Nightmare Pilgrim World Boss downed

As always it’s nearly impossible to confirm independently, but I got a message from Khaotikk about a potential Oceanic first:

Hey Guys,

Last night Not Steamboat (The Swiftsure – Empire) killed “The Nightmare Pilgrim” world boss which to our knowledge is an Oceanic First.

XXX is the link to a screenshot showing the 5 hour +50 stats buff along with the codex entry.

And the screenshot in question:

So – gratz to Not Steamboat! Anyone else want to jump in and say the’ve done this?

The Order: Keeping your Guild Motivated in Preparation for 1.2


Welcome again to The Order, where we talk about raiding and guilds on the oceanic horizon. If you’ve got a topic you’d like covered, drop Rick a line and we’ll work on it for a future column.

Tonight I sit here writing my post for TOROZ with a lot of game rants on my mind. 1.2 is incoming with some amazing changes to come into place, but in reality we already knew all these goodies were coming. It wasn’t about what was coming, it was about WHEN it was going to get here.  Rather than write the cliche – this is whats going to affect guilds and progression with changes etc etc blah blah – instead  I sit here with a Corona in my hand (Corona with Tabasco Sauce – you should try it!) recognizing the bigger picture that is on all our minds. How the hell to stay motivated but at the same time prepare your guild for radical changes in guild focus and progression so that it survives the holy holy saviour patch of our beloved game without fading away! And believe me, there will be guilds out there that will do just that – simply fade away in the progression stampede. That is of course, if 1.2 actually drops in time to save it entirely.

 Part 1 – Motivation

I was on a Facebook group of oceanic players today and an interesting “debate” sparked from a certain player expressing his concerns for the future of SWTOR.. mainly fuelled by the fact that his guild had cleared all content and had nothing else to look forward to. Sadly, this is a common scene for many people. When people get bored, that’s  when fights start. But through the trolling and fighting, a common theme did become apparent – people are dropping off the game because of the lack of objectives and focus and things to do.

If you are a GM like me, you will most likely be in the same boat and thinking that it aint all that bad. Im not bored. Why? Because we are hard at work preparing, researching and helping others to prepare. But unfortunately, not everyone is a GM. People need focus and objectives to be motivated. So here are some ideas that I believe will assist you not only to bond your guild closer together before the cataclysm (no WoW pun intended) but at the same time, bring your guild benefits all the while giving people motivation to keep playing.

1.       You want it harder? Make it harder.

Do HM’s with 2 people. Do 8 man Hard Mode Ops with 6 people. 16 with 12. You get the gist. Make it harder for yourselves for no better reason but bragging rights. Why? Because although you are fully geared and you know the fights like the back of your hand, it gives people a sense of fulfillment. All the while, the gear that drops will fund your new guild bank. Also, change your spec and loot gear for dual spec, if you haven’t already.  Why, you ask? Well when dual spec of some form comes in, youll be ahead already with multi sets of gear.

2.       Crew Skills strategically dispersed.

Your “professions”  are getting changed, dramatically, so it makes sense to put together a group of people in the guild to cover every type of crew skill, mission and gathering type and make sure it’s all at 400. One of the core intentions of the changes to crew skills is to inject the in-game economy with more variety than just biochem products – and to also make MONEY to pay for all the other shiny things!!  You might have 6 million credits but with new credit sinks coming into the game, you will need to save all of it. Get a group together, and while you do your elite 6 man Operations, collect the schematics and start creating them all. Save the gear, and inject the GTN with it when 1.2 drops. You’ll thank me later, and so will your guild bank when it’s getting leeched dry from repairs when Explosive Conflict HM drills you (yes we hope so!).

 3.       Kill all the world bosses as a whole Guild – All levels.

I know they are easy,  but theyre fun. Nothing screams “These guys are amazing and I want to join this guild” more than running through every planet killing World Bosses as a 20-30 man unit and having fun along the way. Don’t forget to close recruitment and make it by application only before you do it, because everyone who sees you will want to be in your guild and you will never need to advertise for members again. While you are there, get all the datacrons and matrix cubes too. Then if you do all the, raid an enemy faction citadel. Operations are so serious at times when you group. Take the time to parade around as a unit and have some fun. Why else do you think even Armies march, Police have parades etc, it’s all about feeling good and bonding and being seen. Psychologically it will help your boredom, motivation and of course, the presence and morale of the guild.

