I recently canvassed the opinions of a long-term MMO gamer who quit Darkfall in disgust not long ago. I have taken her thoughts and put them into the following editorial-style narrative rather than a straight Q&A. I hope you enjoy reading this, especially if it saves you from playing this game because I genuinely trust this woman’s opinion and if she says it’s this bad… then it’s bad!

Darkfall represents yet another great concept with bad implementation in the MMO space. It could have really worked had the cheating, hacking, and mass alliances not gotten together and decided it should be a numbers game instead of a skill game. Basically, it’s grindy as hell if you’re not in a massive guild with a massive city where you can macro your skills up to the top in no time flat without actually playing.

If you want to play legit, meanwhile, all your PVP encounters will be against macroers because, hey, the grindiness is just too insane to not take a shortcut around for most people. You will die every time you leave town to harvest, even by your own race (and if you’re Mahirim, ESPECIALLY by your own race). You’ll only be safe near the Ork cities on the other side of the map (because, oddly, the Orks seem to be the most honourable players), but once you leave the NPC cities you’re screwed because Hyperion alliance owns everything and they do roam their territory. Last I checked, Hyperion owned the whole eastern half of the map (they believe in quantity over quality, and while you may have five way more skilled players than any in their 500+ army, you will die instantly when they lag the map your on with their obscenely unskilled army).

And guess what? Those guys promote themselves as being a Human-Mirdain-Dwarf alliance but they have Orks and Mahirim in their ranks too, so even in town you are not safe because they do the whole mass-army, easy-mode, All Race All Class (ARAC) thing that the game totally allows. There’s really no point to there being races or factions in Darkfall at all. You will get killed by your own race — a lot — and their friends who are supposed to be their enemies. How is that meant to be any fun for anyone?

On travelling, while it’s nice to have a huge world to explore, you can spend an hour trying to go from Mahirim towns to Ork towns only to be killed halfway and lose an hour of gameplay. Now, I used to be against insta-travel, and I think boats help a little with getting around (though the world doesn’t wrap around so you will hit an invinsible wall in the ocean), but it’s ridiculous that it takes about an hour of travelling alone to get to an enemy territory (unless you’re in Ork lands, just walk outside town and you’ll have a bunch of humans just waiting to gobble you up as if it’s their land already).

I didn’t mind the grindiness of skills until I hit about 50 points in any one thing (lesser magic, archery, crafting, etc), and it SHARPLY became more difficult to raise the skill. Nobody will buy products from you if you aren’t making skill level 75+ gear, so you’re constantly losing money and spending five hours a day trying to find resources (and trying not to die to the horde of ARAC clans at the same time).

Basically, the game is completely un-fun until your skills are maxed and even with macroing that takes ages. The devs had led us to believe it was so skilled-based, that like in Guild Wars, a lower level player who knew how to use his skills better than a higher level player (there are no levels in DF, just using this as example) that the playing field would be balanced. However, this is not the case at all, a great-magic fire attack only achievable in two months by macroing the skill 24/7, is going to totally kick your mana missile skill, any day of the week. Non-cheaters get the short end of the stick on a regular basis and while the devs were making it easier to report players, many of those players had cheats that allowed them to have names that are unreportable or were able to teleport before anyone could tell they were there cheating. The most skilled players, are ironically, the hackers, and it’s their game now. I would hate to be starting the game as a new player right now becaused you’d be griefed to no end by ARAC clans with hackers that just prey on the goody-two-shoe players.

Darkfall could have been a great game, but never have I seen so much exploiting and cheating in an MMO from day one onwards, not even in most Korean games has it ever been on this scale. If you like cheating, then you’ll love Darkfall, the code is so weak in it that it practically begs for it to be a hacker’s paradise. A shame too, the ideas behind the game were brilliant, but the players have turned it to a pile of crap, really fast.

The game was supposed to have way more depth then that but this is what happens when you put a bunch of people in a game that have never played UO or any other non-easy-mode game. This isn’t UO-esque at all, like it was marketed to be.

