This CAN be fun

ImageI haven’t been hitting any PvP in the game exceptionally hard yet, focusing instead more on the single-player, story-mode leveling game. Still, I have played a number of instances of each of the 3 options for instanced PvP, and even had a smattering of 1v2 open-world PvP in Alderaan. The point I’m trying to make clear, is that I have experienced what the game offers in PvP format more or less, and up until last night was mostly underwhelmed. However, I saw a glimmer of the possibility of fun last night. I played my first genuinely fun scenario (warzone, battleground, or whatever the hell it’s called) in SW:TOR last night.

For a nice change of pace, it started as a fresh game, in lieu of my typical replacement of someone who left and opened a spot. I sat in the staging area for the Alderaan fight, which consists of a familiar 3-point capture map. WAR vets: think Gates of Ekrund or Nordenwatch. I was pleasantly surprised to see a guildie who had happened to queue into the match as well. He as the scissors, and me as the rock, went to work. We weren’t even on voice comms together, but clearly, we both knew what we were doing. It continues to astound me how two competent players can play together, without any communication, but still do what is needed on a fairly competent level.

Moments like that make me think there’s the chance for cooperative, competitive play here, and it gives me hope. If the competition can match it, and wait around long enough for me to hit cap, there’s a chance that the PvP “game” might be worth sticking around for. I’m not sure of it, but I have a seed of doubt now where before there was only certainty a two month subscription. In the end, it was a close match, with a good amount of back and forth, and we squeaked out the win with a very narrow margin. The Republic doesn’t seem to win much, so anytime I get the “W” I’m a bit surprised.

Something there that wasn’t there before

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I'm a dad, I play disney for my daughter in the car. She loves it. Get over it.

As I’m sure you’re all aware, last night was the opening of the open Beta for Rift. You may also recall my relatively luke-warm reception of the game. I’ve said it elsewhere, but I can’t recall if I explicitly stated it here, I had zero intention of playing the game at launch, or after launch. It was a good, clean, crisp, well polished rehashing of everything I’ve done in the past in every other themepark fantasy game. My excito-meter wasn’t exactly breaking the glass. In fact, I hadn’t even played any of the close beta’s beyond the third when I made my UI video, my disinterest was that low.

Last night, saw me in the game. A strange confluence of events left me with no other outlet of MMO-dom. Both EVE and CoH had patches to download that required a whole 10s of minutes, and I’m damned if I’m going to wait around that long to play a game. My wife was happily dominating time on our PS3, playing the copy of Katamari Forever I got for her birthday. WAR, I found out, my subscription had ended, and I didn’t feel a particular urge to re-up, as I hadn’t even played in a number of weeks, and couldn’t recall when my sub had actually expired (I’ll revisit this later).  So, I looked at my Rift icon, thought, what the heck, I’ll start the patcher and see which game wins in the patch-race.

Rift finished first.

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