It’s time to tack up the guilds that are looking for members this week. If you would like to advertise for your guild as well you can do so by sending me the form you will find if you scroll to the bottom of the page. It’s free and the more guilds from your server who advertise here the better the likelihood of attracting more people to your server and perhaps to your guild.

Who is the fairest of them all

This week we are visiting a wide variety of servers from East to West and RP to PVP. If you aren’t seeing any guilds from the server you would like to join a guild on try searching for it in the search box to the top right. There might very well have been guilds seeking members from your server in previous weeks.

And remember, you can add your guild to the Wall as many times as you like. Just send me a message each week you would like to be included.

The Wall of Guilds:

Quiet Professionals on Grand Master Zym

Guild Name: Quiet Professionals.

Server: Grand Master Zym.

Server Type: US-East, PVE.

Faction: Sith Empire.

Play Style: PVE and PVP.

Ops Schedule: Tuesday and Thursdays 9pm to Midnight EST.

Contact: officers[at]quietprofessionals DOT info.

Recruitment Needs:

DPS and Backup Healers.  DPS with the gear and desire to occasionally spec heals is a plus.

Description:

We are a collection of friends, family, and couples that have been drawn together by our love for Star Wars and our enthusiasm for gaming. We maintain one of only a handful of sixteen man operation teams on Grand Master Zym and one of only a couple which has been successful in challenging hard mode content.  We’ve cleared EV and KP on both 8 and 16 man HM and we have moved on to set our focus on Denova Operations.  When not focusing our attention on operations our members can usually be found leveling alts, doing dailies, running flash points and fighting the good fight in war-zones.

Guild name: Vu’Traat.

Server: Sanctum of the Exalted.

Server type : US-East RP.

Faction: Empire.

Play style: Mix of RP, PVE and PVP.

Contact person and email:

Zam via our guild website.

Recruitment needs:

We are looking for exceptional players of all classes.

Description:

What does Vu’traat mean? In Mandalorian, it means “special forces”. Our goal is to provide a mature, drama-free gaming environment for friends, old and new. We pride ourselves on our laid back nature, our organizational skills and our knack for excelling in every facet of MMO games. We enjoy providing a guild where our members can excel in any area of their choosing: PVE, PVP, RP, Crafting and Raiding.

Stim Junkies on Kaiburr Crystal

Guild name: Stim Junkies.

Server: Kaiburr Crystal.

Server type: US-West, PVE.

Faction: Republic.

Play style: PVE.

Contact person and email: Drasaari, huusch01[at]luther DOT edu.

Recruitment needs:

Healers: Low, Tanks: High, DPS: Welcome.

Description:

We are a community of gamers who are looking to gain experience doing both PvE and PvP content while expanding our knowledge of the Star Wars Universe. We are mature players who like to have fun and enjoy the social aspects of MMOs. We like to do Flashpoints, Hardmodes, and Warzones, and hope to get into Ops soon. We have an assortment of teams that all members can be a part of regardless of class, skill, and level. Stim Junkies welcomes both casual and hardcore gamers.We prefer our members to be active within the guild community – be it on our website forums, on Ventrilo, or in-game. Opportunities for growth in leadership positions are available as well. Interested persons should apply on our website.

Nerf Dialogue on Hedarr Soongh

Guild name: Nerf Dialogue.

Server: Hedarr Soongh.

Server type: US-East PVP.

Faction: Republic.

Play style: Hardcore PVE.

Contact person and email: Costello – officialnerfdialogue[at]gmail DOT com.

Recruitment needs:

2 Healers, 2 Sage DPS, 1 Sentinel.

Description:

Nerf Dialogue, #3 World ranking for Tier 1 16m Nightmare Mode content, and current #1 World ranked for Tier 2 8m Hard Mode, is recruiting to rebuild our 16 man roster. We’re accepting applications from exceptional players, regardless of advanced class. If you don’t like wasting your time in ops and can bring your A-game, drop an app. We want people who are quick to learn, understand the basics of raid mechanics, and preferably have some previous raiding background. Some of our members have experience raiding in older games with Top 10 world ranked guilds. We don’t expect this of everyone, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. As long as you know your class, know how MMOs function, and can adapt quickly and with a positive attitude, we’d love to hear from you.