Despite so many of them ending in drama and despair, I’m still a great believer in the concept of guilds/clans/player associations/call them what you like, in MMOs. Maybe I’ve been luckier than most in the guilds I have chosen to join in my time, but I guess I’ve also made some of my own luck by creating some guilds from the ground up with the simple concept of creating the kind of MMO guild that I would want to be in. A pretty simple concept.

What I’ve hoped to do with this series is record some of my thoughts on guild creation. Maybe my thoughts will work for you and give you something to think about. Or maybe you’ll write me some hate mail and tell me that this is a bunch of crap. Either way, let me be the first to acknowledge that, like most things in life, there is no single “right way” to create an MMO guild. What works for me, might not work for you – and vice versa. OK, that’s the intro done.

With the guild name and hosting package out of the way, for our third (and final) outing we’re delving into the realm of recruiting. This is always a very interesting area, with many ways to approach it.

Generally speaking, the official forums for your game of choice will be the main battleground where you will try to attract talent to your guild, but how will you do that?

The process starts by asking yourself what kind of personnel you want. Or, put another way, how do you want your guild to look in a few months time? At one end of the scale, you might want it to be a tiny, intimate guild of pure role-players. At the other end, you might envisage a massive virtual frat house with 250 people running around in their underwear, drinking and shouting at each other at all hours of the day or night.

How you recruit will determine what you become.

If you go out with a very hard-nosed, perhaps role-played, introduction thread to your guild, chances are you aren’t going to attract the wild and crazy people. You can ensure this by perhaps setting some pre-conditions on people joining the guild, such as writing a backstory for their character or even serving a “trial period” with the guild before they are even accepted as a full member. You will certainly sort the wheat from the chaff with such a method, and be left with what you set out to get: a group of very dedicated, hardcore role-play type people who don’t act very crazy.

Meanwhile, if you go out with an “anything goes” attitude on the forum, and perhaps already have a bit of a posting reputation yourself, you are guaranteed to get that frat house sooner than you can say, “free beer”. And if that’s what you’re looking for — awesome! I find, however, that even the most tolerant guild leaders eventually get a little saddened and annoyed at the antics of their members when they haven’t set any boundaries or controls over them during the recruitment process. “What do you mean I can’t cyber the only girl in the guild? You didn’t say anything about no cybering when I signed up!” a member might explode one day. Is it your fault for having no rules?

Of course, I am working in these brief example with two extremes of guild recruiting. Your job now is to determine where along the scale of recruiting you wish your guild to fall. Very few of you, I believe, will want to be in a highly anal role-playing guild — even if you like roleplaying — in much the same way, that I find very few people over the age of, say 16, are truly comfortable in frat house style environments. So have a good, hard think about it before you do anything. At the end of the day you need to determine:

* Roleplay or non-roleplay?
* PvP? PvE? A mix?
* Any geographical boundaries and timezones preferred?
* Any rules to be laid down to members before they walk in?

And so on. The more you can get a handle on these questions BEFORE people start showing an interest in your guild, the better! Good luck with your guild!

What’s left of the Warhammer Online fanbase* will no doubt be rejoicing with the news that the “Rise of the Tomb Kings” (which is the final chapter of the “Call to Arms” live expansion arc), has almost arrived. For the uninitiated, this is a game update that introduces the Land of the Dead, described by the developers as an ancient necropolis filled with, “powerful foes and the riches of kings”. As you might expect, that means a high-level area featuring new content, console-style action gameplay via PQs and boss fights and a new armour set for every career.

The developers are also promoting the 1.3 patch as bringing some new and upgraded features to WAR, such as a Sigil system which makes armor Wards a permanent character unlock, whether your character is wearing set pieces or not. There are also allegedly “sweeping” improvements to the game’s interface, numerous career fixes and enhancements, and a plethora of improvements to the Gunbad dungeon highlight this huge update. Remember, this is the Warhammer devs speaking, so take it with a grain of salt!