4.       Last but not least, PVP as a unit.

Ranked warzones will come in with 1.2 and the 8 man unit for PVP will become a common theme. Learn to put together strategic units to PVP with and move as a group. Not only will you become more in tune with each other but being oceanic and all, you  probably feel the stagnant lack of PVP Warzones popping during our evenings on US servers. By grouping up, you make Warzones pop more frequently so  its good for everyone to get ahead! So get in your groups of 4, make sure you click join queue as a group at the same time as each other so that the chances that  your groups end up in the same Warzone is enhanced,  and makes the most of the extra valor and commendations. By doing it in groups together, even scheduling it in your calendars, you won’t only be preparing your guild for the new inevitable PVP Warzone beast when 1.2 drops, but you’ll be killing time and giving your Ranked Groups better opportunities to succeed too.

So these are the 4 main things I know I will be doing to maintain motivation and focus in “The Order”.  If you have any more ideas, feel free to share. But rather than do something negative like share your already apparent and mutually shared disdain for the lack of things to do… spreading this negativity to your oceanic brothers and sisters, why not take the time to assist yourself, your guild and the game in general by making the most of the situation. 1.2 will be here very soon. Personally I don’t think it can wait till end of April, do you?

This is what I told my guildies last week: “I will be very very surprised if 1.2 drops this coming Tuesday. However, I will not be surprised at all if it drops the following week.”

What are your thoughts? – Part 2: Key Points in Preparing for 1.2 will be soon to follow – that is of course if 1.2 doesn’t drop before then, but if it doesn’t, and you do even some of the things above, you probably won’t care if it doesn’t  anyway 😉

The Order: Preparing your Guild for Operations.

Welcome again to The Order, where we talk about raiding and guilds on the oceanic horizon. If you’ve got a topic you’d like covered, drop Rick a line and we’ll work on it for a future column.

If you are an astute GM, you will have levelled/recruited a squad of at least 8 players to start attempting to clear the different raids, or as they are called in SWTOR, Operations.

Why Operations?

It’s a good question. What motivates players to educate, co-ordinate and then clear high-end Operations? Why not just focus on Flashpoints, space missions or even PvP? Why are Operations time and time again the core focus of so many guilds out there? The main reasons that come to mind are these:

Gear: The best gear in the game comes from the most challenging instances.
Renown: In many games and of course SWTOR, guilds are measured by their progression through end-game PvE content.
Challenge: Nothing beats the challenge of being in sync with a large group of players and beating the various different mechanics a boss will put you through.

However, not all guilds are successful in completing many of these Operations. Many guilds have been torn apart by failing at similar instances in other games and in SWTOR, the same pressure to succeed applies. Failure too many times usually results in your members leaving to join other more successful guilds – it’s a selfish MMO reality. However, when you achieve results as a team, the feeling is amazing – it bonds your members together and breeds loyalty and attracts new members.

Most people who play MMOs know all about end game raiding. So I am not going to harp on about what it is and why it is such a core focus for people. Instead, we are going to cover what the general requirements are for starting to raid in Operations in SWTOR.

So what are some of the basics requirements to begin SWTOR Operations with your guild?

Eternity Vault:

  1. For the most part, you want your DPS/Healers to have their main stats around 1150-1250 for their main stat. You do this by running Hard Mode Flashpoints to gear up to an adequate standard. Crafted implants and moddable gear can also be used to achieve this benchmark.
  2. You should only need 1 tank for this whole instance. This allows you to stack 5 DPS and 2 Healers into your group. Just make sure your tank has great survivability. High-end Flashpoints such as Kaon Under Siege and False Emperor are great test runs for your tank. Directive 7 is a great benchmark for your healers.
  3. Prepare your squad by hording Stims, Adrenals and Medpacks. Biochem is your friend! And research the boss fights. Make sure your squad is all watching the same source video or walkthrough so you all know what you are meant to be doing. For progression, we stopped for 5 minutes prior to each boss to enforce that all members had watched the video and re-watched it.
  4. Plan well – set realistic expectations. “The Order” is clearing EV Normal in about 40 minutes flat now that it is on farm. However, for your first run with freshly geared members, you will want to allow yourselves atleast 3 hours.

