiles only and that the Castanic races was actually “the best one” looks-wise, though.

In the afternoon, I decided to try out the Mystic class, as that sounded like it had a bit in common with the EQ2 coercer, which I love to death.  I made this one a Castanic female, and on the character creation page it looked nice and the breasts were probably “only” a D-cup, which is actually fairly small in the MMO world.  Then I got into the world and the way it ran. . . .geez, it was horrid.  Bent double, flashing its ass in the air while flailing its arms in a caricature of the “runs like a girl” stereotype.  And tbh, I actually didn’t much like the Mystic gameplay after all.  Ah well.

At that point, I kinda wanted to check out some of the warrior-type classes, but I felt like I was “done.”  Other than the movement style forced on you by the controls it was a very standard MMO, so it didn’t have anything to draw me away from any other game I’m already playing and enjoy.  For all that it calls itself an “action game” the only thing that made it such was that I couldn’t lock a target and had to aim my reticle at it in mouselook mode.  Other than that. . . been there and done that.  I’ve uninstalled that game client from my pc and won’t be looking back.

***

On the other hand, while I know I don’t particularly care for the horror/goth genre of anything, I’ve pre-ordered The Secret World.  It sounds like it’s got just enough elements of similarity to Shadowrun, which game world I love, that I think I’d still enjoy it, and the skill-point-based advancement with synergies between trees sounds enough like SWG (which I loved pre-CU and pre-NGE) that I’m willing to plunk down in advance for it. I’m not sure what direction I’d like to take the character in the beginning, but that sounds like the beauty of the skill wheel is that you can dabble easily and find out what you like, then specialize from there, and then over time add more and more specializations.  Concepts sound cool to me, anyway.  I hope they’re implemented well.  Beta weekends start on May 11th, so I’ll know more after that, I suppose.

***

Speaking of Shadowrun, there’s a Kickstarter project out there for a  small-time 2D turn-based Shadowrun game out there.  I’ve kicked in a bit and hope it won’t turn out to be vaporware.

Legacy Stuff:  Cool, but seems self-contradictory.  It’s designed to help you play alts, but the best way to level it up so that you can do things with those alts is to not play alts.  Add in that to get the race unlocks which are probably the biggest “cool thing” right now you need to either have a lot of money lying about on you level 50 toon(s) or you need to level each race up to 50, which would fill all your character slots, and since the Legacy is server-specific, you’d then have to delete a level 50 to make a new one and do it all over again with the race/class combo you really want on that server since you couldn’t “take it with you.”  Doesn’t really seem well thought out.

UI customization and Target-of-target:  About damn time!

Class balancing stuff:  The Smuggler stuff sounds good. The Commando and Sage nerfs to both healing and dps seem to be a bit heavy-handed.  I didn’t see much that looked like it would affect my Vanguard, but my dps Sage is going to lose the ability to have the Telekinetic Wave get boosted by the Power of Mind proc, which kills the purpose of having the hybrid spec, since those procs are so useful and there’s really nothing else to use them on. Sadly, the level 31 top tier talents aren’t being improved, so there’s no real reason to go fully up a tree still, so it looks like 7/7/27 just might be the new way to go for a dps sage rather than the old 0/13/28 or 0/17/24 specs.  Time will tell, though.  Zoeller did say a lot of stuff “under the hood” is being redone and this may change how it all shakes out, so. . . we’ll see.

Crafting changes:  These I’m pretty excited about.  On the “new server” I mentioned in my last post I’ve got my Vanguard as a pure harvester providing materials to the lower level alts so that they can still keep their crafting up to the VG’s level.  It means I’m keeping the Vanguard more “level-appropriate” to the content, so he’s level 38 now and about to head to Hoth (right on schedule) while my also level 38 Sage is just barely starting Balmorra (supposed to be level 32-33 when starting there).  But anyway, the changes here sound like a big improvement, so I’m sure that I’ll enjoy exploring the changes once they go live.

***

Gameplay update:  As mentioned a little bit above — I’ve got a Vanguard to level 38 and a Jedi Sage to 38 as well.  I also have a Sawbones spec’d Scoundrel at 22, but it’s only used for crafting anymore.  After 1.2 and the Sawbones updates, that may change.  My friends are level 34 Gunslinger and level 30 Commando now, so we’re a little spread out, but we still get together to run some of the flashpoints and help with heroic quests and holocron hunting and such.  We play to have fun, not to challenge ourselves or even to worry about loot or xp or anything.  We’re very laid back about it all.

