beskar.net
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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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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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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March 5, 2011 by blur

Bioware will be at PAX East… will you?

If you live in the US and are able to make it, PAX East will be the place to see all the latest TOR builds in action and, if my Spidey senses are correct, to hear at least one big announcement. Interested?

Here’s some good information; everything you need to know, straight from Bioware:

PAX East begins in just one week and Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will be there! If you’re heading to the show, all you need to remember is to visit Booth 912. Our show floor Booth hours are:

  • Friday, March 11th: 10AM – 7PM EST
  • Saturday, March 12th: 10AM – 6PM EST
  • Sunday, March 13th: 10AM – 6PM EST

Even if you can’t make it to the show, we have some exciting events planned that we want to tell you more about. Read on for all the details.

World Gameplay Premiere – Flashpoint: Taral V

Hidden deep within the Maelstrom Nebula, a top-secret Imperial prison holds a Jedi Master who is invaluable to the Republic war effort. As part of a Republic strike team, you must assault a heavily defended compound on the jungle world of Taral V…

Inside the main PAX East exhibition hall, visitors to Booth 912 will be among the first in the world to play the mid-game Republic Flashpoint, Taral V! Taking the role of a Trooper, Smuggler, Jedi Knight or Jedi Consular, you’ll team up with other players in an extended hands-on gameplay experience. This is a challenging mission which even MMO veterans may find difficult, but we will prepare everyone who plays with a tactical briefing at the booth.

A Flashpoint is a challenging, cooperative mission that takes place entirely within an instance, which only your group can enter. Visit the Flashpoints Game Systems Page and the Building Flashpoints Developer Blog to learn more and to watch previously revealed in-game footage of Taral V.

PAX East Gameplay Premiere – Tython, the Jedi Homeworld

In addition to fighting through the Imperial forces on Taral V, visitors who want a briefer gameplay experience – or just find themselves drawn to the Dark Side – will get the opportunity to play on any of the Origin Worlds of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

For the first time at a consumer event, all eight of The Old Republic classes will be available for attendees to play, including the much-anticipated debut of the Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular. From the heavily armored Republic Trooper to the Force-wielding Sith Warrior, everyone will get a chance to experience the unique story-driven gameplay of The Old Republic.

Presentations and Live Q&A

Conquered Taral V? Experienced every Origin World? There’s still more. Throughout all three days of PAX East we’ll be giving presentations of Star Wars: The Old Republic from our booth stage, including live Q&A sessions with Developers from the BioWare Austin team. Ask James Ohlen (Lead Designer) and Daniel Erickson (Lead Writer), as well as other team members, your burning questions.

Community Meet and Greet

That’s not all! Once the show floor closes on Saturday, March 12th, the Community team for Star Wars: The Old Republic will be hosting a Community Meet and Greet event at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel, conveniently located right next to the PAX East convention center. Come along to meet the Community team in person, your fellow Star Wars fans, and of course members of the Development team. We’ll bring the food and drinks!

Entrance to the Community Meet and Greet is by invitation only, and capacity is limited. Visit Booth 912 to pick up your invite, but arrive early to ensure entry.

Can’t make it to PAX East?

If you can’t make the trip to Boston, never fear… we’ll be keeping you up to date from the show floor via our Community Forums, our Twitter feed and via our official Facebook page.

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November 29, 2010 by blur

Why Beskar doesn’t do ranks…

If you’ve ever read through Beskar’s FAQ or ABOUT sections on this very website, you’ll probably have a good idea about what kind of TOR guild we are; which is to say that we’re quite different from the norm. And one of the elements that has set us apart from the majority of guilds from the very start has been our position on guild ranks. To put it simple… we don’t have them.

For the longest time, non-members have wailed and gnashed their teeth and can’t seem to get their heads around the concept but in this thread on the TOR forums recently, there seems to be some hope that other guilds are starting to get the concept that, hey, you can be a happy and successful guild WITHOUT handing out 101 silly rank ranks to members to keep them happy.

As I’ve already commented in that thread,

Outside of someone administering — or leading — a guild, there’s no point to any other ranks besides providing a “carrot” for people to aspire to and, honestly, I don’t treat my guild members like rabbits, offering them carrots.

Which is pretty much as honest as I can be. My guild members aren’t rabbits that I think need carrots, nor should they think themselves needing carrots. The reward and the fun is being a member of Beskar, not being bestowed with some silly rank just because you’ve been in the guild for six months longer than someone else who’s not allowed to have the same rank for another six months.

Ranks… yuck… I hate ‘em!

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October 11, 2010 by blur

Why don’t TOR developers interact with their community?

There’s a thread over on the TOR forums at present (click here if you’re interested), called Request for More Developer Interaction and I think it’s making a truly excellent point.

Since the TOR forums began, interaction with developers has been minimal. I can count on one hand (and, if the truth be told, one finger on one hand), the number of times a developer has said something in response to one of my forum postings. And, besides my own material, I read a lot of other threads, and I don’t believe I’ve seen a developer EVER respond to someone else. And no, before you respond, I’m not saying it’s NEVER happened, but I AM saying that it’s been pretty rare and I seem to have been one of the few people to ever get a response.

Now… why is this?

In past MMO communities, it has been very common… extremely common… for developers to be on their official forums, making comments and engaging with their community. In Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), lead developer Raph Koster seemed to be on the forums non-stop. You ended up talking to Raph as often as you talked to your own guildmates, to the point where the first 100 of us got into beta testing and Raph was standing there on Tatooine and we just walked right up to him and had a conversation with him like he was an old mate, such was our familiarity.

Could I see that ever happening with a TOR developer? Nope.

