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Mandalorian-themed gaming community for Star Wars: The Old Republic
September 2, 2011 by blur

Before you choose a guild…

As they say about a lot of things, the proof of the pudding’s always in the tasting. And it’s no different when it comes to MMO guilds. Until you take that final, figurative step through the door of a guild, you really don’t know if you’re going to like it or not. It is, on some levels, a leap of faith.

The good news is, of course, that if you don’t end up liking a guild you can simply leave.

That said, joining a guild, finding you hate it and then leaving is a time consuming process. It’s much better to get it right the first time and, when it comes to TOR guilds, like Beskar, I advise:

  • Checking out a guild’s recruitment thread on the TOR forums. Does it have lots of funny chatter between tons of friendly people, or is it 2-3 people repeatedly bumping with nonsense messages? The one to choose is obvious.
  • Has the guild invested in its own website (whether a self-built site or a paid-for site through one of the guild providers out there)? Have they invested in a quality Vent server, or similar? Investment = a good sign that a guild is serious.
  • What’s the chat like on their forum? On their Vent? Try and get a feel for it. Does it feel like chat you would like to be involved with? Is it MA-rated when you want PG? Or is it PG when you want MA? Try and find this out. Research it.

Being in a guild is, primarily, about being able to mix with the people in it, whether just in the game (for some guilds), or in the game AND socially (for other guilds).

Decide if what the guild offers is what you want. Because, if it isn’t there’s a TON of guilds out there. Just under 50,000 English-speaking ones at the time of writing, infact.

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April 23, 2011 by blur

Why I Became a Guild Leader

There’s a thread on the TOR forums at the moment, asking people why they became guild leaders.

As part of my ongoing mission to become better known to all of you, I’ll reproduce my answer:

I became a guild leader because, in the past, I have helped lead guilds and, in the process of doing that, have seen those guilds make bad decisions and the same mistakes, time after time. But wait… why didn’t I do something about these bad decisions and mistakes if I was helping to run these guilds? Glad you asked! Because typically being only one of several people running a guild, ie: in a “council” situation, you can give people all the good advice in the world and point out all the potholes and speedbumps in the road ahead, but at least one of your peers, if not more, will always think they know best and want to disagree — sometimes just for the sake of disagreeing. And, all the while, you watch the guild hitting all the speedbumps and potholes you warned everyone about, but couldn’t do anything about. My peers would turn into Nero — fiddling while Rome burned — and I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating that situation is to be inside of.

(And don’t even get me started on this one guild whereby one of the council members was permanently absent with “medical issues” and didn’t contribute anything real to the guild for, literally, years — but was allowed to keep her seat on the council because the overall leader was such a desperado when it came to women and point blank refused to replace her because his obsession with her meant he didn’t want to make her upset. That said, she should have done the right thing and resigned her post, given her situation, anyway. Regardless, stupid stuff like this happens in guilds all the time.)

So when TOR came up on the horizon, I thought there is no way I was going to end up in a council scenario ever again, being overruled by clowns who couldn’t run a drinking contest in a brewery, much less a fully-fledged guild, and conversely there was no way I was just going to join a guild, and be subject to the same sort of thing; without ANY chance of trying to change things. So I figured the only way to be truly happy, and see my vision in action, was to do it myself.

That’s why I am a (sole) guild leader today.

(And, given that the guild’s going extremely well without even a game yet, I guess that vision isn’t a bad one…!)

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April 16, 2011 by blur

Do TOR titles mean our characters will only have one name?

Trying to find out whether our characters can have one name or two names has been one of my ongoing missions since the TOR forum opened. Yet whether we can, or not, is a secret that’s still up there with UFOs, Bigfoot and Elvis being spotted at 7-11. It’s been asked a million times and, only recently, we got the, “it’s still under discussion” brush off.

(Really? Something so simple still under discussion after all these years…?!?)

So it was interesting to read Daniel Erickson’s comments (reproduced below), not in the sense that Darth will be off-limits when creating names… that was always a given. And not even in the sense that you can become a Lord or Darth or some other title through what you do in the game… I’ve pretty much always believed that would be the case.

No folks, what his comment suggests to me is that we’re now going down the path of single character names. And why? Simple. If you name your character, “John Smith”, becoming “Darth John Smith” looks terrible… not only because of the extra name in there (“Darth Smith” or “Darth John” would be much better in a pinch), but also because a Sith would typically change their name when becoming a Darth anyway… and I doubt the game will allow for people suddenly changing their name entirely, or dropping a first or last name to be replaced by their title later on.