Highlights, according to the devs:

• Rise of the Tomb Kings – An exciting live event which pits the realms against each other in a race to collect resources for an expedition to the Land of the Dead. The winner will gain early control of this new zone.
• The Land of the Dead – This new area features a large open RvR zone and a trap-filled dungeon with instances that can be invaded by the enemy realm when control of the area switches hands. New rewards and challenges await for high-Rank players.
• Sigil System – No longer will you be required to wear armor set pieces for their Wards. With the Sigil system, armor Wards become a character unlock, so that once you get one, you’ll have it forever – even when you don’t wear the armor piece that grants it.
• Career Updates – Every career will see changes in update 1.3, including adjustments to area-of-effect abilities, lots of bug fixes, and balance tweaks across the board.
• Gunbad Dungeon Improvements – Respawn points have been added throughout Gunbad, and the entire dungeon has been reworked as a smaller single-group adventure for characters starting at Rank 19.

So there you have it. Warhammer patch 1.3, coming soon, for those of you still actually playing the game. Don’t say we never do anything for you.

*Save your vitriolic responses; I just call it like I see it. From where I’m sitting, Warhammer is nowhere near as healthy, population wise, as it should be.

Back in January, there was a document circulating the Net relating to BioWare’s The Old Republic. Said document was allegedly from an insider, commenting on the game and how it would play out for gamers when they finally got their hands on it. Now, most of the document was stuff that you or I could have made up after a long boozy lunch at the pub because it’s straightforward and, like any good rumour or conspiracy theory, totally and utterly believable. This is compounded when the document seemingly corroborates what the devs have been saying to date… or have the devs been corroborating the document?

Anyway, the document’s resurfaced of late, so I thought it might be fun to revisit some parts of that document, with some comments from myself, based on my time following the game (ie: a long time; going back way further than the creation of the “official” TOR website). Ready? Let’s go. The rumour from the document are italicised.

TOR was born from a business model. This business model was handed over to developers who were then asked to design a game around it. What was this business model you ask, it was a book. This book was written by Lucas Arts and inspired by KOTOR and its success. I dont know the origins of when and why it was done but this book is the framework for TOR. The game has been designed to play like a virtual book. Each chapter will have alternate endings based on which dialog you chose in the quests. The goal is to make the game replayable and new each time you start over. Each chapter has roughly the same content as a KOTOR game. And there are several chapters so the game does have a ton of content.

Book? What book? It’s certainly not an existing book that you can go and buy from your local bookstore, obviously. But, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that an author, or BioWare staffer, has been contracted to write such a thing in the background. Certainly, when you hear the BioWare people talk with passion about bringing “story” to MMOs (yes, yes, I agree it’s been a stupid thing to say, given that most MMOs have decent to excellent storylines already; witness LotRO), doing it via a book, with chapters that help create moments of choice, is entirely plausible. On a scale of 1-10, I’d give this rumour about a 7 or 8. Expect the game to be something like that.

The game is heavily instanced. If you have ever played Lord of the Rings Online, its similiar to the beginning quest sequence and some of the books. You will literally watch a story unfold in front of you in your own little world. There are several cinematic scenes in the game. Its definitely NOT open. There are no giant worlds you can freely explore. Its sort of like Guild Wars or a variation of Age of Conan. No player cities and no housing.

For the longest time, I’d always imagined TOR being like that, primarily because of its focus on “the story”, rather than being a life simulator, a la Star Wars Galaxies. I tend to think that we will see housing, in some form, however. So, all things considered, I’d give this rumour about 6 or 7. Expect instances at the very least to help tell “your” story, so that you aren’t trying to have a unique experience with 40 other people all trying to kill the same boss and totally disrupting the immersion that the story will try and evoke for you.

There is no space content so if your hoping for a JTL in TOR you better look elsewhere. There is a few quests involving boarding a ship but you arent going to fly around in an X-Wing doing missions.

Bzzzzzzt, nope. There’s enough talk about the game now that confirms there’s an element of space content in the game. So this rumours a turkey. 0/10.

