Hello! I’m Alice Wilkes, based in England, and I’m joining the TORWars team to bring you weekly updates on the social side of Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the Social Points column I’ll be focussing on guild management and the wide range of social aspects of the SWTOR community.
All successful guilds are now being deployed!
It’s finally over! The official Star Wars: The Old Republic Guild Pre-Launch programme has reached the deployment stage and qualifying guilds are frozen, just waiting for launch. For many busy guild leaders the long hours of reading applications, posting in recruitment threads, balancing classes and roles and generally trying to settle in new guild members is over. Well, until launch that is! Now is the time to get the guild website tidied up, add finishing touches to guild policies and rules, check that the voice chat server is still working properly and see how everyone gets along. You can almost hear the sigh of relief from users of the official SWTOR.com Guild Hall forum, which last week was all but washed away in a tidal wave of last-ditch recruitment calls for those elusive pre-orders. Many didn’t make the final cut and have gone away empty handed, unable to even join a guild until launch.
Building Suspense
Looking back on the mad recruitment frenzy of the last few months, it is fair to say BioWare has employed a very successful tactic to keep everyone busy until they’re ready to let the eager masses through the door. By encouraging a complex community to form months, if not years before SWTOR is released, BioWare has effectively sold us the sizzle while we’ve been waiting for the steak. The community they have encouraged has to be seen to be believed. Micro communities and guilds have grown like mushrooms in the dark; making plans, writing back stories, dissecting every new bit of information together, sometimes agreeing, more often arguing bitterly – but all eagerly waiting for launch. Part of this community growth is down to the long build up – the delays, the rumours and the complexity of the pre-game guild system, all of which have contributed to the drama and suspense.
While we’ve had nothing to do but talk about it, a lot of us have been making friends and forming connections. It has given us the opportunity to find like-minded players to scheme and speculate with and people have been getting to know each other, building guilds and creating role-play backgrounds and stories. Now, unlike most new games (with the notable exception of Guild Wars 2 perhaps), the SWTOR community is already a few years old and going strong. From the extensive build-up through to the recent successful Beta it is impossible to deny the vibrant community BioWare has cultivated around SWTOR.
In addition to the guild Pre-Launch system there are other factors that really encourage people to cooperate and play together in order to get the best out of the game.
‘Don’t look at me like that! We were all thinking it!’
One good example is the Social Point system which rewards players for grouping together in quests, allowing them to accumulate points that can be spent on cosmetic, vanity and group use items. Social Points are awarded for participation in conversations as a group where players can ‘roll’ on answers. More points are awarded to those who select the winning answer and increasing the size of the group increases the potential points gained. Therefore cooperating on a difficult quest with another player rather than just taking your favourite companion can be rewarding.
Crafting Cooperation
Then there’s the crafting/Crew Skills system. Unless you want to level two characters together you’re going to have to rely on trade or cooperation to get the most out of it. This is ideal for guilds and even alliances who want to pool their resources.
Huttball
Huttball is another great example of a community-minded innovation in SWTOR waiting to happen. While many MMOs have various battlegrounds, Huttball could raise the stakes by allowing spectators (a possibility rumored but still unconfirmed at this point), something that was popular in Guild Wars. This may encourage those who don’t usually participate in PvP to still become involved in the experience and have some fun with it whilst rooting for their guild mates. The chance to see how the top guys do it would be an added bonus, and it is clear that SWTOR is a game in which PvP may become a lot less intimidating and more accessible.
Armchair coaching is a valid form of participation
The recent Open Beta weekend over the 25th-29th of November was, for some, the first chance to play together as a guild and community forums are generally becoming more active as the countdown continues. Players who signed up for pre-orders and made their guild alignment choices months ago are flooding back to guild forums, getting to know the people they’re going to be playing with and swapping information, rumours and back stories.
I’m going into this with a guild myself, so for me part of the fun will be finally getting a chance to play with all the people I’ve met while waiting for this damn game to come out! It doesn’t really matter to me whether The Old Republic is a mind-blowing break from the norm or, as some Beta experiences suggest, a standard MMO with a few funky new twists; I already know I’ll be playing for years to come, because at the end of the day it’s the people that really make it for me.
I’ll say one thing for Bioware – they know how to put the ‘multiplayer’ in MMO!
TORWars Podcast #152: The Terrors of Nuturing the SWTOR Community
Alice we are very happy to ear this.
Hope we can track your progress.
Good luck in your new venture
- JTBlack leader of Alpha Reaction a SWTOR Guild
Nice article. I couldn’t agree more about the social side of gaming, without a strong community an MMO is destined to fail before it starts.
One thing not mentioned in the article which I think will also be key to the games success are the cinematic quest sequences. For me the spoken quests gave me a much stronger level of identity for my character in just one beta weekend than I have managed to get from other games I’ve played for years.
I think this empathy with your characters, mixed with the amazing Star Wars lore and the other points you mentioned in the article, which will hopefully persuade people to invest their time in both the game and its community for years to come.
Great info! Tnx
Nice, welcome to the site :}
One of the most fantastic revelations about SWTOR I had was during the last few days of the beta, during a flashpoint run.
My Imperial Agent made a light side decision to spare the captain of the Black Talon, and my group began to protest, and I found myself justifying my decision with how I couldn’t see murdering a captain who made an intelligent decision for his ship and crew would further the goals of the empire.
Suddenly we all realized the game had sucked us into roleplaying!
I don’t know if I can give a more glowing review of SWTOR than that
One thing that has always been important in my gaming experience is the chance to interact with my fellow players. SW:ToR has certainly added a new dimension to look forward to. Its quite a novelty to be involved in an active guild for a game that has not yet been released.
I only had chance for a quick “run around” during the last beta but I was impressed with the level of immersion achievable in this game and the fact that the Star Wars theme was believable.
Top words well spoken in this article – I think you’d be mad not to plunder the prospects of community spirit that this game has to offer.
Great read, I have allways been a lone wolf when it comes to leveling and questing and i guess you could say i was a bit anti social when it came to that but SWTOR is giving me a reason to group for leveling, making it fun and rewarding me for doing it.
I have to agree, TOR seems to be shaping up to have such a good community with so many good reasons to team up. During the beta weekend I found myself not wanting to lay solo at all during beta if I could help it. Lets hope it all continues past launch, so many games have been let down by their communities but with all this pre launch teamwork im hoping its just the start of good things to come
Nice post
The main reason I play an MMO is for the community, from what I personally experienced in the beta the community is really nice.
Loved the Beta and really happy that I got to spend some time with my future guild before the go live.
Keep up the good work and look forward to reading more