Reconciliation of the Teachings of Alvis and the Jedi Code

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Editor note: This article is an attempt to mesh the lore of the Star Wars Universe with the lore of the Alvian Church.

Author Note: (I can’t take all the credit for this, a lot of it involves a thread of discussion as well as input from other Alvians as well, particularly Furiel. This is just my take on it.)

“There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no death, there is the Force. “

—The Jedi Code (Based on the meditations of Odan-Urr)

Most Jedi within the order throughout history have argued that the Jedi Code, in and of itself – is complete and final, and requires no further clarification. Sadly, this dogmatic belief lies in thousands
of years of passing down the teachings through Knight to Padawan, with little questioning. It is true, questioning the will of the Force as it relates to the Jedi Code does in fact, go against certain Jedi traditions. Traditions and rituals were set into place to facilitate the learning process of the force and the training of Force-sensitive individuals throughout the ages. However, one inevitably realizes that tradition and rituals cannot destroy ignorance, as these concepts are not mutually exclusive. The Force is
an ever-unraveling truth which ever grows, evolves and changes fates of sentient species, on an ongoing basis, and throughout time immemorial.

Further meditation on the Force, beyond the Jedi Code itself lends itself to a complex unraveling of many layers of philosophical truths. Black and white areas of philosophical arguments can occasionally disappear, and one can occasionally glimpse into deeper layers of the will of the Force. To accept a set of philosophical precepts as final betrays the level of realization of the Jedi, as the Force is ever-changing and evolving.

Throughout history of the galaxy, there have been many Jedi who have been pioneers in their own right. Questioning dogmatic beliefs and searching through years of unquestioned traditions, they have
carefully been exposed to more subtler aspects of the Force. And while many experts have agreed that the Light Side is less seductive and leads to greater peace, many Jedi have confronted the Dark Side and through their attempts of learning, gained some degree of control without being completely consumed by it. Darth Revan, Luke Skywalker, Mace Windu are a few within recorded history, as examples.

Another undocumented account was handed down through word of mouth and widely debated was through the teachings of Alvis. Historians have debated whether or not he was truly Force-Sensitive and the impact his teachings have had on the Jedi Code. Many historians have sadly written off his teachings as the ramblings of a drunken sociopath. There are a few Alvian purists however, who have learned to
embrace his teachings and incorporate them as their own moral code. A very small but growing sect within the Jedi Order also embrace these teachings and have reconciled them to a degree where they are one and the same. They are sometimes secretive of their devotions, sometimes overt, and most of the times unpredictable, but all share in their unwavering adherence to his supreme principles of drunkenness and vengeance.

The key to understanding the Jedi Code as it relates to Alvis’s teachings, is balance. Balancing the will of the force, which occasionally warrants vengeance.

The biggest thing that most people overlook about Alvian vengeance is that Alvis’s vengeance is JUST. And that sense of justice is where both the Jedi Code and the Alvian Code merge. Being drunk and
violent can be fun, but the vengeance as Alvians do is payback to those who have done injustices to the will of the force in and of itself. And it is worth mentioning those injustices do not always materialize as injustices ones done to devotees of Alvis, but also to those who cannot exact said revenge themselves. Thus the Jedi uphold this part and protect the will of the force, in and of itself.

So ultimately, Alvian Jedi may be viewed as more extreme and violent than a typical, run of the mill Jedi, they do share a strong belief in righteousness and justice, be it their own unique distinct brand of
justice, and the Jedi order does secretly turn a blind eye to those who would do so as having Alvians on their side would be viewed as an asset, especially in times of injustice as was the case when the Republic was under the invasion of the Sith.

Jedi historians speak rumors of an ancient Jedi prophecy, which originally stated that Alvis’s drunkenness and revenge will eventually bring balance to the force. The influence of alcohol on
midichlorians has been noted as miraculous as it agitates the cells within a receptive mind and allows them for a furious and tempestuous rage, often misinterpreted as violence. The true nature of alcohol
on midichlorians…is Revenge.

Thus spake Alvis.

Dood Fromeianna is a Priest for the Church of Alvis.