Redeemers on Corellian Run

Guild name: Redeemers.

Server: Corellian Run.

Server type: US-East, PVE.

Faction: Republic.

Play style: PVE and some RP.

Contact person and email: Aaylan, swtor.redeemers[at]Gmail DOT com.

Recruitment needs:

We are looking to recruit active players of all classes, specializations and levels.

Description:

Redeemers is a small, member oriented and friendly guild. We are a team, we work together, help others, but most of all, we have fun. We run group Flashpoints, Warzone, as well as Datacron hunting and story progression. We are currently saving up for a guild bank as well.

Dauntless on Shien

Guild name: Dauntless.

Server: Shien.

Server type: US-East, RP.

Faction: Republic.

Play style: PVE, some PVP.

Contact person and email: arkayde [at] gmail DOT com. Ingame: Holloway, Retta or Basra or ask anyone online for an officer.

Recruitment needs:

We have so many tanks we are thinking of renaming ourselves The Shermans (Except we love our guild name!) and DPS is so scarce they are worshipped as deities at the moment. Would you know it, we don’t have a single DPS Commando yet!

Description:

Dauntless is an irreverent guild of adults (at least on paper) with lives, jobs, pets, kids, mortgages, loans etc. We also happen to adore playing MMOs and enjoy running Operations and Flashpoints. We also do WZs several times a week together. We pretty much suck at most of it but we have a lot of fun doing that. If that sounds like you, swing by and have a gander at our website.

Dauntless – Because wiping takes more determination than winning!

Legio Umbra on Daragon Trail

Guild name: Legio Umbra

Server: Daragon Trail.

Server type: PVP US-West.

Play Style: PvP/PvE End Game-centric.

Contact person and email: GM – Vincvega legioumbra [at] gmail DOT com.

Recruitment needs: Accepting all classes.

Description:

Legio Umbra is an adult, friendly, casual community built around a core of experienced but not overly competitive MMO players who have been gaming together off and on for a long time. We’ve played through most of the MMO’s that people have heard of and/or played as well as a few obscure titles. We have the experience and skill to complete all of the content in today’s generation of MMO’s but we are not “rush to level cap” or “we have to be server first” style gamers. Our focus is on providing players with a quality community and support structure as we progress through a game. We are not elitists and strive to be all inclusive in order to give guild members the opportunity to achieve their goals in game. Although we tend to lean towards end game/raiding we also support PvP and people who just want to game at normal modes and enjoy the game and all it has to offer at a pace they are comfortable with. We are an Empire guild. We are playing on the Daragon Trail Server (US WEST PVP). We are social and voice chat use is required during some events. All SWTOR classes are welcome.

