Breaking news everyone, I stopped playing Star Wars: The Old Republic! Now before you mourn or rejoice, let me clarify. I did not quit the game or unsubscribe. This is not my final blog post and Episode 25 of the State of the Old Republic remains on schedule for a February 14th release. If anything, my time spent in a galaxy far, far away has increased.
Due to the CXP bonanza that is the Galactic Command event I no longer play the game as intended. I have reduced this great escape of a world into a singular mind-numbing activity; Running Chapter II – A Dream of Empire in Master mode over and over and over again.
I can complete a run in 10 minutes, and with various CXP modifiers in place, each run guarantees a new a rank through rank 180. I’ll explain.
The event bonus grants a 350% increase to CXP. I purchased the legacy perk for an additional 10%, and I use the new Cartel Market boost for another 100% boost. These alone ensure I earn 4793 CXP per run. That’s 4600 for the quest, 92 for the bonus quest, 92 for the final boss, and nine CXP for the one gold elite. Add in the DvL and daily bonus and the rewards are even greater.
To put this in perspective, when the CXP event began on Tuesday I was rank 61. I am now rank 145 and climbing. It took a little over 50 days to complete 61 ranks, and just five to complete the next 84. The event is real and so is the grind.
I have altered my behavior to match the new rules of the game. I don’t want to, but the opportunity to power through Galactic Command is too good to pass up. By strictly running A Dream of Empire, I know exactly how much CXP I will earn, how many times I have to do it, and how long it will take. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and for the first time in a while, it’s not an oncoming train.
So what is it like running one master mode chapter over and over? It reminds me of an old college event I used to do called 60-Shot Night. The goal was simple, drink a 2-oz. shot of beer once a minute for one hour. Easy, right? It certainly starts out easy.
That first shot goes down quick and easy and you find yourself tapping your foot waiting for that first minute to expire. Same for the second, third and fourth. Eventually, it starts to get a little harder. The minutes tick away like seconds and that tiny 2-oz. shot starts to feel like a full mug of beer. About half-way through you begin to doubt that you can actually do this. After all, if you think about it, you’re attempting to drink ten 12-oz. cans of beer in one hour.
The same is true for A Dream of Empire. One 10-minute run for a command rank isn’t that bad until you realize you need to do it hundreds of times over the course of many hours. It takes 209 runs to get from rank 181-300.
It’s a far cry better than before, but as Aric Jorgan said about the lack of bureaucracy in the Republic, “What we gained in efficiency, we lost in soul.”
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