Posted by TwinHits | 2 Comments

United We Stand: Maybe Someday They’ll Write A Book Too

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

If you ask anyone who grew up playing a lot of video games, they will go on forever about what video games have done for them. When I was thirteen, I had the honor of founding a clan in the game Star Wars: Jedi Academy and the experiences that I had there have had a huge effect on my life, eventually leading me to writing this column. Video games are actually important, if not just for the reason that they take wildly different people from all over the world and bring them together into one community.

We aren’t the only ones who know that games are important either. Professors and authors from all over the world are starting to write and talk about video games and online communities. What are they talking about? Well, basically how awesome we are. Think about it: We’re using the internet to create world-spanning organizations with the purpose of encouraging teamwork and accomplishing goals. It doesn’t matter that it’s all on a virtual medium, it’s all real anyway and it’s having a big effect on us and on others. The first generation of young guild leaders is entering the workforce, how awesome is that? Let’s take a look at two of these books that are out there right now that deal with how important MMO communities have become.

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Posted by Professor Walsh | 63 Comments

Ask A Jedi: Heart Attack Over Huttball!

If you spend any time on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, you are sure to have seen his passion and prose regarding all things Jedi. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh will answer a few reader-submitted questions in order to enlighten us all with the ways of Star Wars lore and history, in this sometimes highly-opinionated piece. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

Editor’s Note: This is a special edition of Ask A Jedi, where there are no questions from readers. Only a lecture from the Professor!

No. The title isn’t joking; well okay it is, kind of. Yes, I am recovering from a mild heart attack that I suffered a few days ago. People wondered why I suddenly vanished from posting on forums when I did (only a period of about 8 hours when I was in the middle of discussion with people) and that is the answer – the Prof’s health is pretty bad right now.

I joke, because people already found out about my heart issue and everyone knows that I was pretty worked up about Huttball. The fact is, as a designer and a major lore-freak, Huttball bothers me. I don’t like it when lore is pushed aside for gameplay. Though, seriously I don’t think that had anything to do with my heart attack contrary to the sensationalism of this very article.

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Posted by Lethality | 6 Comments

PAX 2011: Hands-On Huttball!

One of the big reveals of out of gamescom last week was the announcement of Hutball, a brand new Warzone in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Hutball is a little different in that it’s the only Warzone (so far) where you can have same faction vs. same faction matches.

BioWare has been quoted as saying the reason beyond that was to avoid population imbalance problems between factions. Writing Director Daniel Erickson wrote a story to wrap around Hutball so that fighting your own faction would have context. Now, not everyone were pleased about this decision, including our own Professor, but, Huttball appears here to stay.

So this morning, I was excited to learn that my first hands-on gameplay with TOR at PAX Prime 2011 would in fact be a Huttball match! I could now see first-hand if this “elastic-ization” of the lore was worth the tradeoff.

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Posted by TwinHits | 4 Comments

United We Stand: Broadly And Wisely

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi mini-series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

Come to think of it, it really is a grand adventure that we are starting on. We have no idea what kinds of experiences we will have in SW:TOR, no idea what kind of people we will meet, or what kind feats we will accomplish. It’s not really very useful to look back at any other MMO experiences for this because we’re now older, more experienced, and, at a personal level, are approaching this game from a much different point of view. Because this is a grand adventure we must prepare, and we must prepare wisely. No where else is this more important than in preparing the most critical player construct in an MMO community. We must proceed from this point with a considerable amount of caution and wisdom if we wish to construct well organized guilds and maintain a strong player community.

Honestly, we do not know very much about what guilds are going to look like in this game or what kind of tools the game is going to provide us. Pretty much everything that we know is contained in this picture which I stole from the guilds page in the game systems section of the official website.

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Posted by Lethality | 34 Comments

Editorial: If It’s Red, It’s Dead – Proper PvP Etiquette

I like to consider myself a well-rounded player in terms of enjoying the various aspects within an MMO. I partake in role-playing, though I am not a role-player; progress in my share of raid encounters, though not a raider; I will gather and tinker, but do not call me a crafter. But if I had to label myself as any particular player, I’d fall into the category of a PvPer. Ah, yes. I can hear the boos and hisses already, as members of various other communities read these words.

Being a PvPer I understand the harsh stigma that is associated with my preferred gaming choice. We ruin role-plays, camp corpses, kill all members of opposing faction with no regard for level difference, ruin PvE, eat children, speak LEET, kill immersion and tea bag everything. We are the blight of everyone and  are vile, disgusting, and flat out terrible human beings. We offer very little, if anything, to the game and should all jump off a bridge or DIAF (die in a firefor those not acronym savvy). I’ve heard, read and seen it all. PvPers are generally not tolerated and our presence is not welcome in some role-playing circles. While most of the disdain is justified, it’s the bad PvPers that ruin it for the good ones.

Fellow PvPers, here is some food for thought before you venture out on your next hunt…

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Posted by TwinHits | 13 Comments

United We Stand: A Rather Lofty Goal

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi mini-series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

Sometimes we forget that we are not the only one playing our game. Sometimes, it’s a story that we read alone, a task we do by ourselves. It’s easy to forget that around the world, millions of others just like us are having the same parallel experience. They are experiencing the same worlds, the same stories, and the same adventures without an effect on our own experience. But Star Wars: The Old Republic is different; it’s not something we can take on alone. Already the community is millions of players large, a small segment of that finding this website and maybe even this column, but all of them sure that this game is not one that they are to take on alone, but together.

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