Legio Umbra is also the guild of TORWars’ Robert Henriquez who writes the Imperial Agent class column on Fridays!

~~~

How do you get YOUR guild up on the Wall of Guilds? It’s simple, just follow these instructions:

Copy the form below and fill in the blanks. Then email it to Kristen[at]TORWars DOT com and your guild’s recruitment ad will be added to the Wall.

Wall of Guilds form:

Guild name:

Server:

Server type (For example US-East, PVE):

Faction:

Play style (RP. PVE, PVP):

Guild site:

Contact person and email:

Recruitment needs: (Healers: High, Tanks: Low, DPS: Welcome <- for example)

Short summary (one paragraph max 200 words):

Optional: Guild video link

Optional: 1 picture/guild header/screenshot

Hello, fellow TORWarriors! Today is Monday, and that means it’s once again time for the latest Minion Slayers comic! James Carlson has graciously provided us with another edition of his funny SWTOR-themed comic for your reading enjoyment.

It’s a great comic this week, subtly poking a bit of fun at some of the crazy relationships in which SWTOR character’s find themselves. Enjoy!

What happens in Nar Shaddaa….

Looking for previous editions of the Minion Slayers?  Those can be found right here!  Looking for more of James’ fantastic artwork?  That’s right here.

Hold still! This will only take 4 hours.

The time has come again, TORWarriors. The time where we have to put down Star Wars: The Old Republic, and do other things. Tonight, as nearly every Tuesday since launch, the SWTOR servers will be offline while BioWare performs scheduled maintenance. So, if you’re behind on sleep, or need a reason to play other games, tonight is your night.

Here is the official word from Associate Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez:

Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for four hours on Tuesday, May 15th , 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8 AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST). All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended.

This weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will be a patch to download. After the maintenance, please login via the launcher to download the latest patch. If your launcher was open during the maintenance, you must close and reopen it for a fresh login.

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Time: 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8 AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST).

All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours.

Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

Pic Source

Hello TORWarriors and welcome to a day that should go down in infamy and be turned into a world wide holiday.

Today marks the birth of the father of the most successful franchise in Hollywood history.  No, it’s not Mel Brooks.  It’s George Lucas and he turns 68 today.  Without George Lucas we wouldn’t have Star Wars and without Star Wars we wouldn’t have geeks and without geeks we wouldn’t have this website.  So, we must truly be thankful for the birth of Lord Lucas.

So. You think this is what Lucas' kids birthday cakes look like?

Happy Birthday George from all of us here at TORWars.  Cheers!

Ah, the happy days of Chewy's childhood….

As we all draw so much inspiration from the Star Wars universe, this Mother’s Day story is one that must be shared.  It’s the story of Chewbacca and his mother, and his favorite Mother’s Day memory of years gone by. Personally, I found it touching that the big hairy guy has such a soft spot in his heart.

Watch, and enjoy.

Welcome back again, fellow Vanguards and Commandos to Trooper Weekly – grab a beverage, take a seat and let’s chat. If it’s your first time in the mess hall head on over to the Trooper Newbie Guide, or read on if you like to wade right into the thick of things. This week, we’re taking a look at companions, the bane and boon of any Havoc Squad commander.

Yeah, I'm pretty much AWESOME.

 The Stat Bat

We’re lucky when it comes to stats – every single one of our companions uses Aim as their primary. Whether it’s Aric Jorgan laying down punishment with an assault canon, Elara Dorne healing you while you mete out punishment or Tanno Vik smacking away at bad guys with a Vibrosword, all of them need Aim to do their jobs.

Compare this to the Jedi Knight; their first companion, T7-O1, uses Aim and their second companion, Kira Carsen, is all about Willpower. While companion gear isn’t hard to come by in the game overall, Troopers have the advantage of being able to hand out hand-me-downs once they’re done with gear to their companions, especially those they don’t bring out into the field all that often. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s all fun and games for Troopers and their loyal subordinates.

Apologies. I did not mean to crush your foot. Again. Sir.

Don’t Stand So Close To Me

M1-4X is quite the companion and a marvel of modern engineering, but according to this thread in the forums, he’s also a bit of a close-talker. Don’t get me wrong here – I love having an uber-cool Republic weapon fighting by my side, but does he have to do it at such a small distance that I can smell which type of motor-oil based aftershave he put on in the morning?

Kidding aside, this is actually something BioWare might want to address; he’s an extra-large companion and especially in tight spaces his presence can easily affect sightlines and make playing the game more difficult than it needs to be. It shouldn’t take much, just back him up a few feet and we’re good. Maybe we could get some sort of new directive from Republic command so that M1-4X doesn’t get his feelings hurt; we like him – we just don’t like him so close.

