As I keep telling folks, Star Wars: the Old Republic launches next month. Next month. Can you believe it? I mentioned that to someone who was on the fence about if they were planning to play at launch or wait until there was a free trial they could dip into risk-free, and I got that giddy “it’s almost Christmas” feeling again.
The movement of Guilds into Phase 3 only amplifies that we are in the home stretch of the game. At this point, guilds that have four members who have pre-ordered the game and redeemed their Pre-Order Code at the Code Redemption Center. I am pretty sure our guild met that requirement a few dozen times over… 🙂
Every so often, as you are traveling about in a game world, you come upon a guild name that makes you giggle, or even laugh out loud. Inevitably, if I am able to quickly stop and do so, I tweet out the cool guild name and then go about my business. But since tweets are ephemeral, I thought why not start a running list of all the cool/funny/awesome Star Wars: the Old Republic Guild Names I come across?
This will be that running list. Please feel free to share the guild names you spot in the comments, and keep this list growing!
Republic
Bantha Poodoo
Blue Shirt Mafia
Corellian Coalition
Curb Your Imperialism
Ewok Dance Studio
Ewok Massage Parlor
Jawas Ate My Baby
Jawa Insurance Co
Jedi Meme Tricks
Love in Alderaan Places
Merely a Setback
Mos Eisley Cantina Crew
No Sleep Till Kessel
Pigs in Space
Sith Happens
Starfleet Dental*
The Antarian Rangers
The Snark Side
There is no Try
We Ain’t Found Sith
Wookie Love Machines
Wookiee Tango Foxtrot
Empire
Accurate Sand People
Aliens Ate My Lightsaber
Boba Fetish
Dead Rebel Society
Death Star Vent Designers
Dukes of Durasteel
Ewokalypse Now
Hoth Beach Club
Imperial Margarine
Incurable Sithilis
Intergalactic Planetary
IT IS KNOWN
It’s a Trap
It’s Getting Hoth in Here
Jawa Trading Co
Juicy KOTOR
Lazy Peon Tavern
Let the Wookie Win
My Wookie Steak is Chewy
No Country for Old Ben
OldSpice for Wookies
Pew pew lazerguns
Pirates of the Korriban
Pretty Pink Pwnies
Sector Forty Seven
Sith and Twisted
Sith Out of Luck
Son of a Bith
Super Silly Sith Squad
The One Percent
The Spice Must Flow
Utini
Wookie Cookies
Wookie Crisps
As an aside, it’s interesting to see how many guild names are Game of Thrones references…
* A guild moving on to SWTOR from STO. I suspect we’ll see a number of World of Warcraft Guilds that pack up their guilds, moniker and all, for playing Star Wars the Old Republic.
We’re starting to get spoiled as far as Star Wars: the Old Republic news goes these days. We kicked off the weekend with the above “Signs of War” video and a new Operations overview added to the Game Systems page on the community site, and then all the NYCC SWTOR coverage started to kick in!
Live coverage of the Main Panel and the Q&A panel was shared via:
Here are some of the prime info nuggets I saw thanks to the many intrepid live bloggers/tweeters…
Modification System
As the game currently stands, you can modify a high % of items. Lets you keep old stuff longer, especially iconic anesthetic armor. Keep your favorite look. High level mods difficult to get. More details later, mods and how they work are still being worked on to make it less complex.
Morality and How Romance Can Affect Dark/Light Side Affinity
Q: Is romance a problem with the Jedi Knight?
A: Erickson: Choices have to be hard. If you’re dark side, your commitment will be tested. A huge amount of Jedi fall to dark side because of romance. Three levers influence morality – social pressure, companions, your morals.
Sith Pureblood Inquisitor confirmed as a race/class combo.
Contract, Please!
Voice actors locked into long term contracts, will not change. Why is this a big deal? If you were a vanilla WoW horde player, and had to eventually live through the WotLK transformation of Lady Sylvanas from strong leader to bubbly cheerleader due to a change in voice actor, you will understand.
15 Flashpoints Available at Launch
Devs state there will always be a Flashpoint available to you as you move through the leveling experience. And promise more details at launch. Conflicting reports as to max level versions of flashpoints available to you at max level (level 50.)
Can Shuttle to Other Origin Worlds
If you and your buddies choose different races, it is possible to take a shuttle to another origin world after a short time of playing (30 mins) to help them quest. Thus no need to agree on starting race combos in order to play together.
So far, I’ve definitely identified a couple of classes I want to play through after my Inquisitor hits max level. And I am definitely one of those alt people who likes to have a self-contained crafting army of her own, so I inevitably continue to level up alts until I feel I have all my necessary crafting bases covered.
As of right now, I am thinking I’ll want to level a Jedi Consular and a Bounty Hunter (because I want my own Jawa companion). The rest remain to be seen, since I haven’t actively delved into all the classes yet.
Right now, while we’re playing the waiting game, it’s fun to sit and imagine our bright and shiny alt future…what are you thinking you’ll be doing alt-wise?
Don’t be sad Lord Vader– even though launch is a few months away, there’s still plenty of interesting posts in the SWTOR blogosphere!
Now that the majority of the Interwebs has gotten over their dismay regarding last week’s BETA survey email snafu, the blogosphere is back to giving us interesting content to read. A few of my favorite reads over the past few days:
Torwars shared some thoughts about the announcement of RP-PvP realms, but without CM-enforcement of naming standards or behavior.
