My guildmate, Kris, recently wrote about SWTOR in review, covering the events that have occurred over the past three months. She invited everyone to contribute their own recap of their first three months in game and since I’m usually scrounging for anything that looks remotely like a blog topic, I thought I would get on board.

My story starts with the fact that as few as seven months ago, I was not at all intending to even try SWTOR. I mean, I enjoyed the original trilogy of movies, but other than those movies being a fondly remembered part of my youth, I never had much to do with the whole franchise.

Despite standing invitations to join a guild in SWTOR when it launched, I couldn’t see walking away from WoW.

But then shit happened in WoW. For all that the changes announced for MoP didn’t excite me, it was really guild-related stress that drove me into wanting the escape of a whole other game. A place where I could be someone else and have a blank slate. A place where I could hide¹ from the several people who made WoW something to be dreaded rather than enjoyed.

So ending up in a beta weekend for a game I had no intention of playing was pretty strange, but I am glad I got the exposure. I wrote about how I enjoyed the Sage and how it felt natural to me. I said I had found my main and was pleased that she would be my main from the get-go, and have the right name and everything.

And despite some taunting from Njessi, I was right. Alexx is 50 and my raiding main. The issue of my Trooper being leveled at nearly the same pace was resolved when I made the decision to ditch Dion and level at my pace, rather than wait around endlessly for him to get done with space battles or whatever had caught his wandering attention.

Although I am a notorious altoholic, I have only the Sage at level cap and, though I do have more than a handful of alts, I don’t spend a whole lot of time in game outside of my main. At least, not compared to prior MMO experience. Part of it is thanks to Biochem and the fact that for a little while there I was the only person in the guild who was working on Biochem on my main.

In fact, these days I mostly work on my alts when I want to have immediate access to a crew skill that I have a need for…

Though, when I had the brief disconnect from the game upon hitting 50 and finishing my class quests on the Sage, I do admit I hit the alts a little harder then.

Since then, I am happy to have finally started in on raiding and am enjoying that immensely, usually despite the bugs. Oddly enough, bugs could cause us to wipe all night on Soa and I wouldn’t be too fussed about it, but I do hate the travel time involved in running back after a wipe. Especially when the speeders bug out and drop you off about two stops too early.

All in all, I am enjoying myself in SWTOR and my guild is a wonderful place to be. The drive for progression in raiding makes up for the sudden drop-off of story elements and I’ve learned that it’s easy enough to scratch that particular itch even with a second run-through of the same class when one plays to the opposite side of the light/dark side spectrum.

I feel as though Alexx has come a long way and I am eager to see her go farther. I really believe we’ll be hitting up hard modes in raiding soon, not to mention there’s a patch right around the corner.

In three months, I guess you could say I’ve fallen in love with a new MMO. Not to the exclusion of being able to see the flaws and I certainly can’t help but compare it to WoW in some ways…. But none of that even matters so long as I have the Snark Side around me.

My takeaway after three months? The game and its mechanics are great but, as always, it’s the people I play with that make it home.