Today we got a big surprise, a Wednesday update!  Today it was announced that Bioware has included a Pre Launch Program for Guilds in SWTOR.

Allison Berryman tells us the following:

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of the new Guild Headquarters (HQ) as well as the Pre-Launch Guild Program. Many members of the community have already been organizing guilds on the forums, and we’re now happy to provide the tools to officially register and reserve your guild’s name. In this new section of the website, you can search for an existing guild to join or you can create a new guild and begin recruiting members. When Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ launches, you may be able to import your guild directly into the game, subject to availability and meeting certain criteria*.

Every guild gets its own guild mini-site on www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com, complete with information about the guild, its recruitment status, and its own public and private forums. Create or join a guild now and you’ll have the opportunity to have your own space to socialize and organize before the game launches. Every guild is automatically entered into the searchable guild database, which makes it easy for players to find their ideal guild. Get your guild together early and get ready for The Old Republic!

To learn more about guilds in The Old Republic, check out the Guilds Game System page for details, and to search for or join a guild, visit the Guild HQ now! Also be sure to visit the Guilds FAQ for answers to commonly asked questions.

*Conditions and restrictions apply. See Guilds FAQ for full details.

To report bugs, please use this thread in the Website Feedback and Support forum. Please note that some words and phrases, particularly some relating directly to Star Wars, are restricted. If you feel your desired guild name is restricted in error, please contact us using the site support form.

The end result is guilds now have the capability to reserve their in game name, that can be huge for some guilds that have names that are contested.  I see the possibility for griefing here, but hey what are you going to do as a game development company?  You have to give players the chance to reserve some things.

The main thing I do not like about this process is this little nugget of uncertainty…..

*”We will make reasonable efforts to ensure that qualifying guilds are imported into a server that meets your specified preferences, but we cannot make any guarantees given the anticipated volume of guilds (among other factors). All server placements therefore remain in our sole discretion. We also cannot take responsibility for technical errors or glitches that prevent your guild from importing into the game as planned. See Terms of Service for more details.

When we begin placing guilds on servers, we will take into account all the information that has been provided, including the server type and the allies and adversaries you have selected. We will make reasonable efforts to place each guild according to their specified preferences but cannot make any guarantees given the anticipated volume of guilds (among other factors).“

So what this means is that Bioware will be placing your guild on a server at release, you dont pick they do, and if your lucky you will get to land on the server type you have chosen (pve,pvp,rp-pve)

I dont find this to be very cool at all.  As a guild I should be able to choose the server I wish to play on.  What if certain guilds want to be aligned in game but they get “placed” on different servers?  I don’t think Bioware has put enough thought into this aspect of the system and frankly I am sad about that.  I can understand the reasoning behind it such as server balancing and such but I dont like when my liberties that I have grown used too in past MMO’s are taken away.

There are other requirements or “criteria”  that will need to be met if a guild can successfully use the pre-launch system in phase 3, for example:

1) At the beginning of Phase 3, the guild leader must log in to the website and verify that their guild remains active and wants to be imported; and

2) The guild has at least four members who have pre-ordered the game by the time we initiate the import.

3)Guilds will have no more than 500 members.

The pre-order requirement is fair i think.  They could have made it higher but i think they chose to be fair and allow guilds that may be smaller the chance to still use the system.  I plan to pre-order.

Also we got a look at what might be the final server play style designations?

Star Wars: The Old Republic will offer different server types that emphasize different styles of game play such as Player-vs-Environment, Player-vs-Player, and Role- Play. When your guild gets transferred into the game, it will be placed on the server type that most matches your selection.

Player-vs-Environment (PvE) servers can be considered representative of the standard play style and rule set. The focus on PvE servers is on experiencing the story and working with friends against the non-player enemies in the game world.

Player-vs-Player (PvP) servers have a slightly different rule set as PvE servers. On a PvP server, players may be attacked by other players from the opposing faction in more areas of the game world.

Role-Playing (RP) servers use the standard PvE rule set, but are identified as great places for players who enjoy acting out their characters in the game world to congregate and find other like-minded players.”

So no big deviation from the norm here, PVE, PVP, and RP are pretty much the standard server types and what most players have grown to expect.  I think most of us expected just this type of classification.

All in all it is a pretty neat addition to the options a guild has in game and out of the game, and it helps them get organized pre-game.  This is very important for most guilds that will have formed their member base before release.

I give it a thumbs up even though I am not too pleased with the server placement being out of my control.

Swtorcrafter Bounty Hunter!

How can a guild best support their crafters in SWTOR, part 2

With the small amount of material available on the crew skills system it is really hard to speculate on what I think will be important for a guild to focus on when trying to support their crafting efforts.  I am going to speculate anyway though because it can’t hurt to guess at this stage.

Read on!

Continue Reading »

My main motivation behind this post is the fact that very soon official swtor.com forums will be hitting 1 million registered users. At the moment of this article being written the number of users is 999296 (you can check this by entering http://www.swtor.com/community/member.php?u=999296 and incrementing the number at the end until you get the message “Invalid User specified”). This made me wonder how does The Old Republic fair against the market leader, World of Warcraft, and a popular newcomer that is about to be released this week, Rift. Please note that all of these numbers do not necessarily mean anything, because we are looking at three products in different stages of their lifecycle and the numbers come from “unreliable” sources. They are unreliable because they depend on how active a company is on a certain social network. There are however some trends showing up that I just couldn’t look away from.
NOTE 1: The number of forum members is a bit tricky because just having a WoW account makes you a forum member. SWTOR forum member number is based on reading the URL and it is actually a number of created accounts and not active accounts. Rift is about to be released and I think their current forum number is based on preorders and not all of the people that purchased the game. I will revisit this in a month or so to see how the numbers changed.
NOTE 2: Included are alexa.com traffic rank stats as well. There is a problem with World of Warcraft traffic rank because prior to the release of Cataclysm expansion they moved their main community site from www.worldofwarcraft.com domain to battle.net domain. I am providing a graph of both these domains traffic ranks where you can clearly see the change in traffic rank for worldofwarcraft.com and battle.net. At the same time battle.net traffic rank also includes rank for other Blizzard games. That is why I chose WoW’s traffic rank prior to Cataclysm which was around 1000. Rift’s traffic rank drastically rose around beta time. Prior to that it was at around ~40.000.

