May 11, 2012 by blur
When I wrote the previous post on this blog about Star Wars: The Old Republic’s declining population, some folk agreed with gusto. Others were shocked — and I fully expected that to happen. Yet others made the point that I was just talking off the top of my head and wasn’t working off “real figures”. These people had more than a trace of hope in their comments that maybe, somehow, in the absence of figures, what I was saying was totally wrong.
Then, by total coincidence, just a couple of days later came real figures, suggesting that the game has indeed lost almost 25% of its subscriptions since March. Yes, you might need to read that figure twice, like I did. Almost a quarter of the game’s population, gone since March. Now, if someone had told me a quarter had been lost since launch (back in December), I would have been shocked. So to hear a quarter since March… MARCH?!? I was stunned.
Now, much like the last post, I don’t say any of this to cackle with glee because Star Wars was just some kind of passing fad for me and SWTOR can now go and join Star Trek Online, Age of Conan and other games that went the way of the dodo in short order. Indeed, it’s perhaps worth reminding people reading this blog, that I spent three years of my life, pre-SWTOR, creating and running Beskar, fully expecting SWTOR to last years for myself and my members.
So where do we go from here?
I think for anyone who follows this blog and/or the goings-on at our server, Sanctum of the Exalted, the message is obvious: Business As Usual. I think most guilds, on most servers, are in a similar position to us right now, ie: the game hasn’t caught people’s imaginations; numbers have plummeted (and there’s just no getting around putting that any other way as much as I’d like to); and, accordingly, guilds have taken a hit on their memberships. But it’s only a hit.
You see, Beskar still has extraordinarily passionate gamers who are so into SWTOR, I’m sure they’d bleed “story” if you cut them. So for them, this is a very confusing time as they sit there at their PCs, doing their quests, or doing their PvP, or roleplaying, or whatever, and they are totally and utterly enjoying themselves. Yet they look left and right and there are angry people, people quitting, people really unsatisfied with the game. You can see their confusion.
So, as I asked a moment ago, where do we go from here? I think Beskar, like many guilds out there, will go forward looking for new members. Maybe what we’re seeing now is the “true size” of the game and, by association, its guilds? And when I say “true size”, make no mistake SWTOR still has a very, very large base of subscriptions. Now, whether that base has hit bottom, or whether there are more to go, the jury is still out and, for that, we all wait on the edge of our seats.
Tags: 25%, Bioware, dwindling, dying, fee, gamers, low, monthly, players, quarter, Star Wars, subscriptions, SWTOR, The Old Republic, TOR
Permalink |
Posted in Information, News, Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
1 Comment »
• • • • •
May 6, 2012 by blur
It might seem strange for a guild leader to talk about the declining popularity of the game his guild has set out to enjoy for years to come, however, I’m not the average guild leader.
As an old saying goes, I’m known for calling a spade a spade, and I find I cannot — in good conscience — stay silent about this topic anymore. TOR seems to be bleeding gamers fast.
Naturally, we’ve all played MMOs in the past where it seems from the first weeks of its live game, loudmouth members of the community are threatening to quit over some issue or other.
And while we all saw that in TOR as well (ie: people hitting level 50 before the end of December and complaining about “no end game”), it’s what’s happened months later that worries me.
You see, we’re a couple of weeks off the game hitting its five-month anniversary and, aside from a recent Rakghoul-themed event (which some saw as unimaginative), I haven’t seen a lot of recent action.
Indeed, if you visit the forums of other games newly released or in the final stages of beta testing (eg: TERA, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World), you can see a lot of annoyed ex-TOR gamers talking.
And what are they talking about? Anything from the lack of end game to horrible-looking armour sets to a lack of warzones to the grind of playing new characters whose individual stories only go so far.
TOR seems to be, quite remarkably, a game made by master games makers, using arguably the hottest IP on the planet… and people have been walking since just a few months into the game.
I commented to my wife recently that even Lord of the Rings Online (which I wouldn’t play again if you paid me), kept my attention for over 12 months before I felt it was starting to wane for me.
So what is it about TOR that is driving people away? I really don’t know.
Of course, not everyone’s gone off the game. Within our guild here, we still have a larger than average number of people playing; some because they have yet to hit 50. Others because they genuinely like it.
And, make no mistake, I write none of this to hammer nails in TOR’s coffin. I want the game to go on. I want this guild to go on. The relationships we have built up in here are extraordinary. I want new recruits!