…I love you. Can't you tell?

Getting Catty

The views about Aric Jorgan are mixed. I don’t mind catboy, and he and I have a similar sense about how to serve the Republic, but many players don’t want anything to do with him. Some avoid him altogether, taking Dorne or another companion along on all their missions but some want to finish his storyline simply out of completionist desire. The issue? If you’re a FemTrooper, you may find Jorgan lovin’ on you even if you don’t want it.

[Minor Spoiler] What it comes down to is that if you don’t want to get all kissy-kissy with your kitty, break his heart into little pieces early on once he’s in your squad. There’s going to be a moment where he offers you a gift, and turning it down is going to make you feel like a real $%#hole. But if you’re nice about it and take the damn thing – even if you’re not interested – you’re going to trigger the romance path, and from what I can glean on the forums there’s no breaking it off.

Generally, I’m impressed by the story lines BioWare has crafted for players and their companions but every so often one crops up that just seems to have been badly handled, giving the player options that simply don’t reflect real-world nuance and take away the notion of meaningful choice. Hopefully, companion choices may improve in the future but for the moment don’t play with your kitty unless you want him curling up in your lap.

Topped-up Trooper Tip of the Day – Despite the heavy armor, Troopers are quite squishy in PvP. Consider a tank/dps hybrid build for more DPS without losing too much survivability.

I’ve played many a BioWare game in the past and one of the things that I’ve always found most appealing is the opportunity to engage in something most games don’t provide; choosing evil conversation options for no reason. Wait, that’s not it; single-gender romance arcs. Yes, that’s it. As a gay gamer, not having to mentally edit out the huge tracts of land on the designated love interest is a big plus for BioWare. While SWTOR may not have this option yet, it will someday and it seems pretty obvious which companions are meant to be marching in the Galactic Pride Parade. I could be totally wrong though; my own gaydar is pretty subpar as any of the straight guys I’ve tried to hit on can tell you. But I think I’ve got these companions nailed for what they really are.

Yes Tharan, that coat goes with those pants. Stop asking, you look fine. Can I take the picture now?

To whit; Tharan Cedrax. This Jedi Consular companion is first discovered on Nar Shadda where he will quickly become a major addition to your team. For the Shadow, he’s an invaluable healer and able to provide some crowd control as well. For the Sage, especially the healing-specced Sage, he’s not that useful but he does provide some interesting missions. There are a number of things that lead me to believe Dr. Cedrax is gayer than Life Day but I think the primary culprit is Holiday. The good doctor’s personal hologram provides him with everything he could ever want in a woman; the opportunity to dress her in a wide array of fabulous outfits, someone to provide advice when shopping for shoes, and a helping hand in the lab. Combine that with the fact that she never has a visit from Red 5, she doesn’t ask for any kind of commitment and she doesn’t have any in-laws to speak of and she becomes the perfect cover for the man still not quite accepting of his own fruity tastes. There are a few other signifiers; Tharan’s neatly groomed facial hair, his propensity for outrageous headgear and his constant reminders that he’s a pacifist. Obviously that’s just a cover for not wanting to mess up his coiffure. I know there’s a strong gay man hiding inside the lovable Dr. Cedrax and we only need BioWare to let him out. I’m sure he can re-skin Holiday to something more appropriate; maybe a Chippendales dancer. Do they have Chippendales in SWTOR?

I'm not sure how you pull the blinds on a spaceship but I think she'd find a way.

Our second candidate comes from the other team in a number of different ways. Ladies and ladies, may I present Kaliyo. This Rattataki is the first companion for the Imperial Agent and she just screams butch. Leather, tattoos, shaved head, it’s all there. Now it may be true that she’s game for anything and doesn’t mind swinging on both ends of the hyperspace lane by my credits are on the L-word. Not only does she look the part but while my Agent was on Balmorra flirting with the contact in the Resistance Kaliyo was fuming with jealousy all along the way.  She thought that he and I were so cute, saving lives together, but I can read between those lines. I know she was really thinking about using her assortment of straps and buckles in a way that would sorely tax my Agent’s training and experience.

So, that’s my pick for SGRA companions. Obviously I’ve not played through the full set of companions with every class; anyone else have good suggestions for me to look into?