About a week ago in order to give them both some time to catch up to me in levels, I started up a Sith Inquisitor.  Yes, that’s her to the left.  Since I already have a Sage I went with an Assassin so as to still get the SI story, but the different play style.  Through use of the HTN on Nar Shaddaa I’ve been able to get some credits to her so she could buy the orange social gear and then also transfer over all the mods for it crafted by my cybertech alt.  Haven’t run out and done anything yet combat-wise since getting the upgrades slotted in, but I expect that combat’s suddenly going to feel quite a bit easier, and it wasn’t hard in quest greens, so. . . . should be fun anyway.  Just equipping the new pieces added 25% to my HP totals and another 5% mitigation on the defensive side, plus higher Willpower for more damage done.

Something I’m not really happy about, though, is that when I looked up the companions for the SI, I found that I don’t get a healer companion until Hoth at about level 40, unlike the Jedi Consular that gets theirs on Nar Shaddaa at about level 24.  Just means I’ll have “less safe” gameplay, I suppose.  I really doubt it will matter much, especially after I get a dps companion instead of Khem Val’s tankiness.  I’m spec’d as a tank, so I’ve got Khem in dps stance, such as it is, but I’m looking forward to an actual dps companion instead.  As it is, though… I love the Empire’s armor looks in preview, and I’m finding the story line for the SI to be far more compelling than the Consular, so I think I’ll be playing a bit more on the Empire side now whenever my friends aren’t also online with me.

Since my last post, I got my Commando up to level 41.  He’s still working through Quesh.  But I re-rolled to a different server due to a friend starting to play and even though he knew I was on Sanctum of the Exalted, he has a couple of nephews playing on Juyo, so he rolled there in order to be able to play with them from time to time.  Though I’ve never seen him say they were online with us ever, and he’s not mentioned ever playing with them at times when he and I aren’t on either.  Ah well.

Another mutual friend rerolled over to Juyo also as a result, and he’s only played Empire up to this point, so it was actually quite fun to run through all the quests on Tython in a group with them.  Got social points, got to chat. . . it was a lot more fun than soloing it.  When we all started there friend J1 started a Jedi Knight to go Guardian with, and since I don’t like the JK play style I rolled yet another Consular.  Friend J2 also rolled Consular and since he planned to go Shadow, I went Sage.

Out of all of that, J1 decided he doesn’t really like his Guardian, so he’s now got a Gunslinger.  J2 decided he didn’t like the Shadow and now has a Commando.  And I’ve got my Sage to 19, my Vanguard to 23, my Scoundrel to 21, and an SI Assassin to 11.  J1 also has a variety of other alts on both Empire and Republic side as well.  Can’t tell we both play more than J2, can you?

But anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing in SWTOR the past few weeks — redoing what I’ve done before, but enjoying it more since I’m doing it with friends.  BioWare’s been patching it up and making things improve slowly but surely, so overall I’m enjoying this game just as much as ever, even with still being such a lowbie all the time

I do think the starter planets are a bit out of whack, though.  Tython seems to take most people around 9 hours of playing time.  I’ve done it in 7 since I’m so familiar with it anymore, but there’s just so much running around that it takes a while.  Ord Mantell I am done with in about 5 hours whenever I run through it anymore, so it’s already a lot faster than Tython.  2 days ago when I ran the SI through Korriban. . . .I was level 11 and done with the planet in 3 hours and 14 minutes of /played time.  I have no idea how long Hutta takes for BH’s and Agents, but if it’s as small as it looks on the map, I can’t imagine it’d be more than 4-5.  I can’t help but wonder if this is supposed to be BioWare’s way of literally putting the whole philosophy of “Dark Side is faster than Light Side” that we heard Yoda tell us in TESB into the game?

Now if they would just make it so that mobs don’t instantly respond to your “instant” spells that delay applying their effects.  Yes, I’m looking at YOU, Project!

Finished up Alderaan with my Trooper at level 37 — only 5 levels above where I “should” be.  And now I’m back on Nar Shadaa finishing up the bonus series there that is rated level 31-32, just like the end of Alderaan.  Got my Legacy unlocked, so all my characters have the last name of “Le’fey” which is a carryover from EQ2, where nearly all my characters had the same last name so that people who saw me running around would know it was one of my alts due to them all having the same last name.  Of course, characters with names like “Gotter Dammerung” were fun too, and I do have a “Gotter” in SWTOR as well.  And my Commando’s really supposed to be “Wahren Peese” but yeah, he’s stuck with “Le’fey” now also.  Such is life.

