Posts Tagged ‘guilds’

Last Chance Guild Changes

Phase 3 of the SWTOR guilding program, now officially in full swing, has made its impact on player associations over the last few weeks felt near and far.

For months now players have had time to organise themselves and their friends into guilds pre-release, so that they are assured of being on the same servers, and being on the same servers as their enemies. This has meant we have seen a wild grab for players, a guilds try to judge who will be good months ahead of the game, with only reputation to go on.

Now that the final phase is in effect, this is all set to wrap up, with players being stuck where they stand and any enemies and allies being locked in for the long hall.

The advantage of this system is that it shall see people which know each other all put on the same server, but at the same time, this tells us just how Bioware plans to run the different game servers.

As it stands at the moment players will not be able to specifically choose which server they want to be on, it shall be chosen for them. This is very different to games such as Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft where there was a comprehensive list of servers or realms which could be chosen when making a character.

The way that Bioware has chosen to do it does away with this system, which hopefully will not be to the detriment of the game. One thing is for sure, which is that it is vitally important to have everything in order before guilding closes off in a few days time. Otherwise, players will only be able to request a few of their friends, with only a small chance of getting into the server if it has heavy load or a far-off geographical location.

Forum Guilding on TOR

Just earlier this week the developers of The Old Republic released a new forum tool allowing players to join guilds with their accounts, and have this recognised officially once the game begins.

In the morning an Email went out to all subscribers detailing this system, and within twenty four hours there were more than sixteen thousand guilds. This a huge number, especially when many already have between ten and twenty members. In previous estimates we had the number of unofficially guilded members sitting at around six thousand, but with this update it appears we were very much clearly mistaken.

Although many of these guilds may have been made by spammers, or people just messing around, they still go to show just how fast news spreads on the internet when so many are interested. This lesson was learned the hard way by Bioware today, as the servers which they believed adequate were easily overloaded by the huge influx of traffic.

So far when creating guilds on the forums players can choose the faction of the guild, as well as one focus out of Rp, PvP and PvE. They can also set certain requirements such as voice chat, forum participation or community play, however most guilds are friendly enough to not discriminate against possible candidates in this way. Players also choose the location of their guild, US East, West or Europe. According to Bioware based on this choice their guild name will be reserved on an appropriate server when the game goes live, making sure that dedicated members of the community are not beaten at the gun by those with super fast internet or line-cutting skills at TOR retailers.

One thing which disappointed some players was the maximum length of guild names. This made it impossible for one of the game’s biggest guilds, The Grand Army of The Republic, to have their chosen name. Rather, they had to settle for Republic Grand Army.

As the number of guilds continues to sky rocket Bioware will have to find some way to change the sign up process to make it less exploitable. Perhaps making a minimum number of members would fix this, otherwise they may find their servers again overwhelmed by floods of data in the future.

Joining a Guild

Within hours of the official Star Wars The Old Republic forums going live, guilds for SWTOR were already under construction.

Yes, there is currently no game for these guilds to play together, but that does not stop them grouping up on the official forums as well as their own personalised websites. There are already well over 200 guilds, and so far the average number of members is 32. That makes at least 6400 guilded players in a game still months from completion which is surely some kind of MMORPG record.

Most guilds are currently open for new members to join. Some will let anyone interested in, whilst others have formal applications. There are even guilds that acquire new players by invitation only, as they evidently think themselves better than the general riff-raff of the Old Republic’s community.

Unlike the other Star Wars MMO, Galaxies, guilds can only be of a single faction in SWTOR. This aught to help alleviate a lot of the drama that pervaded SWG due to guilds constantly betraying other guilds, and even their fellow members.

Many of the already created player groups are listed on the official SWTOR Wiki, and this is only a small collection of guilds that have been added to the site. As can be seen from this page guilds have names, one or many leaders, and different focuses.

These focuses help players find the perfect guild for themselves, as it gives a rough guide as to what the particular group’s members are interested in. There are focuses such as PvP, Pve and RP, although just because a guild lists one of these as an interest does not mean all members have to participate.

Many of the larger guilds have even garnered their own Star Wars The Old Republic wiki pages. These give further information on the guild, as well as whatever guild lore the players have decided on.

Guilds for The Old Republic enthusiasts are a good way for players to get involved further in the community and make friends to play with well before the game is even released. Everyone is encouraged to join them, and being a member of some of the more vocal guilds might even get you special consideration when testers for the game are selected!