Ghosts From MMOs Past

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Games always get compared to other games. Checkers and chess get compared since both are played on board with 64 squares of alternating colors. Hearts, Bridge, and Spades get compared to each other as they are four player card games involving tricks. So it is natural that Star Wars the Old Republic is going to be compared to other MMOS. For SWTOR there are two that will linger around for comparison for a long while after launch. First is Star Wars Galaxies and the second it World of Warcraft. The interesting thing to speculate on is what lessons Bioware has taken from these two games.

Lessons from Star Wars Galaxies

The comparisons are easy to draw. Both are part of the same universe. Both are MMORPGs. Both have huge expectations at launch about their ability to change the genre. But Galaxies has plenty of lessons I hope Bioware has taken to heart and employed in their game. First is that having a finished product matters. Talk to anyone who played SWG at launch and they can no doubt tell you stories about having to find work-arounds for various issues of gameplay that weren’t fully tested and fixed before launched. For crafting a common one was having to be very careful with how much money you put in your harvesters because if you screwed up you could lose a lot of credits or your harvester. It was a very careful game of balance. In combat things that targeted the mind bar were generally viewed as the best so there was a whole slew of flavor of the month templates all focusing on getting the biggest bang for your buck on attacking the mind pool stat of mobs and other players.

But after the bugs and the slow pace by which SOE fixed them, there is a lesson about content. SWG was a great game for sandbox type players, and as far as a player driven economy there are few that are in the same league as SWG. But there were a lot of Star Wars fans who came in expecting a story, and were disappointed in the lack of things to provide the Star Wars experience. MMOs tend to plot somewhere on the spectrum of pure sandbox to pure theme park. Sandbox is about world building and interaction while theme park is go see the sights everyone else has seen, get your digital “I slayed the rancor at Jabba’s Palace and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” badge. I think SWG was too sandbox for many Star Wars fans who were used to games providing a story for them. The question that pops up for me is whether an MMO with an established lore from another source (movie or book) can really be a sandbox MMO? I’d venture to guess they have to err on the side of themepark, or you get the fan base, that came to you because they love the source, disappointed at the lack of things to do.

Finally the last major lesson from SWG is the importance of community. SWG veterans wear that fact like a badge of pride. They look at less buggy games and think, “They don’t know the horrors I’ve seen.” Despite the lack of content, or maybe because of it, the players of SWG bonded and formed a real and honest to goodness online community. The fact that Alvis is still together after 8 years is a testament to that. And we are just one of many SWG guilds reforming for SWTOR. But with the development of a solid community, you also have to communicate and work with that community. Many SWG vets left at the launch of the NGE in 2005 because they saw the NGE as a betrayal of the trust the community had put into the developers. I sometimes wonder if the NGE had been the game that was there at launch if people would have liked it better. Ultimately we don’t know, but we do know that players who had invested time and effort into their characters over two and a half years felt like they suddenly didn’t have the same game anymore. And the developers lack of communication leading up to it was a major scandal.

So to sum up Star Wars Galaxies shows Bioware that you have to have a mostly bug free game at launch, you have to have things for people to do to get their immersion, and you have to work with your community.

 

Lessons from World of Warcraft

For as much as people think that Star Wars should be compared to Galaxies, it is going to be compared more to World of Warcraft. Since its rocky launch in 2004 WoW has grown into the 8 ton gorilla in the MMO market. In fact WoW’s success has had some industry commentators muse that they crowd out other games to the detriment of the genre as a whole. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I can say that they definitely raised the bar of what players expect from an MMO.

Customer Service is important. The rocky launch had some people not able to play for days or even weeks at a time. Blizzard responded to their screw ups with, you missed playtime we’ll give you playtime. That was something that wasn’t exactly common back in 2004. But since then the Blizzard customer service has been rather good, even accommodating to players. When accounts were hacked by gold farmers, Blizzard generally was pretty quick to get the player “whole” again. My wife’s account got hacked, and she missed a raid, but overall it was a decent experience. People who were hacked multiple times, refusing to get an authenticator, were still made whole time and time again despite the stern lecture on account security from customer service.

Polish goes a long way. Personally I started playing WoW one year into its life span. So I don’t know first hand about the rocky experiences, but I do know that in November 2005 when I started playing I was blown away by the fact you never had to find a workaround for doing what should be routine activities for your class or profession. Since then the polish has gotten better with each expansion to the point where looking back at Vanilla WoW I’m amazed that we put up with some of the dumb quests we had to put up with. QA clearly matters and if you don’t have serious or widespread problems with a patch or an expansion people tend to be more patient about waiting for the next bit.