And do you want to know some huge irony here? Bioware also makes a game called Dragon Age where the lead writer is a bloke by the name of David Gaider. My wife is quite the Dragon Age fanatic and she is constantly telling me funny things that Gaider is saying on the Bioware Social Network. It seems that a day hardly goes by where I don’t hear her giggling at his comments or shouting, “Gaider just quoted me again!” and, when you look at the thrill it is for her to interact with a developer, you see what the TOR guys could be doing, but are failing really badly at.

This is a great shame, to my mind, given that I think online communities genuinely respect developers more — even if they’re saying totally crazy stuff that the community doesn’t want to agree with — if they are turning up on the forums and at least being part of “the conversation” that’s happening. It’s when developers give the impression of, “We’ll speak to you when we’re ready…” and, “Yes, there are certainly things we could tell you about the game right now but {yawn} why should we?” that I think communities unnecessarily lose a bit of respect for developers.

You only have to look at how the community takes some of the more, ahem, “famous” quotes from certain TOR developers and puts its own sarcastic spin on them to see a real lack of respect that I think, quite honestly, would be lessened with more real contact between the devs and the community. Oh sure, there will still be haters — there are sadly ALWAYS haters in every online community — but I really don’t think the sarcasm and the hating and the general ill-will that the developers cop at present would be as bad if they interacted with their community.

Because there’s the whole point in one short, simple sentence– it’s THEIR community.

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August 15, 2010 by blur

The concept of “story” might keep some of us in the game, literally…

I like to think I’m a fair man when it comes to talking about computer games. When Bioware does something good, by my estimation, I’ll be on the front line telling everyone about it. When Bioware does something bad — again, by my estimation I need to stress — I’ll be as cutting and scathing as I can be. In other words, I’m not a Bioware fanboi, but nor am I a Bioware hater, either.

I also like to think that I can judge an MMO pretty well these days after playing a wide array of them for over a decade, often for long periods. “Been there, done that & got the t-shirt…” doesn’t even remotely begin to explain my background with these frustrating, addictive, OCD-friendly pieces of code that have worked their way into my very DNA over time.

And as it so happens, just lately I’ve been doodling with the trial version of an MMO that I’ve played in the past, but thought I’d revisit at the moment because, honestly, I’ve been bored. I wanted something to do particularly on these cold weekends (I’m in the southern hemisphere), when neither my wife or I particularly feel like venturing outdoors.

Now, I’m not going to name the game in question because the game itself is irrelevant. It could be just about any MMO ever made because it’s what the game was making me do that I found so offensive.

Yes folks, it seems that after all this time, I’m finally sick of the grind. Even with an open mind, and hour upon hour to kill, the thought of running back and forth across a map to kill critters which slowly increased in toughness — with slight changes to their name to show this — was enough to make me almost throw my PC out the window.

Why do we play these games? Where does it lead us? What does it achieve? Who cares in the end? Why aren’t they FUN?

There… I finally said it. MMOs just aren’t fun. Even when you get to the “cool stuff” at the end of an MMO, like raiding, or PvPing, more often than not it’s full of frustration and time wasting and unexpected moments of sheer misery compared to what they should be offering, given that we call these things “games”. And that thing, once again, is FUN.

So I was standing in the shower earlier tonight — a great place for thinking — and it occurred to me that for all the crap that people hang on the concept of “story” in TOR (and I confess, I’ve found plenty to criticise myself including the fact that if our race is dictated by the background we want… or our background is dictated by the race we want, then we aren’t playing a very fun or open RPG for starters), that this could actually be the thing that saves TOR, and ourselves, from mind-numbing boredom.

Honestly, at this point in time, I don’t think I could play another “traditional” MMO from start to finish (and by “finish” I mean the level cap), but if a game can tell me a story, and keep me interested in that while the character grows and levels without me noticing then, hell yeah, this could be a good thing.

Of course, it doesn’t get Bioware completely off the hook with other aspects of the story but, in terms of simply keeping my interest and keeping me in the game, story is where it’s at. It blows my mind to already read comments from people about wanting to skip the storyline elements…!

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August 12, 2010 by blur

Forced background? Pure crazy, if you ask me…

In the recent Forced Species article at Massively, there’s a comment:

I do not know all the details at this time, but I do know that — as it stands — there is only one backstory choice which allows for a non-Human for each class. If we take the bounty hunter, for example, the choices are currently Outlaw, The Merc, and Gladiator. If you choose the Outlaw or The Merc backstory, you get a Human; whereas, if you choose the Gladiator backstory, your species will be Ratattaki.

I’ve read through the article once, twice, three times and it doesn’t get any better. The decision is ridiculous. It’s like Bioware, who always harp on about understanding RPGs, don’t actually understand RPGs at all.

For example, if you want to be a Ratattaki you MUST have the Gladiator background?!? Excuse me?!? Where is the diversity and imagination and everything else we associate with roleplaying in that decision?

I don’t even WANT to be a Ratattaki Bounty Hunter but, for those who do, I imagine some might like the option of the Outlaw or Merc background instead. Yet, they get wedged into being the Gladiator background only.

Crazy.

Pure crazy.

Who sanity checked all these ideas? Or was it just a group of guys sitting around a table too scared to disagree with one another for fear of being the odd one out (not dissimilar to the way the Star Wars prequels were made — and look how they ended up???)

And now some dummy, over on the TOR forums, has said to me that players still “have control over their character” in response to me making the point that this takes some of the control over a player’s character out of the player’s hands.

I mean, in what universe? How wrong can you be? If your race is dictated by the background you want… or your background is dictated by the race you want, YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL. That is so obvious. Sheesh. The Bioware fanboi’s are out in force today, I can see.

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Permalink | Posted in Opinion, Rant, Roleplay, Star Wars, The Old Republic | 9 Comments »

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