Well aren't we shaping up to be the belle of the ball

[Blackferne]

http://www.swtor.com/guilds/9154/archaic

Hey Blackferne, I doubt you remember me from Scylla since it's been so long. I played the furballs D'ohbakka and then D'ohbiwan once I unlocked.

I was hoping you guys would be interested in being one of our adversaries. We recently allied with Unrepentant, who I saw you guys where adversaries with and well alot of happy Scylla moments came flashing back, mostly involving hot pants.

Our core group is made up of former Scylla players, plus some we picked up in WoW.

BlueTongueDevil is our guild leader. Here is our page..

http://www.swtor.com/guilds/9154/archaic

I am going to get the old man to send an adversary invite or however you do it, I just didn't want to send a blind one. Hope you guys accept, I think it will be a lot of fun.

D'oh

I responded that with them aligned with Unrepentant we should probably end up on the same server and perhaps we could get together to run PVP nights or something. I am really thinking we could be working towards a real server culture which would be awesome.

[Sir Psyko]

It looks like we've (Unrepentant) already approved them as Allies, so chances are good.

[Furiel]

This is OUR server bitches!!!

[Miragel]

One server to be more awesome then all.

[Sir Psyko]

There's apparently a portion of Archaic that was in the iteration of Unrepentant, before they became Unrepentant... there's some overlap here that could prove useful once I figure out who the hell those people are

[Jimer Lins]

When do we find out what server we're on?

[Blackferne]

When do we find out what server we're on?

Not soon enough.

[Miragel]

When do we find out what server we're on?

Not soon enough.

QFE

[Furiel]

When do we find out what server we're on?

Not soon enough.

QFE

BW hasn't said to my knowledge. I figure it will be 1 of 2 ways, either 1) when we make characters on day 1 of early access and are placed on a specific server and then we come here and post the info, or 2) which I find less likely, BW updates the guild pages with their server set once they deploy the guilds to the productions servers right before launch.

Which also makes me wonder how far in advance are they going to take the beta servers down, because I imagine they are going to be reusing the same servers for launch, just wiping the characters and (maybe) renaming them.

At the latest you should know by noon on Dec 15th.

[Sir Psyko]

Guilds are locked for Deployment on December 2, with Head Start beginning Dec 15... I'd guess that we'll know on Dec 12, which will also likely be the day they start to allow pre-loads of the client (for those that don't already have it).

I'm expecting Beta to end that weekend as well... gives them a few days to wipe everything clean and come up with another hundred server names

[Blackferne]

I've not got much left in my Beta to do list:

• Range tank: done
• Play with Character creation on the republic for Jounville, Arillius, Momma and Brother Blackferne: done
• Get a companion: Done
• See how crew skills work: Done
• Run a Flashpoint: Done several times
• Get a ship: Done
• Play around with Guild Control Panel: Done
• Play a Sith Warrior at least a few levels: Done
• Play a Sith Inquisitor at least a few levels: Done
• Play a Bounty Hunter to the Powertech AC: Done
• Play an Imperial Agent at least a few levels: Pending

[Happyclam]

I have a number of friends in Descendants of Ragnos as well.

[Veela]

Joun, can we add Bloodbath and Beyond to the adversary list? I'd really like to see both guilds I so dearly love on the same server.

I'll let X know you might be adding to the adversary list.

http://www.swtor.com/guilds/8263/bloodbath-and-beyond

[Blackferne]

Joun, can we add Bloodbath and Beyond to the adversary list? I'd really like to see both guilds I so dearly love on the same server.

I'll let X know you might be adding to the adversary list.

http://www.swtor.com/guilds/8263/bloodbath-and-beyond

I would love to have B&B and Lost Smugglers on our server but the problems are as follows:

1. We are a EST PVE guild (this was discussed and decided a while back so we could be in line with GTF and Unrepentant) B&B and Lost smugglers both picked PST RP servers. So we are unlikely to end up on the same type of server as them anyway.

2. We only have 3 slots so I can't add them without kicking out one of the other guilds we have set up mutual ally/adversary with. Currently we have 8 guilds who list as allies and 1 as an adversary (who has a reciprocal ally with another former scylla guild who indicated they hoped we end up on the same server).

The second one isn't as serious in my opinion because guilds are forming daisy chains, but the first is where it ultimately falls apart. We aren't going to an RP server and B&B and LS are, and we are east while they are set to be west. As you know server time doesn't matter that much since people are on all times of the day.

[Veela]

Well, they're bastards, then.

Can I roll Sith side and join Pod Six on our server?

[Blackferne]

Well, they're bastards, then.

Can I roll Sith side and join Pod Six on our server?

We can start a pod 6, but personally I'd like to make sure alvis starts strong enough to be able to split into two subguilds without people feeling isolated.

