12/09/2013

Following The News

I've realised that for someone who's enough of a fan of SWTOR to maintain a personal blog about it, I'm pretty bad at keeping up with news about the game. For example it was on Massively of all places that I read about the fact that access to Rise of the Hutt Cartel content will be given to subscribers for free from now on. I'm kind of wondering how that is going to work in practice. If you're on Makeb and let your subscription lapse, will you get booted off the planet?

Of course there were the usual complaints about how this is a slap in the face of the people who did pay for it, yadda yadda yadda, though there was a surprising amount of reasonable opposition as well this time around. Yes, seeing something drop in price compared to what you personally paid for it is always a bit disappointing, but it's also something that happens all the time, not just in video games. Nobody goes around complaining to real life shops about how they dare to drop their prices over time (or at least I hope nobody does). Anyway, RotHC cost very little to begin with, and weren't we going on about how subscribers should automatically get access to all the content anyway? Better late than never I say.

What was I talking about again? Ah yes, news. Back when I played World of Warcraft, I basically just followed WoW Insider and that provided me with everything I wanted to know. Whatever else you want to say about that site, it's comprehensive in its news reporting about the game and offers a good balance between news and opinion pieces. Unfortunately I haven't really found anything comparable for The Old Republic. I think TORWars has been giving it a good go, but it's a bit hit and miss in its reporting (which I can't really blame them for, it's run by what, two people) and I have to admit that I'm not very fond of the site's layout.

The game's official communications channels are actually pretty good: I like the articles on the website, including the more whimsical ones like the recent interviews with Baron Deathmark - bonus points for choosing a quest giver from Ord Mantell to be the interviewer! I just don't like how they tend to send you back and forth between the official website and places like Facebook and Twitter. Who has time to keep up with all of that? The only time I regularly check the official Twitter feed is when it's server maintenance day and I want to know when they'll come back up. And of course there is always a lot of interesting information that they won't report on the official site.

Lately the official forums have contained some very interesting stuff as well, what with the whole election of class representatives and the class Q&As. However, who genuinely wants to read the official forums all the time? So I only ever hear about updates on there when a guildie decides to tell me.

How do you keep up with the state of the game?

5 comments :

  1. I find that Dulfy has an alarming amount of information up very soon after it appears on the public test center. I subscribe to the swtor-only RSS feed. Subscribing has the benefit of never having to deal with layouts I don't like.

    Looking through my feed reader, I read Torwars like you. Also Corellian Run Radio (not just a podcast!), Force Junkies, Darth Hater, SWTOR Life, Ootinicast, Massively (SWTOR feed only), and Tor-Fashion :)

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    1. Yeah but can you keep up with things without reading ten different sites? That's kind of the rub for me.

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    2. I guess it doesn't bother me just because I do use feedly to read everything and it is all just organized in order of publication, regardless of source.

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  2. The problem Massively has is that it covers a LOT of ground, so you don't get the focused reporting that WoW Insider has. I swear some of those folks must have WoW Insider as their main job, because they lurk all over the place.

    I wish I could do a gaming job full time, but I kind of like to eat. And keep my house. And my kids fed and clothed.

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  3. I'm just like you, I really love SWTOR but I don't really bother that much about news. I generally just enjoy the game and don't really care about it. I don't remember the names of all the patches and releases of new cosmetic armour. Rather, if I discover amazing looking cosmetics in game, then I'll investigate how to get it and try to achieve that. Only if I hear about something that personally affects me (like the removal of ranked 8vs8 warzones) then I might 'activate'.

    So yeah, I pretty much live under a digital rock, and I like it that way. Somehow it feels the right immersive level of a game. In RL I already need to find out where the last earthquake was all the time to prove my environment that I'm not an alien, I don't need to do that in games. ;)

    Besides, if something important is about to happen, Tiger follows the forums quite vividly, so I'll hear from it that way. I'll guess I'll keep him around for a bit. ^^

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