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Lowbie Smuggler PvP with Traitine
I still don't really "get" streaming and I'm not sure I ever will, but it's obvious even to me that it's very much a thing these days, so I was quite flattered when Traitine of Constant Warefare (@ConstantWarfare on Twitter) asked me to join him for some SWTOR fun on his Twitch stream. I agreed to join him for about an hour last Sunday and rolled up a new Scoundrel just for the purpose of doing lowbie PvP with him, but we actually ended up playing for over two hours. Time flies when you're having fun!
I had warned him that Republic had a penchant for losing a lot on The Red Eclipse, but we seemed to get lucky as we won four out of the six matches we played, and the two losses were relatively close calls as well. Balance was restored towards the end though, when he suggested that we should try some GSF and we got roflstomped both times.
If you've ever found yourself wishing that you could see me play (hah!), I recorded my point of view of the whole thing and edited it down to a length of about 37 minutes to limit it to the "highlights".
Posted by Shintar at 09:06 0 comments
Labels: community , links , pvp , silly , smuggler , videos , warzones
SWTOR Doesn't Have Lockboxes
Does this qualify as a clickbait title?
I'm pretty sure this does: "SWTOR is putting lockboxes inside of other lockboxes"
It's an article that was posted on MassivelyOP yesterday and which I saw this morning. It (and its comments) were simultaneously amusing and kind of sad.
The actual story behind it is that Bioware is tweaking the contents of their Cartel packs once again, which is not very interesting to me personally because I tend not to buy them myself. Plus when I actually made the effort of trying to understand the new system they were introducing with 4.0, they scrapped it again only a few months later... so at this point I'm just throwing my hands in the air, happy that other people are dealing with this stuff and I can simply buy most things that I'm interested in straight off the GTN. There's probably some discussion to be had here about whether the changes are good or bad, but that's not mine to chime in on.
What intrigued me about the MassivelyOP article was that with that headline, it managed to use a minor semantic inaccuracy to make the change sound like something completely different and nasty.
Games like Neverwinter have lockboxes. They are chests full of random treasure that drop out in the world, but they are locked (thus the name "lockbox") and to unlock them you need to buy a key from the in-game cash shop.
SWTOR doesn't have lockboxes. No random locked chests dropping out in the world to clog up your inventory here! It does have crates of random loot that you can buy straight from the Cartel market if you want any... but otherwise they are out of sight and out of mind, and they are never locked. Once you have the box, its contents are yours.
Now, to be fair, most of the time when people express issues with real money giving you random loot, it's totally fair to treat these two models as identical, because if you have concerns about gambling, it doesn't really matter whether the money is being spent on the actual box of items or on a key to open it.
But in the case of this story, it did matter. Talking about lockboxes inside lockboxes implies that you have to repeatedly buy keys merely to access everything contained in that first box that you wanted to open, which would be pretty crazy and inspired people to post all kinds of hysterical memes in the comments. As Wilhelm put it so succinctly: "Honestly, with EA in charge, putting lockboxes inside of lockboxes seemed completely believable."
Of course the actual story, "SWTOR changes the composition of the loot in their random packs", simply wouldn't be newsworthy, not even on MassivelyOP. There were commenters who did point out that the title was very misleading, but who cares if you can give people a chance to get all worked up about how supposedly sucky the game's business model is?
I thought it was telling that one commenter confessed that they had recently started playing the game and were confused that they didn't actually encounter any lockboxes in it, considering the complaints levelled at it for their supposed implementation.
Just another day of people spreading misinformation about SWTOR I guess... but it was surprising to see it happen in such a weird manner on a major MMO news site. You'd think they would know their stuff a bit better.
Posted by Shintar at 21:36 10 comments
Labels: cartel market , links
Companions - Where Are They Now?
I've been doing some thinking about companions lately and about how their place in the game has changed since 4.0. I'm not so much talking about the mechanical changes (though those play into it) but their overall role and purpose in the game.
Looking back at it now, the original implementation of the companion system seemed to be all about compromise, trying to make them simultaneously important to your levelling experience and an essential part of the story, yet also completely optional and not required. Many people tended to stick with their first companion, simply because that one tended to be the most fleshed out - introduced naturally as part of your class story and then always with you for at least the first couple of planets. It's the additional companions that really threw a wrench into the system, because as soon as you give people the choice of who to bring, you can't allow that companion to get too involved in what's happening - unless you want to add another couple of extra story branches that a large part of your player base will never even see. I can completely understand why Bioware opted for minimal companion involvement for most classes as the story progressed. (Some of the classes that were presumably written earlier still do have some notable companion influences in their basic class story, such as Quinn for the warrior or Khem Val for the inquisitor, but there's definitely not a lot of that kind of thing.)
Companion stories were for the most part completely separate from the class story, giving you the option to ignore them if you didn't like a certain companion. That they were gated behind an affection grind always struck me as a bit odd though - I originally thought that it made sense that you would naturally unlock the story of whoever you quested with, but in practice no amount of "naturally" gained affection was ever enough and you had to shower everyone with gifts to get them to talk to you. After the gift-giving binge you'd then have ten conversations in a row, where your new friend could go from distrusting to loving you within the space of ten minutes - hardly immersive.
Looking back at that, I really approve of several changes that Bioware has made in Knights of the Fallen Empire. For example I love that all the original companion arcs now unlock automatically as you progress through your class story, regardless of individual influence level. You can still ignore them if you really don't like a certain character, but for those that you do like it feels a lot more natural to interact with them a little after every other mission, not to mention that the conversations provide a steady and welcome trickle of extra XP as you level.
I also approve of what they did with the companions in the new story chapters, that they simply saddle you with a different one every other section and that's that. It removes some choice, yes, but by knowing for sure who is actually going to be present in each scene, Bioware can get your companions so much more involved in the action, and hearing them wisecrack about your choices is honestly a huge part of the game's appeal. The removal of companion gear and role restrictions also took care of any worries about struggling with the gameplay in story segments that make you team up with a rarely used companion.
What I'm still waiting for is the option to actually have some variety among alts that have done KotFE - I don't really like the thought of all of mine ending up with the exact same companions, especially since you can't even customise their looks. Looking at the characters of Koth, Lana and Senya, I'm almost certain that there will be a big showdown where at least one of them will leave you or turn against you based on your choices, but I was honestly hoping for more of that kind of thing a bit earlier on already. That one point where you get the option to kill a former trooper companion is a lot less exciting when you realise that even if you spare him, he still won't join back up with you. It's just all a bit same-y so far, but I'm hopeful for the next couple of chapters.
The one thing that I can't really make sense of are the new Alliance companions. They feel like an attempt at giving us more options for everyday gameplay, except there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of choice involved here either. If you are bothering with the Alliance system at all, you will get most of them anyway, and therefore have the exact same stable of companions as every other person doing so. Each new companion features an interesting little intro story and then that's it. Admittedly I don't know for sure, but I didn't get the impression that Bioware has any further plans for involving those characters in the main storyline - assuming that they are optional, they simply can't show up there or we would be back to the same old issue of people bringing different characters that all need their own lines.
Two Alliance companions with (in my opinion) pretty interesting backstories: Veeroa Denz and Choza Raabat. But you recruit them... and then what?
I've also heard people joke about how it feels like we have "hundreds" of companions now with the Alliance system, and I can definitely relate to feeling a bit overwhelmed by that. The most companions I ever had pre-4.0 was eight: five class companions, the ship droid, HK-51 and Treek. After finishing what's been released of KotFE so far, my main is up to 23 companions already, which could have been 24 if I hadn't rejected Xalek, and I haven't even used the panel on Odessen to retrieve old companions that haven't actually come back (yet).
What's the point of having all these companions if I can only use one at a time and send out six or however many it is now to craft? Everything else is just interface clutter. With the great companion normalisation it also feels like I don't need more than one companion to be out and about anyway, since each one can fill any role and they all have the same abilities anyway... which just adds to the indifference about having more and more of them thrown at me. Influence actually affecting companion power and being a huge grind also encourages you to pick a favourite or two and ignore the rest.
You might ask why that's a problem - if I don't like the extra companions, I can just ignore them, right? Well, yes, but only if I want to ignore the whole Alliance endgame as well. If I do participate in it and allow myself to be flooded with tons of companions that all feel way too similar to each other, this is actually a step in the opposite direction compared to Bioware's other efforts to make companions feel more unique, interesting and relevant, which is just a strange contradiction.
Labels: companions , knights of the fallen empire , screenshots
Flashpoint Friday: Battle of Rishi
After talking about Battle of Ilum two weeks ago, I decided to cover another "battle of" this week: Battle of Rishi.
Battle of Rishi was released as part of the Shadow of Revan expansion (patch 3.0) in December 2014. Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi were part of the expansion's main storyline and the first two flashpoints that launched with a solo mode right off the bat. Group-wise they only offered a tactical version initially, with the hardmode getting added in 3.1 two months later. At the time of writing this, more than a year later, Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi are still the two newest flashpoints in the game, as no additional ones have been released. (Personally I don't think that the Star Fortresses really count, since they can't seem to decide what sort of content they want to be and aren't included in the group finder.)
Battle of Rishi is a romp across Rishi to take out a massive Revanite signal jammer, so you spend your time fighting Revanites and their droids. The trash is pretty uninteresting, and the bosses... well, they offer some reasonably interesting mechanics but are pretty darn forgettable in terms of story.
The first two boss encounters each feature a Revanite duo consisting of a former Republic and a former Imperial character, first a Wookiee (smuggler?) and an Imperial soldier, then a Sith and a Jedi master. There's a lot of "don't stand in squares/circles on the floor" in both fights, but the second encounter features an interesting mechanic where balls of lightning float towards the middle of the room and you have to "soak them up" or they'll do more damage to the whole group. Like in many duo fights, killing one of the bosses first results in the other enraging, both in the first and in the second encounter. Now, stuff like that sometimes gets announced in big red letters across the screen that say something like: "[Boss name] gets really angry!" In both of these boss fights though, no matter whom you kill first, the same line is used for all of them: "The remaining adversary rages at the death of their ally!" It's like not even the encounter designers could be bothered. "Who cares? Nobody has heard of these guys before and nobody will ever hear from them again after they're dead. They have no personality, no story and no lines. Why bother?"
Exhibits A and B.
To give credit where credit is due, at least the last boss - a walker that conveniently drops from the sky (yes, really) - is quite memorable, at least mechanically. It has this move where it powers up a massive electric discharge... which will one-shot you even in tactical mode. To survive, you have to go stand in a circle and use a console to activate a protective shield around you and any allies. There is plenty of time to do this, so it's not a matter of reflexes or anything, just a question of paying some attention to your environment. Yet the amount of people I've watched die to this... it's always pretty hilarious. I also have my own funny memories of this encounter, such as that one time when our entire group went to stand in the circle like good little players, but then nobody actually bothered to click on the console so we all died anyway, looking very foolish in the process.
On hardmode, there is also a bonus boss, who is probably the most mechanically challenging flashpoint boss I've ever seen in this game - which is quite impressive really! I talked about him a bit in this post. Unfortunately the sheer difficulty of the fight also makes him unappealing to anyone but a well-geared, fully organised group. I think he's cool in theory, but in nearly a year I've only actually bothered to kill him twice myself, which is kind of telling.
Story (spoilers?)
Battle of Rishi is directly integrated into the Shadow of Revan story, so it's hard to talk about it without giving at least minor spoilers for that... the major plot point is that you're fighting Revanites, and both a Republic and an Imperial fleet have just appeared above the planet, manipulated by the Revanites to hopefully annihilate each other. In order to prevent this, you need to contact your faction's representative, but a local signal jammer makes communication with the fleet impossible. So you charter a shuttle and invade yet another Revanite camp to destroy said signal jammer.
