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| It's been a long road... |
Greetings all!
It’s hard to believe that we are about to celebrate the
10th anniversary of The Old Republic, and the impending release of
the Legacy of the Sith expansion!
It’s kind of funny that the last time I posted a blog on here was a little over
two years ago, and it was my reaction to the Onslaught expansion announcement. And I hope to eventually start
doing this more, and/or revitalize my SWTOR YouTube Channel (Work permitting,
of course!)
But, the main reason why I am writing today's blog? I thought that, with the 10th anniversary at the end of the month, and my personal 10th anniversary of playing TOR in both October (Beta), and December (Early Access), I wanted to look back at how I came to play The Old Republic, how it would eventually become a pretty big part of my life, and help me get into video editing, and even graduate college! Now, I might be a little fuzzy on some of the details, as it has been over twelve years, but I think it’ll be a good read.
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| The Gallifreyan Legacy. Or at least the main characters in The Gallifreyan Legacy. |
A long time ago, I had just started my Junior Year of
High School when The Old Republic was
announced, and I'll be honest... I was very, very unhappy that instead of Knights
of the Old Republic III, we were getting an MMO. I know that is a surprise
to anyone who follows me on Twitter and knows how much I love TOR, but it's
true. The very idea of it; that instead of finishing out Revan and The Exile’s
story, we’d be getting an MMO, that most likely wouldn’t even have any
connection to KotOR I and II were enough to make me mad. It’s funny to look back
at the various connections to KotOR I and II in-game (from the Revanite
questline on Dromund Kaas, The Jedi Prisoner, and Foundry Flashpoints, to Shadow of Revan, and Echoes of Oblivion), and see how wrong
my seventeen-year-old self was.
Of course, High School was already rough for me, and 2008
was the start of a stressful few years, and so, I was just stressed/grumpy in
general. But I was so mad about not getting a KotOR III, I decided to write my
own KotOR III fan fiction (Well, actually THREE KotOR III's; Part one set
between KotOR I and II with Revan, the second set after KotOR II with The Exile,
and then 'KotOR III' with the “True Sith Empire”), and I got pretty far into
the planning and writing the first few chapters, but school and getting my
graduation requirements finished took priority, so I put that on the back
burner.
By the time that The Threat of Peace comic was
being posted to the SWTOR website, I had, for the most part, forgotten about
TOR, and my initial dislike of it. I still wasn’t sold on it, but I was willing
to give it a chance, especially after I saw the Deceived Cinematic, after which I made my forum account, and
registered for the beta. And a year later, in 2010, I won a signed (But non-personalized)
copy of Fatal Alliance from
Del-Rey books, and while I liked it, it didn't grab me as much as the other TOR
novels eventually would.
Now, I was laser-focused on graduating High School (Which for my High School
was a lot of work, as we had to do a certain number of Shadowing and
Internships, PLUS a Senior Project), so I completely forgot about TOR, and my
prior feelings towards it. But that was about to change.
I was hanging out with my two (or three, I kind of forgot
who was all there) best friends, and we were watching either the G4 or Xfinity
coverage of E3 2011, and I saw something that said "Star Wars", and
said "Huh, Star Wars? I wonder what that is. Let’s watch it.”
It was the “Return” Cinematic… And
that was when I knew that A) I was going to be playing TOR, and B) that my main
would be a Smuggler. Out of the six Cinematic Trailers released (Yes, I am
counting the HK-51 Revealed trailer
as a cinematic Trailer), Return is my
favorite one of all, and I love that BioWare has rereleased those Blur
cinematics in 4K! Nico Okarr is one of my favorite characters, mainly because
of his ship, dual-wielding blasters, and his outfit, which inspired a lot of
outfits that my Smuggler wears, and his outfit, and ship look FANTASTIC in 4K.
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| My Smuggler's Original outfit when I first started recording the Smuggler story in 2013, and his new outfit this year |
I know, it’s a heck of a turn to go from hating TOR to wanting to play it. But I wasn’t at the point I am now, where I love the game 110% (Most of the time). I started down that path after I read the Deceived novel (My second favorite TOR novel), but what turned me to eventually love the game was (Finally) getting a beta invite.
