Guild Deployment Details

Early Game Access is almost upon us and BioWare has started sending out email to guilds with their guild deployment details. BioWare also posted a short FAQ explaining how everything (related to Guild Deployment) works. Here's an excerpt:

Now that your guilds are in the game, ready to go, here’s everything you need to know about how Guild Deployment works.

How can I tell if/where my guild has been deployed?

Everyone will receive an email before Early Access with details about the status of their guild.

• If your guild was successfully deployed to a server, you’ll receive a link to the website that you can follow to find out what server your guild has been placed on.
• If your guild was not deployed to a server because it did not meet the qualifications for import, you will be able to create your guild manually in the game.

Server assignments through the Guild HQ system are final and cannot be changed, but you and your guild are not in any way required to play on the server where you were placed. We have pre-created assigned guilds on specific servers as a convenience to you, and these assignments may be ignored at your discretion.

Not really mentioned in the FAQ, but you can also search for guilds and on the guild page find out what server they're deployed on (which doesn't mean that they'll actually play on that server).

After the break a few more details (such as server lists collected in various places), but first I want to give a shout out to the SWTOR-RP.com community who have been in the progress of selecting a "megaserver" (well, two, one for EU and one for NA but I've only been keeping track of the EU one). They've decided that the "The Progenitor" EU RP-PvE (English) will be European roleplaying megaserver and invite all roleplayers to join them there to make as strong a roleplaying community as possible. I'll be looking to play on that server as well.

Read on after the break for a few more links.

As said with guild getting emails of their server these guilds have been sending this information along to sites collecting a list of servers. One of these is Darth Hater, but a cleaner (and from the looks of it more accurate) list is up at Ask A Jedi.

Over at IGN they have up an interview with James Ohlen about the beta, launch and the future. Here's an excerpt:

IGN: Moving forward might there be something like a group finder or something like that? An auto-finder implemented into the game?

James Ohlen Some people ask for a dungeon finder system but the thing about those systems is they're really for more of a mature online game. If you put a system in early on it really takes away from the exploration of the level up game. If you have people all just basically waiting around their dungeon finder and all being grouped up together, they're going to actually take the time to explore all the worlds that are available in the Old Republic galaxy. So it's definitely a feature that we want to put in, we just want to put it in at the right time. However, the looking for group feature is something that we continue to work on, we want to make that more robust and more powerful.

I really hope that they improve the LGF mechanics in the game, because last I saw in beta was people spamming the /general chat channel looking for groups. At the very least I would expect a dedicated LFG channel.

Anyway, SWTORHub has been busy again as well, posting a number of articles:

• [link] to Hyperspace 101 – A Guide to Space Travel in SWTOR at SWTORHub.
• [link] to Exclusive Legacy System Interview at SWTORHub.
• [link] to Space Combat Basics in SWTOR at SWTORHub.
• [link] to Character Stats Overview at SWTORHub.

The Legacy system interview (with Dallas Dickinson) is probably the most interesting of those so let me pull an excerpt from that:

Swtorhub: Say I’ve got two max level characters linked to the same legacy – will the advancement for both characters be an additive thing, or will all characters associated with that legacy share a universal progress bar?

Dallas: It will be shared, but it is also within one server. So you can have a character off on a PvP server and that won’t be associated with a character you have on some completely different PvE server. But within the same server environment it will be shared between characters on the same account.

The whole point of the system is to make sure that they’re linked and that you can be progressing your legacy regardless of which one you’re playing.

Based on that quote I can understand why they made it server-specific (i.e. PvP getting in the way of a good thing again), but I still feel that this will just make it a big disincentive for players to play on other servers with their friends there, weakening the bonds players have to the game in general and making them leave that much sooner. Imagine the awkwardness if you and a friend play on different servers, you both have a Legacy you're working on on that server and neither really wants to switch server to play with the other.

Anyway, on a different topic while SWTORHub had a basic space combat guide up, SWTOR Face posted an Advanced Combat Guide Video:

Looks like Space Combat gets pretty tricky (and I was already having trouble keeping track of everything that goes on).

And finally, before I head to bed and try to sleep hoping that I get into the Early Game Start tomorrow (I should, as I registered day 1), it seems that BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk got himself a SWTOR tattoo:

I'm not really one for tattoos, but that's... some dedication. "Launch tattoo" to go with his "launch beard"... <snickers>

And that's it for the moment.

[link] to guild server compilation at Ask A Jedi.
[link] to guild server compilation at Darth hater.
[link] to interview with James Ohlen at IGN.
[link] to advanced combat guide video at SWTOR Face.
[link] to Dr. Greg Zeschuk's SWTOR tattoo at Kotaku.