But, at the same time, the issue of TOR bleeding members is one I cannot ignore; particularly as a guild leader. MMOs are at their best when you log in and have a vibrant world bustling all around you.
And, again in good conscience, I cannot say that is the case when I have logged into TOR lately. Aside from my guild mates (usually on other planets to me), I’m just not seeing life as we know it.
Tags: 50, ANet, ArenaNet, beskar, Bioware, event, Funcom, Guild Wars 2, GW2, IP, leave, level, mandalorian, population, quit, rakghoul, recruit, Star Wars, subscriptions, SWTOR, TERA, The Old Republic, The Secret World, TOR
Permalink |
Posted in Information, Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
6 Comments »
• • • • •
April 25, 2012 by blur
Although highly unfashionable with younger gamers in particular, any guild “worth its salt” will have a charter. This is a document that lays down, in black and white, what a guild is all about.
Beskar’s own charter can be seen here. We’ve used it internally for some time — and its themes go back to years before TOR even came out — but I thought it might be nice to have it in public.
As you can see, we don’t mess around. We have strong, common-sense rules, and those rules have served us well in creating a really nice, tight, family-like feeling among many in the guild.
It’s a great shame, to me, when I look around gaming communities in general and see so many guild thrown together in five minutes, with nothing even vaguely resembling a charter like this.
If a guild wants to last the test of time — and sure, I guess some guilds don’t and just want to “live in the moment” — tools like a good, solid charter are absolutely the foundation to build upon.
Tags: beskar, Bioware, charter, guild, mandalorian, player association, Star Wars, SWTOR, The Old Republic, TOR
Permalink |
Posted in Information, Opinion, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
April 9, 2012 by blur
Sit me down with a beer or three and get me talking about what PvP is like on Sanctum of the Exalted and, more often than not, I will inadvertently start quoting the immortal Charles Dickens:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Why? Because PvP on our server is so incredibly hit and miss, you sometimes think you must be on another server, such is the difference — even between successive between play sessions.
And no, before you think it, I’m not drawing a comparison here between, say, Level 50 PvP and Level 10-49 PvP. What I’m about to relay is the same, regardless of the level of PvP at hand.
You see, you can hit a PvP match on our server and have the time of your life. There are healers healing, there are tanks tanking, there are DPS dealers smashing the enemy and, on top of it all, everyone knows what they’re doing. And no, it’s not a premade situation; this is a plain old PUG.
Then you sign up for the next match and, what the hell, it’s all completely wrong. The tanks are trying to DPS, the healers aren’t healing anyone (except themselves), and, to put it as simply as I can, you have people doing utterly crazy stuff. Here’s my favourite example from the past week.
Picture it. The Alderaan warzone. The fighting’s been tough for both sides. Then word emerges that the right turret only has one guy on it. Myself and another teammate break ranks and run for it. Two on one! Great odds! Suddenly, two more enemy unstealth. Three on two! Not so great odds, especially for attackers! So what does my colleague do? He runs the turret AND STARTS TRYING TO CAP IT. Huh? There are three enemy swarming us, and his first reaction is to CAP the turret? Suffice to say, the three of them stunned him on the spot, and within a matter of blows from each of them, he was through. Then they turned on me. Rinse and repeat. We were both on our way back to respawn.
So I said to this guy, “Hey mate, when it’s three on two, trying to cap the turret isn’t really our best course of action…” In response, the guy lost his mind at me. He claimed he wasn’t trying to cap anything. What the hell? I’d just seen him do it. Yet here he was, bold as brass, denying it. Perhaps because he realised it made him look stupid infront of the rest of the team, I don’t know, but I have a real problem with liars. I reminded him that I’d been next to him when he was trying to do it, and had been trying to stop him getting killed, but he wouldn’t have a bar of it. He denied it completely.
(I actually took a screenshot of all this, so I’d remember his name and guild, and I’m half tempted to, ‘name and shame’, but it’s not really the purpose of what I’m writing here.)
So what am I getting at? Well, I guess it’s just to vent a little. Our server has so many amazing gamers, whether in PvP or PvE, yet we have some complete morons, too. People who won’t play their class properly. People who do the wrong thing, then lie about it. People who spend entire Huttball matches chasing fights (ie: deathmatching), rather than following the ball and trying to score. It’s so frustrating and, as time goes by, it’s only going to push more and more guilded people into forming premades and ignoring PUGs altogether. And then what will happen? We’ll have PUGs crying that, even with multi server queues for PvP, they still can’t get a timely match. But you know what? They’re going to have brought it on themselves, by driving people — like me — away from using PUGs in PvP.
