With Star Wars Celebration imminent and anticipation high for the SWTOR Community Cantina I thought this week I’d indulge in something a little different. For the solo SWTOR player, there is a vast reserve of things to do, places to explore and stories to experience. Indeed, this blog was created to point out some of those very things. But SWTOR is also a multi-player game, and many of the experiences I’ve had with guild-mates, friends and even strangers remain some of my most enduring memories of this game.
I don’t want to turn this into a boring laundry list of remember-whens, but I do want to share a few stories.
Line Forms Here
Two of SWTOR’s original events were one-time only affairs. The Rakghoul event was completely revamped when it returned, but the Grand Acquisition Race or the “Chevin Event” happened once and never again. To be honest, I don’t have strong memories of the event itself, mainly that it involved mini-games and collecting tokens. One of the games was a sort of remote controlled car race on a track that was set up on the Promenade of Nar Shaddaa. This was not in an instanced area and only one person could run the race at a time. So what did the rest of us do? We waited in line. And it was great.
During the summer of 2012, SWTOR was not in a good place. The already low population was spread out across more servers than the game ever needed, and it was an open question whether the game would make it a year. Servers would be consolidated that fall, but at the time of the event, my server Shien was pretty quiet. The wait to run the race for the Chevin Event turned out to be a rare moment to socialize with those hardy few who were still playing. Folks were joking and chatting. Yes, there was the occasional flat-shoed fool who was too cool for the queue and tried to cut the line, but generally people were happy to hang out in a crowd for a change. Shien was an RP server and, in my experience, folks tended to be mellower and more social than I encountered in other places. Maybe that’s why we were less predatory about needing the to click the button and go first.
The coming server mergers gave players a much-needed shot in the arm, and I was proud to call Ebon Hawk home after that, but hanging with folks on Nar Shaddaa during the Chevin Event remains one of my favorite things from my time on Shien.
Clean Sweep
A more recent event was not prompted by something that happened in game, but by Swtorista’s 50,000 YouTube Subscribers celebration. To celebrate, Swtorista amassed the galaxy’s largest supply of Sweep emotes and passed them out freely on a Saturday afternoon on the Republic fleet. The sight of Carrick station overflowing with dozens and dozens people in every direction all diligently swabbing the deck and having a good time in chat and Discord is one the most fun things I’ve done in SWTOR and a fitting celebration of Swtorista whose contributions to the community are second to none. Ted at the State of the Old Republic calls Swtorista the hardest working woman in SWTOR, and I’d call that an understatement.
Afterwards, I also had the honor of being invited to Kid Lee’s post event stream where he and Swtorista interviewed a whole bunch of SWTOR content creators including yours truly. I’d never been interviewed before, and I think I got a little flustered and pooched at least one of the questions. (Of course there are easter eggs in the Aurebesh of the game! It’s the whole reason I started this blog. D’oh!) But I hope my enthusiasm for the game came through. It’s a testament to SWTOR’s community that Swtorista celebrated her success by promoting others.
Dreadful Slayin’
Not long ago, Marcus from the Working Class Nerds podcast was challenged to assemble a team to take on the Dreadful Entity, the secret boss in Hard Mode Terror From Beyond. This set in motion the task of farming masks, essences and amulets from Dreadtooth in Section X. Dozens of people chipped in and in the end three guilds: my guild New Outriders, the Bad Feeling Podcast and Alea Acta Est teamed up for the fight against the Entity. The fight itself is no great shakes; basically you avoid standing in lightning while fighting a ball of lightning that zaps everyone with lightning. But it was cool to see so many people (much more than the sixteen who got the kill) come together for a common goal. Marcus got an amulet and 100,000,000 credits, but the rest of us got some neat titles and achievements, a reminder about the importance of using master looter when pugs are involved, and some fun stories to tell. My great little guild New Outriders isn’t big enough to tackle 16 man secret bosses these days, and I’m glad we could be a part of the action.
If you’re in Chicago this weekend, meet your fellow players at Celebration or the Cantina event. If you’re in a flashpoint, be excellent to the other people in your group. If you’re in an operation be glad when someone else gets an upgrade. If you’re filling space in a ten stack Dreadtooth run don’t be a dick and instead pass the amulet to the guy who organized the group and supplied the essences. Be someone who makes the game memorable and fun for others, and I betcha it will be for you too.
RAFFLE TIME!
