Vant and Anstal are max level

Well, like it says. Vant Galaide, my bounty hunter mercenary (I created him before you could be any tech class playing the hunter story) and Anstal Tane, my smuggler scoundrel (likewise) are now both at max level, although they're either just finished or just finishing Hoth. The remaining planets, I can breeze through, just doing the class stories and ignoring or playing, as I please, any other missions. 

However, I'm in the process of relocating and starting another job. This means that I'll be very busy. My subscription, which I always buy in the 2 month increments, because I never know when I'm going to step away from it for a while, expires in just over a week, and I think I'm going to go ahead and let it lapse until I'm set up again. I've determined two things:

1) I'm pretty sure that I can finish the galactic season 6 level 100 before my subscription lapses, so I'll go ahead and do so, and pocket all of the benefits, the last of which I'll pick up in the next couple of days of the new week, I believe. If for some reason I come up short and can't finish it, I'll decide at that point what to do.

2) I figured out why Voss was so laggy after coming back; as part of 7.3, they redrew the assets. So now, Voss doesn't look as good as it used to, and it's laggy, at least on my computer. They're already signaled that they're doing the same thing for Hutta for 7.5, whenever it launches. If Hutta becomes too laggy to be fun to play, I'm pretty about done with the game, honestly, until I can upgrade or replace my rig. That's disappointing, but I'm starting to lean into addressing some of my other hobbies and letting SWTOR rest for a while. That will for sure make that a reality.

In any case, here's the slightly updated Vant Galaide Hoth look. Then space opera in general will probably take a back seat to sword & sorcery.

EDIT: What I think I'll do, actually, is go ahead and do Saxon Hettar's Hutta stuff sooner rather than later. That way, in case Hutta turns out really laggy after the graphical "upgrade", I don't have to spend much time there unless I want to. I've already moved Beorn Hengest off Hutta; he finished it a month or so ago and is waiting to continue his story on the Fleet.

Meanwhile, like I said, I'm going to grind to the end of seasons in the next day or two, and then I may not play for a few weeks, my subscription will lapse, and I'll be relocated in a new place when I start again. We'll see if the break becomes a discontinuity that makes me not play nearly as much when it's over or not (I suspect that maybe it will be, because I'm already revisiting DFX, my fantasy setting, and thinking about new things to do there). Also, the double XP and half priced collection unlock sale is still ongoing, although I'm not sure what I want to unlock right now. There are some pretty pricey things I've got my eye on on the GTN, but it seems unlikely that I'll get them so soon. We'll see. I'll have 1200 or so cartel coins just from the Seasons rewards that I'll get today or tomorrow. But that doesn't mean that I'll have anything meaningful to spend them on right now that I really want.

Anyway, here's Graggory, which even though it's one of my earliest names is actually one of my favorites because it's got that Star Warsian "not quite a real name, but almost" feel to it like Han Solo or Lando Calrissian, sporting a 50s spaceman suit.

UPDATE: Finished the season. I think I'll do a little bit when I have time of some other stuff, put not much. I'll come back to SWTOR at some point after my relocation.

Who said Hoth was no fun?

Why do characters always complain about Hoth and Tatooine? Those are two of my favorite planets, and yeah; if I were a real live space traveler, I'd go to both for sightseeing.

Here's Vant Galaide taking Mako, who despite her bold protestations really is just a pretty sidekick, on vacation to see the volcanos and crazy ice crystals on Hoth in the Molten Rift section of the Crystal Wastes.

Vant is about to hit level 80, but I think I'll finish the Hoth planetary story with him anyway before I retire that aspect of his game. Then I'll turn to Mirabeau Tane and have him finish Tatooine. Now that the swoop bikers are gone, it'll feel quiet and natural again. Then we'll see. Maybe I should finish someone else's earlier planet while the double XP is still running so I get ahead in the game. Also, I've got seasons objectives to do, including GSI (again; I'm already legendary reputation) and a bunch of Nar Shaddaa Heroics, and some Alderaan champion-level guys to kill. I'll figure out who benefits the most from doing those, so they can grind some 200% XP.