(But hey, if the game DOES allow that… great… I just don’t think it will…)

So this, more than anything, suggests to me that we are heading for one-name characters and perhaps the reason Bioware is being so cagey with this information is because it knows there’s a ton of RP people out here who are going to freak out when they are told that their character can only be known by one name and, if that character doesn’t attain a title, will ALWAYS be only known by one name. Honestly, some people are going to absolutely hate that concept.

Your thoughts?

Hey Folks,

Darth and Lord are ranks in the Old Republic time period and while they represent an increasingly smaller percentage of overall Sith, they are clearly not at as rare as only having one or two running around in the galaxy. There are already numerous Darths (Baras, Malgus) we’ve seen who are not on the Dark Council.

It will likely not come as a surprise to most people that the titles of Darth and Lord are story-based rewards (one does not become a Darth by grinding frog-dogs) as are Master, etc. What may come as a surprise is that not everyone who completes a Sith or Jedi story will achieve them. There are always choices and those choices matter in many ways, including your notoriety and the rewards or reputation you earn. Darth will absolutely be off-limits when creating names.

Hope that helps!
Daniel Erickson

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Permalink | Posted in Information, Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic | 2 Comments »

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March 25, 2011 by blur

PvE servers don’t fit in the Star Wars universe?

A guy on the TOR forums recently commented:

PvE servers just don’t fit in the Star Wars universe. Not being able to attack each other doesn’t work in this context; I wouldn’t find it enjoyable, being so restricted.

My response?

I disagree with the, “it doesn’t fit in the Star Wars universe..” concept, which a lot of people repeat all the time when they are trying to justify why PvP servers are great and PvE servers are “terrible”.

I mean, since when is Star Wars the story of a guy who steps outside his front door and suddenly there’s a constant procession of extremely manic people, jumping and leaping in circles around him, like utter nutcases, while attacking him? Because that’s what PvP is like… and yet, I’ve never actually seen that in a Star Wars film, TV episode, comic or novel. Have any of you? I’d love to know where.

Long story short, open world PvP doesn’t make the game more Star Wars-y at all. Going to planets like Hoth, meanwhile, and doing PvP, certainly does — but that will happen on both PvP AND PvE servers. So it’s kind of a nonsense to say that PvP makes Star Wars “more” Star Wars — it doesn’t.

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March 19, 2011 by blur

PvP kids do themselves no favours when they talk about ‘real life’

There’s tons of people in the MMO and wider video gaming community that bug the hell out of me for different reasons. But sitting near the top, however, are those folks who are heavily into PvP and treat it like the most macho activity in the world when you just know that, in real life, they probably wouldn’t even raise their voice if they saw someone getting mugged in the street. Nope, all their machismo happens on a computer screen, only in the privacy of their own bedroom or study.

And you can see the mentality of the average loudmouth PvPer in the way they will actively seek to criticise people in MMO communities who, for example, don’t PvP at all (calling them, “carebears” and such), or conversely, berate people who choose to do their PvP on PvE servers.

One of the all-time classic comments you’ll hear coming from PvPers during attacks like this is that, “PvP servers are like ‘real life’, man! It’s a war! You can get attacked anywhere!”

Which begs the question, how many of you seriously expect to run into an enemy army on your next trip to the shopping mall? Conversely, how many of you would expect to run into an enemy army if you were dropped in the middle of, say, Libya or Afghanistan right now?

Thank you, you’ve just proved the point I’m about to make.

The concept of contested areas on a PvE server — just like an Afghanistan or Libya — is realistic. If you venture in, you will end up in a fight. Meanwhile, if you’re just doing something mundane, like driving to the mall, do you expect the Libyan army to start shelling your car?

But that is the PvP kids mindset — that you are just as attackable by the Libyan army on the way to the mall as in Libya itself. And it’s a nonsense argument when they present this as being like ‘real life’ because real life isn’t like that. Again, how many of you expect to run into an enemy army on your next trip to the shopping mall? The simple answer is, it’s not going to happen.

Yet on a PvP server… its equivalent happens 24/7 and the kids call it ‘real life’.

The great irony here is that PvE servers with a PvP component are actually closer to ‘reality’ than their PvP cousins. How so? It’s pretty simple. On a PvE server, you live your life not expecting to get attacked by an enemy army around the next corner in most places you walk. But if you CHOOSE to walk into a warzone on a PvE server… expect to get attacked. THAT is realistic.