Still and all, I can’t help but wonder what exactly these Legacy Levels I’m getting will actually do once they’re implemented.

In other news, my Consular Sage re-spec’d out of the Seer line for healing and is now rocking a hybrid Telekinetics/Balance dps build.  It can be downright brutal in the damage output at times, and can still spot-heal in a pinch if necessary.  At level 29, the build looks like this so far, and at the eventual level 50, I think this looks like it might be interesting.  I’ve not researched any dps builds anywhere, so I could be up in the night as to its effectiveness, but I think it looks fun, and if not. . . respecs are still fairly cheap for me, so I’ll see what I think later.

So in my last post I made a quickie comparison between the tank stats of my Shadow vs the tank stats of my Commando’s tank pet, and even though the Shadow’s gear isn’t completely up to snuff, it was still better than the not-terrible pet’s stats.  Well silly me, I decided to actually get the Shadow up to 29 and do a complete upgrade of its gear and see how it went there.  I was close enough to spit on 29 as it was, and in fact gained that level by doing the daily space missions.

I took screenies of the stats, but since the tank pet is a a ranged class I don’t think the damage stats are an apples to apples comparison.  So, I’ll just list off the relevant defensive stats instead:

.                                                  Level 29 Shadow      Level 35 M1-4X

• Armor:                             3392                           2998 (in-combat 3247)
• Mitigation:                     33.95%                      27.76% (in-combat 29.4%)
• Defense Chance:          18.39%                       10.54%
• Shield Chance:  20% base, 35% buffed     27.46%
• Shield Absorption:        24%                          21.58%

Same as before, obviously — the Shadow’s stats are definitely superior, in spite of being 6 levels below, and yet, the droid’s sufficient for everything I’ve tried to do with it so far, so take that any way you like it.

So anyway, after getting all the upgrades I decided to see what kind of trouble I could get into with the bonus quest series on Tatooine in order to see if the Shadow seemed “weak” in comparison to the Commando.  I had some old heroic quests sitting in the journal too, and figured I’d perhaps try to group up and clear those out.

I ended up in the Dune Sea and decided to clear out the Sarlacc quest by just stealthing past the mobs around the Sarlacc pit and tossing in the grenade.  AfterI did that, there’s that champion mob standing there which I know is a part of the quest’s bonus part, and I figured I can always do a stealth break of combat if it didn’t go well.  But it went fine.  Tharan kept me healed up like a champ, and a lot of the mob’s attacks were avoidable ground-targeted AE’s anyway.  He dropped some nice moddable light armor robe-style leg gear that I promptly gave away to the next Consular that I saw since my level 29 mods in my little bikini were already better than the level 25 piece of gear.

I decided to uncover the rest of the Dune Sea map, which found me that champion-level scyk to kill for the codex entry update and also the Ancient Sand Worm in the SW corner of the map.  I soloed both of them without any trouble.  Butthen there was Warlord Nekra the Geonosian champion.  I was even-level to it, so I figured it’d be tough if it was doable at all.  I attacked, and it became clear very quickly that I wouldn’t be able to solo it.  Not at that level, anyway.  Fortunately for me, a level 37 combat medic with his 4X out came up right then, so I stealth-broke the combat, invited him to group and we duo’d the thing instead.  Since he was at +8 levels the xp wasn’t nearly as good as when my “merely +3″ commando soloed it, but one can’t have everything, right?

I returned to the Jundland wastes section and looked at my heroic quests and realized that the Search and Rescue (Heroic 4) quest didn’t actually have a kill requirement, so I wondered if I could just stealth it.  And yes, I could.  What surprised me was that clicking on the prisoners you’re supposed to free didn’t break stealth, so I didn’t have to use my 3 minute cooldown combat breaker each time, but could get away with just plain stealthing up and hitting my 1 minute cooldown stealth-increaser if something gasped that it was about to detect me.  Seems a little exploit-y to me, so I don’t plan on doing so again.  Plus it just gives a crappy looking moddable helmet for the reward, and I’ve already got a good looking moddable helmet, so. . . I took the commendation reward, not the item.

And then I kept playing along, working the bonus series, thinking I was doing great and planning to be logging out at midnight, and suddenly “the servers are coming down in 15 minutes” maintenance announcement for patch 1.1 popped up, meaning it was 12:45.  I’d completely lost track of time.