As a part of the SWTOR Fan Community, the good people at Bioware and Swtorista have provided me a code which can be redeemed for free 30 Days of SWTOR Game Time and I’m pleased to be running my first raffle! To enter leave a comment to this post below! I’d love to hear about your favorite SWTOR community story, your favorite Aurebesh sign or what you most want to learn about at this weekend’s SW Celebration. Make sure you let me know how to contact you if you win: include your character, faction and server name and I’ll mail you the code in game. If you prefer twitter, include your twitter handle and I’ll send it that way. If you’d rather not comment publicly, I’ll also accept entries via email at twia@generic-hero.com.
We’re on the honor system here, so one entry per person, please.
I’ll choose a random winner from all submissions during the Conquest reset Tuesday April 16th.
I’ll see everyone on the other side of what should be a big, big weekend!
Winner! Winner!
UPDATE! Congrats to Marcus for winning the raffle! I’ll get your code to you today. Thank you to everyone who commented, I very much appreciate it!
Love the Blog!!! I have learned so much!
Huh, I totally don’t remember there being a remote-controlled car. Though I do remember the whole “standing in line while waiting for everyone to take their turn” thing (I wrote about it at the time).
Some of my favourite community stories in SWTOR came from pugging heroics in the early days. I also wrote some of them down, such as here, here or here. (Yeah, I’m linking my blog, but no need to re-write the whole story when I already did so once!) I just loved how people in these groups were always so good-natured and chatty. I think there’s somewhat less of that now with most of the group-finding being automated and levelling heroics no longer a thing.
When I looked at the old Dulfy guide for the Chevin event I was surprised by how little of it I remembered doing. By contrast I can still recall things I did for the very first Rakghoul event earlier that year. Looking at Dulfy, the race was a part of the A New Lead quest; and it was less interactive then I recalled. I guess there’s a good reason why Bioware never brought back that event.
I’m with you on the old Heroic-4s. I leveled with a friend back in the day and heroic-4s were legitimately challenging at level and a fun change of pace from the story. Unless they’ll score Conquest points I avoid heroics now. Now that that we have a new Heroic-4 on Ossus, I hope we’ll see more.
I confess I don’t do many Group Finder flashpoints these days. I’m so done with Hammer Station, and that’s mostly what pops for me these days. It’s shame that a new player might miss out on the fun of group flashpoints because they’re forced into solo mode or pressured to spacebar if they want to watch the cut scenes.
During Life Day one year, I took the Vectron JO-1Y and my Life Day Vestments to Tython. I was feeling festive, so started handing out basic synth-woven armour sets to players with low achievement scores and some credits. Then I decided to make it a game and asked players in General Chat to come and find me (with clues) and I’d reward them with prizes, such as Cartel Market items I had laying about in my cargo hold. Not only did I get way more participation than I expected, but others started giving away their items as well in the spirit of creating good, wholesome fun on SW:TOR. It was just heartwarming to see people come together and find ways to make everyone enjoy themselves and give players arriving on Tython for the first time a sense of what the community is really like.
Another one that came back to me as I put this down was one of my first times playing through the Esseles flashpoint. Out of nowhere, one of the party members just starts role-playing after one of the cutscenes. Midway through we were *all* role-playing the entire thing until the end and to this day it is one of the most enjoyable runs of a flashpoint I’ve ever had.
Mahtt | Republic | Darth Malgus
That really neat. It’s neat when lots of folks get into the spirit of things. Thanks for your comment!
Great stuff, I’m hoping with the addition of Dantooine they’ll start implementing more events. If I’ve said it once I’ll say it a thousand times, I would LOVE a Halloween time Dathomir/Nightsister event. That’s just me though haha
Oh, yes! A spooky Halloween event would be cool. Using the Nightsisters would be appropriate too. They hate everybody!
I have only been playing the game seriously for 2 years. So far I have enjoyed helping my fellow guild member Marcus get the stuff he needed to do the Dreadful Entity run. As far as bigger community it has been awesome to see everyone making a small group to help accomplish the Ossus daily a little quicker. This will be my first live cantina and I am really excited about seeing and talking to the people that I have been fighting in unranked pvp, grouping up with on Ossus, and even people who I run ops with or have filled in on ops teams that I am on.
Love this post. Personally I wasn’t playing during the first Gree or Rakghoul events, but I have enjoyed the life day event and a couple years ago I actually met my old guildmaster(she passed the guild to me when she quit SWTOR) during the Nightlife event. I have met so many friendly and amazing people through this game. It has truly been a motivator on not only my darkest days but on some of the brightest ones too.
Mr’maes’two | Republic | Satele Shan
I appreciate all your hard work and always being willing to explain the inner workings of all that is SWTOR. It has been and continues to be an honor to run with you!