The entire flashpoint is just you fighting your way towards your objective, with a brief light/dark side choice near the end where you get to hijack an anti-air cannon and can decide to aim it either at the Revanites or at the enemy faction.
Once the signal jammer has been destroyed, you get in touch with your respective faction's leader in orbit (Satele Shan for Republic players and Darth Marr for Imperials) and they agree to temporarily halt aggressions to figure out what's going on.
I think most of my articles in this series have been pretty positive so far, but Battle of Rishi is not a flashpoint that impressed me. It features pretty environments, and it offers a fun little mob-killing romp for a pug, but other than that... it just seems to have no heart and no real point.
About a year ago, I wrote a post called Solo Flashpoints - Good or Bad Idea? in which I kind of came to the concusion that Bioware doesn't really seem to know what it wants to do with flashpoints. To be honest, I suspect that's part of why we haven't seen any in a year, not just because of KotFE! In the past, they've sometimes been story-light instances for group content, or an excuse to provide a particularly epic final boss battle. Battle of Rishi doesn't really try to do either, as it came with a solo mode from the get-go and is tightly integrated into the storyline, yet the objective of "go destroy that signal jammer" is so dull that it could simply have been a regular quest.
It's particularly interesting to compare Battle of Rishi to its partial namesake Battle of Ilum, which also suffered from having a somewhat lacklustre objective... but all throughout, it still told a story, of how Malgus' new Empire included lots of aliens, of the kinds of characters he had managed to win for his cause. Battle of Rishi is one massive wasted opportunity here, with the Revanites theoretically boasting an interesting background that has inspired both Republic and Imperial soldiers to defect... yet nothing is made of this whatsoever. None of the people you fight ever go beyond being random mooks, and in a game that prides itself in its lore and interesting characters as much as SWTOR, that's just outright shameful.
Labels: battle of rishi , flashpoint friday , flashpoints , hardmodes , screenshots
KotFE Chapter by Chapter - Chapter 2: A Dream of Empire
Time to continue my detailed discussion of Knights of the Fallen Empire's individual chapters! Unsurprisingly, this post will contain spoilers for the chapter in the title and may contain spoilers for previous chapters as well.
Click here to go back to Chapter 1.
Your character awakes... in a dream. You can tell because the edges of the screen are all fuzzy and everyone speaks with an echo in their voice! You appear to be standing on an asteroid in the middle of a debris field, with Valkorion keeping you company and complimenting you on your abilities. I don't know if male characters get to do this as well, but as a female character you get the hilarious option to ask: "Are you flirting with me?"
He shows you an image of all your companions fighting in what appears to be a heroic last stand, while talking about them in somewhat disparaging tones. You have the option to agree with him or defend them. Your visions get chaotic and Valkorion explains that the carbon freezing wasn't handled properly and you are slowly dying. You fight some imaginary skytroopers as a representation of you fighting for your life. It's worth noting that while you have no companions, you appear to be receiving heals from Valkorion throughout the entire thing! You also fight visions of the past in the form of old class story enemies.
After running across the asteroid, you make it towards your old companions, but they are all dead. Next you find yourself on a ruined version of either Coruscant or Dromund Kaas, floating in space. All the while Valkorion is with you, trying to fill you with doubt about your choices, insinuating that everything you did was pointless and/or wrong. You actually have to fight nightmare visions of members of your own faction that have turned against you, with an attached bonus mission to revive fallen citizens - a shred of hope in an ongoing nightmare? In the end you encounter someone you used to work with in your class story, such as Master Satele as a Jedi knight or General Garza as a trooper and have to kill them as well. Valkorion wants you to feel good about it too. Whatever you reply, a piece of debris suddenly comes loose from the building above you and crushes you, prompting another change of scenery.
You find yourself on what looks like Ziost after its "consumption" (though still with a backdrop of endless stars) and Valkorion tells you that the events on Ziost showed him that he has moved beyond death and is finally free of "crude" vessels such as hands, voices and children, hinting at the various forms in which he has appeared in the different class stories. He also says that he's done everything he can to keep you alive through the carbonite poisoning as he considers you a part of him that he wishes to keep. Mysterious!
A giant Monolith appears and Valkorion tells you that he can only help you if you will accept his power. Whether you accept or refuse his help, you will still be provided with ongoing heals while fighting the mob, though it's worth noting that at this point, accepting or refusing Valkorion's help has no alignment adjustment associated with it.
He says that you have a common foe, and after a fade to black you find yourself at the Eternal Throne, with Arcann sitting on it and Vaylin standing nearby. The scene looks much more real than any of the previous ones, and ambassadors from the Republic and Sith Empire kneel before the throne. Who else noticed that the Sith envoy looks like Darth Vowrawn from the Sith warrior story? The Republic ambassador wears the garb of a senator, but otherwise I couldn't place him. Valkorion says that more time has passed than you think and that Zakuul rules the galaxy now, though he is displeased with his children "abusing their power". Talking about his children makes him sound oddly romantic and he even mentions having found love on Zakuul, but he insists that they need to be stopped before they "ruin everything".
Vaylin suddenly draws her saber and stares at you, seemingly able to perceive your dream manifestion. Then she stabs you and you collapse, while Valkorion comments that you're being "reborn"... (in chapter three).
After the frantic events of chapter one, chapter two gives you some time to breathe and reflect, being fairly light on combat and focusing on how Valkorion appears to have ended up in your head. (It's also one of the shorter chapters.) Spending some time in a dream also gives the story the opportunity to introduce the idea of that five-year time skip that was talked about before the expansion, without having it feel too sudden.
Nonetheless I have to admit that personally I'm not too fond of this chapter, probably because I'm just not that into "dream stories". Or maybe I'm just jealous of people in fiction always having deep and meaningful dreams when my own are just random and make zero sense.
Valkorion has some interesting lines in this chapter, but there's always that feeling that it's probably all a dream anyway and none of it is true. Scenes like finding your dead companions or seeing your capital destroyed certainly serve to introduce some doubt about what may have happened in your absence though.
Onwards to Chapter 3!
Labels: all kotfe chapters , knights of the fallen empire , npcs , quests , screenshots
Some Gree Event Fun
This week I decided to pay the Gree a visit, for the first time in many months. I was quite astounded by the amount of stronghold decorations that had found their way onto the Gree reputation vendor since the last time I checked what he had for sale, and I immediately went on a spending spree. Who wouldn't want one of these cute little guys in their home?
Of course, after that I was almost out of Gray Helix Components and decided to do at least a little work towards earning some more. The most useful idea I had in that regard was probably to coax my guild into running Xenoanalyst on both story and hardmode - boom, ten more components in one go!
However, I also pugged the heroic daily and the two world bosses on alts. I was continually surprised by how chipper and friendly everyone seemed to be in my pugs, as it's such a contrast to the doom and gloom that pervades parts of the community these days. "Do you like PvP? I love it, it's the main reason I play this game!" "You know, this character has a twin on Republic side; he has almost the same name but with a difference of one letter." [insert serious roleplayer nod here...]
I also did The Ancient Gree Relays on two Imperial alts that hadn't done it yet, the quest to visit Gree droids on a bunch of different planets that rewards you with a pet, some rep and two more components. I was pleasantly surprised by the way level sync has spiced that mission up a bit, because apart from on Dromund Kaas, where the elite guards around the Gree observer are for some reason of a low enough level to be grey even to a level-synced character, I actually had to pay attention and fight smartly to survive four or five gold mobs throwing dots and stuns around, companions being overpowered or not. I was also somewhat bemused by their dialogue, much of which I'd already forgotten again. Apparently the Gree dislike Alderaan's Killiks and condone their "eradication"?! Yet they really like the Gormak on Voss... they sure have very peculiar opinions sometimes.
Labels: community , housing , npcs , pugs , quests , screenshots , world events
Trooper, Take Two
Last week I finally finished the trooper story for a second time. It may come as a surprise to some that it took me nearly four years to level an alt of the very first class I ever rolled, especially since I levelled two of most other classes during that time. I'm just fickle when it comes to playing alts and my whims can be quite random.
This particular character, a Vanguard, was actually created in late 2013 - I found a screenshot of her on Ord Mantell that I posted in November of that year. (Fun fact: In that post I complained about finding too many freebies in my mailbox on every newly created character: fourteen items! By now, I'm up to forty for every new alt.) Since then my interest in her has been an on-and-off-again affair. For the first couple of months I thought she might even end up being my 10th character to the level cap, but then that didn't happen. Later I went through long periods of disinterest, interspersed with the occasional GSF match or late-night questing session. 4.0 actually invigorated my interest in the character in so far as I knew that with the changes to levelling the rest of my class story alone would probably be enough to carry me close to the level cap. I just had to round it off with the Ilum story arc and the Belsavis bonus series to actually hit 65.
Also, four years later and companion colour matching still doesn't work in cut scenes...
What did I think of the trooper story the second time around, especially compared to my initial thoughts from back when I hadn't played any of the other class stories? Well, I have to admit that it's probably one of the weaker class stories overall, now that I have actual points of comparison... you just lack a feeling of agency, being bossed around by General Garza all the time, though at least chapter one gives you a strong personal motivation for your actions as well. At the same time, it actually feels weird just how much you do get away with - I'm no military woman, but I'm pretty sure that the military cares about methods as well as results. This wasn't as noticeable in my first playthrough where I was mostly light side, but this time I veered more towards neutral, repeatedly disobeying orders... and every time the mission ended with Garza giving me a stern-talking to at first and then suddenly switching to: "... but oh well, I guess you got things done. Good job!"
My initial thoughts post was however spot on about how Havoc Squad feels like a natural unit. Even after playing through all the other class stories, none of the other companion crews have quite the same natural feeling of belonging together, so that is still a point in the trooper's favour. I was going to focus on levelling with Elara this time, since I had hardly used her on Shintar (healer + healer companion was not a good combination) but eventually ended swapping her out for M1-4X anyway, just like I had done with Aric the first time... 4X is just too much fun, and with every companion being able to fill every role, his former tankiness wasn't an obstacle anymore.
What was most interesting for me to re-play was the last class mission on Corellia. Without going into spoilers about the actual story, gameplay-wise you are being asked to choose one of three attack vectors while NPCs will cover the other two. They are described as pitting you either against infantry, walker droids or "automated systems". On Shintar I ended up facing off against the droids because they were described as the hardest and I was very gung-ho about proving that Havoc Squad can take on anything. This time I decided to listen to what advice the NPCs had to give and ended up fighting the automated systems instead.
I was kind of hoping that there would be puzzles but... well, the first corridor looked like it might have had a puzzle in it, but if there was one I didn't figure out what I was supposed to do and just ended up getting the whole floor covered in ooze that didn't seem to do anything. The rest was mostly turrets and weaker droids though, which wasn't that exciting. What I did love was that there was a bonus mission to blow up barrels! Best bonus ever! Plus I got to hijack an anti-aircraft gun and shoot down an Imperial shuttle; I don't remember getting to do that last time either (though I'm not entirely sure about that, it's been four years after all).
So... once again I'm in the position of having a tanking alt at the level cap. Last time that happened, when my Shadow hit 55, I got quite excited about the prospect of tanking casual ops runs for alts, but then that never happened, so I'm not getting my hopes up this time. But it will be nice to have the option.
Labels: companions , quests , screenshots , tanking , trooper
KotFE Chapter by Chapter - Chapter 1: The Hunt
Since the first nine chapters of Fallen Empire have been out for over two months now, I thought it would be fun to have a somewhat more detailed discussion of each individual chapter. I doubt that I'll get through all of them before chapter ten releases, but I that's okay. I'll just get there when I get there. Unsurprisingly, this post will contain spoilers for the chapter in the title.
KotFE's chapter one starts in typical Star Wars fashion, with an opening crawl. This more than anything else immediately drove home to me that they are truly trying to reboot the game with this expansion, as it literally presents a whole new start within the game. It's established that the events of the trailer already happened, which kind of makes you wonder where your character was during that time and why especially Imperial characters aren't more concerned about planets like Korriban getting wrecked. Remember Korriban Incursion? We sure cared a lot back then!