So in spite of me still being willing to call the game a buggy mess (and probalby will for months to come — it’s a new game, after all. . . . ), it’s also a really fun game that can suck me in well enough to make me forget to look at the clock.

For the Trooper, it seems that the most liked companions are Elara Dorne (healer), or the one you get toward the end named Tanno Vik (melee tank).  Yuun (melee dps) and Aric Jorgan (ranged dps) are well regarded too, but the ranged tank M1-4X seems to generally be regarded as “weak” or “bad.”  There’s an occasional shout out for him saying that if you keep his gear up to date that he’s really good, or that those who think he’s bad aren’t using him right or something along those lines.

Since my Trooper is a Cybertech crafter and this includes the ability to make droid parts/armor, I decided to see what I could do with 4x, since I like how the thing looks.  Plus I’m spec’d as a full Combat Medic healer, so in my eyes having any kind of tank companion should work well.  I was already level 30 on Nar Shadaa before I got far enough in the story line to get him as a companion, and the “full set” of gear for that level range needed level 31, so I didn’t start using 4x until I got to Tatooine.  And I love him to death and think he’s quite awesome.  He grabs aggro like a champ and then keeps it.  He can take quite a bit of damage, but. . . I’m a healer, so damage isn’t really that big an issue.  His dps is decent also.  Groups of “weak” mobs I can still AE down before 4x picks a target.  Strong mobs he can solo, and Elite mobs we can take down together usually without me needing to heal, though sometimes I will if he seems to be getting unlucky with his avoidance chance.

As for results, well, check the screenie to the left there.  That’s a Champion difficulty mob designed to be difficult for a group of 4 to take down.  For comparison, group quests usually have a boss at the end with about 30,000 HP — this mob had 78,000.  But yeah, it’s dead in the picture after having been hit up by the tank/healer combo.  It was a long fight, and I did spend a lot more time healing than dps’ing so 4x did all the real heavy lifting as far as the killing went, but he was just fine.  I also killed a few other Champions that were around the Dune Sea, though they were all in the 30K hit point range again.  Got a nice Codex update for the Scyk to boot.

Down in the screenies at the bottom of the page, I have a shot of 4X’s tank stats vs my Shadow’s tank stats.  Their levels are different so the HP totals reflect that, but the actual tank stats themselves look to be quite comparable when both tanks are fitted out in blue gear, though the Shadow’s still got a couple of pieces at the level 23 upgrade range, so once I get her to 31 and fully upgraded, her armor rating would probably be much nicer, especially since the 4X shot was taken while in combat with him having his 20% armor buff active.  So yeah, player tank better than companion tank, but you’d really expect that wouldn’t you?

***

On the game play front — I’ve made it past Tatooine and am now on Alderaan, in case the 1st 2 screenshots didn’t let you cotton to that fact.  I’m so over level already that I’m breezing through it and when I stumbled in to a “Heroic 4″ area and thought I was pulling a single gold that turned out to be a group of 3, I still managed to CC one of them, and 4x could tank the other 2 just fine, so that worked out.  Though I still don’t plan to try to solo that quest.  That’d just be a pain.

Anyway, my plan now is to push through Alderaan as quickly as I can in order to finish Act 1 and unlock my legacy stuff.  I was going to simply do the story quests and more or less skip the planet, but I’m enjoying the exploration too much, plus the gear I’m picking up from quests and kills and such I can send back to my alts so that they have gear appropriate to their level, rather than to the area they’re questing in.  So yeah, still doing all the quests and thus still way over level for the area, but. . . such is life.  Happy Gaming!  And enjoy the other screenies that follow –

Belt by Batman?

I thought the Sarlacc was just big enough for a stunt man to fall into. This looks a bit too big. . . .

Sith are flashy!

Shadow Tank Stats

Companion Tank Stats

My latest BFG and M1-4X too

I’ve got the Trooper up to Tatooine now, but unlike the Shadow, I’m actually running around exploring the map and finding random 1-off quests here and there as well as a ton of quest hubs out in the hinterlands.  I’ve even stumbled into the “Imperial Area” in the south of the map.  As a result of all this, I’m now level 31 on a planet designed to take you from level 24-28.  I’ve also got my harvesting skill of Scavenging maxed out for the planet too — any node I find is gray and doesn’t improve it.  Which is fine — it just means I’m gathering lots of stuff to use to actually make things and level up the crafting skill, after all.  So there’s the gameplay update.  Happy happy joy and all of that.

