Transferring to the Red Eclipse
Yesterday i decided to move Soofoo over to The red eclipse from the Progenitor. It wasn’t an easy decision since i always have roleplaying or at least participating in community events in the back of my mind, but i feel in SWTOR, roleplaying is an activity mostly confined to internal guild events and community events aren’t actually large-scale. I’m also unsure anymore that the community is much better, since my first flashpoint experience wasn’t very good. The Red Eclipse is also a much more active server, the fleet was full of people/characters.
The transfer didn’t happen, unfortunately. I’m not sure if it is processed by now, but it wasn’t until midnight despite the fact that it should take only 1 hour and me queueing the transfer at 2 p.m. I opened a ticket at 9 p.m. yesterday; we’ll see how far i’ll come today. One of the main reasons i want her over there is the fact that she’s the furthest along in terms of progression and also because i want the legacy on the new server. It’s still not level 2, but i don’t want to lose even this progress.
The Sage
So yesterday i dabbled a bit in playing Samdhara, the Jedi Sage i started on The Red Eclipse.
I have to say, this might be the class- mechanically- i’m looking for in SWTOR. I chose the “Balance” specialization and it seems that i not only have healing spells available, but also “leeching skills” that provide selfhealing in relation to damage done. While this still won’t be what i’d call a “true hybrid class”, it’s close enough, at least from what i saw.
I’ve progressed her through Tython making use of the 12XP buff- so i only did the class quests. Doing this left me basically without credits and somewhat underequipped. And unsatisfied, but that’s a topic for another post.
12XP
I’ll make this short remark, though: i feel 12XP is a thing most useful to players who already did the planetary questlines on other characters and who are to supplement their 12XP characters with credits and equipment. For me, the pace felt wrong; it was too quick to experience what SWTOR has to offer. In this regard, i prefer the 2XP- it is quicker in progression while still allowing the newbie player to experience the planetary questlines, flashpoints and group quests without feeling like they could do “better” if they’d only follow the class quests.
I might have to re-think my approach on that buff. There are workarounds, like maybe first get into the planetary storylines before doing the class quests on the respective planet. On the other hand, the release of The Secret World’s update 11 showed me once again how much i’d like to have a character at the pulse of the games i’m playing. I’m reluctant to deactivate 12XP for me until i have a max-level character, though, because i fear on missing out on the buff entirely because of my slow levelling.
As for the item to remove the 12XP; i tested it yesterday: it’s an item in your inventory granting an 8-hour-buff you can deactivate and that has no cooldown.
Something’s wrong here
Final Fantasy XIV should be my main MMO now; and i enjoyed my return there immensely. This week, though, saw me being able to play quite late in the evenings- mostly 10 p.m., and that’s a time of day when i feel more comfortable launching SWTOR instead. Last week saw 5 hours of SWTOR and 3 hours of Final Fantasy XIV- i think i’ll make the 10 hours complete tonight, because the general direction still stands: i feel more invested in playing only two MMOs and play more- it’s just that i didn’t have much opportunity to do so this week.
The downside is i don’t have much to tell you. I still need to enter Tarvus’ ship with Soofoo and Samdhara is on her way to Coruscant. In FF14, the next step is gathering and bring the Botanist up to level 13 or maybe even higher.
When Soofoo arrives on the Red Eclipse, i also want to explore the group content of SWTOR further- after all, there are quests for groups of two or four characters on the planets, and groups are often built using the general chat. Furthermore it’s time for a second go at a flashpoint.
I’d also like to get into the lore more, though i’m still unsure whether the better approach is to make use of ingame-tellings (the codex, datachrons) or simply reading something on the internet. I feel like games should provide their lore in-game in a somewhat convenient way.
Party Business 
I hope your server transfer issue has been resolved in the meantime. I only ever had to transfer my characters once, back when the game first merged servers, and that went down smoothly and quickly.
Hey! No, it hasn’t, but i got an answer from customer support. Apparently there are problems with character transfers at the moment, so i’ll just have to wait. Of course they didn’t offer some kind of discount or something, but that’s ok, i guess.
I’m just not sure if i’m able to log in to that character at the moment- i’ll just leave her as she is, i think.
On another note: i went to board the Esseles today and it was a pleasure. The queue popped within minutes, the group asked whether we were watching or skipping, they were very friendly when i told them i was new and liked to watch and we had some friendly bickering about conversation choices and generally a good time. All three of them went straight to my friendlist after the run had finished.
I’m glad to hear that this grouping experience went better than your last one! I’m not going to pretend that the players on The Red Eclipse are angels, but I’ve encountered relatively few truly rude people in pugs over the years.
Update: it seems it should work today after the servers restart (2pm gmt). Also, they did give me cc compensation, so all is fine.
Interesting, some servers seem uglier than others I guess. I rarely see an issue on Ebon Hawk as far as instances go. MOST people are decent and often ask if you know the mechanics or not. Pretty rare anyone gets mad if someone wants to watch the cut scenes.
As to the x12 xp, I agree it’s handy if you’ve already knocked out planetary quests a few times and just wish to concentrate on story alone. What I have done on my latest toon Mharius is go strictly storyline all the way up the chain. I did this purposefully for him alone because I understand the character mechanics and have the quests in line. Now, for a new class, I’ll keep the x12, but do all planetary quests first, or as many as I can handle and then jump back to the storyline. Reason is to get a handle on class mechanics and practice them till I figure out my rotations.
Hope you keep having fun in SWTOR, I know occasionally it can be frustrating but over all it is pretty fun business =)
That’s one way of doing things- do planetary first, then class. I wished quests in SWTOR were divided three-fold: class quests, planetary quests and sidequests. That would make it easier to follow the main theme of each planet. There is- maybe- another alternative: do flashpoints as you reach them, maybe even twice. That could help with credits/equipment.
Yes, i still like SWTOR- got my week’s summary from Raptr yesterday and was shocked when i saw what it showed: about 10 hrs SWTOR and other than that…nothing. I didn’t even realize it was a week since i last played FF14.
Haven’t played much in the weekend, though. The wheather is beautiful (almost 30 degrees celcius today (86 Fahrenheit), we visited some friends and as of today, our son is sick, so it might be some time until i get to play more again.
For the time being and after reading your post of today, i thought about just rolling an Imperial Agent. I’m not much of an empire guy, anyway, and will probably settle within the republic.
Totally understand on the faction preference, I think everyone has their favorite. Good to hear you are enjoying the weather out there. I just finished up Makeb with my Sniper, and without giving out spoilers, it had rather interesting and VERY different results than Damios my Gunslinger. gotta love Bio ware for throwing hitches into the over all plot.