The story evolves. Think Books in Lord of the Rings. They plan on adding new chapters to the story. Here is the catch, you will likely have to pay for each new chapter. Its not really an expansion, so its more like buying some additional quests.

This seems like more of a guess, to my mind. Especially if there’s already a monthly fee, I doubt there will be paid-for chapters available. Otherwise, what is the monthly fee for? The game will either be a monthly fee, with free updates (like LotRO), or it will be free-to-play with paid for updated (like Guild Wars). I know those two examples aren’t 100% perfect, but you get what I mean. So I’m only going to give this rumour a 5/10.

There are classes in the game but not in the traditional MMO sense. There isnt a tank class or a healing class really. Each class can dps and has some healing abilities. Each class will start on its own planet and will have a unique series of quests to start the game. Once you leave the planet, the quests will be mostly the same as other classes but the dialog is unique to each class. Of course there are different possibilities based on the dialog you choose. Also cinematic sequences will be different depending on class.

I sense a lot of guesswork here… but it’s guesswork that has been confirmed, piece by piece, so it’s really an 8 for the rumour. But anyone could have really guessed this stuff, especially if they had previously played a KOTOR game.

You can solo through the entire game. Not to say there arent group quests, there are but you can skip them. If you dont like questing, this game isnt for you. There really is no other means to play the game.

Yep, the devs have been sayin this from day one. So, 10/10 for the rumour, but it was already out there in the public domain from the start, so it’s no indication of talent on the poster’s behalf.

There is no non-combat class. Crafting is very basic. You craft your own lightsaber. There is no weapons crafting or armor crafting of any kind. There are some quests that require you to do some basic crafting like fixing a shield generator or fixing a droid. There are some modifications you can add to your gear. But you arent going to make your own gear.

Similar to the last one, 10/10 for the rumour, but this has all been known from the start. The devs keep talking about “heroic crafting”, ie: there’s no one crafting class, or crafting skills for people to learn, but everyone will get to do some sort of crafting as they adventure. Jedi characters making their own lightsaber is a no-brainer. Fixing things while questing is another. Pretty simple stuff to imagine.

There is a limit to the number of companions you can have. And in a group you cant have two of the same companions out at the same time. Also you can only have one companion out at a time.

We’re starting to scrape the bottom of the bucket here. The rumour writer seems familiar with KOTOR games and is extrapolating from them. I mean, OBVIOUSLY, there’ll be a limit to how many party members you can have — whether they’re NPCs or not. So this is an 8 or 9 for the rumour coming true, but it didn’t take Einstein, let alone an “insider” to work out.

To summarize the game, its not really an MMO in the traditional sense. Some people are going to be upset by the design. Others like KOTOR fans will absolutely love this game.

I agree with the final line, but it really is a motherhood statement, more than anything.

So, my take on all this? I don’t think the document is credible in terms of being a real “inside job”. I think it’s written by someone with a touch of writing flair who is as familiar with the game as, say, myself (which isn’t really that hard to become). In other words, I think a great deal of the document is true or, at the worst, well along the lines of being correct, so people should treat it with a degree of respect. Just don’t get too suckered into the concept of it coming from a real Deep Throat in the industry!

On August 15 last year, I wrote about a game SOE had just demoed at its annual FanFaire. Called Free Realms, the game was promoted as a free MMO for 9-14 year olds, where they could engage in any manner of activities, from adventuring and fighting (typical MMO activity), to cooking and playing with pets (reasonably common MMO activity), to driving go-karts and playing soccer (rare MMO activity). Oh, and did I mention the free part? It intrigued us all — and it was made by SOE, no less.

At the time I said the demo looked quite amazing and it struck me that a lot of people, adult gamers included, could make great use of the environment as a place where they could all meet, either to game with each other or to social network, especially if they were friends who are otherwise playing different games to one another.

And you know what? Despite some comments I will make in a moment, I think that might just come true. This is a very polished gameworld to be able to engage in for free and I think it will appeal to both sexes; and probably even more to female gamers.