However, I have some very busy days ahead of me, with less free time than I'm used to (although I already don't have as much as I'd like) so it may actually be hard to finish everything that I want to this week, and the next several weeks may all be kind of quiet in terms of SWTOR progress. In fact, it could be so bad, that when my subscription expires in a little under two weeks, I may let it linger for another couple of weeks or so before I try to restart it. I might just be too busy to play much at all for the next month or so.

Sigh. We'll see. TBD on if this is really going to be a problem or not, but I suspect that it will.

I think it's curious that ice plants seem to be quite commonplace. More than half of the planetary (or lunar, actually, although I'm lumping them together for purposes here) bodies in our solar system are icy. But they're not like Hoth, which is like Antarctica across a whole planet. If the atmosphere is breathable rather than sitting in lakes and ponds of liquid or even frozen nitrogen, hydrogen, etc. then it's a pretty tame ice planet. That's why all of the "oh noez, Hoth is so cold" stuff makes me laugh. Europa? Triton? Pluto? C'mon, Hoth is tame.

May the Fourth be with you

May the Fourth is obviously a fake holiday. Nobody thinks this is a real holiday just like nobody thinks National Talk Like a Pirate Day is a real holiday. It's just kind of fun as a pun on the iconic phrase, and an excuse to do something Star Wars related if you're a fan in any capacity.

I'm not really a fan of the modern franchise much at all. I do still like the older, 12+ year old content (and some of the more recent content) from the game SWTOR, obviously, since I still play it a fair bit. I'm still a fan of the original trilogy, although not as much as I used to be, as I now see them with more jaded and cynical eyes.

I actually saw this recently. It's not very accurate, even though these are guys that I otherwise often appreciate their commentary. Nobody hits every pitch, I guess.

To celebrate May the 4th we should all appreciate what a Boomer institution Star Wars is:

• Luke forsook his rural upbringing to take part in a political campaign he had no place in. 

• Leah was a strong independent feminist. 

• Obi-Wan was a childless hippie who devoted his life to eastern mysticism. 

• Han is a wandering deadbeat who lives with his dog and is obsessed with his car. 

• Darth Vader abandoned his family to pursue his career. 

• The robots are in an openly gay relationship. 

• Everyone treats the empire like the great evil while fully enjoying the comforts and protections it provides.

Well, George Lucas is a Boomer, and he's a "shy, sensitive" Boomer who went to film school in the late 60s early 70s and he's from California. Even Modesto isn't exactly normal anymore. Maybe it was when he lived there as a kid and teenager.

That said:

• This is a fair point. I do get tired of the trope of the bored starry-eyed young person who is unappreciative of his idyllic rural life. It's worse in Disney's Beauty & the Beast, but it's pretty bad here too. Of course, Tatooine isn't quite as idyllic as a romanticized interpretation of rural Medieval France, but still. I'm one of those guys who really appreciates the desert. If I could live in the relatively empty western Utah desert, I would.
• Leah (sic) was no such thing. She was sassy and that occasionally bordered on unlikeable and obnoxious, and she did have a leadership role in the organization that I presume was based on name recognition (although she did seem to grow into the talent to manage it), but she was neither a feminist nor very independent, at least until Jar Jar Abrams took over in the sequel trilogy.
• Yeah, I'm with you there. I have less regard for the Jedi than I did. I don't think Lucas meant to ruin the reputation of the Jedi with the prequel trilogy, but that's what ended up happening anyway because he simply didn't have the wherewithal to write an honest to goodness hero, being completely unacquainted with what makes one. In retrospect, even Obiwan's (and Yoda's) behavior in the originals is pretty contemptible.
• Han was a criminal. Not sure what he was smuggling, but it was illegal. He's a gunrunner or a drugdealer at best. They didn't focus on that, because it's the classic case of the anti-hero with a heart of gold trope. Not sure if that's a trope that rose up via the Boomers, but I've certainly seen it in other works that are older than they are.
• Well, that's pushing it. No doubt that was thrown in there more as a joke than something to be taken seriously.
• I do wonder why everyone is so eager to make regular guy friends out to be gay. Of course, C-3PO's voice doesn't help. But it's a trope too; the overly fussy, neurotic butler type. I actually thought that Anthony Daniels was himself gay, but turns out he's married to a wife and all that, so it seems unlikely.
• We don't see much in the way of what comforts and protections it does provide, so that's another handwavey attempt to make it current. I do think that it's curious that they're all celebrating in the redone end scene of Return of the Jedi (Special Edition) on Tatooine, where Tatooine wasn't exactly an Imperial world, I thought. Luke himself mentions early on that of course he hates the Empire but it's so far away. And the Stormtroopers looking for the droids by canvasing the streets and killing Jawas and farmers is hardly what I'd call comfort or protection.