I try to keep an eye on what “our” No Moon artists are up to while I’m sleuthing around to find us new faces and places. But sometimes I’ll admit a few months go by where I haven’t checked up as diligently with some as I intended to. No big deal right? I mean how much art can one artist really produce in a few months… Turns out Renny’s answer to that is ‘A Lot!’ Some of you will remember the name from back in January where we had a gander at what a serious Clone Wars fan can do with a lot of talent and inspiration. Today, Renny is back and we are showing rather small selection of all her new Star Wars pieces!

Renny is back!

I asked Renny what has been going on in her life since we last talked and she has some big news to share:

What I have been up to? Well, from February to a few days ago I mostly dedicated myself to finishing a 60 pages comic of mine who should be published in my town. I had to finish it by the end of April and I had to work very much, almost all the day, and almost everyday.

Star Wars Heroes by Renny

So in the evenings, I often took opportunities to take breaks by drawing Star Wars stuff and that’s why I’ve been quite productive in these last months!

With all that work, I really needed a bit of fun and to draw what I love.

Of course, I also took it as a chance to improve even if they were pretty quick drawings, I’ve always tried to include backgrounds or to make up stories to go with the art.

Brotherly Hug by Renny

I’ve been trying to push my style further and further towards the Disney style, occasionally mixing it with various other occasional influences, and I think I improved a bit in that direction!! About one year has passed since I’ve began drawing SW stuff in a Disney-ishcartoony style, and somehow I can really sense the difference especially in the way I draw the characters’ faces and expressions!! That makes me pretty satisfied!

Star Wars Heavens Light Hellfire by Renny

On the other hand, I have to admit that, mostly using my latest Star Wars fanarts as some sort of stress-relief, I’ve never really tried too hard to get out of my comfort zone. Especially with the characters I often just stuck with the ones I’m more familiar with, which are also among my favorites, especially Anakin, Ahsoka and occasionally Padmé, haha!

Leia Would You Give Me That Thing by Renny

What I would like, and need to do, once I have a bit more of free time is trying to practice in drawing different characters, learning how to differentiate facial features in a better way, as example.

Winning The Boonta Eve by Renny

I would like to get familiar with other characters I love as well, such as Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and of course the Original Trilogy ones, especially Luke, Han and Leia! Right now I’m not really satisfied with the way I draw them, but I’m confident that, once I can practice more, I’ll eventually get there at last.

To The Stars by Renny

Thank you so much for returning to us Renny! I hope it won’t be the last time and I know I’m not alone in wishing you all possible success with ‘Da Savona Al Volturno’.

As I hinted at in the beginning of the article Renny has many, many more new pieces since last she was here so I would warmly recommend having a look at her galleries at deviantART.

Hello TORWarriors and happy Saturday.  Welcome to another Community Q&A adventure.  This week the devs answer important questions about character transfer, class imbalance in Warzones, Sith storyline spoilers (don’t worry, you have to log in to the main site in order to see this part), and much more.

"You're going to do WHAT?! WHEN?!"

05.11.2012

We’re back with a selection of answers to your community questions! Please note that in some cases we’ve combined multiple questions into one, and we that have edited some questions for clarity.

As a reminder, we previously suggested a shift in focus in your questions. As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems, or questions about why development decisions were made. You’re still welcome to ask questions about future features and we’ll continue to answer them where appropriate – just expect the occasional ‘soon.’

In order to maintain the quality of questions and answers, we will be allowing more time for questions to accumulate, which means that the next Q&A blog will be in two weeks on May 25th. We’d like to focus the next Q&A blog on Game Update 1.3, so please be sure to ask questions on anything related to Game Update 1.3.

We have now opened an official thread for that week’s Q&A, which will stay open until 2pm CDT on May 22nd, 2012 (12pm PDT/3pm EDT/8pm BST/9pm CEST/5am AEST). We welcome your questions in that thread and hope you enjoy the answers below.

If you want to discuss any of the answers given, please use this Forum thread!

nakomaru: You have mentioned DPS, healing and tanking “targets” as objective methods of balancing the roles in the game. Are there hybrid targets (e.g. healing & dps spec) as well? It seems some hybrid specs are viable on certain classes and out of the question on others. I suppose this has to do with objectively balancing lower tier skills across the classes.

Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Yes and no. In your example of a healer and DPS hybrid, by and large, whatever damage you sacrifice you should pick up in healing. For example, if you gave up 10% damage, we’d expect you to pick up 10% healing. Sometimes that’s the case, but sometimes you lose or pick up synergies that move you above or below an even shift. Because “hybrid” in our skill trees means “virtually any combination of points,” it’s certainly not the case that we have targets for every combination. However, we do have expectations, and we’re happy with hybrid builds so long as they don’t radically stray from our expectations.