You will have casual and hardcore players and you can’t ignore either. Blizzard for all of their polish has not been without fault in their run. The original raids were a nightmare to organize with forty people and the number of people who saw Naxrxamas in Vanilla was a tiny portion of the population. Their initial solution to that was to make raids smaller and so the Burning Crusade was more accessible for the first tier, but the higher level dungeons weren’t seen by many people either so their expansions chief bad guy most people hadn’t seen at all. Wrath of the Lich King seemed to find the solution by making the villain pop up all over the place and it was widely regarded as a pretty great expansion. It took time, but Blizzard seems to have found a way to give casuals a way to see almost all the content made, but still giving the hardcore the ability to get shiny toys for their accomplishments.

Will Bioware Learn These Lessons?

It is impossible for me to know for sure if Bioware has learned the right lessons from their MMO ancestors, but we have a lot of reason to suspect that they have.

Bioware enjoys a reputation among game developers that is top notch. When you ask most gamers what Bioware, Blizzard, and Valve have in common, the response is usually something to the effect of “They will not release a product until it is ready”. It is amazing what kind of leeway gamers will give developers with that kind of reputation. Most of Alvis is very very eager to get their hands onto this game. We read about it, we obsess over the latest tidbit said at a con or a Friday update. But almost everyone I’ve talked to has said something to the effect of “I’d rather wait for a finished game, than pay to beta test a broken game.” Bioware has been very clear that they want to make sure that launch goes smoothly, that the game is complete, that it runs well, and that the bugs are gone before 12/20/2011. Their reputation is on the line and they know it.

The second main lesson revolves around content. Since they announced the game they have gone on and on about how they are really giving “story” the center stage in this mmorpg. If they needed a tag line it would be something to the effect of “SWTOR: Putting the RPG back in MMORPG”. Podcasters have joked “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently this game has story.” If they pull this off it will be a new bar for the genre in a significant way. I’ve been playing WoW for almost 6 years and despite killing the Lich King, and seeing most end game content for years now, I never really knew why we were doing any of the things we were doing. I mean I guess that guy in that castle/cave/palace is a bad person, and he needs to be stopped, but I was in it for the game play not the story. If Bioware has succeeded it will add a whole depth to my game playing experience in that, not only will I do things because I like the game play, but I genuinely care about solving story problems. That has the potential to up the genre bar the same way WoW did.

The final lesson is about community and communication with the segments of your player base, and this is the part we can’t know for sure for a while. Ideally Bioware has gotten the resources lined up and the ability to help customers feel like the company values their subscription. And hopefully Bioware has fun activities for the whole spectrum of players. PvPers, raiders, crafters, socialites, and altaholics. If they do, then the player base can settle as a solid community. There are many promising indications this is already happening. Devs are very interactive already with players. They work with fansites, blogs ,and podcasts on a regular basis. They seem to get that people are excited, and that working with the community goes a long way towards having a lasting community.

Bioware has had lots of tests thrown its way. It has to prove it can be a viable game and succeed where a whole list of other MMOs have failed. They have the potential, they seem to be learning from other people’s mistakes. If they live up to their own expectations they could emerge out of SWG and WoW’s shadows and become a giant of their own.

The Case for Surnames

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At Comic-Con the following exchange took place during a Q&A:

jorussher asks: Will our characters be able to have surnames?


 

 


James Ohlen: No answer at this time.

This comes from this thread.

I personally believe Bioware should allow players to have Surnames. I hope to make the convincing case here.

Bioware has bet on and doubled down about their intent on making story matter. They have bolstered this with voiced acting to all quests, drawing us away from skip reading go find my rats to kill. They have released three cinematic trailers tracing a major character over significant parts of his life. Clearly they care about story and immersion.

They have also wanted to make your story feel epic and like it belongs in the Star Wars universe. They have made eight class quests guiding you from level one to level fifty providing plot elements and twists along the way. They have promoted this with eight class trailers.

With all this focus on creating an epic Star Wars story, they need to touch on one of the simplest tools at their disposal, the creation of a Star Wars name.