Tags: Bioware, Level 10, Level 49, Level 50, PvP, Sanctum of the Exalted, server, Star Wars, The Old Republic
Permalink |
Posted in Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
March 23, 2012 by blur
Make no mistake, guild merchandise has been something I’ve wanted for Beskar since we began. That said, making merchandise for a guild that didn’t have a game to play back in 2008, 2009, 2010 and most of 2011, seemed a little odd and obsessive (some might even say making a pre-game guild was obsessive in itself, but I digress). While we kicked around ideas, we never produced anything beyond a prototype shirt one time.
Fast-forward to today.
One of our resident artist’s, tesna, sketched out some ideas and worked with feedback from the guild to get a basic design featuring generic versions of the four Sith classes Beskar portrays in The Old Republic. This was then totally redrawn and, with a little lettering work from LittlePowell, now appears as the great new artwork on a range of t-shirts, hoodies, drink bottles and even a mousepad. Thanks tesna!
Already, Beskar members are buying items that will no doubt be worn at future Guild Summit’s, trade shows and other TOR-related events where Beskar members will be making their presence known.
Where can you buy your own piece of Beskar? Easy. Zip over to our CafePress page for more details.
Tags: baseball shirt, beskar, Bioware, blur, clan, drawing, drink bottle, guild, image, LittlePowell, logo, merchandise, mousepad, Star Wars, t-shirt, tesna, The Old Republic
Permalink |
Posted in Information, News, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
March 10, 2012 by blur
Since I started doing PvP warzones on Sanctum of the Exalted, one thing has been very clear to me: there are some real morons out there. Now, I won’t overplay this and pretend they’re the majority or anything crazy like that, but there are certainly enough of them out there that, chances are, you are quite likely to get one (or more), in your team, two out of every three matches or so.
I mentioned this to my guild tonight and one of my guildmates said, “Yep, there are so many self-appointed experts and PvPers who are legends in their own mind out there, it’s a wonder every match doesn’t end in a draw…” which drew some laughs from us because it’s quite true.
How do you spot these people? It’s pretty easy. Some examples from my past week of gaming:
- The guy who made a massive spectacle of himself in Huttball, abusing people on his team for not passing. Yet, when he got the ball a few minutes later, and had three teammates standing ahead of him — waiting for a pass — no pass was forthcoming. Must be one of those, “do as I say, not as I do” kind of guys. When someone asked him why HE didn’t pass, he went completely silent.
- The guy who defended the left turret on the Alderaan map whilst the entire enemy team targeted the mid turret and smashed through. He berated his team, at length, even going so far as to say, “I defended my turret, why couldn’t you defend yours?” When someone pointed out that he didn’t really defend anything as his turret was never actually attacked (which was a perfectly true and fair comment), he blew his top and hurled abuse left and right at the whole team for minutes.
- The guy on the Voidstar map who, in response to something I had said to the team as the game was winding down and it was clear we weren’t going to crack the final door (I had said something like, “Good job guys, we might have lost, but we tried hard…”), started to make snarky comments like, “Tried hard? is that what you’d call it?” and “You people are absolutely hopeless. The worst team I’ve ever played with…” which, to my mind, is the worst kind of abuse to throw at people who have just spent the last 15 minutes of their life trying hard to reach a goal, for everyone’s benefit.
How many people like this have you come across? Like I said earlier, it’s my experience that you are quite likely to get one in your team, two out of every three matches or thereabouts. So if we take a team to be seven players, it’s maybe one in 14 or two in 21. Which, to be fair, are good odds if we want to show that “most” people on Sanctum of the Exalted are quite cool and enjoy their gaming in the right spirit. But even these odds, with a bad apple popping up every match or so, are enough to drive people to distraction. I am not exaggerating when I say I know people who don’t PvP at all, or whom only PvP sparingly, because of some of the morons out there. If you see one today, tell them to grow up!
Tags: alderaan, huttball, PvP, Sanctum of the Exalted, Star Wars, The Old Republic, voidstar, warzone
Permalink |
Posted in Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
March 10, 2012 by blur
When I created Beskar, one of the first rules I made for the guild was that we would be all-Imperial, all the time. This was even before the game developers had even said whether a guild could have characters from both factions, or not (for the record, they finally settled on guilds being single-faction only). In other words, if you were a member of Beskar, logging into our server, your character options would be Imperial-only. Want to play Republic? Choose any other server and go for it.