Freeborne: Alacrity as a stat seems to be encouraged in “Energy Based’ classes (Troopers/Smugglers) through our talent trees. However, Alacrity seems to be a terrible secondary stat for us. The faster we use abilities, the faster we lose our energy – and the less energy we have, the less energy we regenerate. Are there any plans to review Alacrity, or at least its place in some class talent trees?

Austin: I agree. We’re exploring ways of improving Alacrity that we hope to get working for a future Game Update. As much as I’d like to, I can’t provide details on this plan yet. It’s possible that we’ll address passive Alacrity boosts in the skill trees, but those changes need to be solid and work for the long haul; it would be unacceptable to have a ‘temporary’ skill in place that we planned on removing at a later date.

Deewe: With the locked companion specs, some of us feel like being forced to use specific companions versus choosing them for their personality and look. Is there in the works any kind of feature mitigating this issue (hint: companions kits)?

Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): Companions in BioWare games have always been fully developed characters with their own backgrounds and skills. While you can change between a couple different approaches with each, we do not presently have plans to make Companion Characters interchangeable.

RKLimes: I recall a developer post indicating the results of transferring a character with a Legacy from one server onto another where a Legacy also exists, the highest level legacy would simple be applied rather than added. Since higher Legacy level does not necessarily equal greatest number of Legacy unlocks, will any and all unlocks be granted from either Legacies, or only those of the highest?

Daniel: Legacies will be merged in the most advantageous possible way for the player. They’re your rewards, you earned them, we don’t want to prevent you from moving them wherever you like. So any unlocks gained by the character you’re moving will come with that character, even if the Legacy they are moving into is a lower level.

Rickety: I’m currently the Division Captain for The Old Republic within The Older Gamers community. I am responsible for multiple guilds spanning all three regions. Several of our guilds have issues with the current guild limit of five hundred Characters. Are there any plans to increase this limit or alternatively, to introduce an in game ‘Guild Alliance’ system?

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): We’ve definitely talked about an ‘Alliance’ system, and even thrown around a basic design. This feature is lower in priority than some other guild needs, though, that were identified at the Guild Summit.

Gidoru: Currently in Huttball, certain classes have huge advantages, to the point where, without them, you have a considerably lesser chance of winning. The classes I speak of are namely Sages, Guardians, and their Imperial counterparts that are able to leap and pull across the map granting great mobility. Any chance of changes that prevent the ball carrier from using abilities like leap or being pulled?

Gabe Amatangelo (PvP & Endgame Designer): It is something we considered early in development of the map. However, we aimed to ensure every class had a role as opposed to effectively turning classes off when they carry the ball. Granted, some of those roles are not as obvious or have a steeper learning curve than simply getting the ball over the line (i.e. controlling the middle, cover defense, controlling hazard lines, etc.). The team composition win ratios suggest those roles are playing out for the most part. For example, teams with all Sages and Guardians do not even appear in the top 100 win ratios and the composition with the highest win ratios include a fairly even distribution of Advanced Classes. That, of course, is not an absolute conclusion, especially considering full team compositions rely on matchmaking. We’ll pay close attention to the variance in composition win ratio considering rating when full team queuing is enabled.

ZeusThunder: Why were the vendors removed from Warzones? They seemed to be harmless and the community didn’t appear to mind them.

Gabe: A number of players would queue up for a quick vendor/repair and leave the match to go back to whatever else they were doing. This impacted enough matches that the cons started to outweigh the pros. We plan on getting tech to disable the sell and repair functions on a vendor, at which time we’ll be able to justify turning them back on for those players who want to purchase consumables mid-match, etc.

HoboWithAStick: What is the reasoning behind letting some classes have moddable offhand items but not others? I find this to be a little unfair to those of us who mod absolutely every piece of gear possible to obtain the best results.

David Hunt (Systems Designer): It’s due to arcane technical details. There’s no direct design reason, although there are some awkward situations and implementation details to address. We’ve been talking about options for how to fix the inequality between offhand items recently, and we’re about to start R&D on a potential fix.