When you ask people to name who the characters are in Star Wars some of the names that come to mind quickly are Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, Obi Wan Kenobi, Lando Calrissian, and Boba Fett. Something you will notice is each and every one of them has a Surname. While I will quickly concede that there are those without surnames such as Chewbacca, Wicket, Yoda, Palpatine, R2D2, C3PO, or Jabba the Hutt, it should be noted that most characters have family names, and those surnames can be very important for their stories.

The main story of the original trilogy follows the rise of Luke Skywalker on his journey to become a Jedi Knight like his father before him. He also learns about his relationship to Leia. Family clearly matters.

In the prequels family matter again with Anakin dealing with the loss of his mother Shimi Skywalker. Also he has to deal with his secret marriage to Padme. In addition we see a subplot where Jango Fett has a clone made to be his son, and we see young Boba dealing with the loss of his father to the Jedi forging his path in the future. In the novella Boba Fett: A Practical Man you see this loss really does a mental number on Boba Fett.

So clearly in Star Wars, families matter. They matter a great deal. So Bioware in wanting to create an epic story for players that meets the Star Wars ought to allow players to have that tool to expand and develop their characters. Family dynamics can allow for some really fun role play opportunities. For example in SWG players were allowed to have surnames and I chose to make an alt who was my main’s father. Jounville Blackferne was young, charismatic, and generally optimistic. Arillius Blackferne by contrast was old, balding, had wrinkles, and was generally grizzled.

Not all players will take the surname option. Arrican and Furiel both were single named players who were fine with that. Others just used the last name for a little flair but nothing else.

I hope Bioware makes the smart decision and allows players to have a surname as part of character creation. It fits the lore, it helps make the stories players create better, and can be a lot of fun all around.

Star Wars the Old Republic: Deceived Book Review

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The key figure in the three cinematic trailers they have released for the game has been Darth Malgus. From the first time we saw him in the Deceived trailer we realized he is a force to be reckoned with.

 

What the novel does is flush him out more than just a force of rage slaughtering Jedi left and right.

For anyone yet to read the book

and wanting to avoid spoilers

please  stop reading now.

Everyone else follow past the

break.

Continue reading →

Loot Containers: The End of Loot Drama?

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‘Loot containers’ (name is still a work in progress!) do indeed exist and are designed to alleviate the frustration some feel around high-level loot drops.

As it’s currently implemented, at the end of a key encounter within an Operation, upon looting a high-level opponent, everyone in the Operations group will get an individual container which has a chance to give you a random piece of loot that’s specific to your class. It could be part of an armor set, a weapon, and so on. If you don’t get loot, you’ll get commendations which can be used to purchase gear.

Please note, this feature is currently in Game Testing and may well be modified before launch. -Stephen Reid

A long standing problem in MMOs is “who gets the loot?” I’ve seen loads of drama and read about worse drama in six years of playing World of Warcraft all on answering that exact question. There are a ton of different ways to answer the question but every one has their advantages and disadvantages. In a flashpoint (or small group instance) it is generally pretty easy to tell who a specific piece of gear is intended for and who in the group benefits most from it. But in Operations (8 or 16 man ‘raid groups’) that question becomes more difficult as you will likely have multiple people who could use a specific piece of gear.

Bioware has taken what I think is an interesting step in answering the loot question. They have essentially said “every plays, everybody wins”. This is good in many cases, but could be bad in other. I’d like to quickly outline what I see as the benefits and the potential harms.

Benefits
There is not a question of who gets what. Operation Leaders cannot play favorites because everyone essentially has a grab bag and the random number generator is deciding who gets what, not a loot system.

Since your loot container is tied to your class, any loot that drops will be class appropriate. It may not be your spec, or might be a duplicate of what you have, but it won’t be like an operation of Jedi Knights, Consulars, and Troopers finds themselves with Smuggler drops they can’t use.

Even if you get no gear, you still get something. The commendations that drop are an in game currency that can be exchanged for gear. So for every loot container you get where there aren’t pants, you still get something that when saved up will go towards new pants, or armor or a weapon.