Karagga’s Palace:

  1. This is definitely a harder Operation. You will want your main stats to be around 1200-1300 – your secondary stats should be well on their way to maxxed out too, not including diminishing returns.
  2. You will need 2 tanks for this. A main tank and an offtank for the second, third and fourth bosses. Then 2 Healers and 4 DPS which are in minimum Tionese/Columi. Centurion PVP gear won’t usually cut it.
  3. Unlike EV, KP has a lot more trash and you will need to be on your toes on some of the trash pulls. Use Crowd Controlling skills and good communication as you WILL wipe if you lower your concentration.
  4. Allow around 3-4 hours on your first run of this. On farm, you should get this down to 80-100 mins.

Remember, in Normal Mode Operations, most gear loot is chosen and distrubuted to you by the game itself. We still use Master Looter, but this is merely for distributing other loot which the game deems non class-specific.

By running Normal Mode, your goal will be to completely gear your squad with Columi (Tier 2) PVE gear. However, you can accomplish this objective as well by running Hard Mode Flashpoints. Don’t ask me why Bioware created it this way – perhaps they wanted to go easy on the opening generation of players. Another thought is there is a bigger picture behind it. If how the gear looks is anything to go by, upcoming expansions and content will be something craved for quickly.

It was intended that the Normal Modes be easy enough for pick up group players or “PUGs”. This was so that everyone could at least experience the storyline without a guild. Also, for most guilds, the skill level of Normal Mode serves as a  “training” version of the actual Operation.

Our next article will be about moving past the Normal Modes and into the Hard Mode version of the Operations. Until then, good luck! If you have any Operation-specific questions focused around guild preparation or organisation, please feel free to drop me a line!

2012 SWTOR Guild Summit: Evidence of Longevity

With Day 1 of the 2012 SWTOR Guild Summit totally done and dusted (our coverage of the key panels here, here, here,here and here), there’s one very striking theme that resonated with me.

SWTOR is here for the long haul.

A lot of you will rightly say “what, you only just worked that out?”. I suppose I’ve always realised this is a game that has a good lifespan ahead of it, but today’s panels really brought home the depth and breadth of developments BioWare are working on in relation to the game. Sure, any MMO has never-ending development requirements and yes, there’s no shortage of stuff some people argue should have been in the game before launch anyway.

All that aside, the amount of new stuff on the horizon, whether officially on the development roadmap or on the “wall of crazy” referred to during the day, is enormous. I see that as nothing but a sign of a game that has a lot of fun twists and turns ahead.

Another encouraging observation was the obvious interplay between members of the Dev team. Although like any team there’d be tensions and conflicts, there was an obvious robust respect between the panel members and humorous comments where there were philosophical differences in approach to the game. Assuming it wasn’t a front (and I doubt it was given how long the panels went for and the obvious good humour), this also bodes well for the game.

So for me overall, the Guild Summit is more than just an event for BioWare to schmooze some of the more hardcore players in the game. It’s also been an interesting illustration of an engaged development team and a long list of future improvements to the game which should see its viability continue for a long time yet.

Do you agree?

SWTOR Guild Summit: ‘And The Rest’

Daniel Erickson covers off the final session where it’s open slather on anything not covered previously:

The details disclosed:

– 1.2: new daily missions on Corellia
– “Unify to Chest’ option is back i.e. makes gear look more integrated with chest to a voice ‘Power Rangers’ look
– higher resolution textures
– duel / multi-spec: coming in two parts
– first part: switch between skill tree builds
– when do we got more story? “This year”

