SWTOR: Level 50 and Beyond

After 139 hours and 32 days, I finally hit level 50 in SWTOR. I still haven’t finished the Trooper story though. I have a bunch of things left to do as a level 50. I have:

1. Story to finish

2. PvP goodness in level 50 only bracket

3. Get love and finish companion stories

4. Start doing Flashpoints because I skipped most of them.

5. Start doing Operations with Delusions of Grandeur

6. Check out the new patch content

7. Take a look around Ilum

8. Do space missions and upgrade ship

9. Gear treadmill

10. Get money for my speeder collection. I’m looking at the CE only speeder for 1,000,000 credits.

Here is a cool chart of all the dungeons in SWTOR:

As you can see, I have a lot to do in SWTOR at level cap. The game is fairly new and BioWare is trying to pump out new content as fast as the can. They already mentioned a new planet in March, phase 2 of Legacy system, a new Warzone, and more Flashpoint goodness. Further in the future the have Act 4, and 5 of story arcs coming.

I’m pretty confident SWTOR is going to do just fine. As long as they keep pumping out updates and fixes on a regular basis, they will keep the grunt of their subscribers. They need to keep up on killing bugs and nerfing Inquisitors/Jedi Sorcerers.

I think they need to focus on getting more planets made for an alternate leveling experience. It is one of the difficulties with having a story based MMO and the main story concreted on specific planets.the leveling tends to feel forced on a second character of the same faction. Possibly they could have an end quest on each planet that has a light or dark decision and that dictates what planet you go to next. For example:

Quest: The final quest on Coruscant ends going to Taris. If you choose the light side points you go to Taris, but if you choose the Darkside points you go to Dantooine. To save money the main story can stay the same on both planets. Instead of saving the galaxy or following X to Taris, the main story could fit on alternate planet.

It’s just an idea to make light and dark choices mean a bit more than just a gear choice. It also makes the game appealing to alternate character creation. It does make the planets a empty if population is spread out leveling, but BioWare already stated they want 500 planets by 2052 or some crazy year. No matter what, at sometime in the future, even if a million people were on 1 server, you will be the only one on X planet. Server population really doesn’t matter. it’s the illusion of population that counts.

Now that I am level 50, I’m looking forward to all the other stuff I can do. It might not be as much as Blizzard’s 7 year old game or as free as a sandbox, but it is still fun and there is plenty to look forward too. It might be the same as this game or that game once you you hit level cap, but that is what I was expecting. I wasn’t delusional in to thinking I wasn’t going to gear grind or Warzone hop. I knew those were the things I enjoy at level cap. It my own personal Star-WoW and I love it.

There comes a time in gaming, when I just feel comfortably married to my genre of choice and not in puppy love anymore.