In a major departure from any of the previous stories, we start with a scene on the distant planet of Zakuul, showing Valkorion and Arcann. Previously we were always more or less limited to our character's point of view (with Ziost taking some baby steps in this direction by showing us what Vitiate was up to in town even when we couldn't see him), so it's a pretty big step to suddenly show us, the players, events that we would have no possible way of knowing about in character. It takes you out of character a bit but creates a more cinematic experience in the sense that it gives you a bigger picture to worry about: The bad guys are up to something, what could this mean for me?
Whether your character is Republic or Empire, you end up being called to Darth Marr's flagship. Even after the events of Yavin IV and Ziost I found it a bit odd how it was implied that even as a hero of the Republic, your character was happy to oblige and trust Marr, but I guess the point is that after Ziost, everyone really has a strong interest in stopping Vitiate.
You board the ship without a companion and get greeted by the ship's captain. For new players there is a tutorial mode here that hides most of your abilities. During my first playthrough I didn't realise that this could be turned off and spent the entire chapter being annoyed by how gimped my play was.
As you move towards the bridge, you overhear background NPCs talking, something that also occurs frequently in the following chapters and helps a lot with setting the mood for each location if you're willing to listen. Like in this case you hear two Imperials talk about how they had a bet about whether Republic and Empire would be able to work together peacefully - one claims to have won the bet since nobody has been knifed yet, while the other argues that the mission isn't over yet. Later you hear a Republic and an Imperial soldier speculate about whether Vitiate has been found yet.
When you meet Darth Marr he explains that the former Emperor is "out there" and if you're a Force user your character will comment on feeling his presence too. You discuss how it doesn't make sense for Vitiate to have "fled" after what happened on Ziost.
Suddenly a probe appears, which doesn't seem that big a deal except that the music makes it clear that something exciting and dangerous is happening. The ship's sensors identify it as being associated with the "unknown force that attacked Korriban". Before you can do anything to it, a huge fleet of Eternal Empire ships appears and boarding pods attach to the ship. Your character volunteers to take out the boarders while Marr is supposed to get you out of there.
You fight a couple of inconsequential feeling skytrooper groups, which are obviously intended to teach new players starting at level 60 the basics of combat. The background chatter has Imperial and Republic soldiers sticking together against the unknown threat. In the port section, some soldiers from both factions are cut off fighting skytroopers. The Imperial Sergeant Dol argues to quickly shut the closest blast door to keep the enemies out, while the Republic Corporal Ralo doesn't want to leave anyone behind. You get to choose whose orders are followed and it's noted that both soldiers have an opinion on this that they will remember.
You fight some more skytroopers when the companion to whom you talked briefly before boarding Marr's ship radios you that the airlock has been shot up but the clamps are stuck and they can't get away. You free your ship and can tell your crew to either flee or to stay and fight.
You meet with Darth Marr on the engineering deck and he becomes your companion! So exciting! This was also where I was immediately weirded out by the fact that since KotFE any new companions are set to act as healers by default. I understand why - but it's really weird to see characters like Darth Marr run up to you and the first thing he does is cast a heal on you!
It's made very clear that Marr is willing to fight to the death and expects the same of his crew, but eventually it becomes undeniable that the ship has become too shot up to escape. You are given the option to abandon ship or use it to ram one of the Zakuulan ships as one last defiant gesture. (Marr obviously approves of the latter.)
The ship blows up either way, and you wake up as a prisoner on an enemy ship (shackled, with all your abilities greyed out). You meet Arcann, who introduces the Zakuul Empire. This is where the improved work on facial expressions really starts to show, as your character manages to look impressively pissed off with the occasional glance of worry thrown in. Darth Marr reappears as a prisoner as well. Arcann takes both of you to see his father, though shortly before you reach his throne, you run into Heskal, a so-called Scion, and it's made clear that he's made some sort of doomsday prediction that Arcann doesn't like.
In the throne room, it becomes apparent why Darth Marr had to be with you - if you are a Force user yourself, you can tell that Valkorion is Vitiate, but otherwise you need Marr there to say it out loud. Valkorion is rather amused by your anger at him and removes Darth Marr's shackles, offering him to join him. Marr is enraged however and swears that he will never serve the Emperor again. After he attacks the knights guarding him, Valkorion kills him with Force lightning. Then his daughter Vaylin appears and suddenly asks for the room to be cleared.
With just you, Arcann and Valkorion left in the room, the latter shares that he has been impressed by the way you have influenced the galaxy and offers you a share of his own power if you kneel to him, the pivotal scene shown in the Outlander trailer. It's interesting to note that while the scenes play out somewhat differently depending on what you say, the outcome is the same: Valkorion dies soon after. If you agree to join him, Arcann backstabs him while he appears to transfer some of his power to you. If you refuse him, he orders Arcann to kill you, yet Arcann cuts your shackles instead, encouraging you to finish what you came for, and attacks Valkorion himself. This leads to a pretty memorable exchange during which Valkorion parries Arcann's lightsaber blows with his bare hand, mocking him for his "jealousy" - until you stab or shoot Valkorion in the back while he's distracted.
As Valkorion dies, a sort of Force storm gets unleashed in the room, knocking everyone out. Arcann is the first to get up again and as Vaylin enters the room, he orders you taken prisoner since you assassinated the Emperor (which is actually true if you made the light side choice!). He is shown making a broadcast to the citizens of Zakuul, informing them of your vile deed and swearing vengeance against the core worlds, while your character's unconscious body is dragged away and frozen in carbonite.
Chapter one starts pretty much in medias res and as a long-time player it's hard not to feel a bit disoriented by everything that's supposed to have happened while you weren't looking. Things progress at a dizzying speed, which can feel a bit rushed but also keeps things interesting.
Receiving Darth Marr as a companion is many a player's dream come true, and seeing him die almost immediately afterwards sucks. I've read about players who actually abort the chapter as soon as Marr joins them just so they can traipse around the fleet and show off their unique companion.
The revelation that Valkorion is Vitiate comes surprisingly early and isn't properly explained, though upon replaying this chapter specifically for this blog post it's quite obvious that there is more to the whole thing than meets the eye, as Valkorion himself never actually agrees with the accusations that he is the old Sith Emperor and keeps making mocking comments about how there's been a mistake and do you really know who you're talking to? This isn't to say that he isn't Vitiate, as he doesn't deny it either, but the whole matter is clearly more complicated than is immediately obvious.
The fact that the "big choice" leads to Valkorion's death either way can be seen as a disappointment if you genuinely expected the story to branch into two completely different versions, one of which would have you ruling the galaxy alongside an evil Emperor, but personally I never expected things to go that way anyway. I for one was still very much intrigued by the different ways in which the situation played out.
Labels: all kotfe chapters , companions , knights of the fallen empire , quests , screenshots
Flashpoint Friday: Battle of Ilum
Today I decided to talk about the last flashpoint that my Mercenary had a "streak" of while levelling, Battle of Ilum.
Battle of Ilum was in game at launch and was originally designed for levels 48-50, meant to finish off Ilum's main storyline, together with its follow-up, The False Emperor. Since 4.0 it's available as a tactical from level 15-65 and has a solo mode option as well.
Story (spoilers)
The flashpoint starts off with your party talking to their personal pilot, the Corellian Cole Cantarus for Republic players or General Hesker of the Imperial Guard for the Empire. Ilum's planetary storyline just ended with Darth Malgus - a repeat quest giver for Imperials but known to Republic characters as well - unexpectedly seceding from the Empire and attacking both Republic and Empire at once. A plan has been hatched to steal one of his new stealth ships and use it to find the old Emperor's cloaked space station, which has become Malgus' new base of operations. In order to do this, you need to succeed at a ground assault on Fort Barrow on Ilum, where a lot of Malgus' troops are stationed.
You get dropped off in a seemingly random spot and immediately have to take a taxi to actually get anywhere near where you're supposed to be (the trenches). You run into a lot of aliens fighting for Malgus, as a big part of his "New Empire" is embracing the diversity of different species that the old Empire has always dismissed as inferior.
After lots of fighting through trenches and mines you eventually make it to Fort Barrow, just as Malgus' right-hand man arrives: Darth Serevin, whom Imperial players may remember as the quest giver for the main Imperial storyline on Voss. (Personally I was quite gutted that he turned out to be a traitor as he had been one of the more likeable Sith that you meet throughout the game. You just can't trust a Sith that seems likeable.) As it turns out, he has brought some Voss with him as well. After you defeat him, you can either execute them or spare them - they promise to join your side if you do so.
Both factions also receive a set of initially somewhat unpleasant news near the end: General Hesker gets shot down by the enemy (though he survives) and Republic characters get told by Serevin that an assassin has been sent to kill Supreme Commander Rans. (Though as it turns out, he survives that attack as well.)
Battle of Ilum has the dubious honour of probably being the flashpoint with the largest amount of skippable fights in game. I already talked about this problem to some extent when I discussed Directive 7. If you want to, you can go around killing a lot of enemies and complete two bonus missions in the process. On the other hand, there are huge amounts of encounters you can skip just to get to the end quickly if that's what you prefer. The problem lies in pug groups bringing together people who might have different preferences. I don't know if it's still the done thing or even possible, but I remember a time when people even used to skip the first two bosses, which drove me absolutely nuts.
You spend the entire flashpoint fighting Darth Malgus' troops as well as some miners that work for him. Some are human, but a vast majority are aliens. Most trash pulls are not very exciting, but watch out for the groups with the ice cats, those critters hit quite hard.
The bosses are largely in line with this, as three encounters feature alien leaders fighting for Malgus and they all emphasise some variety of the golden rule of "kill the adds". Then there are two mining droids which are a matter of tank and spank. And finally, at the end, a Sith: Darth Serevin. He throws crystals at people and is meant to teach the lesson that long casts with ominous names like "Force Explosion" are best interrupted. (It used to wipe you on hardmode if you allowed it to go through, but even on regular difficulty it does quite a lot of damage.)
Battle of Ilum is a gorgeous-looking flashpoint with beautiful environments if you care to look, as Ilum's skies are as wondrous as ever and its designers clearly put a lot of love into placing everything. Who else knows that "secret" cave that's not on the map and which has several crates for the bonus mission in it as well as a dead tauntaun with a frozen body next to it (which is probably an Empire Strikes Back reference)?
Sadly, a lot of people really don't like spending time there though, and just like in other potentially long flashpoints, that rush-rush attitude can be a pain in the backside if you actually enjoy taking your time and doing the bonuses.
The storyline of Malgus' betrayal is interesting in principle, but somewhat awkwardly put together. It's very questionable whether it was a good idea to tie a main planetary storyline and two flashpoints together, as many people do one without the other and end up confused. Actually, the really sad thing is that even if you do run everything in order, the planetary storyline on either faction and the Malgus arc seem to have little to do with each other except that they both take place on Ilum. It can get particularly awkward if you're an Empire player, where you get the option to support Malgus and his ideas repeatedly, and then he's suddenly betrayed everyone including you with no warning whatsoever. The events of the planetary storyline and the the two flashpoints just don't feel very well connected.
Also, Battle of Ilum is definitely the weaker of the two flashpoints involved in this storyline, as stealing a spaceship via a ground attack is not very intuitive and you end up feeling kind of removed from the whole mission. Republic players also get the shaft a bit at the end since they have never met Darth Serevin before, while Imperial players likely have a history with him that makes the encounter a lot more meaningful (see my comment above about feeling betrayed).
The ending with the Voss is also a bit unsatisfying, because after all the fuss that is made about their neutrality the idea that your faction might get some Voss based on a simple flashpoint choice - which will of course never be mentioned anywhere ever again - feels like a bit of a letdown if you were really hoping for a more meaningful resolution to their situation.
Labels: battle of ilum , flashpoint friday , flashpoints , screenshots
Coruscant Nostalgia
I don't spend a lot of time on Coruscant - why would I? It always covered only a fairly brief part of the levelling game, and with the increased levelling speed brought on by 4.0, you might as well blink and you'll miss it. To be honest, I also never actually liked Coruscant very much. Most of the environments are way too corridor-like, and story-wise it's just a different gang causing problems in each sector, which is not very exciting.
And yet... there is something about that planet. Recently I came back to it more often than usual, due to working on both a knight and a trooper alt, and if I allow myself to actually take in my environment after exiting the spaceport instead of making a blind beeline for the next quest objective, it's still kind of enchanting. The way the music swells, the beauty of the wide open spaces around the Senate Plaza, with the skyline caught in eternal dusk... it takes me back to the first time I arrived on the planet and felt that this game was really taking me to a galaxy far, far away.
