Sep 15, 2011

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Office Hours: The Perils Of Faction Imbalance

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 Star Wars. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh enlighten us all with opinions on lore, design and more in this sometimes highly-opinionated piece. 

Greetings my Padawan learners! The Professor is here once again, and this time with a topic that I am empassioned about. But first, I have two disclaimers:

Disclaimer #1

What you are about to read is an opinion piece. It might even be considered controversial. It might even make some readers mad. The point is, I’m a critic. I do what I do and say what I say because criticism, in my eyes, is a better form of feedback than flattery.

I get a lot of flak from some viewers for always “attacking” BioWare. The truth is that there are plenty of things I wholly agree with BioWare on regarding The Old Republic. I, intentionally, focus on controversial hot topics and heated opinions because I feel the dissenting voice is an important thing.

Am I always correct? No. Do people disagree? Yes.

This is what I do though. I’ll never say, “This sucks because I say so.” I’ll always explain why I don’t like something. That, to me, is the essence of what being a critic is all about.

Disclaimer #2

This article is based on a series of forum posts that were made on SWTOR.com in a thread started by Aneu.

I have checked the information as well as I could, and have found it to be accurate. If this information is incorrect, I can only apologize. This article is, however, based on the numbers generated by parsing the Guild Headquarters information.

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Sep 9, 2010

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Ask A Jedi: Can non-force users wield a light saber?

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 the Jedi. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

Dear Jedi,

Can a non-force user wield a light saber? If so, how come we don’t see more of them out there?

Dear Anonymous,

This is a complicated question, but in short, yes. Non-Force Users can indeed use a lightsaber.

Han Solo did it, but didn’t fight with it. In a non-canon story Boba Fett did however. In Episode III, the Clone Wars miniseries, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars General Grevious does too. In Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 2 Pre Viszla does it as well as one of the thieves who stole Ahsoka’s. In season 3 of the same show we know Cad Bane jumps on the bandwagon as well. Finally we have Anja Gallandro, who appeared in Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights in the novel Return to Ord Mantell by Kevin J Anderson and Rebecca Moestra.

So we have G, T, and C canon examples of it happening.

Now, how come we don’t see any more of them out there? Well, to be honest, they aren’t very good weapons unless you are Force Sensitive. You need to Force to block blaster bolts with them because that requires being able to predict where a shot that moves at that high of a velocity will land. You can’t really beat a Jedi with one unless you are Force Sensitive or otherwise enhanced.

  • Pre Viszla got more or less humiliated by Obi-wan Kenobi when he tried it.
  • General Grevious had to rely on cybernetic augmentation and we saw how that didn’t help much against Obiwan.
  • Boba Fett even lost the second Darth Vader decided to use the Force against him.
  • Anja Gallandro was only as effective as she was with her lightsaber because she was hopped up on drugs, even then it was shown how sloppy and unrefined she was compared to a Jedi.
  • The Thief that tried it was easily beaten by an old and physically infirm Jedi Master in one motion.

So, you end up basically with what a lightsaber is: a melee weapon that has as much of a chance of damaging you as it does damaging your enemy. Yes, it is cool, yes it can cut through just about everything, but it is still bringing a knife to a blaster fight unless you have the powers needed to make up for that weakness.

Dear Jedi,

Who was your favorite Mandalore? Personally I prefer Mandalore the Preserver

Dear Anonymous,

I don’t have a favorite Mandalore, if I had to have a favorite Mandalore it would have to be good old Canderous Ordo.

Dear Jedi,

Do you know if there was ever a Mandalorian Jedi? If not, then why?

Dear Anonymous,

We know that there were some Mandalorian Force Sensitives but mostly it is their lifestyle. In order to be a Jedi a Mandalorian would have to turn their back on their culture. Since being Mandalorian is a culture and not a race if you turn your back on being it, then you aren’t one. So that is the main reason why there are no Mandalorian Jedi.

Lego Luke

Do you have a question for our Jedi-in-residence, Professor Walsh? Submit it via the form below, and we’ll be sure to pass it along to him when he emerges from meditation.

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Aug 5, 2010

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Ask A Jedi: Are Sith or Jedi closer to the Force?

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 the Jedi. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

Dear Jedi,

Are the Sith closer to the Force then the Jedi? I know the Sith seem to use every aspect of the Force.

– Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

The Sith are not closer to the Force than the Jedi. The Sith do not actually use every aspect of the Force. This was explicitly pointed out in “Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire” where we learned that Darth Vader could not heal himself from his injuries specifically because he could only call on the Dark Side while angry and he could not maintain his anger long enough. This goes against the idea that the Sith use the Light Side in addition to the Dark Side.

