Dec 13, 2011

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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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Dec 7, 2011

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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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Nov 30, 2011

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Council Chambers: Last Call for Guild Deployment

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 talked about the Pre-Launch Guild Program that Star Wars: The Old Republic offered its members and some tips about how to make the most of recruiting with this forums-based system. Early access is now only a little over two weeks away, and the Pre-Launch Guild Program is drawing to a close. That means you have only days to ensure your guild meets the requirements for server placement!

First things first: the LAST day to have your guild ready for deployment in the pre-launch program is Friday, December 2, 11:59pm CST. Guilds who do not meet eligibility requirements by this date will not be eligible for placement under the pre-launch program.

That does not mean you cannot form a guild at launch or have significant long-term impacts for those guilds who do not meet the criteria; all it means is that your guild will not be assigned a server in advance or be created for you by the system at launch.

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Nov 19, 2011

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Council Chambers: Making The Most Of Allies And Adversaries

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.  

This week’s entry focuses on a unique aspect of TOR, the Allies and Adversary system.  This system allows a guild leader to connect with up to three other guilds through the TOR guild window, and will ideally place all of these guilds together on the same server at launch.  In order to be an ally or adversary of another guild, you all need to be requesting the same type of server (PvE, PvP, RP-PvE) and also the same time zone (EU, US East, US West).  For most guilds, if they used this feature at all, it’s been as a way to connect with friends from other games or other well-known guilds in the community.  But it turns out, there may be a lot more to the Allies and Adversaries system than just connecting with some friends to land on the same server.

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Nov 12, 2011

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Council Chambers: Fostering Interest In Your Guild Pre-Launch

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.  

Within the last week, the developers at Star Wars: The Old Republic pushed out the third, and final, phase of the pre-launch guild deployment system.  In this third and final phase, the system checks to make sure your guild has at least four members who have pre-ordered the game in order to create your guild for you when the game goes live.  With a little over a month now between phase 3 and launch, one of the biggest questions for many guilds out there will be how to not only recruit folks and secure their pre-launch spots, but also how to retain them.

Last week, we talked about advertising a guild through the Star Wars guild forums and how to begin building membership for your new SW:TOR guild.  This week, we’re going to talk about the other half of the recruitment effort – holding and maintaining interest.  No matter how great of a recruiting drive you make, if you don’t find ways to keep players engaged and interested – they don’t stick around, which leads to even more time being spent on recruiting.  So while it’s very important to recruit new members, it’s also key to make sure the ones you’ve already recruited feel like a part of the group.

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Nov 5, 2011

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Council Chambers: Recruiting In The Old Republic

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.  

Hello and welcome to the first installment of Council Chambers, a column specifically for all those guild leaders and officers out there, as well as those who aspire to be.  I’m Lady Republic, a long-time gamer and MMO player as well as a guild leader for…well, more years than I care to admit.  I’ll be contributing columns about guild leadership, management, and troubleshooting guild issues – so please feel free to write in with any guild management questions you’re running into!

Dressing For Success

Today, we’ll be talking about a unique aspect of The Old Republic’s guild system – the pre-launch system.  Many of you will have some experience with forming up a guild in game, but in a world where the game isn’t even live yet – how do you recruit members using just the forums?

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