Up On The Roof : SW:TOR

My subscription to Star Wars: The Old Republic is due to expire in a couple of days. I'm still playing regularly, so I'd probably have renewed for another month if it wasn't that I'm going to be away for the first two weeks of June, driving around Andalusia and Extremadura, drinking wine and looking at castles.

I'll almost certainly re-sub as soon as I get back. I'll be starting a twelve-week course of chemotherapy then, a follow-up to my surgery earlier in the year, and it's very likely I'll be off work for much of that so, depending on how well I tolerate the drugs, I could find myself with quite a lot of time to play and blog about MMORPGs.

That's what I call a picture window.

It occurred to me yesterday that before any of that happened - specifically, before the sub lapsed - there was one thing I ought to do. Spend my credits.

Perhaps the most obtrusive and potentially frustrating of all the restrictions placed on Free to Play accounts in the hope of persuading tight-fisted customers to open their wallets is the currency limit. F2P players can only hold 200k. Preferred status raises it to 350k.

Is it that a lot? It sounds like a lot. Until you play you can't really be sure and even then it takes a while to judge. The income stream you see at low level tells you next to nothing about your future earning capacity..

Reckon we could fix a bungee rope here, Corso? I'll let you be the first to test it.

All MMORPGs end up feeding more cash at higher levels but the degree to which it changes varies hugely from one game to another. In Guild Wars 2, for example,the cash you get from mob drops and "quest" rewards does improve over time but any increase is functionally meaningless, going from a few copper to a few silver in a game whose economy runs on gold.

If you want to make money in GW2 you have to go out and grind for mats to sell to other players, or play the Auction House flipping game. There's no direct route to a fortune. In EverQuest, on the other hand, the monetary value of quest rewards increases very significantly as you level up and NPCs will pay hundreds of platinum pieces for commonplace, higher level drops. You can make bank doing nothing but adventuring.

TOR is very definitely at the EQ end of that scale. Last night I decided I wanted to reach one million credits on my Smuggler before my subscription ended. I'd already passed a couple of hundred grand to my Agent but that still left the Smuggler sitting on just over 600k.

Hmm. I didn't think it would actually let me jump down here...

It took me no more than a couple of hours running Heroic Missions to make the extra 400k I needed. That really puts the 350k Preferred Currency Limit in perspective. It's about one session's income at Level 50, which does seem astonishingly mean-spirited.

The reason I wanted to hit a million was housing. Of course it was. Housing is the one thing guaranteed to make me dig into my savings in any MMORPG.

TOR's housing is not at all bad. Yes, it is a hook system, automatically rendering it inherently inferior to all free placement systems, regardless of any other factor, but as hook systems go it's a good one. In this case, though, my desires had nothing to do with decoration and everything to do with living space.

First time I've ever seen anyone make a feature of lack of safety protocols.

My Smuggler has the Coruscant Stronghold and the Agent has the corresponding version in Dromund Kaas. Both begin with three rooms. Those alone would probably be enough for most casual players, were it not for the many tempting, locked doors. And the view.

OMG the view! In the Coruscant apartment, as you gaze through the huge, panoramic windows at the sky, you see the traffic streaming past, the cranes silhouetted against the horizon, the skyscrapers and the clouds. In Dromund Kaas you see the endless rain pouring down the glass, the city outside blue with possibility and longing.

And you see your balcony. Each home has a huge, curving expanse of flat plasteel just waiting for you to come outside and enjoy. There's a pad fit to land a speeder and the low walls above the fatal drop speak volumes about health and safety regulations in a galaxy where life is cheap.

Can you run inside and fetch me a cushion?

Opening each extra room in your Stronghold costs money, either Credits or Cartel Coins. Most of the unlocks are very reasonable. I'd already bought my way to the upper floors and opened most of the rooms in Coruscant even before I subbed, just as a way of staying under the miserly 200k cap.

Opening two stairways and five rooms had cost me less than 200k in total. All that was left was the Garage at 250k and the Balcony. The Balcony costs a million, twice as much as all the other rooms added together. And it's worth it.

I was in two minds whether to open Coruscant or Dromund Kaas. It would be very helpful if you could wander around an empty apartment before buying, as you can in EQ2. Maybe you can but if so I don't know how to do it.

I do know how to google though. I searched for "SWTOR Strongholds" and found a website of that exact name. And they have video tours. Here's the one for Coruscant. The part that shows the balcony begins just after the nine minute mark.

I watched it. Then I watched the Dromund Kaas one. All that rain looks better from the inside. I went for Coruscant.

Of course, had I thought of this a week ago, I could easily have earned enough credits to buy both. I still could, I guess, in the forty-eight hours before my sub ends. I will, eventually.

There's no need to hurry. That's the real joy of housing in MMORPGs. It persists more persistently than any of the supposedly persistent features upon which the genre depends. Buy a house and it holds its relevance, value and utility for the lifetime of the game. Tell that to your armor or your weapons.

You know spectacular sunsets are caused by air pollution, right?

If anything keeps me coming back to TOR for the long haul it won't be the story or the combat. It'll be the housing. I can imagine logging in after months away just to go out on that balcony and watch the sky change color.

I guess I probably should start thinking about getting some furniture if I'm going to stay. I wonder if you can buy a rooftop pool?