Don’t need an external system for tracking and allocating loot. There are a lot of possible loot systems people use in World of Warcraft, and most require some addon or offline list/spreadsheet to figure out who can get loot. A loot container gets rid of the need for that since everyone is on their own loot path.

Drawbacks
The drawbacks I see are relatively few and mostly can be mitigated if gear can be traded. Let’s assume that what is provided in a loot container is bound to the owner of that loot container. There are operations I’ve been on that are farm nights. And what farm nights are really good at is helping to quickly gear some one up so they are ready for even more difficult operations in the future. For example if a Trooper who was slow to level, or had to take a few month break from the game comes to a farm night, then no matter what trooper gear dropped from a boss, they could be designated to get it. This would likely happen since all other troopers would likely already have that gear and not want it.

Another drawback is while loot containers are class specific, it isn’t necessarily spec or advanced class specific. If all I care about is tanking, DPS boots do me no good. But Furiel will want DPS boots and if the loot is linked to me and I can’t trade it, we are at a net loss.

Both of these drawbacks I think are relatively minor, and easily negated if Bioware allows for Operation members to trade loot containers within a certain time limit from opening.

Not All Troopers Are the Same

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By now there is a good chance you’ve seen the Trooper Armor Progression Video:

Over the weekend Furiel and I were talking about it as we both intend to play troopers. What struck me as amazing was they showed four different models of advanced class troopers in the 2:34 clip and Furiel and I were really excited about different ones. Furiel was really excited about the Trooper shown from 1:10-1:28 or so. A man with a large gun mowing down droids and blowing stuff up. Maybe not the cliche glass cannon so much as a cannon of cannons. For me the excitement really started at 1:30 and lasted the rest of the video while they showed two different kinds of Vanguards (Trooper Tanks).

 

The take away here for me is that Bioware is doing a really good job of signalling to players that there is diversity within a class. When you compare Furiel’s dream Trooper versus mine, they play very differently. Furiel’s is about big explosions and doing damage, while my dreamy Trooper is much more about securing location and maintaining control (key aspects of tanking), and to think both play styles originate with the same basic class is pretty cool.

We still have a long way until a launch date, but I will applaud Bioware for amping up the excitement and finding tidbits of information to tantalize the fanboy/fangirl in each of us.

Back to Basics

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Waiting for a game is sometimes really hard. Star Wars the Old Republic was announced two and half years ago, and we still don’t have a release date. The best estimates say this fall, but we shall see. In the meantime I decided to do something I haven’t done since high school, play a pen and paper game. Well it is worse than that I decided to be the Game Master for an Alvian Campaign set in the Old Republic Era using the WotC Star Wars Saga Edition ruleset.

The Joy of Pen and Paper

On the above chart I was nicely in the Video Gamers/Science Fiction TV Fan boxes dipping my toes into the Trekkies box every now and then. But this latest decision is putting me squarely in the Roleplaying Gamers box. I know some people might protest “But Blackferne you play WoW and that is a roleplaying game” to which I’ll gladly respond “On a recent Lore Quiz our GM gave I knew surprisingly little about who we kill and what we get for it in WoW.” So if there is roleplaying in WoW I don’t see it.

But when you play pen and paper there is a certain aspect of role play. There has to be for it to work well. Pen and Paper isn’t just moving miniatures around a board, rolling die for damage. A good role playing game is in a sense collaborative story telling.

But the greatest fun I’ve had since this experiment started is the creative construction. I’ve decided to place the Alvians in a long mystery trying to rescue Jounville Blackferne who was kidnapped shortly before the campaign started. I used to GM games with some friends in high school, so some of it is coming back. But there is also a lot I have forgotten. For example I forgot that the biggest challenge for a GM isn’t necessarily coming up with interesting stories or cool adversaries, but rather the biggest challange is dealing with players acting in ways you didn’t expect.

For example the WotC rule set has rules for gambling. And I said there was a casino in Mos Eisley so a few of our players decided to go gamble. However this happened at a point in the game when I was trying to get the players to pay for a ship, and I was giving them choices on how to finance through taking jobs to earn money. Each job plotted a point on a risk/reward payoff. Well Arrican’s scoundrel because of the flawed WotC rules had enough to buy a ship in just a few hours, Now that can be chalked up to me agreeing to a game rule set without fully thinking through the implications, but it also served as a strong reminder that the GM has to be able to react to the things the players do, that you didn’t expect.

