The time has come again fellow TORWriters. Anthony Sproson (AKA Kellmorn) has planned out and set the dates for his latest Star Wars: The Old Republic Fan Fiction Competition. If the name sounds familiar, in addition to organizing fan fiction competitions, Anthony has written a few guest editorials, right here on everyone’s favorite fan site. [...]

“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!” — There is no better example of damage in the Star Wars galaxy than the scene attached to that quote. Each week in Fully Operational, join Kray as he takes a look at the damage dealing role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. And yes, we’ll blow up a planet if we get the chance.

Welcome again to another delicious dosage of Fully Operational. I’m Iron Chef Kray and today we’ll be making Flashpoint Souffle topped off with Operation Casserole, and if you’re lucky I’ll teach you about my secret Heroic Quest Pie. As always, before we start cookin’ with our DPS, I recommend putting on some excellent listening music.

With all the talk about The Old Republic’s development cycle compared to other games, the ever-present reminder that this game has *STORY*, and the excitement of leveling with companions, it’s easy to forget sometimes that this is a Massively Multiplayer Online game. That’s what I’m here to talk about today.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

First off I’m going to apologize for all the references I’m going to make to World of Warcraft in this article, but it’s a 12 million person community that has set a lot of industry standards, and pointing out where The Old Republic deviates from those standards is a good way to analyze their uniqueness. That said, you can expect grouping to be a whole lot easier in some aspects, and possibly a bit more difficult depending on how you look at it.

Grouping in TOR’s PvE scene is split up into 3 categories: Heroic quests, Flashpoints, and Operations. Heroic quests are pretty self explanatory and most MMO players should be familiar with the concept of a group quest. The spicy part is the fact that most times you and 2-4 friends embark to slay some enemy, you’ll walk into an instanced area. Think of these quests as mini-Flashpoints — you walk into an area specific to your group, take care of business within a few minutes, and reap the rewards. Fully fledged Flashpoints, on the other hand, are the standard instances/dungeons of TOR. These adventures take place in an entirely separate zone you’ll spend 30-60 minutes (or more) in fighting elite enemies and bosses, with a group of 4 people. Operations are the final stage, similar to WoW’s raids. Only accessible at max level, these 8 or 16 person encounters will provide the best gear.

Heroic quests are likely going to be an extremely common occurrence, with at least a “double digit” number of Flashpoints will provide a great boost of experience and gear. Needless to say, grouping up for these is going to be ideal on your way to level 50.

Group Composition

With BioWare pushing us towards groups, you may be groaning at the concept of having to find tanks and healers all the time, but worry not! The first thing of note is the fact that every class has companions, something I touched on last week.  If you’re trying to run a heroic quest or Flashpoint, especially at the lower levels, with yourself and another DPS buddy, call over a tank and healing companion, and you’ve got yourself a basic group. Companion-supported groups aren’t going to be optimal, but skilled damage dealers shouldn’t have an issue getting through most of the group activities for the first half of the game or so.

Unfortunately, there is a possible downside to the system BioWare has implemented, namely the concept of 4-person groups. You see, in many other MMOs a standard group consists of 5 players — 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 dps. In The Old Republic, we’ll only have 4 people, meaning that instead of each group having 3 dps, you’re cut down to 2. What this means is in order for groups to form easily, the community needs to be made up of around 25% tanks and 25% healers, instead of the 5-man model which only requires 20% tanks/healers. Simply put, less people per group means more groups are needed over the long haul, and that can be problematic. Blizzard has been combatting the issue of “everyone wants to blow stuff up, not heal or tank” since the launch of WoW, and hasn’t quite fixed it yet. Hopefully the interesting aesthetics and balancing of classes in TOR will make this a non-issue, but be wary that groups might be hard to find for a while. 8-man Operations are plagued by the same problem, and ironically it seems that the 16-man groups will be the easiest to flesh out, as most likely they’ll have 2-3 tanks, 3-4 healers, and 9-11 dps.