It's interesting that my actual first starter planet, Ord Mantell, doesn't evoke nearly as many feelings. Do you also have a place that still reminds you of that special "new MMO" magic?
Labels: coruscant , screenshots
Levelling Through Flashpoints Post 4.0 - Would I Recommend It?
Levelling my little Mercenary solely through flashpoints over the course of the last one and a half months has certainly been an interesting experience. I was actually kind of pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it - admittedly I don't really miss it right now, but I certainly do miss talking about the weird pugs I meet when I do decide to brave the group finder now. There's a reason that the "Weird people you meet in Group Finder" thread on the official forums has been going strong for nearly three years and is up 767 pages at the time of writing this. When you're in Blood Hunt (yes, again) and the last man standing on Jos and Valk starts demanding beer in all caps, you just want to tell someone! Anyway, what did I learn?
Part of what inspired this little experiment was to see how quickly I could level through flashpoints, though I didn't take any steps to intentionally speed up the process: I remained unguilded and used neither XP boosts nor any XP-boosting character perks, though I did pick up various flashpoint missions that awarded additional experience when I completed them. I usually limited myself to one random a day due to the extra bonus for that and was rarely fully rested. Queue pops were almost always instant; I think the longest I had to wait at any point was still less than five minutes.
The end result was that I did end up levelling quite fast, though not as fast as I would have expected. After the heady rush of the low levels, where I sometimes gained up to four levels in one run, things slowed down quite quickly, and by the end I could make it through a whole flashpoint without levelling up even once (until double XP happened to kick in and provided an additional boost again). I hit 65 with a /played time of one day and a bit less than nine hours. I have no real point of comparison for how fast that really is, but to me it seems pretty damn quick, especially considering that I didn't take any steps to actively rush the process other than simply choosing this particular levelling path. For comparison I did a /played on my level 61 Juggernaught who was at least mostly levelled since 4.0, and she was also already up to two days and 22 hours of play time.
I'd imagine that if you went all out on maximising your XP gains by doing all the things that I didn't, you could make it from 1-65 within less than a day of play time. That is assuming your runs go as smoothly as most of mine... which brings us to:
I'd heard a lot of complaints that tactical flashpoints were way too hard now and wanted to see that for myself, even if I seriously doubted that it was true. Admittedly you could say that I stacked the deck in my favour by choosing to do this with a healer, as a lot of problems seem to originate in the fact that many tactical groups don't have a healer, but it's simply what I enjoy playing.
Of the 37 flashpoints that I entered throughout this whole thing, I successfully completed 33 of them, or 89 percent. Of the four groups that fell apart, two collapsed in the face of Jos and Valk in Blood Hunt, one fell apart in False Emperor since the double droid boss appeared to be bugged, and one was disbanded because none of the other group members wanted to wait for me to listen to the cut scenes. Hah! Most of the successful runs went pretty smoothly throughout, with a couple of deaths and wipes here and there but nothing that I would consider major.
So, how hard are those tacticals really? I think my completion rate of nearly ninety percent indicates that cries about how impossibly hard they are are probably exaggerated. However... some bosses are definitely overtuned, with Jos and Valk being the worst offenders that I personally encountered, while others simply don't seem to have been adjusted very well to take differences in group make-up in consideration. For example I found the first boss in Hammer Station pretty hard to heal without being able to cleanse his debuff, but once I gained that ability it became completely trivial. Generally higher-level flashpoints don't seem to have been re-tuned to take the limitations of low-level characters into consideration, which I think may actually be a bigger issue than a lack of tanks or healers. When nobody in your group has a cleanse, survival cooldowns, crowd control or any utility points that grant mobility yet, you'll probably be quite screwed in a fight that was originally designed for level 50+, regardless of your party's skill level or group make-up.
On average though, you'll end up with something that is (in my opinion) moderately but not overly challenging - which may or may not be your cup of tea. Personally I actually enjoyed it as a change of pace, seeing how questing in the open world is now easier than ever.
At the same time, I did also encounter a fair amount of "learn to play" issues though, such as people not even bothering to heal up before jumping into the next trash pull, focusing the wrong targets, not using all their abilities, and dying rather than clicking one of those healing consoles on the boss fights. The good thing for me as a healer was that I was able to make up for a lot of that by simply healing people through their failures.
Player Behaviour
On the whole, I was pleasantly surprised by the behaviour of all the pugs I encountered. I didn't encounter any verbal abuse and never witnessed anyone being given a hard time for being a bad player (even if there were some quite obvious - to me - cases of the latter in a lot of groups). I only recall one dodgy vote kick (the one at the start of that first Black Talon run that fell apart soon after) and was never kicked myself (I don't count those Russians trying to make me leave more quickly after we had already completed the flashpoint); all other kicks were merely initiated to remove players who had disconnected and not returned after a few minutes.
That's not to say that everyone lived up to my standards of friendliness and politeness either. Many players had no interest in engaging in any kind of conversation and there was a lot of yelling about skipping cut scenes. But I feel that that's just part of pug life and being grouped with random people who may have very different ideas of what makes for a good run than you do. I wouldn't be surprised if some of my pug mates were equally annoyed with me for wanting to watch cut scenes sometimes or wanting to do bonus bosses. On the whole though, I felt good about what I saw of the community here. There were more than a couple of runs where people made me smile or even laugh. Posts like this one can make it look worse than it is sometimes, but most people really aren't like that.
Social Points, Crew Skills, Money, Gear
Considering that I spent all my time from level 12 onwards in groups, it feels kind of odd that I only achieved social rank three by the time I hit 65. I suppose it makes sense since most social points come from conversations (of which there aren't that many in most flashpoints), not killing things in a group, but it still doesn't feel quite right.
As explained at the start of this experiment, I chose scavenging, bioanalysis and slicing for this character. I had maxed out scavenging by level 39, but there are a lot fewer mobs to bioanalyse in your average flashpoint and I only got that skill up to 409 by the end. Slicing remained at level 1 since there was nothing to skill up on, however I was able to activate the various slicing shortcuts in flashpoints like Cademimu and Mandalorian Raiders, which definitely came in handy.
I didn't feel like I made a lot of money. The only thing this character received from my main was a set of orange gear that I liked the look of, everything else she had to pay for herself, and she hit level 65 with about 1.3 million credits. Not that she had a lot of expenses - skill training is free for subscribers these days, and repair costs were minimal (plus there was that bug in the past month where I didn't need to repair at all for a while). Up until level 55 or so I sold all the BoE gear drops that I won on the GTN, but after a certain point they all changed to bind on pickup instead and could only be vendored.
I suppose I could have made some extra credits if I had sold all those companion gifts that I bought with my common data crystals, but I kept those for myself. Crystals were the one thing I always had lots of. I obviously didn't keep an exact count of their number, but I came close to hitting the cap multiple times and kept having to find new ways to spend them.
Buying new mods didn't really seem to be worthwhile - I did update my gear about four times but it made no noticeable difference to my performance in the actual flashpoints due to bolster. On a different gear-related note, I was pleased to note that no matter how low level my pugs were, everybody was almost always impeccably dressed. That's definitely been a positive side effect of the Cartel Market and associated systems like the outfit designer - I still remember when we all looked a bit clown-like while levelling up.
I wanted to make a note about how the order and frequency in which each flashpoint appeared was pretty haphazard, as you would expect. In the end I got:
Cademimu - five times
Blood Hunt - four times
Hammer Station, Battle of Ilum, False Emperor and Assault on Tython - three times
Black Talon, Kuat Drive Yards, Mandalorian Raiders, Boarding Party and Directive 7 - twice
Athiss, The Foundry, Red Reaper, Czerka Corporate Labs, Czerka Core Meltdown and Korriban Incursion - once
Depths of Manaan, Legacy of the Rakata, Battle of Rishi - never
Colicoid War Game, Kaon Under Siege, Lost Island - only just noticed that these aren't even on the group finder anymore, except for Kaon/LI hardmode...
I suppose that's pretty much what you would expect from doing randoms, but I did find it noteworthy that this pretty much screws over any narrative cohesion. It's an intentional trade-off to enable faster queue pops, but I would strongly advise new players against going down the route of random instances, simply because things just won't make sense. One moment a guy will give you a quest, then he's suddenly evil, then you're randomly crashing a shuttle in a jungle. It's just confusing when compared to the old system where each flashpoint would pop up at the level where it also fit into the overall story of the game.
So... would I recommend it or not?
I would recommend this levelling path as a change of pace if you are an experienced player who's already seen all the class stories and wants to try something different for a change. I can also see this being a good way of levelling if you just want to quickly get another character to max level, for example to help with your guild's operations.
You'd probably be best served to roll a healer, though a tank also gets plenty of opportunity to practice. As a dps you'll probably have the least power to carry the rest of your group if they are not the greatest of players (though high dps can certainly make a big difference on a lot of fights too). Either way you'll be challenged to get the most out of your class and can familiarise yourself with all of your abilities while levelling up, as you'll probably find a reason to use all of them in pugs, even the ones you usually wouldn't use while levelling solo.
Patience with other players, whether they are new, slow or just odd, is a requirement though.
I would not advise new players to level exclusively through random flashpoints, as you'll probably get them in an order that makes no sense. If you do want to do any flashpoints while levelling, I recommend that you only go for the ones for which you get quests along the way, specifically selecting them in the group finder. Also don't be afraid to state that you're new... but don't expect everything to go smoothly right away.
And that's all there is to it really!
Here are links to all the installments of my levelling journey in case you want to re-read any of them:
Part 1: My Flashpoint Levelling Experiment (1-17)
Part 2: Up to 29 (17-29)
Part 3: Blood Hunt Wants My Blood (29-35)
Part 4: Russians and Reruns (35-45)
Part 5: I Have The Power (to carry these pugs) (45-53)
Part 6: Battle of Ilum Makes Me Mad (53-58)
Part 7: My Mercenary's Grand Finale (58-65)
(P.S.: You still have until the 6th to enter my Cartel Coin giveaway!)
Labels: community , crew skills , flashpoint levelling , flashpoints , grouping , levelling , pugs , screenshots
Happy New Year! Win 2400 Cartel Coins (Closed)
I've decided to ring in the new year in a slightly different manner this year, namely by holding a little giveaway for my readers!
And the lucky winner, determined by an in-game /roll 30 (the number of entries), is...
Commenter #3, fellow blogger Ravanel from The Red Eclipse!
Congratulations! :D
While I visited my family in Austria for Christmas, I purchased a 2400 cartel coin code in a local shop. Here's the box in all its German glory:
No, of course I won't send that to anyone, that would be silly. The winner will simply receive the code to claim their coins in their in-game mail.
Store-bought cartel coins come with different mini pets depending on where you bought them, and since these are from Austria, they will also grant one of your characters a Forest Nekarr Cat.
There are two requirements for entering this giveaway.
1. Leave a comment in response to this post telling me about a happy SWTOR memory. (I was going to say "your happiest" at first but didn't want anyone to fret about whatever they had thought of right then really was their happiest moment or merely in their top ten - it's kind of silly but I know it's the kind of thing I would do.) Anything SWTOR-related will do, whether it was directly caused by something that happened in the game or only tangentially related, e.g. that time you had a real-life meetup with all of your SWTOR guildies and it was awesome.
2. At the end of your comment, leave your character name, faction and server name. This is so I have a way of contacting you if you win! This doesn't have to be your main if you're shy, just somewhere where I can mail the code if you win so that you will actually receive it.
The blog is set up to allow anonymous comments, so as long as you can cope with CAPTCHAs you don't have to sign up with any third party service like OpenID to participate. However, should you still have issues commenting on this post for some reason, feel free to drop me an e-mail with what your comment was supposed to be and I will post it for you.
While I hope that people will leave thoughtful comments that will be enjoyable to read, they won't be rated by quality and the winner will be drawn at random from all eligible participants. You have until 7 am GMT on the 6th of January to enter (you'll have to check yourself when that is in your local time zone), at which point I'll close the comments for this post and announce the winner later in the day.
▼ Jan ( 12 )
KotFE Chapter by Chapter - Chapter 2: A Dream of E...
Levelling Through Flashpoints Post 4.0 - Would I R...