Overall it has been fun for me, and I hope for the players. The best thing about Pen and Paper is that it has a tendency to create memories and stories you don’t often see replicated in video games. An example we’ve seen in the game is Bulwark made fun of Wailer (Gandolfini’s Gungan Jedi), and being a bit mischievous, Wailer used a Jedi mind trick to give Bulwark a subconscious attachment to a small rock. Another involves a dimwitted service robot who’s actions led to one Alvian shooting another.

Final Thoughts and Hopes

One side effect of the pen and paper game is it has increased forum traffic as the players, and a few viewers have been checking in regularly to see if anything new has happened. But it is also a great way for us to rebuild the bonds we had back in SWG. This, if nothing else, also allows us to make new bonds with people who didn’t play SWG with us very much. I hope the game continues to be a nice distraction until SWTOR launches, at which point we will focus down on some serious MMOing.

Guild Systems: A speculative post

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Recently I was directed to David Bass, Senior Community Coordinator at Bioware for the SW:TOR team. His job is largely based on trying to assist guilds looking to form up for SWTOR and asked me the following question.

We haven’t quite begun talking about guilds in an official manner yet, though that’s coming fairly soon. Right now, I’ve been getting in touch with guilds mostly to gather some initial feedback. What sorts of features do you and your guild feel are an absolute necessity at launch? What features are those that you consider “nice to have”?

Well this got me thinking about what are the core game features that a guild needs, expects, and in my case what I would like to see based on known aspects of the game we are all anticipating.

This was my response.

David,

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into guild management having run a guild twice (The Church in SWG and an unrelated guild in WoW), and the prospect of what a guild needs and wants can be daunting. Considering my experience and upcoming responsibilities I have to say the way the guild system will work is of particular interest to me, though I realize that while nearly everyone joins a guild, a minority are probably concerned with their mechanics. Here are some of my thoughts divided into needs/wants/wish lists.

Needs

Formation: I’d consider the ability to form a guild quickly and inexpensively to be a need, especially for a launch guild before anyone has any credits. The prospect of a “guild charter” being either prohibitively expensive (forcing players to forgo spending credits on other things like training or gear) or the charter requiring unusual effort (I heard Conan required players to all be present in some far off location to form up) seems like an undue burden to place. Something akin to the WoW play 10silver/1G and have 4-5 charter signatures now seems reasonable. I would prefer that the ability to sign a guild charter (should you have such a system) be able to be done remotely so I could use the “holonet” to secure any necessary player commitments if such a system is what you guys intend.

Communication: I think it is expected and standard to have an intuitive guild chat channel members have access to immediately upon joining the guild.

Access Levels: The ability to set ranks, and permissions to those ranks (ie ability to invite, gkick, promote/demote)

At its core this is all that is really absolutely necessary for a guild to exist in any MMO. Everything else just enhances, strengthens or flourishes those core aspects.

Wants

Shared Resources: Ideally there will be some kind of guild vault/storage locker. I don’t really mind if it starts small and grows with costs associated with it as a money sink. Ideally we would be able to have members who are operating in a cooperative crafting arrangement, or helping to gear the guild in craftables, could use the
guild storage space as a safe no hassle transfer point for hard goods. And in a manner which doesn’t affect personal storage space (ie self bank/mailbox quotas)

Titles: The ability to set intra guild titles. These don’t have to be seen by those out of guild, but when I walk by a guildmate and see in front of his name above his head “Bishop Furiel” that would be really cool. If you could also have a vanity title which would be applied to one person and not require a rank like Arrican the Sith Slayer or
Dentist Cuspar that would be awesome. Allows for community building if somebody did something really memorable in the guild and you wanted to immortalize it.

Taxes: I don’t know how it would play and effect the overall gameplay, but if a guild could set some nominal tax rate to go towards the guild bank account. “Maybe set a max rate allowed of 7-10% to prevent officers interfering woo much with their members money making”. And ideally this would be something that would happen automatically off credits received via missions/quests/looting. Within my guild specifically it would just be called a tithe, but the basic principle is taxation. The real decision is how you’d implement this. Option (a) you get paid unguilded 100cr for a mission, but in a guild with a tax you get paid 90cr and 10cr go to the bank. Option (b) you still get paid the 100, but the guild gets “bonus” money like the current WoW guild perks system. Lore justifications could be, especially if you have a guild level system, that NPCs are paying a “premium” because your group of heroes has a reputation for being so good at their jobs, and as we all know if you want “Havoc Squad” you have to pay what Havoc Squad is worth.