Paladinnight: I am wondering why the decision was made to allow PvP crafters the ability to buy the schematics for the PvP orange gear, versus obtaining the schematics similar to PvE players which are forced to play the reverse engineering game in the hopes of obtaining a schematic. This decision has resulted in an economy that the only crafted orange boots and gloves require the buyer to PvP. Could we possibly get schematic boxes purchasable via credits (or Black Hole commendations) added to the vendors? If this is not possible, can we at least be allowed to reverse engineer the Black Hole gear instead of only Campaign gear?

David: In either PvE or PvP, you need to consume a certain amount of that content to gain the appearance associated with the highest level gear. PvE and PvP will never have identical distribution mechanisms because of their inherently different progression. The PvP boxes were necessary to ensure that PvE gear wasn’t the best PvP gear due to the augment slot gap. In Game Update 1.2, this means there’s the inequality you mentioned for obtaining orange boots and gloves. There are ~75 new orange PvE hand and feet schematics in Game Update 1.3 (each). We can’t make schematic boxes for Campaign items, because it would conflict with the reverse engineered versions of those items.

I’d like to allow any gear to reverse engineer for discoveries, but there’s a limit to how many recipes players can acquire. We’re looking at ways to improve that and apply systems more universally, but it’s not currently possible. Only Campaign can be reverse engineered because if we make both a Campaign and Black Hole a reverse engineering recipe, they will be the same result with different names but they will both count against the upper limits.

Wookieluva: In a previous Q&A it was stated that there will be a way to add augment slots to existing items! I like the idea but was wondering about how it is planned to put it in. Would it be by adding a crafted item to the armor? Or would it be put in by some long-winded quest? Or both?

David: Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. Reverse engineering crafted items will give you the materials required to create augment kits. You can also see other previously answered questions and my answers in regards to this topic here.

Thanks for all of your questions, and thanks to the team for answering them. If you’d like to put forward a question for the next Q&A, please visit this Forum thread!

The moment I saw this video on this week’s Wall of Guilds I knew I had to snag it for us here in the Holovid Heroes series. It’s a fresh, original take on a guild promotional made for the Sanctum of the Exalted guild, Absolution and it’s maker, Anka, is enthusiastic about her work which pretty much spells the perfect start to a Friday for me.

Sanctum of the Exalted guild Absolution, is on the Holo-telly!

Why did you create the video/What was the purpose of the video?:

The purpose was like any other. Just something fun and flashy to display across the many websites we’ve sought to advertise our guild and draw people to the server. We are an RP server and our guild, Absolution, does support and encourages RP so the video played off of that where the character “Eldra Felding” is making a public broadcast to those across the galaxy willing to join forces for a similar cause. It also tied into a server wide, cross-faction storyline where one of the names she mentions “D’el Toro” was actually put to death by a fellow Sith guild. So for those on our server who partook in this two month long event could relate to the video.

You’ve made Machinima videos for WoW before. Is there some you would consider giving us a link to?

I love showing off my machinima! haha! I was known in WoW as “Moonora” and I used the machinima tag “The Mooing Druid”.  My biggest creation was a bi-weekly news cast that featured actual audio captured from our 25man raid teams and then had their characters machinimated over their voices. There were 10 episodes total. I cringe looking back at the first 3. I recommend watching 4 through 10 only. My favorite of them all is probably Episode 7.

In addition to my own created projects. I also had the pleasure of working with great people like Erunno from Blindman Studios, Varath of Blackhand Machinima, and Pykme of Pykme Productions. All three of these fellows were wonders and Varath still remains a dear friend of mine. Infact, I believe he also made the switch to ToR and is playing some EU server. I did a lot of voice work for them which included Dragon Begone, Veil of Corruption II, Return of the Ashbringer II, and Prelude: Forgotten by dtk is supposed to be released sometime soon that I voiced. Oh and an episode of Naruto Abridged by the TeamNinjaStar guys… I think it was Episode 10.

Which tools did you use?

I use FRAPS to record the ingame footage. Then it goes onto an edit line in Sony Vegas Pro.. The voice over you hear in this video gets recorded with Audacity, which is a free audio program. Sound quality can easily make or break your piece. So a long while ago when I was cast to voice my first big machinima I invested in a high quality microphone; a Snowball made by Blue to be specific. After that, it all just comes together with a little tender care and a lot of cursing when something you want to do, isn’t quite working, and after 10hours you finally give up and be content with doing it a different way. haha!

ABSOLUTION BROADCAST

Where is the footage from?

