Here is a companion, and you get a companion and YOU get a COMPANION!!!.

       When you talk to the normal person about a companion one of two things usually comes to mind. The first being the lovely sidekick of the Doctor in the BBC Series Doctor Who, or your mind goes out to Morena Baccarin and her portrayal of a companion in the series Firefly. Unless you talk to a gamer who has played Knights of the Old Republic or Star Wars: The Old Republic video games. There a companion takes on a whole new meaning. Non-player characters that are helpful in your quest to finish the story and have certain story situations on their own. Some of the most beloved characters in the Legends Universe for Star Wars comes from these categories. It was one of the major reasons why I really left World of Warcraft. But there comes a point where you go what are you thinking.

       Companions in SW:TOR are a very important feature within the game. They are your backup either by being the one who takes on the enemy in the role we call "Tank" keeping them at bay while your character continues to do damage or healing them so they can kill the enemies. They can be a secondary damage dealer called "DPS or Deeps" or they can be the Healer for  you while you take on the enemies head on and keep your hit points from dropping too low. In the game you can have multiple companions to run around with for the story aspect of the game but you can only have one out with you at a time. The role that you wanted to take with you depended on which companion you had at the time. In the early life of the game this was hard to work with because for those players that liked to do the game solo meant that they had to find the companion that was the healer and get him or her recruited in to your group. Some classes  did not get their healer until near the end of the main story. This can be frustrating as there were players out there who were spending a lot of credits on med-packs and other instant heal situations while others who got their healer early in the game could just roll through and make additional credits because they did not have to buy instant healing packs and spend more money on repairs because they kept dying over and over. Well with the recent expansion Knights of the Fallen Empire, SW:TOR fixed that scenario with the fact that you can choose what role (Tank, DPS, or Healer) any of your companions can be and tailor the game to what you want it to be. Which is a really great thing for new players who get attached to certain companions depending on their choices and how the story plays out for them in the game.

       It is the new expansion that I am going to focus the rest of this post on. The way that the game has treated companions and some of the issues that I have with the companions. Without spoiling too much of the story of the new expansion it is safe to say that events within the expansion lock players out of the original five major companions that are collected in the original story line. The steward droid for the ship does not count as a major companion as he does not have a real deep story line to explore. By the time you finish the current endgame story line you are introduced to two new characters that are unique to the new expansion. In the same process two characters that you have met in the previous expansion Shadows of Revan finally join up with you and become part of your crew. Depending on your class there are two new companions that are important to the main story line. If you were the Jedi Knight or the Imperial Agent these are companions that were from the original story line that have returned to help the main character regardless of class.

       It is the stopping point which is Chapter 9 of the expansion story line that gives me issues. The issues seem to play out into some sort of massive situation that I am hoping will right itself by the end of the expansion. During the grind session between the end of chapter 9 and what is coming with end of the hiatus for the holidays starting with chapter 10 there is a plethora of companions to recruit and acquire. During this time there are 6 new flashpoints which need to be attuned in certain ways in order for the companion to be added to your crew. These are all brand new companions to the game with some story aspects but nothing at this point where you feel attached to them. Also during the grind time you have the capability to start gaining companions from other classes... That is right folks you are going to be able to gather companions from other classes and other factions. Heck in the main story if you are a Republic Player you get one of the Imperial Agent's Companions and vice versa with one of the Jedi Knight's companions. This is where the crux of the issue starts to gets going. In the vein of just doing a quest and getting a companion there are three companions in which if you do a simple quest you get the companion end of story. There is one companion tied behind of the special events for the game which for the companion involved makes sense again not trying to spoil it too much but veterans of the game know what I am talking about. Then there is a companion that requires either World Boss hunting or just hunting certain things in general in order to recruit that companion. Now the last of the classic companions is tied behind a section of Player versus Player or PVP, here depending on which side you are playing on you can get one of the two companions available. You are not able to get the other one as they are loyal to the faction that the main character is from and not willing to deal with the other faction. Now if you happen to be part of the qualified subscribers or just got things done in the story you were able to recruit a person from the first cut scene when the game released. Plus you are gifted not only your factions steward droid but the opposite factions droid as well.