text:
Istoria Poloniei din 1939 până în 1945 acoperă perioada care începe cu invadarea Poloniei de către forțele germane și se încheie cu sfârșitul celui de-al doilea război mondial. Pe 1 septembrie 1939, fără o declarație de război oficială, Germania a declanșat invadarea Poloniei. Pretextul nazist a fost
presupusele "provocări" ale trupelor poloneze de-a lungul granițelor comune și disputele polono-germane cu privire la statutul orașului Danzig și dreptul de liberă circulație între Prusia Răsăriteană și restul Germaniei, prin așa-numitul coridor polonez. În conformitate cu prevederile pactului Molotov-Ribbentrop, Germania Nazistă și Uniunea Sovietică (care s-a implicat în conflictul polono-german pe 17 septembrie) au trecut la împărțirea Poloniei.

Invaziile germană și sovietică

Forțele armate poloneze a rezistat atacului german, dar poziția lor strategică era disperată, de timp ce Polonia era înconjurată de Germania, de Cehoslovacia ocupată de germani și de statul marionetă] Slovacia. Germania a utilizat în Polonia tactica Vernichtungsgedanke, care mai târziu a evoluat în cea a Blitzkriegului  ("a războiului fulger"):  înaintarea rapidă a diviziilor de Panzer (blindate), bombardarea concentrărilor de trupe și a orașelor lipsite de apărare. Armata terestră și aviația militară poloneze aveau puțin echipament modern pentru a face față cu succes atacurilor foarte violente ale germanilor.

Forțele germane au fost superioare din punct de vedere numeric și tehnologic celor poloneze. Germanii au trimis pe frontul polonez aproximativ 85% din forțele lor armate. Pe front au fost deplasați între 1,6 și 1,8 milioane de soldați, 250.000 de camioane și alte vehicule, 67.000 de piese de artilerie, 4.000 de tancuri și o divizie de cavalerie. Avioanele Luftwaffe erau detașate din cadrul Legiunii Condor, formație de elită, ai cărui militari câștigaseră experiență în timpul războiului civil spaniol (1936 – 1939). Forțele aeriene germane erau reprezentate de 1.180 avioane de vânătoare (în special Messerschmitt Bf 109), 290 bombardiere în picaj Ju 87 Stuka, 290 bombardiere convenționale ( He 111) și 240 avioane ale marinei militare. Marina germană a folosit vechiul cuirasat Schleswig-Holstein pentru bombardarea Westerplatte, o secțiune a Danzigului, care era în stăpânirea Poloniei, în conformitate cu prevederile Tratatului de la Versailles din 1919.

Forțele poloneze au fost reprezentate de aproximativ 800.000 de soldați, inclusiv 11 brigăzi de cavalerie, două brigăzi motorizate, 30.000 de piese de artilerie și 120 de tancuri. Forțele aeriene poloneze au avut aproximativ 400 de avionae, dintre care 160 avioane de vânătoare PZL P.11c,  31 PZL P.7a și 20 P.11a, 120 de avioane de bombardament-recunoaștere PZL P.23 și 45 bombardiere medii PZL P.37. Marina militară era formată din patru distrugătoare, un torpilor, un puitor de mine, șase dragoare de mine și cinci submarine.

Regatul Unit și Franța au declarat război Germaniei, dar nu au întreprins nicio operațiune importantă de ajutorare a polonezilor. În conformitate cu acordul militar franco-polonez din 19 mai 1939, Franța ar fi trebuit să atace Germania dacă Polonia era atacată. În vreme ce Wehrmachtul era implicat în luptele de pe frontul polonez, armata franceză se bucura de o superioritate zdrobitoare la granița cu Germania, dar aliații polonezilor nu s-au grăbit să atace. Nouă divizii franceze, (din cele 102 care erau deja gata de luptă), au atacat în teritoriul german în Saarland, au avansat cam 8 kilometri și au ocupat 20 de sate abandonate, fără să întâmpine o rezistență notabilă. Ofensiva Saar nu a obligat Marele Stat Major german să mute soldați de pe frontul polonez pe granița de vest. În același timp, Royal Air Force a parașutat fluturași de propagandă asupra orașelor germane. Pe 4 octombrie, forțele franceze s-au retras pe aliniamentele originale.

În același timp, Uniunea Sovietică se pregătise la rândul ei să atace Polonia, în conformitate cu prevederile Pactului Moltov-Ribbentrop, semnat de reprezentanții sovietic și nazist în august 1939.

În condițiile în care Franța și Anglia nu doreau, sau nu erau în stare să-și respecte angajamentele militare față de aliatul polonez, Uniunea Sovietică, având propriile motive să se teamă de expansionismul german, făcuse mai multe oferte de alianță antigermană Poloniei, așa cum făcuse și Cehoslovaciei mai înainte. În concepția liderilor sovietici, asemenea alianțe ar fi avut un efect de intimidare și de domolire a planurilor expansioniste ale lui Hitler, dată fiind puterea militară sovietică. Polonezii se temeau de comunismul lui Stalin cel puțin tot atât de mult cât se temeau de nazismul lui Hitler și, de-a lungul întregului an 1939, ei au refuzat să facă orice fel de aranjament care ar fi permis trupelor sovietice să staționeze în Polonia. Dilema, așa cum o percepeau polonezii, a fost cel mai bine ilustrată de spusele celebre ale mareșalului Edward Rydz-Śmigły, comandantul suprem al forțelor armate poloneze: "Cu germanii ne așteaptă pericolul să ne pierdem libertatea. Cu rușii ne putem pierde sufletul". Liderii de la Moscova au ales mai apoi să semneze un tratat de neagresiune cu germanii (Pactul Molotov-Ribbentrop), anulând astfel orice șansă de ajutor sovietic pentru Polonia.