It sounds like I must have been playing Free Realms recently to make that sort of call and, yes, I have been. A little while ago, I made a bearded avatar I called “George Imperialsaga” (I used the in-game name generator to come up with that), and due to his likeness to a certain bearded director of space fantasy movies, petitioned that his real name should be George Lucas which, bizarrely, SOE approved. So if you’ve seen George Lucas running around in-game lately, yes, that was me. Guilty as charged.

So what’s the game like? Well, at the risk of disappointing people, it’s like every other MMO out there. You run around a game world; you do quests; you can talk to people; you can explore; etc, etc. Surprisingly, based on everything I had thought it would be, I found it to be very grindy. Very, very grindy, actually. While it’s a cool concept that one character can be multiple professions and, in turn, it’s very easy to unlock the first level of each profession for your character, like ninja, postman, medic, blacksmith, warrior, treasure hunter, wizard, kart driver, chef, brawler and explorer (phew, and that’s not even all of them), it actually takes quite a bit of running around and “doing stuff” to get to level two. I haven’t even gone beyond level two as I set about playing the opening level of as many professions as possible, but if the game follows regular MMO conventions and makes level three harder to achieve than level two… well, it’s a good thing the game’s free, as kids might need to spend years leveling in it.

Of course, the company line would be that the game’s not about leveling, but rather the fun experiences you can have along the way but, I’m not really sure about that. Seeing other players with cooler equipment, I felt this played out like any other MMO and I wanted to level my guy up so I could be like the cool kids, more than anything else.

All in all, Free Realms looks and feels like an overly cutesy, yet still grindy, version of WoW with perhaps a dash of sandbox insofar as being able to go anywhere and do anything with the same character, rather than re-rolling, re-speccing or having multiple characters. And you know what? Despite my personal aversion to grinding, I think the kids might like it. This is definitely one MMO to download (a surprisingly small download, too), and have a play with, especially if you have young children or even younger brothers and sisters or nieces and nephews coming around to your house. Try it.

Free Realms launches Tuesday, April 28.

Despite so many of them ending in drama and despair, I’m still a great believer in the concept of guilds/clans/player associations/call them what you like, in MMOs. Maybe I’ve been luckier than most in the guilds I have chosen to join in my time, but I guess I’ve also made some of my own luck by creating some guilds from the ground up with the simple concept of creating the kind of MMO guild that I would want to be in. A pretty simple concept.

What I’m hoping to do with this series is record some of my thoughts on guild creation. Maybe my thoughts will work for you and give you something to think about. Or maybe you’ll write me some hate mail and tell me that this is a bunch of crap. Either way, let me be the first to acknowledge that, like most things in life, there is no single “right way” to create an MMO guild. What works for me, might not work for you – and vice versa. OK, that’s the intro done.

For our second outing, I thought it might be useful to talk about guild hosting. That is, once you’ve decided on your guild name (see part one), and are ready to build your guild’s website, where do you propose hosting it? There are two distinct options. The first is to buy a URL which corresponds with your guild name. In some cases the name will be available outright, but if you’re using a generic sort of name for your guild, you might have to get creative and insert an extra word like “guild”, or similar, into the URL in order to find something unique. With the name registered, you then need to find a plot of of hosting to point the name at. In today’s dog-eat-dog Internet market, decent hosting packages can be as cheap as a mere couple of bucks per month, with the only hitch being you need to pay for 12 months at once. I believe that if you’re confident about your guild concept, however, slapping down under $10 for the URL, and around $24 for a year’s hosting is a small price to pay. But more on that in a moment.

The other option relates to the large body of guild-centric web services that are already out there. I won’t name any service in particular as I don’t personally use them and, besides, don’t want to be seen as favouring some over others if I neglect to name one. But if you Google “guild hosting”, or similar, you will find tons. They are also regularly advertised on MMO-centric websites, too. In a sentence, they are kinda hard to miss. These services build a website for you in moments, with all the tools you need in a guild environment, like member lists, forums, and so on. They are really good for people who aren’t Web-savvy, but still want to build an online presence for their guild. They also come in two flavours: advertising-funded and paid-for. As the names suggest, an advertising-funded web service will stick banner ads and the like on your guild’s site. Sometimes this is done attractively and unobtrusively; other times it looks like a pile of crap. If you elect to pay for the service, meanwhile, your site will be banner free.

