Milestones: branching out and leaving Nar Shaddaa

I’ve made some progress in Final Fantasy XIV and Star Wars: the old republic. I’ve written about it before, but cutting down to three different MMORPGs a month proves to be the right decision for me. Granted, right now i play only two of them, but that’s even better! I feel invested, i want to get things done in both of them and when i have the time and mood to play, i just have to decide on one of them and get it started. Having 8+ MMORPGs installed can leave me open to analysis paralysis, so sometimes i didn’t play at all, even if mood and time were present.

Right now, though, this isn’t a problem anymore, because i decide based on factors like social mood (i’m not in a guild in SWTOR…yet), available activities/goals and time to play as well as time of play. Yesterday evening, for example, i didn’t get to play until 10 p.m., i found that to be too late to launch FF14, so i simply booted SWTOR.

Branching out

Anyway, in Final Fantasy XIV i reached the point where i can join multiple class guilds in the game. This is the point where the game begins to get complicated for me, since there is so much i want to do with one character but i shouldn’t get too wide-spread to still gain significant progress on the classes i play.

Still fascinated by the beauty of this game.

Doing class quests and story quests mainly has worked out fine, so far. I’m even below the current level of main story quest at the moment, so i’ll have to do something else next. But the opening of other classes means that it’s time to catch up, as well. For now, i’ll stick to conjurer and botanist mainly, maybe with a bit of dabbling as a carpenter.

Joining the Botanist Guild

 

Later on i will join the weaver’s guild, as well. Playing catch-up this early means i don’t have 20 levels of gathering before me like last time. I’ll simply level the Botanist up to 13 and keep it in pace with the Conjurer. The Botanist isn’t able to gather Weaver-relevant materials until reaching level 10, though, so i might use the wood i gather to get there to get the Carpenter started.

I think reaching level 30 is entirely possible before Heavensward launches next month, and that’s my main goal right now- then, i’ll take a look at the machinist and the astrologian as they are possible main classes for me. But i’m not in a hurry to get there- it would be detrimental to my enjoyment of the game and i simply hope catching up in terms of main story questline isn’t as bad as it sounds.

I also took part in the first weekly FC meeting, which was interesting. I think guilds too often neglect this part of meeting up, taking a look at each other, maybe taking a screenshot and just telling members what’s happening in the guild, introducing and promoting new members and so on. Many guilds rely on the forums, the fact that “everybody’s using voice chat anyway” and don’t value the social atmosphere of an ingame meet-up. Needless to say, i liked it very much and got a few laughs out of it.

Leaving Nar Shaddaa

In Star Wars: the old republic, Soofoo the Commando finished the class storyline on Nar Shaddaa. I can’t say i’m too sad to leave this place behind me – it has a nice look, but it’s a city-planet (again!) and full of narrow corridors/streets (again!) on map islands strewn around the planet map (again!). I like more open areas, but i think i’m getting used to them in SWTOR, as well. Despite the fact that Lotro’s Moria looks airy, open and free in comparison, i can’t say the corridor-thing wouldn’t work with SWTOR. After all, the movies themselves play in similar areas quite often.

I was pleased to enter a dedicated imperial area, though

 

I still look forward to a snowy planet, though (not Hoth, the other one), as that would be the landscape i prefer the most- unfortunately, snowy wood- and mountainlands haven’t been done too good in MMOs that i know of yet. Maybe SWTOR and FF14 will finally make amends in this regard.

Nar Shaddaa is also very….colorful. I really don’t envy the population – it’s loud, the light pollution shoots through the roof and it’s all just shady business, which is the point, i guess.

How can you live in a place like that? Oh wait, i do…

My plans for 12XP

Funny enough, the official homepage had a banner on the 12XP-site yesterday that read “it’s live right now”, so i went in to get something started only to find out it hasn’t yet. It’s always a difficult thing in europe to find out when something goes live, exactly. May, the 4th could be everything- it could be live right now, since it is today’s date; or it could even go live tomorrow, depending on the time it will be implemented in the US.

Mhorgrim made a comment these days and made me think about ways to make use of 12XP in a good way, for me. After all, i have two goals for SWTOR that are quite opposing to each other- on the one hand, i’d like to be where content updates are- at the level cap. On the other hand, i’ve not yet experienced planetary storylines, like to craft while playing and generally like to take my time- to an extent. So for now, i think Soofoo will remain 12XP free.

Freeing Forex

I’ll use 12XP, though, to explore different servers. Having made the move on FF14 from the “german” server to the biggest EU server, i can tell you the difference can be huge. Phoenix is full of characters everywhere i go. It makes a lot of a difference to see all the other characters around you, so i want to try and explore more populated servers. I’ll also see how it would and could work out on a NA server, i want to take a look at guilds and maybe start somewhere where i feel there’s a good one that might fit, and see about the roleplaying community. Transferring those characters to one server after i might decide where to land wouldn’t be much of a problem.

Concerning classes- i might give the mirrored imperial commando a look. The imperial agent is one thing on my to-do-list, as well. And the smuggler, the sentinel- so there are four classes and storylines i’d like to take a look at. I think i’ll go with the Sentinel/Consular first and try to get it to level cap as quick as i can.

Right now, i’m really enjoying my time in SWTOR. So much so that i can’t see myself dropping it by the end of the month. It even grows on me, but that might be because whenever 12XP hits, i can essentially level on my own pace. For instance, i could do class quests when i outlevelled them (to slow my progress) or do them on-level (to quicken it), or i could disable the bonus entirely. My guess is that i’ll make use of all three options, and that’s great.