You see, you cannot use both sides at once; they are diametrically opposed to each other. The Sith choose the side they see as stronger. The Dark Side, and because of this, and because of their unwillingness to serve the Force, they are actually much further removed from the Force than the Jedi are.

Dear Jedi,

Where do you base your pool of wisdom from, the movies, books, websites, another source of information or actually a combination of the above?  Also to help the askajedi community could you share the names of the the books and websites so we can also benefit from your pool of learning.

– Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

I base my pool of wisdom from the movies, the novels, the source books, the RPG material, the comics, and the television shows. In short all of the above. I rarely use web sites unless I can confirm a source directly. I am a true Star Wars nerd. I am very proud of the fact that I have read every novel written to date with only, so far, one exception… Death Troopers… I simply can’t wrap my brain around the concept of zombies in space. So far that is the only novel I have skipped. This includes the Young Jedi Knights novels as well, as a matter of principle I have even read those.

Lego Luke

Do you have a question for our Jedi-in-residence, Professor Walsh? Submit it via the form below, and we’ll be sure to pass it along to him when he emerges from meditation.


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Jul 27, 2010

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Ask A Jedi: Special Edition

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 the Jedi. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

This question came in today and since this one is going to be a nasty one to tackle I figured it deserved a special article just focusing on it. This one will be controversial, there is no way around it, but I wouldn’t be the Professor if I wasn’t willing to tackle tough topics.

Dear Jedi,

Are the Jedi Libertarian or Socialist?

– Bozzvegas

Dear Bozzvegas,

This is a question with both a simple answer and a complex answer. I am glad that you asked it, and I felt that it was worth having an article all to itself. First, the simple answer: No. As both Libertarianism and Socialism are both philosophical viewpoints that originated on Earth and since the Jedi have never had contact with Earth, they can’t really be either. For the more complex answer, I think you are actually asking “Would the Jedi’s beliefs be more in line with Libertarianism or Socialism?” and that answer is amazingly more complex.

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Jul 26, 2010

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Ask A Jedi: What Do The Jedi Serve?

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 the Jedi. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

Dear Jedi,

The essence of the Jedi, like the Samurai, is service.  What, in your opinion, do the Jedi ultimately serve? The Republic?  The Living Force?  Civilization?  Life?

– Rick

Dear Rick,

Thank you for such a wonderful question. The Jedi ultimately serve the Force, I don’t like using the term “The Living Force” because people often confuse that for a separate philosophy. That goes back to the so called “Unifying Force” which is a whole different topic entirely.

The idea is that the Jedi’s primary duty is to serve the Force, but also it must be remembered that the Jedi Order did pledge to protect the Republic as well. So they are honor-bound to serve the Republic after the Force.

The Jedi don’t have any particular requirement to serve civilization, though the fruits of civilization normally serve the Force so to then do the Jedi.

The Jedi are not required to serve life specifically but since all life creates the Force and the Jedi do serve that then the Jedi are indeed required to serve all life.

If I had to place it in a hierarchy it would be as follows: The Force, then the Republic, then Life, then Civilization.

Dear Jedi,

In the new novel “Fatal Alliance” the Jedi Padawan and the Sith Apprentice whip out some pretty crazy Force powers. Are these powers canon? I have never heard of anything like that before.

– DarthWheeler

Dear Wheeler,

This is an interesting question that is a little self-explanatory but I am going to go a little in-depth on it. Since they appeared in a Star Wars novel they are indeed C-Canon. I suspect what you meant to ask though was have they ever appeared before. To that question, I can only answer that for the most part those powers have never appeared before to the level that they were demonstrated.

I have a feeling that a lot of those powers will appear in TOR however. The powers that were demonstrated were pretty high end. In the novel we saw force fields capable of deflecting everything from blaster bolts to lava, the ability to push fire away like it was nothing, to withstand direct hits from wrist rockets without any damage what so ever, these things were way off the charts. To be honest I wish they weren’t as over the top as they were but in canon we have seen similar abilities before just never quite to that level.

I hope my answer helps.

Dear Jedi,

Ajedisayswhat?

– Goofin’

Dear Goofin’,

What?

Well my Padawans that is all I have to say for this week. Tune in next week for more questions and answers. Until then I’m Professor Walsh and may the Force be with you.

Lego Luke

Do you have a question for our Jedi-in-residence, Professor Walsh? Submit it via the form below, and we’ll be sure to pass it along to him when he emerges from meditation.

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