	World of Warcraf	Rift	Star Wars The old Republic
Facebook Likes	1,145,267	138,228	253,228
Twitter Followers	113,224	15,244	28,473
No. Forum Users	Unknown	179,055	999296 (estimate)
Alexa.com traffic rank	~1000	6,450	12,494

alexa.com traffic rank 6 month comparison

I wouldn’t want to draw any solid conclusion from this but The Old Republic is doing very good for a game that hasn’t even entered pure beta stage. It is already approximately two times as popular as Rift, which can be contributed to the awesome promotion Bioware has been doing and I think mostly thanks to the Deceived and Hope trailers. We’ll revisit these numbers in three weeks when Rift should be at its peak to see if choosing this particular moment had an effect on Rift’s numbers. I welcome all your comments on the subject and suggestions and interpretations.

Swtorcrafter Bounty Hunter!

(A topic suggested by my loyal blog reader Daelda, thanks!)

The question I want to pose to you today is:

How can a guild best support their crafters in SWTOR?

One of the things I absolutely hate to see in a guild group is a lack of optimization of equipment.  When I see guild groups in game and I mouse over their equipment and they are wearing shoddy, mismatched gear that is tiers below the optimization that I as a crafter know is available, it makes me sad.

It could be this way for many reasons, either they don’t know any better, or possibly their guild crafters are failing in gearing up the guild.  If it is the latter then possibly it stems from a lack of support from the people they need to be gearing up.

Continue Reading »

My question to you today is:

What if the class you choose affects your crew skills ability?

In past games that I have played I have found that sometimes the class I choose to play affects the potential I have to use the crafting system to its fullest amount.  By using certain mechanics of a class system sometimes you can gain advantage over other aspiring master craftsmen looking to advance to grandmaster craftsman status.

Some examples of this to let you know what I mean would be like one of the characters I used to have in Ultima Online. 

Continue Reading »

My question to you today,

What can we do to make crafting more fun in SWTOR?

For some people in MMO’s today crafting can sometimes be looked at as simply more than a utilitarian function, a means to help the overall leveling process.  As something you do as merely a side thought when you need some type of item in-game.  Some people would go so far as to call crafting “boring”, or something they do out of boredom.

To us that thoroughly enjoy these types of systems in MMO’s, we know them to be capable of so much more.

So what can we do to make crafting more fun in SWTOR?

Continue Reading »

The question I want to pose to you today is;

What will your worth be as a crafter in Star Wars The Old Republic MMO?

I think on this subject a lot because to me it is very important.  I derive great pleasure from being able to learn all the details about a crafting system in a massively multiplayer online game that I call home away from home.

I then achieve even more pleasure when I am able to take that knowledge and produce the finest items available to me as a master of that craft, in the most efficient manner.  Provided that the game system I am in will allow the crafters to produce top-tier items.  When I do however find a game that allows this, it is a joy to be a crafter because I know the fame that awaits the diligent, the methodical.

I have been called a “min-maxer” before and that’s ok.  To achieve greatness and fame in a crafting arena one must be efficient, and creative.  One must use a crafting and in-game economy to maximum effectiveness to be considered a true master.

Continue Reading »

From the last blog post I did we looked at the developer blog “closer look at crew skills” by Patrick Mallot.  It was this piece of it that inspired this blog post and a lot of personal joy from me.

These are my personal opinions anyway.    🙂

“It’s worth noting that players will definitely need to be directly involved in the process when learning rare schematics”

That tells us that there will be such a thing as rare schematics, and that we as a player will have to be directly involved in the learning process.  Learning the schematic won’t be something that the player can pass on to the companion because the schematic will need to inscribe itself into the players learned items database so that the player can access the recipe later when he wants to craft that item from that certain crafting skill.

Continue Reading »

With the first blog that I will post about the crew skills system in SWTOR I wanted to reach back into a dev blog from the main site and show you why it was that I decided I was going to partake in this crafting system they are creating.

from the dev blog entitled  ” closer look at crew skills” written by Patrick Malott

You can find what I am referring to there.   I wanted to take just the first part because to me it says enough to let me know I like where this is heading…

Continue Reading »

Swtorcrafter Bounty Hunter!

About the author,

Swtorcrafter is a crafter at heart, dating back to the start of the Ultima Online beta.  It was there that he developed his love of massively multiplayer online crafting systems, in game economies and fan site creation.  It was there in that realm that he was first introduced to what it was like to play online with other people instead of just a single player PC game.

It was a grand six years, the longest he has been in any one MMO since.

He has searched countless realms searching for that feeling again, sometimes finding satisfaction, sometimes not.

Now as he grows older he decides it is time to “go all in” one last time to try to find that perfect anvil, the crafting system of his dreams, and the community to share his thoughts and insights with.

*Enter stage right*

The Game:  Star Wars The Old Republic MMO by Bioware.

The Community:  www.swtor-life.com

*fingers crossed*