So this is why I laugh long and hard every time I see some kid defend PvP servers by saying, “PvP servers are like ‘real life’, man! It’s a war! You can get attacked anywhere!” Because it’s actually less like real life than the PvE experience they are invariably seeking to talk down.

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Permalink | Posted in Opinion, Rant | 6 Comments »

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March 14, 2011 by blur

Advice for TOR guilds – don’t end up as “filler”

I’ve just posted the following text on the TOR forum but, in case it gets deleted or buried under a ton of meaningless nonsense, I’ll reproduce it here, too. Enjoy.

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As of a moment ago, our trusty database returned:

There are 14,203 PvE, RP/PvE and PvP guilds matching: English Language, US East or US West.

Sobering, isn’t it, that for all the people posting here whom, on the whole, are English speakers with their eye on either US East or US West servers, there are already more guilds than is practical and yet, more and more guilds are still being created every day.

(And yes, I know there are “joke guilds” in that total, ie: someone has made a sock puppet account and created a guild that they have no intention of ever developing. But even when you take away a percentage for those guilds, there are still way too many guilds out there.)

I’ve actually made this point a few times over the last two and a bit years and have often got stuck with people saying that there’s enough to go around and “everyone” should be able to create a guild if they want. Now, this is a great comment from a free-market, right-on, go-get-em-tiger, you-can-do-it, POV but, despite all that, is still false.

There is such a thing as too many guilds.

And sure, I know some people will probably stop reading as of that last line and are already hitting reply to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m going to push on here because there’s a meaning behind all of this which anyone who wants to take their TOR gaming seriously needs to understand and get on-board with, or be left behind.

When it comes to servers, and who we’re gaming with, TOR isn’t like other games. Anyone looking to enter TOR at launch needs to be entering their guild, and it’s members, here on the site — http://www.swtor.com/guilds — during Phase One (that’s now, by the way).

Next, in Phase Two (When’s that? We don’t know), you need to be preparing to list up to three allied and/or adversary guilds whom you’d like to have on your server.

Then, in Phase Three — the live game — all of us will log in and be TOLD what server we’re on — and not only what server we’re on, but who the guilds with us will be, too.

I can see this isn’t very well understood via a lot of commentary going around, so please pay attention: If you’re going into the game, in a guild, at launch… Your. Server. Will. Be. Assigned. To. You. This isn’t any other MMO where you log in and there’s 20 server names and your guild picks one that sounds “cool” or “funny” or “befitting our faction”; you are actually going to have the choice made for you and when you log in, you will be told where to go and play. No ifs, buts or maybes about this fact, guys.

So what are you going to do about it? If you are anything like me, you want:

* To be on a strong server.

* To have good “neighbours” (both friend and foe).

Now this is the whole reason for starting this post with that guild statistic. If you are in a guild and it’s just yourself, or you and a mate, or even half a dozen of you… do you think you’re a desirable group for others to align with? If you said yes, fine, there’s nothing more I can do for you. Thanks for reading!

If you were honest and said no, meanwhile, my suggestion is that you need to work at building your guild up. You need to be in a position where your guild is attractive to other like-minded guilds — and their guilds are also attractive to you, of course — so that in Phase Two of the guild process, you can start tying yourselves together and getting placed on a server which might not be “the top” server, but if there’s you, and your pals (both friend and foe), and you’ve all got guilds of 10, 20, 30 people… you’re going to do OK. You will have a nice experience.

Stick with a tiny guild, meanwhile, and you will be filler. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But just because it sounds horrible doesn’t make it untrue. If no one wants to be aligned with you, and there’s just you (or you and your best mate), you will get placed wherever there are holes, or cracks, in the system. You could end up anywhere. Would you like that?

That is why I am saying there are too many guilds right now and although the problem is unlikely to go away in total, those who are smart about these things will consolidate with other, like-minded guilds and, in this way, not only will more of you end up in decent sized guilds which allow you to do more (and thus have a good TOR experience in general), but you won’t end up as “filler” and, thirdly, if more guilds consolidate we will actually have less guilds overall.

Think about it. You know it makes sense. And… you’re welcome.

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March 10, 2011 by blur

Bioware’s Pre-Launch Guild Program gets things right…

What might get lost in the previous post, which was an epic rant by anyone’s standards, is that I think Bioware’s new Pre-Launch Guild Program is fantastic. Simply fantastic. There, I said it!

And I couch it in that sort of language because anyone who has read this blog in the past knows that I have been highly critical of Bioware — and will no doubt be so again in the future. But here, today, right now, I am happy to say that the new guild program is the bomb. I’ve come across nothing like it in 14 years of playing MMOs — almost as long as some of the 16 year old gamers I see running around, causing havoc in games. It really is a breath of fresh air for guild leaders in particular.