Guvernul polonez a considerat că germanii se vor implica doar într-un război limitat, care să le permită cucerirea teritoriilor pe care le pretindeau, după care să ceară Franței și Angliei încetarea ostilităților. Pentru a apăra aceste teritorii, Marele Stat Major polonez a încercat să contrabalanseze slăbiciunea strategică a forțelor sale prin masarea efectivelor de-a lungul frontierelor apusene, pentru apărarea celor mai importante zone industriale și a celor mai bine populate regiuni ale țării, în special ariile înconjurătoare ale orașelor Poznań și Łódź. În momentul în care s-a hotărât efectuarea retragerii strategice pe linia râului Vistula, era deja prea târziu. Pe 14 septembrie, Varșovia era încercuită.

În conformitate cu protocolul secret anexat la pactul de neagresiune, Germania a cerut Uniunii Sovietice pe 3 septembrie   să declanșeze atacul împotriva statului polonez. Uniunea Sovietică a asigurat Germania că Armata Roșie va intra în Polonia în scurtă vreme sub pretextul ajutorării ucrainenilor și bielorușilor amenințați de agresiunea germană.

Pe 17 septembrie, Armata Roșie a început să ocupe teritoriile poloneze pe care Molotov le negociase cu Ribbentrop. Invazia era justificată și de dorința sovieticilor de a-și asigura o zonă tampon, care să-i apere de o viitoare agresiune germană.  Înaintarea Armatei Roșii era coordoanată atent cu mișcările forțelor germane   și a avut parte de o rezistență nesemnificativă din partea forțelor poloneze, care primiseră ordine de la Sikorski să evite confruntările cu sovieticii.

Guvernul polonez și comandamentul militar suprem s-au retras spre sud-est, spre capul de pod românesc, și în cele din urmă au traversat granița în România neutră. Nu a existat nicio capitulare oficială, iar rezistența armată a continuat în mai multe locuri. Varșovia a fost bombardată sălbatic pe 27 septembrie, unele unități militare continuând lupta până în octombrie. În cele mai multe zone muntoase ale țării, subunități ale armatei au început lupta clandestină de rezistență aproape imediat. Armata polonez a pierdut cam 65.000 de infanteriști, 400 aviatori și 110 marinari. Pierderile germanilor au fost de aproximativ 16.000 de soldați, 365 aviatori și 126 marinari. Luftwaffe a fost dezorganizată. Piloții de vânătoare polonezi au pretins că au doborât 126 de avioane germane. 90 de avioane au fost doborâte de focul artileriei antiaeriene, și au mai rămân 70 de avioane despre care nu se  știe cine le-a doborât. 300 de alte avioane germane au fost atât de grav avariate, încât nu au mai putut fi reparate. Forțele aeriene poloneze au pierdut 327 avioane, din care 67 au fost doborâte de artileria antiaeriană.

Ocuparea și dezmembrarea Poloniei

În conformitate cu prevedrile a două decrete date de Hitler pe 8 și 12 octombrie, o mare parte a vestului Poloniei a fost anexat de Germania. Printre acestea se aflau zonele pierdute de Germania la încheirea primului război mondial prin semnarea Tratatului de la Versailles (Coridorul polonez, Prusia de Vest și Silezia Superioară), dar și teritorii care nu au făcut niciodată parte din statul german, printre ele și zona orașului Łódź.

Germanii au împărțit Polonia ocupat în următoarele unități administrative:

 Reichsgau Wartheland (inițial Reichsgau Posen), care includea întregul voievodat Poznań, cea mai mare parte a voievodatului Łódź, cinci districte ale voievodatului Pomerania și un district din voievodatul Varșovia;
 Restul voievodatului Pomerania a fost încorporat în Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen (inițial Reichsgau Westpreussen);
 Regiunea Ciechanow (Regierungsbezirk Zichenau), formată din cinci districte nordice ale voievodatului Vaarșovia (Płock, Płońsk, Sierpc, Ciechanow și Mława), a devenit parte a Prusiei Răsăritene;
 Regiunea Katowice (Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz) sau neoficial Ost-Oberschlesien (Silezia Superioară Răsăriteană), care includea districtele  Sosnowiec, Będzin, Chrzanów și Zawiercie și părți ale districtelor  Olkusz și Żywiec.

Suprafața acestor teritorii anexate era de 94.000 km<>sup>2</sup>,  cu o populație de aproximativ 10 milioane de locuitori, marea majoritate etnici polonezi.

În conformitate cu termenii Pactului Ribbentrop-Molotov, renegociați prin înțelegera din 28 septembrie, Uniunea Sovietică a anexat teritoriile poloneze de la est de râurile Pisa, Narew, Bug și San, cu excepția zonei din jurul orașului Wilno (Vilnius), care a fost cedată Lituaniei și a regiunii Suwałki, care a fost anexată de Germania. Aceste teritorii erau populate de ucraineni și belaruși, (care reprezentau majoritatea în zonele rurale), și de polonezi, (majoritari în orașe), și de evrei.
(Pentru compoziția etnică a regiunii, vedeți și: Linia Curzon).

Suprafața totală, (inclusiv zona cedată Lituaniei) era de 201.000 km², cu o populație de 13,5 milioane de locuitori. O fâșie îngustă, care a fost parte a Ungariei înainte de 1914, a fost dată Slovaciei.

După declanșarea Operațiunii Barbarossa din iunie 1941, teritoriile poloneze care fuseseră ocupate de URSS, au fost ocupate de Germania și au fost organizate după cum urmează:

 Bezirk Bialystok (regiunea Białystok), care includea districtele Białystok, Bielsk Podlaski, Grajewo, Łomża, Sokółka, Volkovysk și Grodno) a fost "atașată", dar nu și încorporată în Prusia Răsăriteană;
 Bezirke Litauen und Weißrussland – Bielorusia poloneză (Belarusul occidental din zilele noastre), inclusiv provincia Vilna (zona orașului Vilnius) a fost încorporat în Reichskommissariat Ostland);
 Bezirk Wolhynien-Podolien – provincia poloneză Volhynia, a fost încorporată în Reichskommissariat Ukraine și
 Galiția răsăriteană a fost încorporată în Guvernământul General și a devenit al cincelea său district.

Viitorul Poloniei și al polonezilor a fost decis în Generalplan Ost. Restul teritoriului neîncorporat în Germania a fost plasat ca teritoriu sub administrația germană cu numele de Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete, cu capitala la Kraków. Guvernământul General a fost împărțit în patru districte: Varșovia, Lublin, Radom și Kraków (Cracovia). : (Pentru mai multe amănunte, vedeți și:  Guvernământul General.)

Avocatul german Hans Frank, nazist de frunte, a fost numit guvernator general al teritoriilor ocupate, pe 26 octombrie 1939. Frank a supravegheat izolarea evreilor în ghetouri în marile orașe, în primul rând în Varșovia, și a controlat folosirea civililor polonezi pentru muncă forțată și obligatorie în zonele industriale germane.

Populația inițială a Guvernământului General a fost de cam 12 milioane (la un teritoriu de 94.000 km²), dar a crescut cu cei aproximativ 860.000 de polonezi și evrei expulzați din zonele anexate de Germania, "recolonizați" în Guvernământul General. Această mutare de populație a fost parte a campaniei de exterminare a intelectualității poloneze și a altor elemente considerate priculoase pentru statul german (Operațiunea Tannenberg). Din 1941, bolile și foametea au început să macine populația poloneză. Numeroși polonezi (aproximativ 1 milion) au fost depotați în Germania, în lagăre de muncă, mulți dintre ei pierind de boli, malnutriție sau epuizare.

Aproape o cincime dintre cetățenii polonezi și-au pierdut viața în război.

Guvernele poloneze în exil

Guvernul polonez s-a reconstituit în Paris. Władysław Raczkiewicz a fost ales președinte, iar generalul Władysław Sikorski a fost numit prim-ministru și comandant suprem al armatei. Cea mai mare parte a flotei militare poloneze ajunsese în siguranța în Anglia, iar mii de polonezi au scăpat prin România, sau peste Marea Baltică și au continuat lupta. Numeroși polonezi au luat parte la luptele din Franța, din Anglia sau în alte operațiuni, altele decât cele ale armatei britanice.

Guvernul în exil, cu sediul în Paris și mai târziu în Londra, a fost recunoscut de toate guvernele aliate. După ce Germania a atacat Uniunea Sovietică în 1941, guvernul polonez în exil a stabillit relații diplomatice cu URSS-ul, în ciuda rolului lui Stalin în dezmembrarea Poloniei. Sute de mii de soldați polonezi, care erau prizonieri în Uniunea Sovietică, deportați polonezi și civili aflați în lagărele de muncă din Siberia, au fost eliberați și au putut să se alăture conaționalilor lor care formau o nouă armată în Siria aflată sub mandat francez. (Printre ei s-a numărat viitorul prim-ministru al statului Israel, Menachem Begin). Ei au format baza armatei poloneze conduse de generalul Władysław Anders.

În aprilie 1943, germanii au anunțat că au descoperit în pădurea Katyn gropile comune în care au fost îngropați 4.300 de ofițeri polonezi, care fuseseră luați prizonieri în 1939 de Armata Roșie, după care au fost uciși de sovietici. Germanii au invitat  Crucea Roșie Internațională să viziteze locația. A fost confirmat faptul că gropile comune conțineau trupurile unor ofițeri polonezi și că aceștia fuseseră uciși cu arme de producție sovietice. Guvernul sovietic a afirmat că germanii au înscenat totul cu scopul de a produce disensiuni între aliați. Guvernele aliate au acceptat declarațiile sovietice din motive diplomatice, dar guvernul polonez în exil a refuzat să accepte explicațiile oficiale.

Stalin a luat decizia de a îngheța relațiile cu guvernul polonez din Londra și a hotărât să sprijine comuniștii polonezi aflați în Uniunea Sovietică pentru a forma un guvern alternativă și o armată. În iuluie 1949, această armată, condusă de generalul Zygmunt Berling, avea 40.000 de membri. Printr-o conincidență nefericită, Sikorski, considerat de mulți cel mai talentat politician al exilului polonez, a murit într-un accident  de avion lângă Gibraltar. S-au făcut numeroase supoziții cu privire la acest accident, care ar fi fost de fapt un atentat pus la cale de Stalin, de aliații deranjați de insistența cu care generalul polonez se opunea cedării pretențiilor sovietice, sau chiar de anumite cercuri poloneze din exil. Lui Sikorski i-a urmat în fruntea guvernului din exil Stanisław Mikołajczyk.