Q&A

– Ilum bonus quests: turn XP into some other type of reward at 50? Unsure at this stage due to cash flow impact into economy
– TOROZ (David’s) interview with Gabe last week gets a mention as far as realm versus realm PvP: something BioWare wants to do but no ETA
– Additional mechanics and rewards in Nightmare modes
– Cross-faction communication cross-server: infrastructure not there now but something BioWare wants to do. “Down the road a bit”.
– Cross-faction communication could be tied into Legacy setup
– Battle res for Troopers and Bounty Hunters: no plans
– Pod racing / Swoop racing: would love to do it but lots of other priorities. That said, full designed already done for a bunch of SWTOR mini-games
– Balancing factions on servers: Legacy part of resolving that. also cooler outfits for endgame Republic progression
– impact of legacy on encouraging single-faction guilds to play outside guilds: “good feedback”, may need to prioritise work on adversary guild features, want to ensure legacy system doesn’t impact guilds
– Ability to change rank of guild leader from default: “noted”
– PvP backfilling people who leave a Warzone – being worked on for 1.2 plus further incentivisation of staying in a match
– Same gender romance: it’s coming, with story updates. Relies of writer lead times, want to do it right. Always wanted to do these romance arcs but was a budget decision. It’s coming this year with large story update.
– Going back to origin planets: will be putting daily hubs there where appropriate.
– Ability to turn off environment effects to make game run better on lower-end machines: yes a team working on making the game run better. 1.1.5 going live tomorrow should also assist with this. That team is being kept alive to deliver further improvements. Also includes optimisation for higher-end machines where issues exist.
– Still no official plan for a Mac port
– Epic weapon/gear quests: not in 1.2 but something we want to do, some surprises to come, including interesting legacy related quests

SWTOR Guild Summit: Legacy information

We’re pleased to throw Toby, our day-shift news droid into the fray to report some of the highlights from Day 1 of the Guild Summit. Thanks Toby! And damn you day jobs, damn you!

Hi, Toby here, reporting from the guild summit live stream. Here’s the key bits from the legacy panel:

The details disclosed:

– buffs unlocked for every companion quest line completed
– although not in 1.2, a ‘Grey’ alignment will have its rewards, just like ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ side alignment
– social rank unlocks: can dance with companion, ‘brawling abilities’ for unarmed duels
– RP packs to go along with new emotes
– most legacy unlocks can not only be earned but can also be purchased
– cooldown reductions for Fleet Passes
– new Sprint level (Bounty Hunters via their Rocket Pack, the rest via ‘rocket boots’
– training dummies – including Warzone and Operations dummies
– Repair Atsromech on your ship – will repair, buy and sell your items
– Neutral GTN terminal and mailbox on your ship! (The GTN terminal option is “VERY” high up the legacy system)
– Any legacy items can be mailed to your other toons, including cross-faction
– Unique Orange items only available via Legacy
– the future: customising your alt experience e.g. buy speeder license earlier than currently available

Q&A

– character transfers ‘not in immediate future’ but will be able to meld legacies
– no specific plan to allow sharing of legacies with other players but it’s on the list to do
– yes you will be able to use Force Choke on Republic side (via Legacy unlock)
– yes a WoW Barber shop equivalent is on the table but a ways off
– shared alt bank space (legacy bank) is on the timetable, so set date
– no plans for additional character slots, related to legacy or otherwise
– 1.3: can buy buffs for XP for things you like doing (see character customisation above)
– no present plans for bind to legacy gear dropping in PvP / Flashpoiints / Operations
– dual spec: ‘multi-spec’ is coming and likely to be tied to legacy system – well after 1.2 though
– spec being written to allow for both character and legacy name changes (likely to cost or have some other ‘gate’)
– maximum legacy level cap is 50 but definitely expandable
C2-N2 will have a voice restraining bolt
– companions can’t go in legacy family tree at this stage
– cosmetic ship upgrades are in the future but not necessarily tied to legacy
– non-Force users can only use legacy unlocked Force buffs if there’s another Force user in the family

SWTOR Guild Summit 2012: full details released for Day 1

Bioware have just posted all the details of the Guild Summit starting this Monday (US time). More than 150 guilds are scheduled to be there, so it should be one interesting shindig.

For those of us unable to attend (and we’d love to hear from anyone that is attending), there’s the option of viewing a live stream of the first day’s proceedings via this link.