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| Getting this email turned that day into a fantastic one. |
Monday, October 3rd, 2011 at 11:38 AM; I was in my
English lit class when the email came in, so I didn't see it until I got out of
class a half-hour later. I was very surprised to have gotten in the beta,
mostly because I totally forgot I had even registered for the beta test! The
only downside was that I wouldn’t be able to get home until 4:30PM, and back
then, I didn’t think the IT department would have liked me installing and
playing the game on their network. (Now that I’ve worked here for three years,
it might be a different story…)
By the time I went to bed that night (Thank the Force my
class the next day wasn’t until 3:30 in the afternoon!), I had just finished
Ord Mantell, with my Smuggler/Soon-to-be Gunslinger, and was ready to head off
to Carrick Station, and then to Coruscant. And after playing it for a few days,
I knew I was going to be playing TOR for a long time!
I started listening to TOROCast & TOR Wars,
downloaded and was watching the different dev videos and trailers from the
website, and my laptop background was a rotating selection of the wallpapers,
and concept art from the game. Suffice it to say, I was obsessed with TOR.
About two weeks later, after going to nearly every GameStop in town (We had
four GameStop’s in my hometown in 2011), I managed to grab a pre-order for the Collector’s
Edition from the local Best Buy (Even though I had to go to the next town over to
get the CE when it was released). Every day from when I got into the beta, to
launch, I was following the stuff on the official forums, and the SWTOR Subreddit,
working my way through the three SWTOR novels, while also spending most of my
free time (After homework and classes) checking stuff out in the beta, and
listening to the different fan run SWTOR podcasts. Speaking of, who else
remembers the video “review” that Gamepro released before launch, and how… bad
that video was?
Even though I had played the starting planets with all
eight classes, I knew that the Smuggler would be my main class. The Male
Smuggler VA is fantastic (And does the sarcastic lines perfectly. One of my
favorite Smuggler specific sarcastic lines was in the most recent Flashpoint;
Secrets of the Enclave), the companions are funny, and the XS Stock Light
Freighter is beautiful (I mean, she’s the lovechild of the Ebon Hawk, and the Millennium
Falcon. What’s not to love?)
I had a very “SWTOR Heavy” Christmas and Birthday in
2011; I had ‘gotten myself” the CE for Christmas (With a little help from my
parents, so it was a birthday gift from them), and grabbed the Prima Explorer’s
Guide (Which I was kind of disappointed in, as I expected to be a strategy
guide with stuff about the various quests and such), and the Blood of the Empire and Threat of Peace Trade paperbacks, and my
dad got me the Art & Making of Book for my Birthday.
Even though I was a full-time student for half of the
time I was playing SWTOR, I have been subscribed pretty much since launch,
except for a small week or two gaps in October of 2014 where I had to buy a textbook and software for a class instead of my Sub, which then I fixed that issue
and resubbed as soon as I (Which came
back to bite me in the butt and caused me to miss out on the Fifth Anniversary
Galactic Alliance Statue during the fifth anniversary, and if the rumor I saw
is accurate, will bite me in the butt again this year).
While not playing TOR, I was working towards an
Associates in Theater Arts degree at my local Community College. I was a
theater kid in High School, and when I needed to figure out my degree path in
College, Theater Arts made sense. Until a year later, at the start of my third
semester when I realized that while I love theater... I don't love it enough to
get a degree in it! So, I worked on my General Ed stuff for the next few
semesters and had hoped I would find a degree path that I would love.
Eventually, I found the degree path for me, and, it was all because of TOR!
The first trailer (And video) that I ever edited. Still proud of it to this day!