What’s not to like about it? Sure, the previous post outlined what a bunch of whiners on the TOR forums have been banging on about all day, but so long as you haven’t been planning something utterly stupid for your guild over the past year or two (let’s say, a Sith-Republic hybrid guild with 37 levels of member access), the new guild program is a treat that will pay dividends going forward.

It breaks down into three distinct stages — Formation, Alignment and Deployment.

In the Formation phase, guilds are encouraged to form. Pretty simple stuff. A guild leader creates a guild page, and his existing members can apply to join it, whilst further down the line, anyone searching for a guild will now be able to plug their key criteria into the TOR database and see all guilds that fit the bill — a much better system than what is done currently with people making posts on a forum. They can even apply to the guilds using a pre-determined list of questions provided by Bioware, which I’m sure some guilds will use. Not us, it must be said, as we have specific questions we want to ask, but for an average, run-of-the-mill guild, the system will give them a level of professionalism that they might have even previously lacked in their recruitment process.

Next, the Alignment phase — which will happen at a yet-to-be-announced time — is REALLY interesting to me. Basically, guilds will be able to specify any other guilds they wish to be aligned with, either as allies or adversaries, so that when the game launches, these designations will influence which guilds are placed on the same server. Which leads us to…

The Deployment phase. Or, in other words, the live game. This is where guilds will be assigned a server; ideally with the people they flagged themselves as wanting to play with in the Alignment phase. I think this is a very brave move (as it’s essentially asking guilds to put their trust in Bioware while admitting, at the same time, that they might not get what they want), but it’s also a very gutsy move that should be applauded as it will have the effect of being able to balance — in some way at least — the number of Sith and Republic guilds on each server. And that’s a massive issue in games where, sometimes, a particular server name might appeal to one faction over another and, for no other reason than just the name of the server, there are twice as many guilds from one faction as the other. This system should do something about changing that equation.

Alongside all of this, Bioware has also added some guild management goodies to its website, which both look good and will be quite useful for guilds. Frankly, I couldn’t ask for more. I think this is a great day in the game’s development and while other issues might still rankle, or remain unresolved in general, I’m happy to praise something I think is very praiseworthy and say that I’m really loving what Bioware unveiled today. Kudos to you, Bioware. There, I said it!

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February 10, 2011 by blur

Why a lifetime subscription is unlikely…

Since TOR first raised its head in 2008, I’ve lost count of the sheer volume of people on its official forum saying they wish it will come with a lifetime subscription model. And that’s understandable — the Star Wars IP is intoxicating and, assuming TOR isn’t another Star Trek Online and drives people away, screaming in terror, they will probably want to play it for ages and ages and ages.

Look at the people who still try and play poor old broken Star Wars Galaxies in the present day. And why? “Because it’s Star Wars…” No more, no less. Stick “Star Wars” on it and they will come.

But I don’t think Bioware will offer a lifetime sub. Want to know why?

1) Lifetime subs are the domain of under-achieving games

Look around at all the games that offer lifetime subs. There’s a curious parallel between them offering lifetime subs and tanking on the market. Even LotRO, which didn’t tank but still had to flip to F2P in the end, offered a lifetime sub at first, in addition to a $9.95/month deal for founders instead of the usual $15/month; showing that — to my mind at least — Turbine knew it didn’t have a world beater on its hands, and wanted to pull in as many people as it could, with whatever means it had at its disposal, from the start. If a game developer thinks it has a world beater, however, lifetime subs are never mentioned. And what does Bioware think TOR will be? A world beater. What do we think TOR will be? A world beater. So, do you really think they’ll do a lifetime subscription?

2) Bioware will value its DLC and expansions too highly

Bioware has already shown through Mass Effect and Dragon Age that its all too happy to take a small bit of extra gameplay and toss it out there for a few extra $$$. Multiply that by a bunch of DLC releases (perhaps a different DLC release for each different class?), and that’s some serious coin being raked in. Then there’s the whole concept of expansion packs which, by rights, will cover all classes and be quite large and expensive projects in their own right — they will cost a fair amount of money; probably $20-$40 apiece. Now, do you REALLY think Bioware will toss away all these micro-transaction opportunities by selling lifetime subscriptions to us, upfront? Some extreme optimists might, but I certainly don’t! The only way I see it happening is if… and it’s a big if… if a TOR lifetime subscription only covers the monthly fees and you still have to pay additional money for the DLC and expansion packs. But that isn’t really what a lifetime subscription means in most games.