This was a neat solution, in my opinion, for a variety of reasons. First, it meant our members had eight character slots for Imperial gameplay. If they so desired, they could play each advanced class of each Imperial class, ie: 4 classes x 2 advanced classes = 8 slots. Second, it meant that when people logged into our server, they would be focused on Beskar and the Imperial cause. Again, no one would be told not to play Republic; they were simply, and politely, asked to do so on any other server.
But then came news of the 1.2 game update and the Legacy system.
While Bioware has done nothing to make it compulsory to play both factions on the same server, they have certainly made it compelling, with cool rewards and unlocks on offer for people who do it. And for obvious reasons – if people are encouraged to play both factions on a server, and given incentives to do so, it will not only help server balance, it will keep people engaged with the game longer and tie them tightly to their server. That should mean longer subscriptions in most cases.
So, as guild leader, I had a choice. Should Beskar continue down the same path for reasons of “tradition” (and yes, I understand how funny a concept that must seem in a game that’s barely been out for three months), even though members were likely to break the rules and roll Republic characters anyway or, should we approach the topic with good old-fashioned common sense and sit down, as a group, and determine how we wanted to proceed in relation to the Legacy system?
I put the concept of having a guild for Republic alts to the members of Beskar. Overwhelmingly, the membership decided that having a Republic guild would be the best way to move forward. By and large the attitude was, “I would like to have some Republic characters on our server and I would like to do it openly and in a guild with other Beskar members…” Even people who want to play Imperial-only characters on our server saw no real harm to letting fellow members dabble on the dark, er, light side once in awhile. It was a great, mature discussion – as you always find in Beskar.
So there you have it. TOR is changing with the 1.2 update and, as a result, so is Beskar.
Tags: 1.2, beskar, Bioware, faction, legacy, mandalorian, patch, server, Star Wars, The Old Republic, update
Permalink |
Posted in Information, Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
March 6, 2012 by blur
The SWTOR guild summit is happening as I type this, in Austin, Texas. Bioware asked Beskar to take part and, while I would have dearly loved to go, I sent a couple of members who are there at present, and have even popped up in the livestream of the event already.
Already, my takeaway is that the upcoming 1.2 patch is even better than I thought it would be (and, remember, I was already calling it “the Jesus patch”), so I’m going to predict a bounce for the game. I think it’s going to really reinterest and reenergise people.
Watch this space.
Tags: Bioware, guild summit, livestream, Star Wars, The Old Republic
Permalink |
Posted in Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
February 29, 2012 by blur
So here we are, with the month of February zipping past in the blink of an eye and yet, somewhat ironically I have to say, this was the month where everything slowed down overall in TOR. And by everything, I mean everything.
If you’re in a guild that somehow increased its membership in February, or increased the amount of time members spent online by any kind of real amount; congratulations. You are by far the exception to the rule, as far as I can ascertain.
Looking at the way my own guild is faring, talking to other guild leaders and even doing simple things, like keeping an eye on how many players are on a particular planet, or at the fleet, it’s clear to me that February saw a real downturn.
Is this downturn for keeps? It’s hard to say. While people have left the game, claiming it’s “not what they expected” or that, “two months was enough” or even, “where’s the PvP?”, I think some will return.
The much talked about 1.2 patch, which has earned the unofficial title of the “Jesus patch”, is set to make the game more playable; perhaps even what it was meant to be at launch. I know a lot of people hanging out for it. Fingers crossed, eh?
Tags: 1.2, Bioware, jesus, operation, patch, PvP, Star Wars, SWTOR, The Old Republic, TOR
Permalink |
Posted in Opinion, Rant, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
January 28, 2012 by blur
One of the great pleasures in any MMO is when you belong to a quality guild that, as well as “getting things done” and featuring some top PvE and PvP gamers, also has a strong social side.
The picture below is the result of members deciding to get together for a group photo. In other words, 33 members (half the guild, or thereabouts), who thought it would be fun to simply meet in a central location and get some cool screengrabs. The group then dispersed. Some to do PvP; some to run dailies; some to go back to lower-level alts; some to craft; some to RP. Such is Beskar. We aren’t beholden to one playstyle and we wouldn’t have it any other way! Interested in us? Visit this page for more.
Tags: beskar, clan, Dromund Kaas, guild, mandalorian, Sanctum of the Exalted, screengrab, screenshot, Star Wars, The Old Republic
Permalink |
Posted in Information, News, Star Wars, The Old Republic |
No Comments »
• • • • •