Security: I don’t know if Bioware is going to take a cue from Blizzard, but authenticators (either keyfob, or as an app for smart phones), and the ability to set restrictions on shared resources based on whether an account has one is a huge feature I personally would like. My wife’s WoW account got hacked while I was GM and I was really
worried about the amount of damage that could have been done.

Guild Perks/Levels: I don’t know if you guys are thinking about it, but I think that these type of systems help keep people from guild hopping as much, and can help build community. I’ve been pretty impressed with the WoW guild levels/perks they have implemented in Cataclysm, and would love to see similar things in SWTOR.

In Game Calendar: Having the ability to have a group calendar in game I have found very useful in games. Especially if that calendar can be used to send event invites to people. Features like the ability send event invites based on rank, or some other division would be useful.

Alt Linking: In a game with the anticipated replay of SWTOR I forsee many players including myself playing multiple characters. If there was a way that when a player joined a guild on his alt that it would have a note field or something just listing “Oh hey Arillius is the alt of Jounville” it would be very nice. I would say the default would
whichever toon linked has the longest standing membership in the guild. The ability for an officer to break that link (ie mom and kid share an account and play at different times) would probably be necessary.

In Game Want Ads: This isn’t something I’ve seen in another game, but probably wouldn’t be hard to implement on a player’s guild menu UI. A place to put in guild in game ads for in game products or service. For example a guildmate could put an ad up “Want to run Flashpoint XYZ, hoping to get the blaster from third boss” and if people see it they may do it, or decide to plan it. Or maybe “WTS: surplus scrap metal. I have 100 units of titanium. If anyone in guild wants it let me know before friday or I’ll just AH it” Basically it serves as a concise short in game BBS to get guild interaction where the guild calendar would be inappropriate. And would be useful for guilds that have a player base where some players frequent the guild forums, and other people don’t and instead just log in and play.

Wish List

Capital Ship Guild Halls: Yeah I know everyone is asking for them, but that would be really cool. I don’t see my guild getting massive, so we could settle for a smaller cruiser or frigate.

Shared Factory: I’m not sure how this one would work out, but if a guild could coordinate and automate some assembly functions for cooperative crafting that would be awesome. What I’m thinking is let’s say Furiel and Vesp are working together. Furiel’s crew makes subcomponents for some other item Vesp’s companions do final assembly on. It would be great as part of the crew skills system for Furiel to say “Okay Vette I need you to make X of these parts” like he would normally do, but be able to add the command “And when you finish deliver them to guild member X”. This would also be great for players who are helping out their guild crafters by being gatherers of raw materials.

EPGP: As I’m sure you’ve played WoW I’m fairly certain you know of EPGP, if not you can google it and get the gist. If there was an in game configurable EPGP/DKP system for raiding guilds that would be great. I know that there is no “perfect” loot system, but having something that was more sophisticated than need/greed would be great.

Permanent and Non-Permanent Choices in Your Character

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Listening to Mos Eisley Radio Episode 29 Forum Assault, Zach and Brooks briefly discussed the issue about whether at some point down the road whether players would be able to change their spec or even their advanced class choice. They cited a developer statement made over the summer that the advanced class choice was a permanent one. This got me to thinking about how this will work in practice. Bioware has the ability to make the advanced class choice a permanent one, while still allowing players to redo their spec and focus on another area of their advanced classes talents

Skill Trees Will Allow a Lot of Flexibility

First off I want to remind everybody that each class has a total of 5 talent trees. Each advanced class has access to 3 of them, and only 1 of them is shared by both advanced classes. So to use smuggler as an example. Smuggler has 2 advanced classes: Gunslinger and Scoundrel. Gunslinger is known for the dual wielding(up close DPS) and trick shot (I assume powerful crowd control). Scoundrel is known for medicine and the scattergun (ranged DPS). So let’s assume (because I can’t remember what the advanced skill sets are called that the 5 for smuggler are Gunslinger(Dual Wield, Dirty Tricks) Scoundrel (Medicine, Scattershot) and Shared(Smuggler Core Skills).