Now for some time conversions in AEDT (subtract 3 hours for AWST and add two hours for NZDT):

3am Tuesday 6th March – Welcome and Introductions
3:30AM – State of the Game and Game Update 1.2 Presentation
Break (Livestream offline from 4am to 7am)
7am – Operations and Flashpoints Discussion
7:45am – Player vs. Player Discussion
8:30am – Legacy Presentation
9am – Economy and Crew Skills Discussion
9.30am – Roleplayer’s Discussion
10am – Guild Features Discussion
10:30am – User Interface Presentation
11am – …And The Rest

So the start of proceedings isn’t too friendly time zone-wise but if you’re keen and don’t mind getting up early you can catch most of the day’s discussions.

Over to you: will you be attending? We’ll have Toby from our team providing reports / updates from the stream from 7am, so if you can’t jump on the stream yourself, you’ll at least be getting the key info.

The Order: Your Guide to Guilds and Progression

We’re really pleased to introduce another new member of the TOROZ team. Rick Duff is a self-confessed stealer of Stormtroopers and he’ll be writing on guilds and raid progression. Welcome Rick!

In our game, SWTOR, and the countless other MMO genres out there, guilds are an integral and core part of the game. Can you imagine an MMO without organized groups? Unheard of! A guild can make or break the game for you. It can help you progress as a player, it can keep you motivated, it can even bring you closer socially to others who you would not usually associate with in real life.

Without a doubt, guilds are a driving factor and are important to everyone. Unless of course you want to be like Yoda and exile yourself in the Dagobah System. Still, without association or people, we would not have MMOs. So it then makes sense that for such an important part of our game, we created a section here on TOROZ dedicated to Guild Management and Progression. As we are imperfect human beings (well maybe not me…) we must remember that associating and co-operating with other individuals will have its own pitfalls and its rewards too.

My name is Rick. I am the Co-Founder and Co-Creator of a successful End Game Raiding Guild which I will refer to as “The Order” in this column. This name however, is not our actual guild name as this section is not about drawing attention to my own guild but rather, sharing and discussing management and progression tactics with the Oceanic Community.

“The Order” dates back to the MUD days and followed onto EQ, WoW and today, is alive and thriving on the US SWTOR Server called Krath. At the time of writing this, we have a total squad of 42 fulltime and casual core raiders made up of Australians and Americans. “The Order” has always been a non hardcore guild. Rather, we stand for being ‘Social Serious’ – a genre which is socially accommodating  yet when it comes to Operations, is serious enough not to be called casual.

I am no expert at all the facets of guild life, but I would hope I have a little bit of freedom to speak about the common principles and experiences of guilds in general.

Guild: n.

  1. 1.     An association of persons of the same trade or pursuits, formed to protect mutual interests and maintain standards.
  2. 2.     an organization, club, or fellowship
  3. 3.     an association of men or women belonging to the same class or engaged in the same industry, profession, interested in the same leisure, literary, or other pursuit, etc.

As our common dictionary defines above; guilds, clans, squads, groups, chapters etc are a systematic and organized way of socializing and progressing in a game. There are hundreds of non-MMO games out there which have systems in place to accommodate groups of people with like-minded pursuits.

It must be known however, that there is no right or wrong way to run a guild. There is no handbook and there is no specific way to create and run a successful clan. Rather, we will be sharing the positive and trending ways that are successful when it comes to managing and progressing with a goal of hopefully creating a richer experience for all people out there who play SWTOR.

Many people have asked me in the past, “What does it take to run a successful guild?”. To be honest, there is no simple answer, however it can be summarised and will no doubt be covered in more detail here on “The Order” as time goes on. If I had a gun to my head and had to answer quickly, these are the main things which come to mind:

The Guild Cycle of Success

  1. A Dedicated Leader
    Julius Caesar was not a part-time Commander of the 13th Legion. He lived it. He was involved with it and he fought with it. Although this may sound over-dramatic, there are some principles we can learn here. The success of a guild starts with the vision and investment of its GM. Just like any corporation in the world today, if you start it up and then not invest time and effort into it, it will fail. Which leads to the next point:
  2. Planning and Organisation 
    This is the single most important key to running a guild, especially end-game progression guilds. The level of planning and organisation will obviously be dependent upon the size and needs of a guild (common sense) but just like any group or body of people, a form of organisation and a vision or direction is needed to progress and manage expectations. Unfortunately, you can’t wing it:
  3. Motivation
    Ahhh.. why are these people even bothering to be in your guild? Is it because they like the fancy name plate they gain above their head? Well, it could be, but you can be assured that novelty will wear off very fast in the end-game if you do not have a common purpose or vision. Guild members are human after all – they have needs and wants and a desire to succeed. Having a clear direction and a plan of action will motivate people to work together towards the common goal and keep them in your guild and not leave to somebody else’s. It is the feeling of success through commitment to achieve these things, whatever you set them to be, which encourages  the next point:
  4. Loyalty
    Ultimately, nobody wants to create a fantastic organisation and have nobody to share it with. To what benefit is it, if all your members leave you? Loyalty is important for your guild’s survival and sometimes a GM can forget that his/her guild is pointless and useless unless it has a happy, successful body of members who believe in what the guild stands for. Which brings us back to the first point and the cycle repeats. How can a person be committed and loyal to something when the person/people running it are not dedicated and focused themselves? If you are not a dedicated GM fully committed  to your guild, you cannot expect your members to be.

And so, as time goes on, this column will discuss the many different and successful ways to build and maintain and address issues in guild management. The slant will no doubt hinge on end-game progression but the principles can be applied to other types of guilds too.

There will also be a monthly Guild Interview which will showcase a chosen Oceanic Guild, their Leaders and Officers and discuss their successes and motivations. If you are a Guild Leader yourself and need some advice or would like to have an issue or principle discussed in “The Order”, or if you would like to apply for your Guild to be interviewed in front of the whole Oceanic Community, please contact us at contact AT toroz.com.au or use our contact form.

Ultimately, the greatest benefit of a guild is: if you aren’t in one, you are only experiencing a fraction of what the game is. And after all, we’re here to experience the game in its entirety.

SWTOR Guild Summit: live streams to be available

Some good news for guilds and other interested parties who won’t be attending the Guild Summit in the flesh. BioWare have announced that there’ll be live streams available to allow people to watch proceedings and in some cases also participate:

Thank you to all of the guild leaders who submitted applications to attend the first Guild Summit in Austin. We are currently reviewing guild applications and will be responding back to everyone who applied in the next few days.

For those who are unable to attend the Guild Summit for one reason or another, we’re very happy to announce that we will be providing a livestream of select events during the Guild Summit, including developer presentations and feedback discussions. These livestreams will allow players from around the world to observe and participate in some of the event discussions as well. As a reminder, the Guild Summit will be conducted in English, but anyone can join in on the livestream regardless of their location. If you can’t watch the livestream during the Summit, we’ll also be publishing videos of the panels after the event has ended. As we get closer to the event, we’ll provide more details for how you can get involved. Stay tuned!

For oceanic guilds: please let us know if you’ve applied to go in person and get accepted to attend – we’d love some reports and pics from on the ground and are happy to remunerate you for your time.

Just drop David a line.

SWTOR Guild Summit March 2012

BioWare have announced a guild summit to be held in Austin Texas between the 4th and 6th of March this year i.e. in just under 9 weeks time. It’s an invite-only event but they have some places left if you can get yourself over to the US at your own expense in March.

Read on for the full details:

Today, we are pleased to announce the first ever Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Guild Summit, being hosted in Austin, TX in March. Over the course of a few days, guild leaders from around the world will gather together to discuss the state of the game with the developers from BioWare Austin. Guild leaders (or a designated officer in the event of a guild leader being unable to attend) will participate in Q&A sessions with developers, roundtable feedback discussions, and will get a preview of some upcoming game features.

The goal of the summit is to facilitate an open discussion between guild leaders and the game design team. This event will provide an opportunity for attendees to voice their feedback directly to the teams responsible for the design of Star Wars: The Old Republic, hear the team’s thoughts and reasons behind design decisions, and discuss the current direction of the game.

The Guild Summit will be hosted from March 4th – 6th, 2012 at the DoubleTree Hotel Austin. Due to space limitations, the event will be invite-only. We’ve already invited guilds of various backgrounds and sizes to the Summit, from Endgame to Role-playing to PvP guilds, but we’ve got some space left for additional guild leaders who wish to attend. We ask that interested leaders submit an application, which can be found at this link.* Guild leaders will be evaluated based on the information provided in their application.