***

Something that’s been cropping up a lot in blog posts and on the SWTOR forums is that a lot of people are complaining of “missing features” and bugs and whatnot.  The typical “fanboi” response is “Well compared to WoW’s launch this is pretty good.”  To which a rejoinder is made “But it’s competing with WoW *now* not WoW-at-launch.”  And then it goes from there in the back and forth with both sides talking past enough other.

I think what’s really going on is that “everyone” has a list of features in their head, probably not even consciously, that an MMO *should* have, and when a new game comes out that’s missing some of those features it makes them go “OMG this is crap!” and then go flame on the forums about what a crappy game it is that doesn’t have this “basic feature” that *all* MMO’s have.

I can see these people’s point — games released now are expected to be on par with other games, regardless of how many years head start the other game may have.  But on the other hand, the devs have only got so many resources to use for development before their investors/backers say “Get it out the door and start recouping costs here!”  So of course they have to prioritize and make sure you have all the *essential* features their game needs to fill their vision, and then the “quality of life” or “fluff” features can come later, while enduring the whining of the gamers that say “This other game that made billions of dollars and thus had a ton of resources to make this feature 5 years after it launched and everyone loved it so now any new game coming out has to have this feature at launch or else it’s a sucky game!”

Even worse is that I’m one of them.  There are several “missing” things that make me shake my head and go “What were they thinking launching the game without this?”  Of course, since I’m enjoying the game and can live without these “missing” features, it does show them to be non-essential and thus left out due to that priority list that the devs must have, so. . . yeah.  I’m sure over time more and more features will be added, and the game can only improve from here.

This takes me to another point:  There are a ton of bugs.  I’m not going to try to list them all off here, there are simply a ton.  And IMO, it’s better for BioWare to squash the bugs and also to get the interface and combat to have a nice smooth snappy feel to it before anything else.  If they get the actual gameplay is to where it should be, and then focus on the “quality of life” stuff, I think that’s the path that will make their players/customers happiest, even if the customers are whining more about the “missing” features than anything.

In the past week or so, my Sage made it to level 21 and is working her way through Taris now.  And the consular I made with the joking intent of going Shadow and being a “tank in a bikini” (due to the social clothing) has apparently become my main character.  I say “apparently” since I still think of my Trooper as my main, even though the Shadow is not only higher in level (28 vs 26) but has also gone farther into the story, having just completed her story arc on Tatooine (though still having the bonus series to do) while the Trooper’s still working on the Red Light section of Nar Shadaa.

Scary thing about all of this was that the Shadow finished up Coruscant at level 20, got level 21 from the initial run through of the space missions, then went to Taris, but I got bored there since I’d just done those quests on the Sage, so I went to Nar Shadaa “level appropriate” instead of having massively over-leveled it.  It made it so there was a little bit of challenge every so often, instead of always breezing through every quest.  And Nar Shadaa is also where you buy the “slave dancer bikini” social gear, so I was already there to buy it anyway.  But anyway, the “scary thing” was that I hadn’t intended to play this toon much at all, much less let it “take over” so to speak.

And in case you wonder, yes, I do get a lot of funny comments when I join a group as a tank and am running around looking like this screenie to the left here.  But I also have kept my mods up to date and blue as much as possible, so I have the best stats of any tank in my level range that I’ve seen — often having 20-30% higher hp than same-level Jedi Guardians.  So it works out

Overall, I think the Sage is probably the stronger soloer of the 2, since I can control when my tank pet gets healed and how well.  Getting the healer pet on Nar Shadaa was a big help for the Shadow, but sometimes his healing still seems a little lackluster, so while much of the time I feel like I’m wearing an unbreakable forcefield, there are also times then my health drops pretty precipitously, and what should be simple fights vs 4-5 mobs sometimes end up with a death.  No idea why I seem to take a ton more damage at times than others either.  Sometimes a “strong” (silver) mob seems to do more damage to me than an “elite” (gold) mob.  Go figure.

Since I’ve gotten my grapshic settings tweaked around and the game feels a lot more snappy as a result, my only real complaint now is the horrible UI.  Sure, there’s still a bit of the “molasses” feeling, but it’s far less noticeable now.  Hopefully UI customization and/or mods will be available soon.

And finally, to close — when I saw the Hutt and I was there in a dancer outfit, it became a moral imperative to take this screenshot:

Happy Gaming!