Posts Tagged ‘SWTOR’

SWTOR PvP: What to expect from 4.0

by on ·Games, Interviews, MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

This blog post will briefly discuss the current state of PvP in the game Star Wars: The Old Republic, as well as delve a bit deeper into the expectations the players have for the future. PvP in SWTOR has been struggling for a long period of time and I have watched the playerbase grow increasingly frustrated. Considering the amount of time this has been going on I was curious to know how much faith there is still left in the community for an improvement, especially with the upcoming expansion and its promise of an influx of players. In order learn more about this I’ve interviewed four players (Igor, Zherio, Snave and Mosh) and asked them about their thoughts and feelings about the current state of the game as well as their expectations for the future.

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My love for online communities

by on ·East, Gamer Culture, MMOs

I began playing SWtor at launch and was utterly new to MMO’s. In fact I had no intention of spending much time interacting with other players. I had a few real life friends who had expressed mutual interest in the game and that was cool. I intended to play the game for the story alone as I was already a fan of Bioware & Obsidians outstanding Knights of the old Republic games. Obviously this all changed and I soon became part of an online community within the game. I was just casually minding my own business, levelling on Voss as I recall and a guy asked me to group up for a heroic quest. This was pretty alien to me at the time, mingling with a complete stranger in a virtual environment, but was very rewarding! The sense of accomplishment and teamwork was great and something which I had yet to experience in video games.

After completing the quest, the player who invited me to the party offered me a place in his “guild”. This was another concept I was unfamiliar with, but the last novelty went ok so I said “sure” and took my first gm ‘Ruuk’ up on his proposition.

Being part of the guild certainly had a positive effect on my time in game, advice and help was always offered and there were always people around to just hang out with. It’s funny how someone just saying “Hi” can put you in a good mood when you log into a game. Which brings to mind the question, are there other online communities outside of gaming that can induce a strong feeling of interpersonal bonding? I ask this since the competitive nature of playing video games and the immersion factor appears to enhance the connection.

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Leadership part 2 – Interview with Dakaru

by on ·Gamer Culture, Interviews, MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

So this week Rav and I will be doing another twin piece post on in-game leadership. For my second article on the subject I decided to get in touch with Dakaru, GM of Nostrum Dolus and team leader of the ND ranked team. Him and his team were, to be blunt, hated by many, but their combined level of skill was unmatched on the server they played. It is surely one of the reasons they generated so much hate. Dakaru has since moved on from SWTOR and is currently playing Evolve where he is again finding himself in a leading position.

To give a bit of background, Dakaru started out as an officer in Nostrum Dolus back when it was mainly a PvE guild. He was most interested in PvP himself which led to Dakaru being given a leadership role in ranked when that came into the game. Eventually the GM and Co-GM quit the game and Dakaru took over leadership of the guild. As he did so many of the PvE players in ND were quitting and Dakaru ended up slowly turning ND into a more PvP oriented guild. The ranked team he collected was a slow progression according to Dakaru. “I got as many good players as I could find together, and kept shuffling around over and over”, he tells me. By the time of the transfer to Nightmare Lands the game had lost a lot of players and so had Nostrum Dolus. They ended up merging their ranked team with another team who had lost a lot of people as well.

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“Rules of conduct” and Ranked

by on ·Discuss!, Gamer Culture, Interviews, MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

As a part of our theme week focusing on SWTOR and Ranked PvP previous to patch 2.0, I decided to write a piece about the rules that were agreed upon back in the beginning of year 2013. Anthis from Reality Check and Mylex from TWATS were two of the people present at the meeting held setting the terms of this agreement. Last Friday I brought them both on the GD TS hoping to find out more.

Mylex begins by telling me that before the server transfers between Nightmare Lands and TRE there was some but not much in terms of ranked activity on TRE. When the server merges happened the best team on TRE was LotD and on Nightmare Lands it was Nostrum Dolus. Mylex continues to explain that LotD didn’t do that well against ND in those first few days of queuing and subsequently over a period of time fell apart. A few of their better players moved to ToFN for a time. Eventually RC started queuing but up until then the only other regular teams were ND and TWATS.

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8v8 Ranked on TRE Part 2

by on ·MMOs, Mylex, SWTOR

To read part 1 of this article follow this link! 

By October or November 2012 the server had two regular teams in TWATs and Nostrum and some new semi-regular teams in Spaceballs, Dxun, Drop it like it’s Hoth and the first version of Reality Check.