So I roll a smuggler and at level 10 I choose. Hopefully they will give you a little playtest of each one, but at some point I make the choice and that choice is permanent and cannot be changed. This still allows me to “spec” different ways. I could be a DPS focused gunslinger or a Crowd Control focused Gunslinger, or maybe I’m a Gunslinger but more of a hybrid between two extremes. Like wise I could be a healing scoundrel or a ranged DPS scoundrel or a mixture. And I could be using companions to compliment my shortcomings so even though I’m a half ranged DPS half healing Scoundrel I always bring my healing companion and serve as the “healer” in a flashpoint.

Players Will Expect a Chance to Undo Mistakes

Why did I spec into Force Poke instead of Force Choke? I'm and Idiot!

So Bioware could, and I have no special knowledge one way or the other, say your advanced class is permanent, but how you spec within that advanced class can be changed for a price (and hopefully not an insanely high price). And in a sense they kind of have to allow some spec freedom because besides people will make mistakes, but they also make choices based on current game conditions and game systems will change as they play the universal mmo dev game of “continual balancing”. If I take a talent point in something and that talent is decided to be overpowered and they nerf it, I’m being “punished” for Bioware’s mistake not mine. Likewise if I decline to take a talent because it is garbage now, and Bioware buffs it later, why should I be punished for not being a true believer in the future upside of a current crappy talent?

We Need to Rethink How We View Advanced Classes

So I think the source of this problem in community perception has a lot to do with how we envision the game’s classes. We see Smuggler as the class and not so much Gunslinger or Scoundrel. But in reality the advanced class is what we will spend the majority of our time playing. Levels 1-10 (assuming you pick Adv Class at 10) is the introduction to game mechanics, and you are learning the broad strokes of what a group of advanced classes can do, only to make your real decision after you play a bit.

To illustrate this whole thing imagine in WoW that warlock and mage were combined to be the wizard class with warlock and mage being the advanced classes. At level 10 you choose mage school or warlock school, and then you get your three talent trees. One of those trees overlaps (fire damage), while two schools are unique to mage and warlock (mage gets frost and arcane, warlock gets DoTs and Pets). Now you can still respec in your school, you just can’t switch from mage to warlock. Now we don’t worry about this in WoW (if you want a mage, roll a new toon) because that permanent decision is made a character creation instead of level 10. SWTOR seems to be saying “We want you to get used to the broad category of a group of advanced classes, and then make your permanent choice.”

The Importance of Balance

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By now most people have seen the new Trooper video put out by Bioware.

What I love is the action sequence starting about 55 seconds into this video. We see some kind of Sith force user getting ready for the force jump slice and hack pawnage only to be refuted cool and calmly by the grenade of the trooper. What this tells us is that Bioware is committed to some degree of balance in the game.

In the Star Wars movies, which I love, the Jedi and Sith are portrayed as powerful Super Heroes and Super Villains to everyone else. If you need proof all I need to do is remind you of how quickly Darth Vader disarmed Han Solo in Bespin. And we all know how that turned out.

Now some may argue that Jango Fett and Obi-Wan seemed to have an even fight, but I would remind you that until Boba used Slave 1’s cannons to tip the scales it was looking really bad for Jango. And we saw how quickly Jango fell to Mace Windu.

So this Force user advantage poses a serious problem for players who are not interested in being a Jedi or Sith, but would rather be like Boba Fett or Han Solo. In order for the game to work there needs to be balance between the classes so no single class can always win. It can still be balanced if certain classes play better against one class consistently, but inferior to another class consistently. The important thing is that all players feel like their class choice matters. This video hammers home that point. We see the fall of the Sith seemingly so easily. It reminds me of this scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This commitment to balance will cause cries of not being true to the spirit of Star Wars from some fanboys, but it is important to remember that we are all playing a game, and a game has to have players starting on mostly equal footing. Imagine a game of chess where you only had your pawns and king, but the other player had all 16 pieces. It would be massively unfair, and unfun. The same feeling would be there for non-force players when looking at their friends who chose to be living Gods.