Machinima in ToR is very restricted compared to Warcraft. The fact that your /talk and when you send things in /say your character doesn’t have any animation or mouth movement makes this sort of artwork increasingly frustrating. It dawned on me that I could … possibly.. record one of the cut scenes where the character does have mouth movement. This was something I hadn’t yet seen, so I figured I’d give it a shot and see how it looked.  Lucky for me, my Twi’lek happened to be ready to turn in her next class quest on Nar Shaddaa. It’s from when you go to talk to that Hutt in the upper prom. Class quests are generally the longest self-speaking segments you can record, so I figured this would offer me a nice collection of animations I could then cut and slice to make the short video from.

Once I had the segment recorded. I then sat down and wrote my script and recorded my voice. When doing lip sync it’s much easier to match the video to the sound rather than matching your voice to the video (which is the case in anime dubbing– huge pain in the ass.) Lip syncing can always be tricky and quite honestly after a year of making the CBC Montage for my WoW guild, I got better each time with the episodes on making my voice or my guildies voice match to the lip movements of their toon.

I think in total I had about 4 speaking clips to work with, which totaled to about.. 10seconds of my toon actually speaking. The video is obviously much longer than that. So you use little tricks like close up shots and panning shots, and even reversing the video to make it look different. You then reuse the video over and over again, but it actually makes the viewer feel like there were far more different and unrepeated shots than there really were.

Music: Title/artist? Why did you pick this particular music?

I’d love to plug some great guys here. The creators of machinimasound.com created a site in 2009 I believe where they started to compose none-copy righted music, targeted specifically for free use by machinimators. They started and continue a great thing and it was wonderful for the community. So the music piece you hear in this video is from their site. Which song, I can’t remember, heh.

Were there any problems in the making of this video? What was the hardest part?

Any machinima takes a lot of time and sometimes a lot of extra people.The members of Absolution have been great and so has our allied Sith guild Vu’traat, about going to a particular location for an hour or two and taking direction from me over Mumble on where to be and what to do. Infact, I noticed you highlighted our Galactic Swoop Racing League on TORWars. I cut a promo video for that as well: SotE Community April 14th.

To be more direct as to ‘any part that was hardest’ getting the opening where the ship video is waving and the signal feed is appearing to struggle before straightening out, that was a bit tricky. I’m still not happy with it, but after about 12hrs of work I was to a point that I was just ready to be done with it. This was only the first video and there will be plenty more to come, where I’m sure I will improve upon.

Do you plan on making more videos? Do you know something you are going to be doing in a different way next time?

I do plan to make more videos. I can’t say that they will use these particular talking cut scenes. I’ve toyed with the idea but the reality is it would just take way too long to get all that video and be more of a headache to make it all fit and work.

If you bother to see any of my old work, again the CBC Montage, I will be creating something very similar to this design that will feature various members of Absolution, more specifically the members of our 8man raiding team “GorillaCats” and possibly some of our PvP teams as well.

Any general advice you would give to guilds making their first video?

Stay away from text. This has got to be my most number one hated thing about guild recruitment videos. When they throw a bunch of text over video or on the screen saying who they are, what they do, where they do it. It gets super annoying. I’d much rather listen and watch the screen than try to quickly read all that text and miss the artistic backgrounds or scenes behind it. Take the time and record yourself or a friend, or if you don’t have a good quality microphone or you hate the sound of your voice then by all means seek me out, Anka on Sanctum of the Exalted. I will be more than happy to lend my voice to any guild project or machinima for that matter. You can also friend me or message me through Enjin if your guild uses that site.

Stay away from copy righted music, such as popular radio songs. This also is perhaps a machinimato’rs biggest pet peeve. We all started somewhere, hell even my first machinima was a music video. But as you grow and learn from mistakes, just take the advice now… and don’t travel down this road. You might think it looks cool, but after the most popular song (This is War by 30seconds to Mars was hella popular in recruit videos when it first released, as an example) has been used by everyone from the core worlds to the outer rim, it starts to feel overused and can bring down the effect of your video piece.

The last bit of advice: Everyone has to start somewhere. Not all machinima or guild videos for that matter are good on their first go and no one starts off being super awesome. Just have fun with it. My first video wasn’t well received and I’ll be honest, it kinda crushed me and almost made me not continue honing those skills. If it hadn’t been for Erunno and the kind words of encouragement he left me, I likely would have never continued making videos and what you see today would have never been. Listen to the criticism, even the bad, and use it to improve.