Posted by Sa Chi | 5 Comments

All The Galaxy’s A Stage: Guild Alignment And Role-Playing

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

BioWare’s announcement that the second phase of pre-launch guild alignment did get me to thinking. What will guild alignment mean to the RP community?

I will confess that at first glance the concept of Guild Alignment gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. What has stood out for me since the launch of Guild HQ is the investment that BioWare has clearly made into the idea of guilds. I’ve been left with a sense that they recognize that an MMO is social, that guilds are a key part of the social game, and that the structure surrounding the care and feeding of guilds is not to be dismissed.

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Posted by Sa Chi | 5 Comments

All The Galaxy’s A Stage: ‘Emoting’ in RP

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

Do you enjoy reading?  Have you ever taken the time to look at how books are written?  I am no English major but I have noticed that stories generally include details that help inspire the reader’s imagination.  For example, an author will not only write about what is being said, but will also describe what is happening around the characters, the environment they’re in, what’s going on in the mind of the main character and how they feel.

In an MMO you have the ability to chat.  Chat gives you the ability to have conversations  You can type into the chat window and your character will speak.  This is good for dialog.  But what about the other elements of a story?

Well, the environment is somwhat taken care of in an MMO.  After all, when it comes to SW:TOR we’ll have BioWare’s artistic rendering of the Star Wars galaxy to help inspire our imaginations.  Not only that, but we’ll be able to see what others are doing around us as well.  However, there’s one major element of story left that has not been address with MMOs.  What is going on in the minds of our character and how do we add depth to what we do?

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Posted by Sa Chi | 8 Comments

All The Galaxy’s A Stage: God-Modding And Powergaming

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

For those that are newer to the Role-Play experience I thought I’d introduce a couple of dirty words in the world of RP.  Newcomers will undoutedly bump into the terms god-modding and powergaming before long.  And some of the more seasoned RP veterans will tell you that these concepts still crop up from time to time.

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Posted by Sa Chi | 2 Comments

All The Galaxy’s A Stage: RP Tracker

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

We are delighted to introduce the RP Tracker.  From this point forward, the first All The Galaxy’s A Stage article of each month will be focused on highlighting something exceptional that we here at Ask A Jedi have observed related to RP.

To kick things off it’s my pleasure to raise your attention to Segellion’s Guide to Roleplaying over at swtor-rp.com.  RP guides are always going to be frought with controversy.  Some players will tell you that they do not care for being told how to RP.  Others, such as myself, will tell you that a guide related to RP that offers suggestions in a respectful and objective way can be of benefit to the community and, in particular, players new to the genre.

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Posted by Sa Chi | 0 Comments

All The Galaxy’s A Stage: To Guild Or Not To Guild…

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

To guild or not to guild… that is the question.

If you’re a frequent visitor of the official SW:TOR website you’ve likely visited Guild HQ at some point.  Not only is BioWare to be commended for their attention to such a detail pre-launch, but the manner in which they’ve prepared for pre-launch guilds really has impressed me.

When Guild HQ was announced I was also pleased to see RP guilds being taken seriously.  Not only is there a big button for RP Guilds but the last time I looked there were 9,454 RP guilds registered!  Given a total of 54,338 guilds that equates to 17.4% of all registered guilds at the time of writing focused on RP.  Assuming a minimum of 5 players per guild that means at least 10,000 RPers will be in the game.  I suspect that only the truly hardcore are visiting the official forums right now so the total number of RPers in SWTOR post launch should (in my gross estimation) be in the hundreds of thousands!  Not bad for one of the more fringe playstyles, eh?

So, why do players join RP guilds?  Likely reasons might have something to do with mutual interests, a common vision for story and how we interpret Star Wars lore.  Yet I know from experience that not every Role-Player will join a RP guild.  There are many great RPers that frequent various RP forums and thousands are already enjoying some Play by Play action ahead of launch.  With 361,957 posts (at the time of writing) in the official SW:TOR Roleplay and Play by Post forum there’s clear evidence that not all RP activity is related to RP guilds.

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