Posted by Lady Republic | 12 Comments

Council Chambers: Finding Space In Space

Council Chambers is all about the ins and outs of guild leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Each week, we’ll look at running and managing a guild through good times, bad times and everything in between.  

It is hard to believe that Early Access began almost two weeks ago. Where has the time gone? For me, I cannot claim any level 50s yet – I’ll confess to being a bit more of a slow leveler, especially in this game – but I have definitely tried to take my time, explore the galaxy, and more specifically scout out some potential guild or event meeting locations. This week’s question comes from Joey, who asked,

“Do you have any recommendations for large scale grouping in the game? Coruscant seemed as if it had a good deal of room, but I was wondering if there was something that could specifically be used for a guild hall, for example. Similarly, if other planets had conducive areas, Alderaan in particular, I’d love to hear of any information you had there.

Second to this; as I understand it right now, it is NOT possible to form groups with other players and gather on your respective starships. Can you confirm that this is in fact the case? Further, do you know if Bioware has any plans to change this, or dare I dream, implement some kind of guild capital ship system?”

These are both great questions, and something I have been looking for myself as a guild leader. Ideally, for events like meetings where members may be either high or low levels (and if they are anything like ours, have a slight tendency to run a bit late and need something close to the Fleet), you will want to scout out areas that are easily accessible to both high and low level players. In particular, I have looked to Tython and Coruscant for meeting locations, as both of these are fairly easy to get to for anyone as low as level 10, and so should provide fairly convenient access for members of any level.

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Posted by Lady Republic | 5 Comments

Council Chambers: Host Sweet Host

Council Chambers is all about the ins and outs of guild leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Each week, we’ll look at running and managing a guild through good times, bad times and everything in between.  

A couple weeks ago, we had some great questions and comments relating to the ending of the Guild Headquarters project (at least temporarily) through the official site at www.swtor.com, and what alternatives may be out there for guilds looking for site hosting options.

Specifically, Suro writes,

I’d be interested in an article describing TOR-specific or themed hosting sites, and the benefits and features of each. For WoW, sites like Guildzilla, Wowstead, and such all have differing features, costs, and quality levels. I’d be interested in knowing which sites feature TOR themes, good forums, and game integration (progression list? profession listings?)

What’s out there?

Thanks for the question, Suro! I definitely think this is on a lot of guild officers’ minds as they look for places to relocate their content by the end of the year. The good news is that there are a lot of options out there for guilds, from largely pre-configured templates for the non-tech savvy guild officers to do-it-yourself programs that allow complete control over your site.

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Posted by Lady Republic | 3 Comments

Clandestine Maneuvers: Spy Game

(Thanks to special guest author Ehren for his contributions on the Imperial Agent impressions entry!)

By The Tailor of Coruscant

Introduction

”Bond, James Bond.” – England’s greatest secret agent introduces himself in Dr. No

Over the past several weeks I have been fortunate enough to engage in a wide variety of Beta testing. One of the most enjoyable play experiences came as an Imperial Agent. There is a compelling story, engaging and challenging gameplay mechanics and an opportunity for a variety of play styles should make this class one of the most attractive options in the game.

Curiously, in much of the early polling, Imperial Agent is among the lowest ranked in terms of raw numbers. Spend a moderate amount of time lurking on the Imperial Agent however, and you will find though the numbers are small, the core player base is devoted. They should be. Those looking to play Imperial Agent in the live game can perhaps take solace in the famous words of Shakespeare’s Henry V, when he called out to, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” I have always had a fondness for the underrepresented classes in role playing games (RPGs), and perhaps that contributes to my affection for this class.

What follows is a (mostly) spoiler free account of early game play for one of the true gem classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I think this game in general, and this class in particular, are best experienced without spoiling the story too much. That said, there is still plenty of good information to pass along without revealing too much that would take some of the magic away from this excellent story.

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Posted by Lady Republic | 3 Comments

Council Chambers: No Server For You!

Council Chambers is all about the ins and outs of guild leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Each week, we’ll look at running and managing a guild through good times, bad times and everything in between.  

Monday’s big excitement came with the announcement of servers for guilds in the Pre-Launch Program. As you can see there, as well as over on Massively.com, the TOR Universe was all abuzz with people posting their guild’s server placement, compiling lists of total servers for the game, and sharing this information with anyone and everyone they could.

The RP-PvP Dilemma

Unfortunately, there is one group left out of all this excitement and mayhem: RP-PvP servers. The problem is that when the Pre-Launch Guild Program was created, only three categories of servers existed – PvE, PvP, and RP. RP at that time applied to PvE servers only – just PVE servers designated for roleplayers and that tends to draw communities that enjoy playing their characters and acting as that character would, rather than their offline selves. RP-PvP servers did not exist, and were not listed as options in guild server selection.

Later, BioWare decided – in part due to requests from the fan community – to add RP-PvP servers at launch as an option for players. However, because this was a later addition, the option never became available in the Pre-Launch Program.  This meant that guilds seeking an RP-PvP experience either had to select just RP or just PvP, or to choose to form their own communities.

While it may not have been the ideal outcome that RP-PvP guilds would have preferred, they banded together and formed a remarkably robust community to help those guilds that enjoy roleplaying and player-versus-player environments to connect with each other and look to form their own server communities pre-launch. Initially, this was managed through the official forums, and many guilds connected there. Once the forums came down in preparation for launch, the RP-PvP guilds moved their organizational efforts to http://frag-world.com/forum. As of Monday, December 12, 2011, there are fifteen guilds represented on the Frag World forums, the majority of which appear to be East Coast RP-PvP guilds. If your guild is one of those interested in RP-PvP and looking to connect with other RP-PvPers, I highly recommend you head over to Frag-world and connect with those guilds to work on a launch placement for your guild.

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Posted by Lady Republic | 9 Comments

Council Chambers: Ready To Go

Council Chambers is all about the ins and outs of guild leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Each week, we’ll look at running and managing a guild through good times, bad times and everything in between.  

On December 3, the Pre-Launch Guild Program came to an end. In the following announcement – on both the official site and the official forums – the customer service representatives explain what to expect in the coming days:

Today we are announcing that the Pre-Launch Guild Program for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ has come to an end. Guilds that have met the prerequisite of having four members redeem their Pre-Order Codes at our Code Redemption Center are now locked for transfer into the game in time for our December 20th launch.

If your guild has qualified for import, you can expect to receive an email at some time over the next several days. This email will give you further details on how to check the status of your guild as well as further details about how to join your guild once you’re in the game. Your email will also tell you which server your guild has been assigned to, so you will know which one to select when Early Game Access begins. While we will do everything we can to ensure that your Allies and Adversaries are on your server with you, we can’t necessarily guarantee that every guild will see their Allies and Adversaries on their server with them.

We want to thank each and every one of you who took part in the program, and we look forward to seeing you all in the game!

You can also read about it in our recent update on the topic, as well. This is something that we had known was coming, and discussed in last week’s article the specifics that guild leaders should do to prepare for the end of the Pre-Launch Program. Now that the Pre-Launch Guild Program has ended, guild leaders can no longer make any changes to their current roster, add or remove allies and adversaries, and are largely in a holding pattern with respect to guild management between now and launch.

So what is there for guild leaders to do over the next two weeks to prepare? First – as we discussed last week, the Guild Headquarters and its websites on the official forums will be closing two weeks after launch. That means in a little over a month from now! For guild leaders and officers, that’s a lot closer than you may realize.

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