But Seriously, Why Bother?

If the credits and experience boost don’t get you excited to start running group content, let me talk about some other things to woo your mind. For the story-driven among you, the developers have stated that, in addition to your overarching class quest, Flashpoints have a cohesive story that makes sense as you level up. Essentially, as you get stronger you’ll be fighting more and more complex challenges that work together to form a gigantic story parallel to everything you do single player. Not only that, but Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager, recently confirmed that there are at least 10 Flashpoints going in the game at launch. Judging by the fact that we’ve only seen a handful of them, there’s going to be a LOT of cool stories to explore.

If you’re more pragmatic and loot-driven, then I’ll speak your language here. The boosts from heroic quests and Flashpoints are going to propel you towards Operations much faster than trying to do everything on your own, that’s been stated by BioWare. The thing is, they’re not just throwing us into groups and walking away. Every single Flashpoint will drop rewards from bosses, as we expect, but in addition you’ll receive commendations which you can use to buy equipment mods or brand new armor and weapons. Did ya run Black Talon 46 times and never see that lightsaber you wanted drop? Well, you’ve got a ton of commendations now, just go buy a shiny one from the Black Talon vendor! Operations work similarly, but in an even more fantastic way. Every time you down a boss in an Operation, instead of a few single pieces of loot dropping everyone has to fight over, each member of the group is rewarded with a loot bag, which can contain epic pieces of gear, rare mods, or a ton of commendations for the Operation vendor, where additional powerful items are available. Gone are the days of pieces of gear dropping that nobody needs — loot bags will only contain things useful to your class!

The social gaming aspect of The Old Republic is going to be absolutely amazing, and I for one can’t wait. With Guild Phase 2 recently starting, now’s the time to try to find a guild to throw your hat in with. Take a look at the Ask A Jedi and Ask A Sith guilds for some people to hang out with, I know I’ll certainly be rolling an alt there!

If you liked this article, be sure to check back next Friday for another regularly scheduled episode of Fully Operational. Can’t get enough of me? Follow me on Twitter for more updates and musings.

Gamepro has a sure-to-be-controversial ‘15 Best RPGs‘ list up today. While these types of “Best of the best” lists can never please everyone reading, I found this collection quite interesting. BioWare holds two positions in the top 10 including Dragon Age: Origins at #6 and Mass Effect 2 in the coveted #1 slot. Fallout: New [...]

PC Gamer today posted a Star Wars: The Old Republic “preview” in which one of their writers had a chance to play the game for an extended stretch, possibly as part of Game Testing.

The review chronicles the author’s adventures as a Smuggler up until level 10 and really seemed to enjoy it:

I’ve been levelling a smuggler character through TOR’s opening area of Ord Mantell and beyond. The smuggler class is meant to be Han Solo incarnate – a character archetype who relies on chucking grenades, blaster fire and barbed wit at the enemy.

Overall the preview is extremely positive, with the author describing his experience similar to what most of us have seen happen with a great MMO – time vanishes before your eyes while playing:

I’ve played The Old Republic at trade shows and at press events multiple times, and always come away impressed. But I’d never had the chance to disappear into the game properly. Here, with no distractions, I simply vanished into it. In six hours, I burned through from level one to level ten, barely looking up. It was a brilliant, brilliant experience – polished, flowing, with quests that smartly escalate and a story well told.

Head on over to PC Gamer for the full read, but be warned there are a couple story spoilers if you intend on playing the Smuggler!

PC Gamer has a new write-up previewing BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic which describes writer Tim Edward’s experience while playing a Smuggler through Ord Mantell and other areas. As the game gets closer and closer to release, those of us unlucky enough to simply be taunted with Beta Test e-mails will continue to eagerly [...]

Home world of Corellian Run Radio

Wish you could check out the starships or planets on your own, more than what you see in videos? Well folks now you can, with the help of the Unity Web Player. On Star Wars: The Old Republic website there is a new interactive galaxy map that allows you to explore the known planets and where they are in relation to each other.