Between these two facts, I’m sorry, but I really don’t see TOR being offered with a lifetime subscription option; at least in the way we understand a “lifetime subscription” to work, ie: pay once and everything going forward is free. So who knows? Bioware might indeed offer a new take on what “lifetime subscription” means by creating a lifetime sub where you’re still having to pay for things going forward; something akin to those games companies who now think “open beta” means a limited number of keys obtained through gaming sites, rather than actually being “open”.

It seems you can just invent your own interpretations in the MMO market, these days.

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Permalink | Posted in Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic | 6 Comments »

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February 3, 2011 by blur

When is a delay not a delay?

Q: When is a delay not a delay?
A: When Bioware’s involved.

Bioware is one of those company’s with the uncanny knack for being able to make year after year of announcements, yet not say very much at all. And it seems to think no one notices!

Just off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen things we don’t know about TOR which, in any other pre-game community, would have been basic knowledge after the first month or two.

Heading towards 2.5 years in the TOR community, I am often embarrassed at how little we know, relatively, about a great many things to do with the game. It’s just… bizarre, frankly.

And, in a similar vein, there’s Bioware’s dogged determination to not give us a release date. The closest we’ve ever gotten is developers grinning and saying, “Spring 2011″ — a spread of three months in itself — but which was (potentially) blown out of the water by events of this week.

We’re now being told the game will release between April 1st and December 31st, 2011. And, actually, we weren’t even given that much detail, if the truth be told. Listeners to Electronic Arts Q3 2011 Earnings Conference Call were told that TOR is expected to ship in calendar 2011, but after the close of FY11 (which ends 31 March 2011), forcing fans to work out the “April 1st and December 31st, 2011″ for themselves as EA seemed unwilling to just say that plainly in the first place.

Optimists point to the fact that the “Spring 2011″ release date still falls into the dates specified and, as such, the game might still pop out in, say, May or June, thus fulfilling the original “Spring 2011″ criteria, and also falling within the newer “April 1st and December 31st, 2011″ spread of dates.

Pessimists, however, are pondering why the previously solid “Spring 2011″ release date is now being stretched to the end of the year. Is this the delay you have when you’re not having a delay?

After all, if sometime within “Spring 2011″ was still rock-solid, why wouldn’t Bioware stick to saying that? Does it think there’s going to be a need to hold on until the end of the year now, even though “Spring 2011″ seemed pretty solid whenever anyone said it during the last few months? What’s caused this blow-out? Fans like to feel involved but, right now, they’re getting nada. Zip.

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January 21, 2011 by blur

Coruscant is a Republic-only planet. Do we really care?

A few days ago the official TOR forums were scandalised when the game’s new(ish) community manager, Stephen Reid told punters that Coruscant will be a Republic-only planet. That is to say, if you’re a Sith-aligned character, you cannot go to Coruscant. At all. Not even for sightseeing. There might as well be a sign saying, “No Sith Allowed” sitting out in space next to the planet.

Interestingly, the forum didn’t go into full meltdown mode — as it has done in the past over certain issues — but the announcement seemed to create some pretty annoyed people, regardless.

My personal take on this is mixed. Yes, it would be fun to fight on Coruscant in a pure, “Whee! Look at me! I’m fighting Jedi in the middle of Coruscant!” kind of way. But is it realistic? When you look at the storyline — or at least what we know of it — no, it’s probably not realistic to have constant Sith versus Jedi battles raging non-stop across the galaxy’s biggest planet during this time period.

Also, when you think of the highly structured way the game is shaping up — essentially as a bunch of eight different personal storylines — it makes sense that there will be some odd and perplexing restrictions like this, here and there, to simply drive the storyline along and not get people bogged down in events that aren’t really part of the ongoing story that Bioware wants to be telling us.

So while I certainly understand people who say things like, “So there’s not a single spy on Coruscant at all? Not a single Sith Lord is walking around the undercity?” I would counter, “There well might be all of those things… but they’ll be rare, and they’ll be part of the storyline that Bioware tells us, not something that the game will encourage gamers to be portraying with their own Sith characters.”

And, to top it all off, when the likelihood of people rolling alt characters to experience the other storylines in the game is quite high, it’s obvious to me that most people will get to see Coruscant anyway. It might not be as part as some kind of rampaging army of Sith Lords and Bounty Hunters, but they’ll still get to experience what it has to offer. And that, perhaps, is the main thing.

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Permalink | Posted in News, Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic | 5 Comments »

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