What’s best? Personally, I lean towards buying a URL and hosting and building a site. Among other things, I think it shows that you are serious about your guild. How serious? Well, you’ve gone out and paid real money for a URL and hosting, not to mention spent hours designing a website and an overall look and feel for the guild, while many of your competition are still scrabbling around on a freebie guild hosting sites. For many MMO gamers, looking for a stable and solid guild, this kind of thing speaks volumes. A freebie web service can give the impression, “Yeah, we’re here… but we could pack up tomorrow…” while a paid-for URL and hosting suggests you are more serious about things. Of course, the paid-for URL and hosting means you will need some kind of Internet savvy to build your site and forums (although with hosting add-ons such as Fantastico, that is becoming easier every day), and I appreciate not everyone has that. For such people, I’d recommend the guild hosting sites, but with the strong suggestion that the site is paid for (and advertisement free), so that even if the site looks a bit generic and “newbie”, at least the lack of advertisements gives the impression, “Here is a guild that might not be Web savvy, but is still pretty serious about sticking around and has been investing some real money into this…” You might not think people have these thoughts when checking out guilds, but they do!

Undoubtedly, someone is sitting out there reading this blog and getting hot under the collar because they have run their guild on a freebie, advertising-laden website for the past decade and are accordingly giving my thoughts the finger and shouting, “You’re wrong, Rob!”. To such people I say, “You are the exception, not the rule…” because I think if anyone sticks around in the MMO game for more than five minutes, they will see that the biggest, most-respected and longest-reigning guilds all take the path of buying a URL and hosting eventually, and don’t play with the freebie guild hosting services that are out there. At the end of the day, it’s all about perception and how you want your members, and prospective members to perceive you. Player or chump? Your Web presence, rightly or wrongly, can define you long before anyone reads a word about you. Consider that when you are debating whether to spend money on your guild.

Next time I will take a look at the next major step in creating a guild once you’re done with choosing the name and hosting package… the recruiting process. Bye for now.

Free Korean MMOs are notorious for being grindfests with little to show for your time at the end of the day. With that in mind, a lot of MMO gamers might catch a glimpse of Atlantica Online and simply ignore it. After all, it’s got the same anime-style graphics as all the other games; it’s free; and doesn’t look at all compelling at first glance.

But here’s the kicker: Atlantica Online has turn-based combat and is actually quite different to probably anything else you’ve ever played out of Korea. Don’t believe me? Keep reading this review…

If you think of Final Fantasy or other console-based Japanese RPGs, you’re on the right track with Atlantica Online. Take those style of games, stick them in an MMO context, along the lines of an environment like Guild Wars, and you’re halfway there.

You start the game by selecting your main character (choosing between archers, spearmen and even gun and guitar-toting characters), and then recruiting a few party members (or “mercenaries”) before embarking on one of many kill/fetch quests, such as “kill ‘x’ monsters” or “kill monsters to find ‘x’ item(s)”. Don’t worry; these quests are simply to teach you the basics of the game and get you up to speed with what is, essentially, a PvP experience once you blast through the first phase of the game.

Starting in “Division 18”, your goal is to work towards “Division 1” through fighting other players in an arena environment. When not fighting in the arena, you can travel the countryside – which is essentially an alternate version of Earth, with fantasy-style areas named after real world places, such as Beijing, Moscow and even Detroit.

Combat is very cool. You are given 30 seconds to make all the moves you can across up to nine party characters before the balance turns to your opponent and they get 30 seconds to hammer you – so while the game is turn-based, it’s still fast and you really need to be on the ball to maximise your strategy against your opponent.