More about the New 3D Galaxy Map after the Jump…

You can find the new Galaxy Map on the SWTOR website. The first thing you will need to do is install the Unity Web Player plug-in for your web browser. Be sure you bookmark the Galaxy Map or remember where you found it, as you will have to close out your browser, in order to complete the install. Once the install is finished, return to the new Galaxy Map and click on the Explore the Galaxy in 3D icon, located on the upper right of the page. A new window will open a loading screen, it does take a bit, but well worth it. After it is loaded you will see the Galaxy Map, at the top is a UI, with six buttons. I do not wish to ruin any of the surprise, but it is relatively easy to use. I found the information on the planets neat, while most is known, there are some interesting tidbits of knowledge. Each planet has a small video and a planet detail button to check out.

The most impressive feature, I found, was the starship feature. Located on the top UI, this feature allows you to see all the player starships. You can click on any starship and it will zoom in and offer some new options to check out along the bottom. There is a starship details button, like you find with the planets. It brings up a small description about the particular starship. The really neat feature is the ability to click and grab the starship and examine it from all angles. This may not seem like much until you are seeing the detail that is put into every inch of each starship.

Some might call all of this novel or a lot of fluff, and to a point true, but ask yourself this…If they are going to this much detail for an update and a feature on the website, what surprises are in store for us in the game?

The latest edition of G4tv’s weekly vodcast, The MMO Report, is online and in it host Casey Schreiner (lovingly?) insults Star Wars: The Old Republic. I believe it’s all in fun as Schreiner reports on SWTOR often and seems eager to play it – but I’ll let you be the judge. Have a view! PC [...]

MMOs are now a well understood, and pretty well developed genre. A number of MMOs have really brought the game up, and introduced new features to make gameplay easier, more convenient, and more fun. Overall, the development of the genre has been extremely positive. Of course, BioWare is implementing a series of unique features to [...]

Like the chisel-jawed Bounty Hunter above, my mind is on crafting. Not just the same old general stuff, but the specifics.

A few weeks ago I clearly stated the dysfunctional process I used to select my crew skills, and like a Krilhead I forgot one important factor.  In fact, I forgot RULE NUMBER ONE  in the Toydarian economic playbook: The Market Changes. (Note: This rule #1 is not to be confused with the time honored “you can sell anything that is not bolted down, and if you can pry it up it wasn’t really bolted down” which is more of a personal mantra than a rule for the Toydarian merchant class.) So I am announcing that the market has changed for me.  The Mrs. wants the toon created with her name as a Force user.  I could have sworn the video of the Gunslinger would have sold her, but nope. So back at the drawing board I find myself.

The change in starting class  is not the only impactful item that has crossed my economic line of sight. There might mean another strategy. It might mean there is an option to configure your Crew Skills for short-term gain as you level and then convert to the long-term strategy.

It might seem to some that I am obsessed, as this intercepted text message between Stephen Reid and BioWare's security head seem to discuss.

So without access the the game, I have to generate my ideas from what I can read, research from Stephen Reid’s trash cans and most importantly, discussions all of you.

To better understand/steal the thoughts of the genuises out there, and also to sort them out from the nerfherders my hope is a poll with some comments from you all might help.  I was curious about what crew skill configuration you were going with at launch.  The specifics of type is helpful, but more leaning towards what mix of Gathering, Crating and Missions are you leaning towards?  I am currently leaning towards traditional but could go hybrid with very little prompting.  When (or if) the NDA drops, my hope is that I can get more input from some people I trust so the final configuration choices can be made prior to Early Game Access.

Help a Toydrian out here, people!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

An update to the Star Wars: The Old Republic official site this week contains an interactive Galaxy Map added to the Holonet. With this new tool, you can explore five sections of the galaxy and view profiles of each of the planets. You can also view each planet, as well as each player starship, in [...]