Aug 4, 2011

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All The Galaxy’s A Stage: Developing Character (Backgrounds)

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!

Are you the kind of Role-Player that likes to start with a blank sheet and develop your character as you go?  Do you like to develop a detailed background for your character before you start?  Maybe you approach character development somewhere in between these two approaches?  Or perhaps you are new to Role-Playing and are wondering what in the galaxy character backgrounds are all about?

Hi, my name is Anakin, and I am your father.

The Blank Slate

On one hand, starting with a blank sheet is certainly easier.  You decide your character is X class, from Y planet, of Z species, name them, maybe add a few more details and off you go.  You’re like a painter sat in front of a white canvas, free to create whatever whim inspires your imagination.

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Aug 1, 2011

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Ask A Jedi: Holy Kark, That Was Evil!

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!

This week, we’re taking a slight departure from the reader Q&A format, and instead focusing on a recent reveal that I just find too juicy to ignore. This is regarding the Esseles Flashpoint Developer Walkthrough, which was recently unveiled during San Diego Comic Con. Specifically, I am referring to the point where the party makes the choice to… “jettison” the engineers.

If we were formatting this similar to past Ask A Jedi columns, it would go something like this:

Dear Jedi,

How do you feel about the engineers getting spaced in The Esseles Flashpoint?


Dear StarWarsNut,

I am a bit shocked by the event in question.


Now, for the long version

For those of you who have not seen it, you can view it here:

In case you can’t view it, or don’t want to view it, allow me to give you the recap.

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Jul 28, 2011

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All The Galaxy's A Stage: Freeform and Structured 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!

The more time you’ve spent Role-Playing, the more likely it is that you’ll have come to realize that there are many different styles of RP.  Whether you’ve experienced the cliques that form within real life or on-line RP communities, or the differences between those that prefer RP within a guild to mixing it up on forums, the reality is every RPer has their own preference and opinion when it comes to RP.

For those of you new to RP it is worth providing a little context.  Perhaps the two most obvious ‘types’ of RP in an online setting concern what I’m choosing to title as Freeform RP and Structured RP.

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Jul 21, 2011

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All The Galaxy's A Stage: Real-Time RP In An MMORPG

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!

As I was thinking about RP in SW:TOR, one of the defining moments of my MMORPG Role-Playing experience came to mind.  When Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) was launched I founded a RP guild.  It didn’t take us long to grow, and by the time of our first major RP event we had about 60 active members.  The leadership team had a real passion for creating guild story arcs, and one such arc resulted in what came to be an epic experience.  Players were morally challenged, sacrifice was required and all in all the event initially looked, from where we were sitting, to be a great success.

Many of us would like to have a word with you.

Have you ever been in an MMO-RP scene with 50+ players RPing at the same time?  Have you experienced that rush of text dialog and emotes in the chat channel?  And I’m not talking about random cantina RP (where you can easily see 50+ RPers in the same space).  I’m referring to big story events that have taken weeks or months to bring to a significant storypoint and most of your guild have shown up for.

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Jul 14, 2011

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All The Galaxy's A Stage: Enforced RP Rulesets?

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.  Join in the discussion and share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

I know last time, I promised to discuss some of the challenges of real time RP in an MMO in the next column, but I caught a post by BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid in the Dev Tracker and could not resist.  He wrote something that I never expected to see even being discussed:

We’ll have PvP servers, and we may have ‘soft’ RP servers (ie, labelled as such, but with no enforcement)… however, enforcing an RP ruleset is a big decision and one that’s higher up the chain than me.

We’ve been getting wind of soft RP servers for a while now.  Given that folks such as Daniel Erickson are self-noted avid Role-Players themselves, there’s no doubt that the RP community of SW:TOR really has some important allies in high places.  Contemplating official RP servers is definitely a practical approach by BioWare – after all, they have to know that if they don’t give us RP servers the community will only go and select a single server to overwhelm as our unofficial home anyway, right?  But to read that the idea of an RP ruleset driven server is even on the lips of BioWare staff made me do a double-take.

That said, I do agree with Mr. Reid that this is far from a trivial matter.  Whilst I’m not going to get into enforcement of in-character elements of RP (that’s never going to fly), the idea of a ruleset on RP is still fraught with complications.  And yet, I will confess that the idea does fill me with a dreamy look of a young schoolgirl overwhelmed by her first crush.  The idea of a server where there are consequences for OOC (out-of-character) griefers disturbing the RP scene really is tantalizing.  And yet, I know I am definitely reading more into this than is realistically happening behind the scenes.  Perhaps this really is a heavy dose of wishful thinking?

Regardless of what Mr. Reid may have meant by all this, we would like to hear your perspective on this post and experiences around RP in MMORPGs.  What do you think?

What is your position on the idea of RP servers?

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I find your lack of respect for our RP disturbing.

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