In all, this is a solid strategy game with some strong PvP and guild elements. On the downside, the setting is a little bizarre and a touch cutesy, like most games coming out of Korea. If you can see past that, however, this is a very, very good free game and, I guarantee, quite different to what you’re used to seeing produced out of Asia.

Despite so many of them ending in drama and despair, I’m still a great believer in the concept of guilds/clans/player associations/call them what you like, in MMOs. Maybe I’ve been luckier than most in the guilds I have chosen to join in my time, but I guess I’ve also made some of my own luck by creating some guilds from the ground up with the simple concept of creating the kind of MMO guild that I would want to be in. A pretty simple concept.

What I’m hoping to do with this series is record some of my thoughts on guild creation. Maybe my thoughts will work for you and give you something to think about. Or maybe you’ll write me some hate mail and tell me that this is a bunch of crap. Either way, let me be the first to acknowledge that, like most things in life, there is no single “right way” to create an MMO guild. What works for me, might not work for you – and vice versa. OK, that’s the intro done.

For our first outing, I thought I might discuss one of the most important of all issues when a guild concept is being kicked around – the name. This is something that has to be decided from the very start of any guild and, unless the MMO in question has very forgiving guild management rules, will stick and come to define you and your bunch of merry men (and women) for months and years to come. So it’s kind of a big deal!

Start by asking yourself how you want to approach the game. Are you wanting to create a guild that’s all about fun and laughs and people not taking themselves very seriously? Consider a comedy name that reflects that. Not only will it feel “right” for you and your members, but when others in the community see your name, they will hopefully get a sense of that sense of fun and not acting too seriously from the start.

What I find quite schizophrenic in MMOs, meanwhile, is when guilds which take themselves very seriously, and want to be taken seriously by the other guilds on their server, also take on a comedy name. Maybe it was after a night of drinking, or maybe it just seemed “right” at the time and made some people laugh on Ventrilo or IRC, but if your goal is to be a serious guild, do think twice about using comedy names. Not only will the joke wear thin very quickly, but you will potentially lose recruits who don’t realise you’re a serious guild or, worse, they do realise you’re a serious guild, but still don’t want to join you because they don’t want to be in a guild with a “stupid” name.

Another thing to consider is how your guild name fits into the gaming world itself. Let’s say a Star Wars Galaxies guild called itself, “The Jedi Council”. While a serious name in itself at first glance, the name takes on comedy overtones when you stop and think that these people are (i) Naming themselves after an organisation that no longer exists in the game world and, (ii) Even if it did still exist, it wouldn’t be represented solely on the server by people in that guild. I have always, always, always run a million miles from guilds that claim to be an official organisation already known in a game’s lore. There’s no nice way of putting this – it looks lame. Like something your 12 year old brother might create. And who wants to play with their 12 year old brother? Case closed.

You might think that your choice of guild name isn’t that big a deal but, seriously, it is. For people who aren’t in your guild, the name is 99% of what they see when it comes to your guild. The best advice, distilled from the past few paragraphs is to choose something that reflects your approach to the game. Anything else will be a lie and will ultimately frustrate you and/or your members and/or potential recruits. Trust me.

Next time, with a guild name decided and in the can, I will tackle the issue of guild websites. Buy a URL and hosting and create one from scratch? Use a guild website hosting service? Advertisements or no advertisements? You get the idea. Bye for now.

Like a drug dealer keeping an addict interested in his or her wares, the BioWare folks sure know how to keep impatient Star Wars fans on a drip feed of information relating to its highly-anticipated MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. The latest is today’s announcement of Ord Mantell as a planet which players will be able to visit in-game. For the record (and TOR trainspotters), this is the second planetary announcement; the first being Hutta (more commonly known as Nal Hutta later in the Star Wars timeline), back in February.