[Blackferne]

Soooo I was bored and nerdy. I mapped out everyone who is our ally/adversary and people who have listed us as an ally or an adversary and found their allies and adversaries etc etc and the list of guilds was 27 long including 746 players with a population breakdown of 281 Republic players to 465 Sith Players. This is obviously incomplete because I have no way of knowing if say MERC (The Mos Eisley Radio 500 person Republic guild) listed SinisteR (117 Sith guild who is on our "island") as an adversary. But assuming no major data branches not counted like that I think there is an excellent chance our island could come as that with maybe 2 or 3 other similar data pools to even out the server population. But should we have a Sith heavy PVE server it does mean our wait times for PVP warzones and hutball things will be shorter. The downside is that stuff like Ilum will usually be held by the Sith.

[Blackferne]

Guild/Roster Size/Faction
Alvis/32/Republic
Arion /10/Republic
Armada/11/Republic
Bad Karma /11Republic
Chaos Theory/30/Republic
CorBA/20/Republic
Cult of the Wolf/4/Republic
DHO/10/Republic
Egyption League of Neter/10/Republic
GFF/35/Republic
GTF/24/Republic
Runic Knights/46/Republic
Starsider Legion/14/Republic
The Snark Side/8/Republic
The Watch /8/Republic
Wisconsinites/8/ Republic
Archaic/26/Sith Empire
Black Watch/23/Sith Empire
Circle of Night/6/Sith Empire
DHO Sith/3/Sith Empire
Eternal Empire/97/Sith Empire
Grievance/64/Sith Empire
Prophecy/34/Sith Empire
SinisteR/117/Sith Empire
Sithilicious/12/Sith Empire
The Illuminati/25/Sith Empire
Unrepentant/58/Sith Empire

Posting this mainly to see how much of this actually happens down the road.

[Miragel]

Interesting work Joun!

I'm really interested to see how the guild/server topography pans out.

[Blackferne]

Well this is interesting

http://swtorprogress.com/members.php

They breakdown class and Faction choices based on the guild pages

US PVE East (Where we are slated to go)
Empire Total: 45401
Republic Total: 36457
All Allegiance Total: 81858

Class Choices
Undecided Empire 12642
Sith Inquisitor 11235
Sith Warrior 9973
Undecided Republic 9940
Jedi Knight 9351
Bounty Hunter 7404
Jedi Consular 7222
Trooper 5197
Smuggler 4747
Imperial Agent 4147

How do you guys feel about being the likely underdog at launch?

[Furiel]

I've always liked playing the rarer combos.

[Blackferne]

Well from my understanding that is collected off guild commitments. And their totals are about half of the number of preorders so if people who are coming into the game guilded for some reason are more likely to be Sith than people coming in unaffiliated, then the stats could be meaningless except in terms of progression through end game content.

[Furiel]

Well from my understanding that is collected off guild commitments. And their totals are about half of the number of preorders so if people who are coming into the game guilded for some reason are more likely to be Sith than people coming in unaffiliated, then the stats could be meaningless except in terms of progression through end game content.

Based off that they I'm willing to bet that there will end up with a Republic slant in total population, but a Sith slant in progression.

My theory being that the more casual people are going to be your currently unguilded pre=ordered people, who as a general rule usually lean toward the "good" side. At the same time these same people are also likely to gravitate toward 3 classes, smugglers, Knights and Consulars. Casuals are likely to gravitate toward either the glowbat, or to being Han Solo, I don't know many kids who grew up dreaming of being a stormtrooper so they are unlikely to pick troopers, at least initially. So while we may have numbers, the more power-gamey/hardcore are leaning more heavily to the Sith side, which means they likely be the ones leading in progression. Unless of course there is some class imbalances at the high end that make it easier for 1 faction or the other.

[Blackferne]

Well that makes sense to a degree, but I have to wonder if the player base is different than you assume. Keep in mind if you discount the fact the saga is really a story about 2 droids and go with the argument that is the fall and redemption of Anakin, it would be easy to assume that people have a fascination with the dark side. Keep in mind that your average MMO player is older than your average console gamer. So you are talking about people who are 25+. That demographic might feel a natural draw to exploring the dark side.

Historically there seems to be this assumption that the "evil side" is self selecting hardcore players for progression, but I don't think that necessarily holds. Once WoW introduced a pretty race to the horde population distribution normalized for the most part. Look at US 10 man guild progression in WOW. Based on the fact that 4.3 dropped tuesday and with it the next raid encounter there have been 100 guilds(maybe more guild ox stopped counting at 100) that have gone 8/8 and 51 of them were alliance.

SWTOR has "pretty races" on both sides of the faction divide because everyone could be a cute human if they wanted. No one is forced into an ugly race to get a class.

[Jimer Lins]

I think a lot of people will roll Sith simply because they're perceived to be more "powerful"- they have the more physical and visually appaling special attacks. Force choke and lightning? That's gonna draw a crowd. Plus it's the under-represented side in the gaming history. You could play dark or light side in KOTOR, but you had to move in that direction. This lets you start there, getting in on the ground floor of Evil Incorporated, so to speak.

I believe it will be pretty wel balanced at launch, maybe a slight advantage to Sith in terms of power and a slight advantage to Republic in terms of numbers.