Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Are YOU HoT?

No, you filthy minder tosser. Are you the Hero of Tatooine?

SWG have, once again, rejuvinated this quest series. For better? For worse? Well, let me recap...

I did the original revamp of the Hot quest on TC (the original original HoT having been broke since before I started playing) and it was *fun*. My toon was an up and coming ranger and it was great to actually be able to, wait for this... *use the skills that were UNIQUE to my profession*.

As soon as it went Live (after about two weeks on TC, we used to cook 'em slow back then) I got my whole guild and out alts out and about, leading them through the squill cave, tracking the spawns, solving the BH's riddle, all good fun. And we got our 'ickle rings and tings.

The next few months were a laugh riot of tells and messages in planet chat with people looking for a ranger to "spawn teh mixture farmer" or "find meh teh pilot king" /boggle But it was easy money and I could happily charge a half mill for an hours tracking because of that player thought it was overpriced there was another two or three waiting.

I did notice it was getting harder to find the blighters, but, well, lifes like that. Then post NGE I had no tracking and was busy scouring Tat for Val/Jabba thugs to kill for Legacy.

So, we get the new HoT stuff on TC. I missed them at first as we don't get freaking notes of what's IN a publish for checking, doh. But yeah, there they were.... For one reason or another I wasn't ingame much so didn't test them or give feedback before they went to Live (like there was much chance with them flashing publishes to test for a few days now a days).

I'm doing htem with one of my newblish toons and, oh BOY are they boring. Static spawns? Pirates in a bunker with a bucketload of placeholders to kill before the leader finally spawns? Camping the wilderness for the moisture farmer? (Hah, being HoT is now a matter of being first to log on after a server reset and pouncing the buggers before anyone else gets to steal your cloudsong).

Yeah, back in the day it was sooo different.

There was this hermit, wandering the wastes. It was a chance encounter, a real adventure.... now? It's a tick box list of locations and a lot of sitting waiting. And I'm sorry, but sitting in a bunker staring at an empty chair is NOT gameplay dammit.

1 comment:

RickR said...

I remember setting a dozen or more waypoints, 2000m x 40m, so I could slowly drive a grid out in the middle of nowhere, TABbing to every yellow con looking for the bladeback boar and hoping there were no elite Tuskens out there to one-shot my ass (pre-CU). Took me 2 days to find the thing. The moisture farmer was a lucky thing on a tip-off I heard that he was seen on a line between the Squill Cave and Bestine. The pirate cave was a *tough* fight for a solo TKM/MDoc, not a pack of grey cons you could ignore. Getting to the bottom of the Squill Cave to talk to the hermit was a guild activity, you took a group and everyone could start the quest.
Oh, times they have a-changed.