Quick Peek: Rise of the Hutt Cartel

This has not been a good week for me when it comes to gaming. Two game releases I was watching out for and not enough time to properly review either. Ah well, at least there are these first impressions.

So Star Wars: The Old Republic finally released it's first expansion, Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Other than the level cap increase from 50 to 55, there are quite a few nice changes. Class talents and abilities have been tuned for the additional levels, but I cannot honestly say if any balance issues were fixed or if any new ones arose. There were some interesting playstyle changes due to some change, like adding yet another ability to the Jedi Shadow tank rotation for additional threat. I also did like making the Mercenary's Kolto Missile baseline rather than a talent.

Interestingly, gear levels didn't quite jump as high as I would have thought. A gear level of 126 is recommended for level 50 hard mode flashpoints and 146 for level 55 ones. That means that anyone already in Black Hole/Campaign gear will be able to just jump right into the group finder once they hit 55. This also means that they already outgear much of the new leveling content.

Case in point, my own Jedi Guardian is mostly in Black Hole/Rakata gear and the first set of quests really did not pose much of a problem. I was even ambushed by a level 51 champion droid while AFK (lesson: never afk in hostile territory) and still beat it with my companion dead and was down to 64% health when I got back to my keyboard. The first Heroic 2+ quest did not pose any challenge at all to solo. I am pretty sure newer players or those who has new 50s would find things challenging and may want to run some level 50 flashpoints to help gear up.

As far as new content goes, Makeb has a pretty interesting story. Granted, I've only finished one set of missions, so I cannot give much of an opinion on it overall. Same with the new operation and additional hard mode flashpoints.

From what I have seen, Rise of the Hutt Cartel is pretty much just more SWTOR. Whether that is a good or bad thing remains to be seen. I will be playing more once my time frees up, but I have yet to get really excited about it. Time will tell if Bioware manages to bring the game back up into prominence or simply maintained the status quo.

Highlights

• Finally! Transferrable set bonuses on old set gear! That has been on the want list for like...over a year. Better late then never I suppose. Now my Shadow and Assassin can look like less of an idiot. This also means adaptive gear is way, way more valuable. Well, the good looking ones anyway.
• Following up with the first point is that new gear looks absolutely awful. I really, really need to know what goes on when they design the gear.
• Consolidated planetary currency. Thank goodness for that. A definite plus for those leveling characters and they can allow currency earned to be carried over to the next planet.
• Bioware made sure to get more voice acting done for new content which is always very much appreciated. Nothing irks me more than content where my character does not say anything; likely due to not being able to get the original voice actors.