In mid-2012, during the “Dark Times” just after the big
layoffs at BioWare Austin, I had started seeing rumors everywhere online ranging
from TOR was going to a free to play model to TOR was going to be shut down,
and fearing the latter option, I decided to start recording the Smuggler story
(With hopes I could record the other seven class stories), as I wanted to have
some memory of my characters in case the game went bye-bye. As I was recording
and editing those separate cutscenes into their own videos, I found that I
really enjoyed video editing. My first few videos were rough, as you can see if
you look at my YouTube Channel (Insert Shameless plug here) but I started
teaching myself new techniques, read some editing tutorials online, and slowly
branched out into making things like trailers for the class stories (Like
above). A year later, I found out that my college offered a Video Editing
degree, and I switched degrees, and started working towards my associate's
degree in Video Editing & Effects Production in the spring of 2014.
The best thing about taking the Editing classes required for my degree was that
I was able to make whatever video I wanted for the final, and so two of the
three final videos were SWTOR related (And one was Mass Effect related). The
first one I did was a tribute/fan trailer for Revan, to celebrate the release
of Shadow of Revan, and the second
one was a class story trailer for the Jedi Knight Class story. Although it took
longer than I expected, since a handful of my classes actually transferred
between degrees, my grandma moving in with my mom and I, and a few unplanned
breaks during my college career (I wasn’t always the best student at the start
of my college career), but I finally Graduated College in May of 2018, and,
other than my own hard work and dedication, it was mostly because of TOR!
And, in a roundabout way, if it wasn’t for TOR getting me into video editing, I most likely would not have gotten my current job at my Alma mater. Ok, maybe my previous Call Center job, and computer knowledge helped too, but… I like to think it was because of that.
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| Those Heroic Space Missions were a pain... |
It’s funny to look back at the last 10 years and see how
far I’ve come from the MMO newbie I was when I started to a… well, not sure I’d
totally call myself an MMO Veteran, as I still haven’t done an Operation,
though I’ve done my fair share of World Bosses. But… now that I found a guild, maybe
that will change in 2022! Of course, I just have to be more social in said
guild! Ha-ha
I mean, when I first started out, I would never have been
able to beat those Heroic Space Missions, or had the patience to go around and
use the Seeker Droid to complete the Dreed Seed and Star Forger armor sets.
Ten years later, I did both, along with other various achievements (Although,
working from home in 2020 gave me extra time during the day to do that stuff).
And now I’m in the process of getting the remaining Renown Achievements before
they are removed in 7.0. I did the same back before 6.0 with the Galactic
Command Achievements before that was replaced with Renown. Thank the Force 7.0
got pushed out to February of next year, and there is a Double Rewards Event
starting next week!
And of course, there is the “SWTORFamily” over on Twitter!
Until recently, I never was in a guild; not for a lack of wanting to, but I
haven’t found the right guild, and when I joined a few guilds at launch, they
all pretty much died two weeks after I joined (It felt like I was a Black Widow
when it comes to guilds! Ha-ha), and apart from a few times a year, usually around
my birthday, my friends don’t really play TOR, So I am pretty much a
solo player, or as I like to say a “Carebear PVE player who occasionally does
Warzones and Flashpoints. But, the #SWTORFamily on Twitter are a great… well,
SWTOR Family; lots of cool players and content creators over there (Even a Dev
or two)! I may not always agree with some of their takes, but
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| Me with a few of the BW Devs. Not sure any of them are still working on the Game... |
And speaking of Devs, I was able to go to the one
Community Cantina that was held in Colorado in 2014. And that was a great time!
It was nice to know I wasn’t the only person playing TOR in Colorado, and I got
(Yet another) SWTOR T-Shirt. Sadly, it was the only in-person Cantina I was
able to go to, since the rest have been held at Conventions that I can’t afford
to go to. (Seriously, BioWare, if you want to do another Cantina event in
person after COVID, we can hold it in my backyard. I’ll bring snacks!)
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| Happy Life Day! |
Ten years ago today, was when I got into Early Access. And
looking back at the last ten years; the ups and downs in 2012, the seven (soon
to be eight) expansions, staying up late those first few weeks after the game
launched and playing my first Smuggler, and everything I’ve done since… It’s
been a hell of a ride, and I can’t wait to see where this ride goes next!