       At this point we are looking at twenty-one companions (6 from the main quest, 6 from the flashpoints, 3 quests, 2 steward droids, 1 World Boss Hunting, 1 PVP, 1 Event. 1 Subscriber Reward,) If you have the Cartel Companions HK-51 and Treek the Ewok that takes the amount of people to twenty-three. From what I have been able to see from this point on it seems that the players are going be able to recruit the rest of the companions from the classic group of companions. If this is the case this is going to be an insane amount of companions. Doing the math real quick you have 39 of the 40 companions because of the PVP aspect of the two companions talked about earlier. The 4 new companions from the main quest, the 6 from the flashpoints, The Subscriber rewards starting next month will go from one companion to two companions plus cartel market companions which went from 2 to 5 (the three new ones are more pets than companions I think Hunter Pets from World of Warcraft). We are talking about 54 different companions available to the player. I really hope that this does not become the case because there is a lot of waste going on with the grind of the player. At this point the player at the endgame level can send out 6 companions to do crew skill work which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or so, and they can have one companion out with them while they are actively killing things for the purpose of the grind. Leaving 47 or so companions out there sitting on their arse not doing a damn thing. Choices need to matter more in the game. I do believe that there is one choice already out there but in the first nine chapters that was the only choice to be made that dealt with one of the classic companions. I hope that from Chapter 10 on that the choices we make with the characters will have more of an impact on how to get or how not to get the rest of the companions in the game.

       What should SW:TOR do with all of these companions? I do not know how much of the stuff that is out in the MMO world is proprietary information but let us say that the world of MMO's are open game and I can take what I want from anywhere and place it into SW:TOR the first thing I would grab would be the garrison quests from World of Warcraft. In their latest expansion WoW players have a garrison where they recruit heroes and have them do missions either solo or in a group in order to get supplies for the garrison to help it grow and prosper to complete the story side of the game for WoW. I would love to see something like this implemented in SW:TOR for the reason to give the rest of the companions something to do that is not crew skills or hanging out with the main character. This would give the player a reason to go through the grind with each character and gain the benefits of the garrison and the companions therein. To me this solves the main crux of the problem. The best thing they could do is not allow players to have 50+ companions at their disposal. There needs to be some companions that just do not come back because something got them killed or a decision that was made had long term effects that were not seen until later. The developers keep teasing that but that is a post for later on. If the developers were able to separate the PVP companions from being allowed to work for the opposite faction then a lot of the other companions given at this point should have been given the same courtesy.  This also reflects my feelings on the Alliance Commanders. Since the Alliance base is zoned off for each individual player the make up of the Alliance Commanders should have been unique for each faction as well. I can understand two of the Commanders being there but the other two should have had opposite faction counterparts for the other faction.

       The last thing for this post since it is becoming very long winded, is the quality of the companions that were given to us. This deals with the new companions that come from Knights of the Fallen Empire. The main story companions I can understand, two of them are former non-player characters from the previous expansion Shadow of Revan who finally became companions after a long and anticipated wait as to when they would become companions. The two absolutely new companions are very well constructed and do very well as new players on the scene. My issue is the flashpoint companions. All of these companions are brand new and have no real backbone to a story to make me want to tote them around for a spell except for just getting a kill count achievement. In my opinion they should have been non player characters that you had previous dealings with. Either on the planet in question or some other important character that may have escaped the events of the beginning of the expansion. I have no connection to any of these other companions and the lack of a story line other than background information does not help matters. I have said it is not the quantity of  companions new to the game. Yes I still have issues with everyone getting everybody and I hope that does not become the case, but the quality of the new companions that are being presented. There are characters from as recent as the Shadow of Revan expansion that I would like to know where in the hell they are at and the people who knew them best can't and won't say anything about them. I feel the SW:TOR player base would have appreciated well known non player characters join their crew rather than some no-name from god knows where that we are supposed to care somewhat about. The developers are going on about getting back to Knights of the Old Republic style story telling, Well tell me the story give me characters that I am going to care about.  Where is Jakkaro,Torch, General Garza, General Var Suthra, One of the Organas someone....Someone we as the player base had some time working with. No names just make us feel like you did not care.

       Okay Okay I have rambled on enough.... I can make a book about how I feel about the companions and how they are being treated. So I might pick this back up next time but we shall see.