În 1943 și 1944, conducătorii aliaților, în mod special Winston Churchill, au încercat să aducă la masa tratativelor pe Stalin și pe liderii polonezilor din exil. Aceste eforturi au eșuat din mai multe motive. Poate cel mai important motiv era masacrul de la Katyn și soarta polonezilor dispăruți în Uniunea Sovietică, în închisori și lagărele de muncă ale Gulagului. Un alt motiv era chestiunea granițelor Poloniei postbelice. Stalin insista ca teritoriile anexate în 1939 să rămână în mâinile sovieticilor, iar polonezii să fie compensați cu teritorii cedate de Germania. Polonezii din occident conduși de Mikołajczyk, au refuzat această propunere, chiar și în condițiile în care Churchill amenința cu rupera relațiilor politice cu guvernul polonez în exil. Un al treilea motiv a fost insistența cu care Mikołajczyk cerea ca Stalin să se angajeze să nu impună un guvern comunist în Polonia postbelică. Problema fundamentală era aceea că liderii polonezi din exil doreau să păstreze independența țării lor, în timp ce Stalin era hotărât să controleze total viitoarea Polonie. Polonezii au ajuns la concluzia că Statele Unite și Regatul Unit îl sprijină pe Stalin, nu pe ei, în rezolvarea celor trei chestiuni enumerate mai sus.

În 1944, guvernul polonez din exil considera că se află pe o poziție extrem de puternică, de vreme ce armata poloneză din occident contribuia din plin la succesul operațiunilor aliate. În mai, Corpul de armată de sub comanda generalului Władysław Anders s-a distins în luptele pentru cucerirea mânăstirii-fortăreață de la Monte Cassino, deschizând drumul către Roma. În august, Divizia I blindată poloneză a avut o contribuție hotărâtoare la obținerea victoriei în bătălia de la Falaise, iar, în septembrie, Brigada poloneză de parașutiști comandată de generalul Stanisław Sosabowski a luptat cu dârzenie în bătălia de la Arnhem. În același timp însă, Armata Roșie intra în Polonia, sovieticii înăsprindu-și poziția față de guvernul polonez în exil la Londra, Stalin pretinzând acum nu numai recunoașterea liniei Curzon ca viitoare frontieră, dar cerând și demisia din guvernul lui Mikołajczyk a tuturor persoanelor ostile Uniunii Sovietice, inclusiv a președintelui Władysław Raczkiewicz.

Mișcarea de rezistență din Polonia

Rezistența poloneză fața de ocupația germană a început aproape imediat după declanșarea invaziei, deși relieful țării oferea puține posibilități pentru ducerea cu succes a luptelor de guerilă. Armia Krajowa (Armata Teritorială), loială guvernului polonez în exil la Londra, constituită în brațul înarmat al Statului Secret Polonez, a fost formată dintr-un număr de grupuri mai mici în 1942. Din 1943, Armia Krajowa a intrat în competiție cu Armia Ludowa (Armata Populară) sprijinită de URSS și controlată de Partidul Muncitoresc Polonez (Polska Partia Robotnicza). În 1944, Armia Krajowa număra aproximativ 380.000 de oameni, e adevărat, slab înarmați. Armia Ludowa număra mult mai puțini membri, dar mult mai bine echipați. Au existat și alte organizații ale rezistenței poloneze, precum oamenii pădurii  (Leśni), responsabile pentru uciderea a aproximativ 150.000 de germani în timpul ocupației naziste.

Între august 1943 și martie 1944, Statul Secret Polonez a conceput planul politic pe termen lung, gândit parțial să combată propunerile atrăgătoare ale comuniștilor. Astfel, era promisă o reformă agrară cuprinzătoare, naționalizarea bazei industriale a țării, obținerea de compensații teritoriale din partea Germaniei, dar și restabilirea granițelor estice interbelice. Principala diferență dintre programele politice al Statului Secret Polonez pe de-o parte, și al comuniștilor pe de alta, nu era caracterul reformelor economice și sociale propuse, ci atitudinea față de suveranitatea națională, fața de chestiunea redesenării frontierei de est și față de relația cu Uniunea Sovietică.

În aprilie 1943, germanii au declanșat operațiunea de deportarea a evreilor care mai rămăseseră în gheotoul din Varșovia, provocând o răscoală a evreilor, care a ținut din 19 aprilie până pe 6 mai, aceasta fiind una dintre primele revolte armate din Polonia ocupată. Unele subunități ale Armatei Teritoriale au încercat să-i ajute pe răsculații din ghetou, dar, în principal, evreii au fost lăsați să lupte singuri.

În timpul anului 1943, Armata Teritorială și-a pregătit forțele în vedera declanșării insurecției naționale. Planul de insurecție a fost codificat Operațiunea Furtuna și a început să fie pus în practică la sfârșitul anului 1943. Cele mai cunoscute acțiuni au fost Operațiunea Ostra Brama și Insurecția din Varșovia. În august 1944, în timp ce Armata Roșie se apropia de Varșovia, guvernul în exil a cerut Armatei Teritoriale să declanșeze insurecția în oraș, astfel încât să elibereze orașul și să prevină preluarea puterii de către comuniști. Armata Teritorială, aflată sub conducerea lui Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, a declanșat Insurecția din Varșovia. Forțele sovietice se aflau la mai puțin de 20 de kilometri depărtare, dar primise ordine din partea Marelu Stat Major sovietic să  nu sprijine lupta polonezilor. Stalin a descris insurecția ca pe o "aventură criminală". Polonezii au apelat la aliații occidentali pentru a ajutora luptătorii din capitală. Royal Air Force, iar mai târziu escadrilele poloneze din Italia, au parașutat arme, dar, la fel ca în 1939, era imposibil pentru aliații occidentali să-i ajute pe polonezi fără acordul și cooperarea sovieticilor.

Luptele din Varșovia au fost extrem de crâncene, polonezii luptând pentru fiecare stradă. Armata Teritorială  avea în capitală înte 12.000 și 20.000 de soldați, cei mai mulți înarmați cu arme ușoare de infanterie, care au luptat împotriva armateri regulate germane și a trupelor SS. Bór-Komorowski a sperat că oamenii săi pot prelua controlul asupra Varșoviei și pot să apere capitala până la reîntoarcerea guvernului în exil la Londra. După 63 de zile de lupte foarte sângeroase, orașul a fost transformat în ruine, iar represaliile germane au fost cumplite.

După capitularea lui Bór-Komorowski, luptătorii Armatei Teritoriale au fost tratați de germani ca prizonieri de război, dar polupația civilă a suportat represalii nemiloase. Pierderile totale ale polonezilor au fost estimatea la 150.000 -300.000 de morți, 900.000 de civili trimiși în lagărele de concentrare germane de la  Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Mauthausen și altele. Varșovia a fost distrusă aproape în întregime după ce bombardierele germane au demolat sistematic orașul. Insurecția din Varșovia a permis germanilor să distrugă o bună parte a Armatei Teritoriale, spre marea sadisfacție a lui Stalin, care a putut să-și impună guvernul comunist în Polonia postbelică fără să se teamă de o opoziție armată.

Sfârșitul războiului: Ialta și sovieticii
În timp ce sovieticii înaintau prin Polonia la sfârșitul anului 1944, administrația germană s-a prăbușit.  Comitetul Polonez de Eliberare Națională (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego) în frunte cu Bolesław Bierut, având susținerea comuniștilor, a fost instalat de sovietici la Lublin, primul oraș polonez important eliberat de sub ocupația nazistă, și a început să preia treptat administrația țării, odată cu retragerea germanilor. Guvernul în exil de la Londra nu putea miza decât pe Armata Teritorială. De aceea, guvernul în exil a stabilit că dacă Armata Teritorială trebuie să colaboreze cu Armata Roșie la nivel tactic, în schimb, autoritățile clandestine ale Statului Secret Polonez trebuiau să preia puterea în zonele controlate de Aliați (vedeți Operațiunea Furtuna) pentru a preveni posibilitatea ca sovieticii să preia controlul asupra întregii țări. Eșecul Insurecției din Varșovia a marcat prăbușirii oricărei șanse a Poloniei de evitare a instaurării puterii comuniste, în special datorită lipsei de interes a Aliaților față de un eventual conflict cu sovieticii. Sovieticii au trecut la arestarea, deportarea sau executarea membrilor Armatei Teritoriale, în ciuda participării lor la mișcarea de rezistență antigermană., . Până prin 1946, membrii mișcărilor clandestine antigermane au continuat să lupte cu sovieticii, considerați cu nimic mai buni decât ocupanții naziști. Unele elemente ale mișcărilor de dreapta, care se mai opuneau comuniștilor, au mai rezistat  până în 1956..

La Conferința de la Ialta din februarie 1945, Stalin a putut să prezinte Aliaților occidentali, Franklin D. Roosevelt și Winston Churchill, situația din Polonia ca pe un fapt împlinit. Armata Roșie stăpânea practic țara, iar comuniștii polonezi controlau adminstrația. Uniunea Sovietică era în plin proces de încorporare a zonei răsăritene a Poloniei (Kresy), pe care o invadase și anexase în 1939. Față de situația din 1939, sovieticii au făcut câteva concesii teritoriale polonezilor, în principal prin cedarea orașului Białystok. În compensație, URSS-ul oferea Poloniei toate teritoriile germane din Pomerania, Silezia și Brandenburg de la est de Linia Oder-Neisse, plus jumătatea sudică a Prusiei Răsăritene, (care aveau să devină cunoscute ca Teritoriile redobândite). Stalin era hotărât să facă în așa fel ca noul guvern comunist să fie unul de factură comunistă și prin acesta să controleze țara. El a înăsprit tonul în relatiile cu guvernul în exil la Londra, dar, pentru a păstra bunele relații cu Roosevelt și Churchill, a fost de acord la Ialta ca la Varșovia să se formeze un guvern de coaliție. Premierul guvernului polonez în exil, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, a demisionat și, împreună cu alți câțiva lideri ai exilului, s-au întors în țară, la Lublin, unde guvernul provizoriu controlat de comuniști își stabilise sediul temporar. Acest guvern era condus  de socialistul Edward Osóbka-Morawski, dar comuniștii ocupau posturile cheie ai cabinetului. Acest guvern a fost recunoscut de Aliați în iulie 1945. Stalin a acceptat ca Polonia să primească 10 miliarde de dolari SUA ca despăgubiri de război din partea Germaniei.