Anyway, I'm probably taking this too seriously by even responding and rebutting some of this stuff. No doubt it was just meant to be silly. But still.

The other fake holiday this weekend, of course, was Cinco de Mayo. This is clearly not an American holiday, but ironically, it's not really a Mexican holiday either—my Google search AI seems to suggest that Mexican immigrants as early as the late 19th century celebrated it, but it was actually a bigger holiday in America than in Mexico, at least until recently. Nobody seems to know exactly why or how it became a thing, especially in America, but I think it mostly was just an excuse to eat Mexican food and drink Mexican beer or something. Because I avoid shopping on Sundays if I can (when I was a kid in Texas, most places still weren't open on Sundays) I ate out Mexican (by myself, because I got back in town earlier than my wife) and played some SWTOR to get both "holidays" taken care of. Honestly, in some ways I think even though these aren't real holidays, that was a more significant celebration than most Americans do for Memorial Day or Veterans Day, for instance, which are real holidays. And everyone seems to have forgotten all about Presidents' Day in the wake of the federal government trying to push the fake holiday of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on us, which nobody celebrates either; it's just a free day off work.

Anyway, because of May the Fourth, we're in a collections sale (50%) so I spent just a few bucks to get some cartel coins so I could unlock my collections before the event ends. I'll get a bunch of free cartel coins soon from the last part of the Seasons, but I don't think it'll happen in time for me to spend it during the sale, so I'll squirrel them away for something else. It's also double XP for two weeks, I think, although now we're already halfway over that. I grinded a bunch of heroics with Gael Heckett so I could get him from level 58 to 66 so I could equip my newly revised Corellia outfit idea on him. I also played Hoth with Anstal Tane and got him to max level without having to do the bonus series or spill over into Belsavis. I'm doing the same now with Vant Galaide, and I did a bit of the same with Mirabeau Tane.

On the last, I'm going to wait until the swoop bikes event is over tomorrow to really do the Dune Sea section with him, because it looks ridiculous, and I prefer to take my story playthroughs a little more seriously than that, or at least straight and not farce. Shouldn't have any trouble getting Vant to max level either (he's just shy of level 78 right now, and he still has 3/4 of Hoth to go, more or less) but if for some reason I don't quite make it, I'm still not doing the Bonus Series or the planetary faction stories on Belsavis or beyond with him. No need; I'll hit max level just with the basics easy enough shortly after if I'm going to be that close.

In any case, it's satisfying to see level go up faster than normal, although at these high levels, it still seems to take some effort to get there. But getting them done is nice, because then it's one less thing to worry about, and I can just concentrate on the story without feeling like I'm grinding because I have to; I can just do whatever I want to of the missions (minus the story stuff, which I have to do, of course, in order to move forward).

Anyway, here's Vant on Hoth. I've also included his "cheap cowboy" outfit too, because I happened to have a handy screenshot of it, but I didn't really create this specifically to play anywhere.