Now, these guys started queuing of their own accord, either for the first time or as a return to action, but they benefited from coming in to an environment that had lost a lot of it’s toxicity. For that change in atmosphere to have taken place I clearly could not be the only person reaching out and building bridges. On the forums, where every word would be analysed and the fuse leading to the drama-bomb sat ready to be lit, an interesting thing started to happen. Unprompted, someone from each team would post each morning thanking the teams they had played the previous night and give hints as to the results, whilst being good losers and gracious winners. This in itself caught the eye of the guys in Group Three. When Group Three also got a sense of the positive and friendly atmosphere afforded to new teams, it became much easier for those guys to persuade the guildies to try some 8v8 ranked. They could, in good conscience, promise that they won’t get laughed it, that it will be fun and (because of the forums thread) they knew of people on both fleets that they could talk to about good times to queue etc.

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8v8 Ranked on TRE Part 1 (Why our server was better than yours)

by on ·MMOs, Mylex, SWTOR

Introduction:
Interested in the player involvement which SWTOR has always seemed to need to get ranked PvP off it’s feet I decided to ask Mylex to write us something about his own experiences on the subject. In the days of ranked 8v8 (despite heavy imbalance between classes and a shrinking PvP population on the server) Mylex and a few others made the competitive PvP scene a dynamic experience. This was done through tireless networking and forum activity. Here’s what happened!
-Noctua

8v8 Ranked on TRE Part 1 – Why our server was better than yours!

Okay, maybe not. But it was good and we went from virtually zero activity to 5-10 teams in the queue each day, which was unusual for the PVP servers and unheard of on the other PVE servers. It was also a great time to play on The Red Eclipse, but it was a long road to get that point.

And this is the story…

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Will The Fallen Empire ‘Res’ SWTOR?

by on ·MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

“Knights of the Fallen Empire”, the new SWTOR expansion, was announced at this years EA’s E3 press conference. This was done through stunning CG story telling. The expansion is due this October but has already created a stir within the SWTOR community. Holding our breaths, we are all waiting to find out if this is what will bring Star Wars: The Old Republic back up on its feet.

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In Game Whispers – Narcissus

by on ·In Game Whispers, MMOs, Noctua

“In Game Whispers” is a series of posts featuring real characters with fake names based on real events.

 

Narcissus: Imps are so bad today lol.
Dalek: should be an easy win
Narcissus: I’ll go make sure we have some damage mid, Noctua you go guard grass
Noctua: sure.
Silence.
Dalek: lol
Silence.
Narcissus: See? lol. Easy win. they are leaving the wz already
Noctua: 3 inc grss
Silence.
Narcissus: WTF! How the hell did we loose mid?! ******* IDIOT CALL INC FFS!

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In Game Whispers – The Player

by on ·In Game Whispers, MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

“In Game Whispers” is a series of posts featuring real characters with fake names based on real events.

 

Lamb: Hiya
Noctua: hey
Player: Hi
Tarras: hello
Player: anyone else sick of kdy?
Lamb: First time!
Player: really?
Lamb: Yeah : )
Silence.
Player: mate, why are you pulling all that aggro?
Lamb: Sorry I’m new…
Player: i can tell
Player: and dude, youre in wrong stance for tanking btw
Lamb: I’m not a dude! ^^
Player: dudette then

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In Game Whispers – The Womaniser

by on ·In Game Whispers, MMOs, Noctua, SWTOR

“In Game Whispers” is a new series of posts featuring real characters with fake names based on real events.

 

Womaniser: I’m so tired of killing the damn prophet of vodal… can’t wait to lvl up.
Noctua: tell me about it
Womaniser: 2x XP FTW!
Garret: That was my last one though. thx 4 the run boys n’ girls!
Womaniser: Wait… are there girls here?
Silence.
Garret: Well I don’t know I won’t assume
Womaniser: Well are there??
Flint: there are no such thng as women in gaming it’s all guys pretending to have tits
Noctua: that’s not true :p swtor especially has lot’s of female gamers I’d say
Womaniser: you are girl noctua?
Noctua: well yeah but point is there are a lot
Womaniser: yeh, back off Flint, you’re being a little offensive m8
Noctua: No it’s fine really, just saying
Womaniser has removed Flint from the group.
Garret: “Err, ok… I’m gonna head off too before I get kicked too”
Garret left the group.
You left the group.
Womaniser: Why you leave the group?

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