Unsurprisingly (this is the double whammy of Star Wars fans and MMO devotee’s we’re talking about), the announcement has led to fans speculating on where the planet might fit into the overall game, and some other thoughts. Here’s a taster:

Farlark: Looks like a good Smuggler and Bounty Hunter class starter world. Im looking forward to exploring it. Keep the news coming BIOWARE!!!:)

Vitchman: There is still one thing that has me curious…after seeing these screens, I’m wondering if the planets will be open exploration or instanced paths…like Kotor. You know? Like where you can’t run off a edge or wonder off the path…if not I hope they scale these planets really large. Otherwise it’ll feel like I’ve explored the place in 20 minutes, like Kotor, ya know?

TheLightFang: Sounds like a good planet to start off on for bounty hunters, smugglers, and other black market types if they are going to exist.

Syphon: Fantastic sounds like a planet ripe with strife and conflict. Just the kind of place every one could have something to do in. Not much info other what you guys have put out on this planet. I think we all want to see more new planets.

Darth_Agonas: Nice! Not only that we got a new planet for this update, but that it is one that has not been done a million time in SW games. Kudos BW!

I’m in total agreement with that last comment. I’m pretty stoked that we’re getting a planet that hasn’t been done a million times in Star Wars games before. Yet, at the same time, it’s not a planet solely made up for this game; Ord Mantell appears in supplemenary Star Wars material, such as maps of the Star Wars universe, for as long as I can remember. Indeed, after a little research, I believe it can be traced back to The Bounty Hunter of Ord Mantell – a comic strip written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by Al Williamson, originally published in February 1981. So there.

Just how many planets, classes, etc, will appear in Star Wars: The Old Republic at launch is still open to debate. So far, however, what BioWare has announced has all sounded pretty good. I’m giving the announcement of Ord Mantell a thumbs up.

There was a strong buzz around Star Wars: The Old Republic last week when it announced bounty hunter as one of the games official classes.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t that bounty hunters would be in the game that generated the buzz, however, as they had appeared in game artwork and been alluded to for quite some time. No, what started the buzz was the less-than-subtle inferences in the class description that it would be a class for the Sith faction only.

That’s right… besides the obvious point that bounty hunters don’t work for any particular faction anyway, it staggered many TOR watchers that if the class had to fall under a faction, that it would, seemingly, be limited to Sith players only.

Accordingly, I have an explanation for this: story. BioWare is making such a big deal out of the storylines for each character class in the game, that I think it’s going to make EVERY class unique to its faction and, through doing so, not have to write a Sith-flavoured and Republic-flavoured version of each class storyline.

So in the weeks and months ahead, expect to see, for example, smugglers and troopers announced as Republic-only classes and, perhaps, spies to join bounty hunters as a Sith-only class. Jedi and Sith Lord characters, of course, will be Republic and Sith faction respectively. That’s a no-brainer. What does this mean for the gamer?

It means that BioWare had better be planning on some sweet faction-swapping in its class storylines, or the game is going to be horribly unbalanced come end game.

Just think of it… your Jedi gets to the crest of their storyline… along the way they’ve made some mistakes and maybe done some dubious things. It’s my conjecture that, at this point, if enough dubious behaviour has occurred, that a fall to the darkside might be available. Or think of a spy for the Sith. Perhaps, over time, they haven’t been quite as ruthless as a good Sith should be… will they get the option to join the Republic?

In this way, BioWare only needs to write six to eight unique storylines, depending on how many classes the game ends up featuring (some people swear it’s six, others swear it’s eight, but no one seems to have proof), yet, at end game, with spies turning good and troopers turning evil, etc, the game will start to balance out with bounty hunters, spies, smugglers, troopers, etc, appearing within both factions.

Mentioned on the TOR forums, the concept of faction swapping has been rejected by as many people as embraced by others. All this correspondant will add to that debate is that EQ2 has allowed faction swapping, in the form of a “betrayal” quest series for many years. That alone shows that characters can change faction in an MMO and the sky will not fall down, nor will fire and brimstone rain down from the MMO gods in disgust.

Meanwhile, if BioWare doesn’t allow faction changing as part of its storylines, it’s going to have a LOT of very pissed off gamers on its hands. People who want to play Republic spies or Sith troopers, to name just two. I guess all we can do is wait and see!