PC Gamer shared a really nicely written SWTOR preview article. Not a lot of News, but a great piece to remind you why we’re all so excited about this game, and to share with any of your friends who haven’t quite decided to take the plunge with you at launch.
I should note that I shared links out to the above content via my twitter account, so if you want a more timely report out on what I’m reading and recommending in the SWTOR blogosphere, follow me on twitter (@anexxia) or subscribe to my paper.li daily.
I was *sooo excited* to see email in my mailbox from the Old Republic Community mailbox…alas, it was not the much hoped for BETA invite. Instead, it was the above email, encouraging me, as a former BETA tester, to preorder SWTOR. Except, of course that I’ve never been granted the opportunity to BETA test.
And then I saw another email from the SWTOR gang…maybe this time it was an invite?
SWTOR BETA testers post-testing survey email
Oh, no, not an invite. Just a request to take a post-BETA completion survey.
*sniffle*
Ah well, maybe next time!
UPDATE: From the outcry on twitter tonight, I think a ton of folks got the email…like every gamer I follow it seems 🙂 The communitymanagers are looking into it and have promised to report back soon.
9:40 p.m. UPDATE: Still no official word on what caused the email malfunction. Interesting to see how many folks jumped to 1) crazy speculation and accusations or 2) hurled profanity-laced emails and forum posts at Bioware. Yes, it sucks that we got our hopes up for a second, but seriously– it’s not the end of the world!
Earlier today, two e-mails were sent to members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic community. These e-mails were sent to a larger group than intended, and have caused some confusion in the community. We can confirm that these e-mails were from EA and BioWare and apologize for any confusion they have caused. Please note that receiving these e-mails does not affect your chances to be invited to test the game. Thank you all for your understanding!
It’s the big news we’ve been waiting for — Bioware and EA haveannounced that we’ll have SWTOR in our hands right before Christmas! During their keynote address at the Eurogamer Expo, Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, co-founders of BioWareâ„¢, announced that Star Warsâ„¢: The Old Republicâ„¢ will launch in North America on December 20, 2011 and in Europe on December 22, 2011.
Also announced were the monthly subscription fees that kick in after the 30 days of play time that come with the game:
1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)
Now, the waiting begins…I suggest you kill some time by leaving your feedback on yesterday’s Companion update blog post.
😉
UPDATE: Darth Hater has a brief audio interview with Stephen Reid at EuroGamer right after the team announced the release date. Read the transcript or listen to the audio here.
UPDATE 2: Eurogamer has the video clip of the announcement up. View it here.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to what I want to be doing guild-wise when Star Wars: the Old Republic comes out. There are so many options — join a guild that’s forming now, play with one of my World of Warcraft guilds that’s planning to start a SWTOR guild, or even start my own guild.
I’ve given them all a serious amount of thought since I put up the guild poll here a while back. And I think that alt creation capabilities willing, I’ll be doing a little of each of those.
In a perfect world where I had unlimited free time, I would have gone with starting up my own guild. But this year has been anything but that. So although I do have plans to create a little alt guild with some of my favorite gaming people, I am not going to try to do that as a serious full-time endeavor. I simply do not have the time I would want to allot to it (which I think is also the case for most of my buddies, truth be told.)
Instead, keeping in mind my favorite WoW guild of all time, I decided to look for a nice big, boisterous guild that would hopefully be teaming with folks who want to be out and about and raising hell for the launch. I also wanted to think about doing something a little different from my usual PvE raiding focused recent past. And thus, I sought out Coconut Monkeys, the PC Gamer SWTOR guild.
We’ll see how I do in a PvP environment. It’s a big change, but PvP, and specifically world PvP, was a key part of what I really enjoyed about my favorite WoW guild. I’ve already raised my hand to help out with whatever needs doing in building the guild for launch. As a bonus, something about having an active guild forum to go and chat in has gotten me just that much more revved up about the game.
Contrary to what the BETA FAQs announced last week, there is a special group of BETA weekend testers who *will* get a second crack at testing — the folks who were invited to BETA Weekend #1.
Why are they being re-invited? Because we feel for a significant proportion of those invited to test during Beta Testing Weekend #1, they did not have an optimal testing experience. As I mentioned before, we had some issues, including some people not receiving an invite, and others being unable to get the client in time because of issues with their acceptance of their invite. With those factors in mind, we felt that because many people did not experience the game, it was worthwhile to re-invite everyone.
Now before you start fuming about this being unfair, note that Reid has gone on to clarify that these folks being reinvited to a future testing weekend will not take away any other tester’s ability to participate in BETA– rather, those #s will just be added to the overall #s they are inviting.
In light of this news, be on the lookout for phishing emails telling you to click for a BETA key. The new build of the BETA is still in internal testing, with no new BETA weekend announced and no invites sent.
Today’s poll inspired entirely by yesterday’s post on how to find a SWTOR guild. This one is a multiple-selection, to reflect that fact that I think many folks are going to be hedging their bets and indulging their altaholism by having a number of guild affiliations, and playing both sides of the fence.
As I keep telling folks, Star Wars: the Old Republic launches next month. Next month. Can you believe it? I mentioned that to someone who was on the fence about if they were planning to play at launch or wait until there was a free trial they could dip into risk-free, and I got that giddy “it’s almost Christmas” feeling again.
Inquisitor's Roadhouse 