În aprilie 1945, guvernul provizoriu a semnat un pact mutual cu Uniunea Sovietică. Noul Guvern de unitate națională polonez a fost constituit pe 28 iunie 1945, cu Mikołajczyk în funcția de vice-prim-ministru. Principalii rivali ai comuniștilor erau Partidul Țărănesc Polonez (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe) și veteranii Armatei Teritoriale, care luptaseră în țară sau cei ai Forțelor armate poloneze care luptaseră în străinătate. În același timp, partidele prosovietice dețineau controlul asupra armatei și poliției, înclinând balanța puterii în favoarea lor, și în plus se bucurau de sprijinul Armatei Roșii. Oponenții politici potențiali ai comuniștilor au devenit victime ale campaniilor de teroare sovietică, mulți dintre ei fiind arestați abuziv, deportați, executați sau torturați.

Aliatii occidentali, (în mod special președintele Roosevelt) au fost criticați, atât de polonezi, cât și de istorici și politicieni din occident, pentru ceea ce a fost perceput în Polonia (dar și în alte țări din Europa Răsăriteană și Centrală) ca o trădare a vesticilor și abandonarea fostului aliat în brațele lui Stalin. Privind reptrospectiv, nu este nicio îndoială că Roosevelt a fost prost consiliat și a fost un naiv când a acceptat promisiunile lui Stalin făcute la Ialta. Trebuie acceptat că posibilitățile aliaților occidentali de a influența hotărârile lui Stalin erau reduse, de timp ce URSS-ul controla efectiv regiunea, iar singura posiblitate de a schimba starea de fapt era aceea de a declanșa un război la scară largă împotriva sovieticilor. O asemenea posibilitate părea exclusă, nu doar de opinia publică, care fusese supusă în toată perioada războiului unei intense propagande în favoarea prieteniei cu aliatul sovietic și care așteptase plină de speranță încheierea războiului și ar fi acceptat cu greu declanșarea unei noi conflagrații, dar și de o bună parte a clasei politice occidentale, mult mai interesată de refacerea economiilor apusene secătuite de război, decât de soarte țărilor est-europene.

Mikołajczyk și colegii săi din guvernul polonez în exil au insistat pentru menținerea neschimbată a granițelor poloneze interblelice, sau măcar pentru schimbări teritoriale limitate, aceasta fiind o poziție imposibil de apărat în practică, deoarece sovieticii controlau teritoriul în chestiune, zona fiind deja promisă lui Stalin de Churchill și Roosevelt încă din 1943. Refuzul guvernului în exil de a accepta noua graniță răsăriteană i-a iritat pe aliați, în mod special pe Churchill, care a devenit mult mai puțin dornic să se opună propunerilor lui Stalin cu privire la compozitia noului guvern postbelic al Poloniei. Până în cele din urmă, exilul a pierdut pe ambele fronturi: Stalin a anexat teritoriile răsăritene și, în plus, a controlat total noul guvern de la Varșovia. Deși din rândul comuniștilor polonezi prosovietici a veni propunerea ca Polonia să fie admisă în Uniunea Sovietică ca una dintre republicile unionale, (o propunere a aparținut lui Wanda Wasilewska), tara a rămas un stat independent, dar plasat în blocul răsăritean, membru al CAER-ului și Pactului de la Varșovia, adoptând modelul politic, social și economic socialist sovietic

Hans Frank a fost capturat de trupele americane în mai 1945 și a fost unul dintre acuzații din cadrul Procesului de la Nüremberg. În timpul desfășurării procesului, Frank s-a convertit la catolicism. El a predat procurorilor 40 de volume ale jurmalului propriu, multe dintre dovezile împotriva sa fiind luate chiar dintre însemnările proprii. A fost găsit vinovat de crime de război și crime împotriva umanității, iar pe 1 octombrie 1946 a fost executat prin spânzurare.

În 1945, granițele Poloniei au fost în sfârșit redesenate în mod oficial, în conformitate cu deciziile luate la Conferința de la Teheran din 1943. Teritoriile ocupate de Uniunea Sovietică în 1939 (mai puțin regiunea Białystok) au fost definitiv anexate, iar locuitorii de etnie poloneză au fost în cea mai mare parte expulzați. În zilele noastre, aceste teritorii fac parte din Belarus, Ucraina și Lituania. În schimb, Polonia a primit teritorii din componența Germaniei interbelice, așa numitele teritorii redobândite: Pomerania, Silezia și Brandenburg de la est de Linia Oder-Neisse, plus jumătatea sudică a Prusiei Răsăritene. Din aceste teritorii au fost expulzate mai multe milioane de germani, locul lor fiind luat de polonezii expulzați la rândul lor din Kresy.

În conformitate cu înțelegerile de la Ialta, milioane de "cetățeni sovietici" urmau să fie repatriați împotriva dorinței lor de către autoritățile aliate în URSS. Profitând de această hotărâre, guvernul polonez, dornic să rezolve odată pentru totdeauna problemele minorităților belorusă și ucraineană, a retras în 1947 cetățenia mai multor membri ai acestelor etnii și a colaborat activ la expulzarea lor din regiunile sud-estice ale țării în Uniunea Sovietică (Operațiunea Vistula). În Polonia postbelică, singura minoritate semnificativă a rămas cea evreiască.

Note

Bibliografie

 Norman Davies (1982). God's Playground. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05353-3 and ISBN 0-231-05351-7.
 Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-691-09603-1, Google Print
 John Hiden (ed.), Thomas Lane (ed.), The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-53120-9
 Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War : A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-300-10670-X
 Marek Jan Chodakiewicz. Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004 ISBN 0-7391-0484-5.

Legături externe
 Hitler Armenian Statement
 The Poles on the Fronts of World War II
 Polish Resistance in World War II
 Testimony of Hans Frank at Nuremberg
 University of New York in Buffalo Info Poland: World War II
 Polish Losses in World War II, Witold J. Lukaszewski, Sarmatian Review, aprilie 1998
 The Soviet Invasion of Poland During the World War II
 The Polish-Russian Controversy

Vezi și
Lista conducătorilor polonezi

Istoria Poloniei
Istoria militară a celui de-al doilea război mondial

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text:
6 Ways to Help Your Teen Manage Their Instagram Responsibly
By Susan Borison
With over one billion users, Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms on the planet, especially with teens. Sometimes, we worry they're using it too much, or not using it appropriately or safely. Did you know there are many updated features and filters that allow users more control over their account?
What is Finsta—And Why Is It So Popular With Teenagers?
Your Teen spoke with Karina Newton, head of public policy at Instagram, to learn more about how parents can help teens manage their Instagram accounts safely and responsibly.
1. Manage screen time with alerts.
Says Newton, "Parents should talk with their teens about how much time they're spending online. One of the things we introduced last year was a "time spent" dashboard so people could see how much time they're spending. You can also set alerts. My alert, for instance, is set to 24 minutes. When I exceed that time, Instagram sends an alert."
2. Public or private account? Location tagging? Discuss the options.
With a private account, the user must approve all the followers. "That really protects your experience," says Newton. However, she notes, there are teens who are budding artists or entrepreneurs who want to develop a portfolio and connect with others who have similar interests, "and that might be a reason to have a public account."
It's definitely a conversation you should have with your teen and decide together. Similarly, parents should also discuss whether to allow geo-tagging of photos. If you decide there's no good reason for people to know their location, have them turn it off.
3. Use keyword filters to block unwanted comments.
"You can now select who you allow comments from," says Newton. "We also have a custom keyword filter where you can block anybody from leaving a comment that has particular words you have chosen." Parents and teens can discuss together what words might make sense to block. For example, certain words might trigger a negative reaction for a teen struggling with an eating disorder or anxiety.
4. You can report bad behavior anonymously. Really.
Parents should reassure their teens that if they see or experience bad behavior on Instagram, such as bullying or inappropriate comments, they can report it without fear of repercussions from the offender. "There is zero way for anyone to find out who reported whom," says Newton. "And we notice a lot of reporting is done by bystanders, not the individual who is being bullied." So remind your kids: If you see something, say something. It could make a difference to someone who is suffering.
5. Be wary of direct messages from unknown senders.
If you receive a direct message from someone who does not follow you on Instagram, it will go to a pending folder and must be approved before coming to your inbox, says Newton. Talk to your teen about how to handle this scenario. You may decide, "If there is a direct message coming from someone they don't know they should either ignore it or report it," she says.
6. Create a smaller community to share more privately.
Some teens choose to create a "finsta," or fake Instagram account. In reality, it's a smaller community of friends they choose to share things with more privately. (Ironically, it's often the more "real" of the two accounts they have.) Now, Instagram offers a way to build that smaller community, by designating a group called Close Friends. No one can share the content outside of that group with another user, and only the person who creates the group can add users to it. "Maybe you know most of your classmates follow you on Instagram, but you only want to share the fact that you're really struggling with studying for this one test with a select group, or you only want to share your pre-makeup look with a certain group," says Newton.
Looking for more on Instagram?
When Technology Distracts Teens from Completing Their Homework
Checking in with your teen on using some of these controls and filters can give parents a better idea of how their teen is using social media, who they are sharing information with, and how they are presenting themselves online. In addition, parents should make sure their teens follow these common-sense guidelines for all social media:
Use a complicated password.
Don't use the same password across accounts.
Don't lend your device to people you don't know.
When in doubt, don't post.
Updated May 2019
Susan Borison
Susan Borison, mother of five, is the founder and editor of Your Teen Media. Because parenting teenagers is humbling and shouldn't be tackled alone.

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The starting line up for today's game Auba and Laca starting yet again which is great to see a little concerned about elneny and Jenkinson but I'm sure they will do a job for us tonight COYG🔴⚪ 3rd is in your hands.
✔| CONFIRMED LINEUP #arscry ••• Agree with it? What would you change?
No match updates today as I'm at the match. I'm predicting a 3-1 win. What are your opinions on the lineup and predictions?
Can we take third spot? COYG!!!
Il #napoli potrebbe qualificarsi per la prossima #championsleague già con la partita di domani, #napoliatalanta. Con una vittoria infatti gli azzurri andrebbero a +15 sulla #roma ed in virtù degli scontri diretti favorevoli sarebbero sempre in vantaggio. Un obiettivo che sicuramente si vuole conquistare il prima possibile, e domani ci sarà l'occasione adatta; anche per il riscatto dopo l'eliminazione dall'#europaleague. #100x100napoli #sscnapoli #forzanapoli #forzanapolisempre #forzaazzurri #seriea #campionato Fonte foto: SSC Napoli Account Ufficiale.
Gameday gooners We host Crystal Palace tonight at the Emirates. Kickoff times UK: 4pm AEST: 1am Available on Optus Sport Score prediction: 3:0 W Let us know your score predictions.