Just a BioWare Fan

For those of you who are curious about SWTOR and its vaunted class stories (and excellent voice acting) but reluctant to pay for the privilege of experiencing it, good news has arrived! In the near future—sometime this fall, which could be anytime from next month through the end of the year, depending how you define fall—you’ll be able to pick up the game and play up to level 50 without paying a subscription.

Fifty is the current level cap, so that number may change. If they increase the maximum level for characters the free-to-play (F2P, as they say) limit may be raised as well or it may be extra incentive for non-subscribers to buy access or pony up that fifteen dollars a month to see the end of their story.

The point is that you can leap into the Star Wars universe, run through the main story line in at least one of the classes, and get a good sense of what SWTOR is all about without committing to the monthly subscription. In fact, I’ve seen the possibility of two free character slots thrown around the forum so you may be able to unlock your legacy and establish a relationship between a pair of them without paying a dime.

“You know, Corso,” the Captain said casually, her eyes on her screens and the still-distant docking bays, “it’s times like these for which pilot’s pants were invented.”

Corso never knew where she was going with these nonchalant little comments but they invariably led to his blushing madly at her audacity and making him want her even more. She was so different from anything he’d ever known. His stint with the Republic Army had left him feeling urbane and experienced compared to his fellows on Ord Mantell but the smuggler operated on a whole different level.

“All right,” he said with a nervous laugh, “I’ll bite. What are pilot’s pants?”

Some of My Best Friends Are Artificial

Dance I did, a wild and wooly, high-kicking celebration with Garrus while Mordin sang salarian show tunes for accompaniment. The shuttle pilot finally told us to pipe down because he couldn’t hear Joker over all the pounding and yelling.

Garrus’s mandibles were spread wide in what passed for a cheese-eating grin among the Turians and Mordin’s flat lips were pulled back to show his own teeth. We sat as quietly as we could for about twelve seconds and then I jumped up and started pacing. The deactivated Geth lay in a tumbled pile off to one side and I was itching to boot it up but most of my energy came from relief at feeling no scrabbling claws in my head.

The shuttle docked and we staggered out, dragging the Geth between us, and found half the crew milling around the shuttle bay, slightly dazed and euphoric. They’d all been suffering the same sorts of exploration from the Reaper and were at least as relieved as I was to have been so suddenly released.

Head Games

A couple of relay jumps and hours’ worth of cruising through the backwaters of the galaxy brought us to a Reaper, as TIM had promised. Its presence made no sense at all, considering it had have floated there since the last invasion 50,000 years before, but there it was.

No one on my ship wanted to go into that thing, me least of all. I still didn’t fully believe Miranda hadn’t inserted some sort of control chip in my brain while she’d been up to her elbows in my skull. Well, so to speak. My head isn’t that big.

The idea of intentionally going inside something capable of commandeering my brain made my morning coffee try to come up for a reprise. Going in I was, however. TIM was right about our needing the IFF and, unless we happened upon another handily disabled Collector ship laying about the galaxy this was likely to be the only one available.