While we welcome applications from guild leaders from anywhere in the world, please be advised that the Summit will be conducted entirely in English. Applications will be accepted until 11:59PM CST (GMT -6) on February 10th. If you have any questions regarding the event, send us an email at guilds@swtor.com!

*Must be 21 or older to attend. Guild leaders selected to attend are responsible for all of their travel, food, and lodging expenses.

Over to you: has your guild been invited? If it has, we’d love to hear from you and discuss you covering the event on behalf of other Oceanic guilds. Drop us a line if you’re interested in doing that.

Oceanic Guild Spotlight: Not Steamboat

If you’d like your guild spotlighted, just use our contact form to let us know. Or if you like, respond to the questions shown below and send them in – we love to profile guilds and the work they’re doing. The only requirement is that you’re an active oceanic guild. Please be patient if you don’t hear back from us immediately – we will only be spotlighting a guild every week or so.

Name of guild

Not Steamboat

Guild website 

www.notsteamboat.com

History of your guild’s name

NSB has been around since 2006 and was originally a WOW guild in which we became popular through multiple oceanic firsts and world top 20 kills in our prime.

SWTOR has become the chosen platform for NSB’s next chapter and many of our old school elite are back.

The name itself came about when a bunch of friends were going out for Chinese food. Upon entering the restaurant the waiter asked Yumchat (NSB founding member) if they would like steamboat or ala carte. Yumchat then replied with “Ahhhhhhh…… Not Steamboat”, to which we then laughed and decided to make a guild around it.

Cool story bro, but what does it mean? I’m not sure, maybe we wanted to be different; too many of today’s guilds base their guild names on some cool word or corny catch phrase which are generally quite boring and forgettable.

What sort of guild do you intend on being?

• Not a family guild
• Hardcore PvE focused (3-5 days a week)
• Players held to high standards in terms of skill, commitment and determination
• Operations run in a highly organized and time-efficient manner
• Small focused guild that focuses on quality over quantity

NSB is a hardcore PvE focused guild and our average member age is 25. We aim to be one of the stand-out guilds in oceanic progression..

We have high standards of all our members in terms of skill/commitment/gear and have a historically high member retention rate.

People who have been part of NSB hold the tag with honor as they know it wasn’t easy to earn. The road ahead is harsh but full of achievement. Bonds will form and you will soon notice the strong sense of camaraderie we have which gives us strength and presence.

Why did you choose to be a part of the Empire? 

It suits the personality of most of our guild members. However we will most likely switch to republic for a change if the game allows it at some point as we would prefer the difficulties of an under represented faction.

You have one minute to convince someone they should be in your guild – what would you say to them?

Right now is probably the best time to join NSB. Once we fill our roster, openings in the guild will be scarce.
Due to game limitations (no server transfers or faction transfers) we are recruiting from a restricted player base which means we are currently happy to take on less experienced players and build them up to an NSB level if they show potential in their application.
Additional RL skills such as web design, programming and mod-design are also a bonus.

• We push each other forward
• We drive one another to perfection
• The only excuse for failure is “I f****d up”
• We strictly follow a ‘no drama’ policy, any form of sabotage to the guild or operation is an instant gkick.
• We laugh and life-grip one another off cliffs.
• Raid times are currently 8pm-12am, Wed/Thurs and Sun/Mon.

If your mindset is similar to ours, I encourage you to send in an application for an opportunity to play amongst some of the best players in the oceanic community.

What are your predictions for the first 6 months of the guild’s existence post-launch?

We have been going through a lot of selection and recruitment and optimizing our roster over the last month or so. This has involved kicking players, recruiting players and getting some of our established members to re-roll classes. While all this has been going on we have been doing some ad-hoc 8 man raiding and have just recently started 16-mans on the 19th of January. Our primary focus will be 16-mans as there is and always will be more prestige in completing the larger raids. Currently we are just taking it easy and gearing up.

We will hopefully see a patch (In March I hope) which will have challenging end-game content that isn’t instantly farmable.

More impressive oceanic guild clears: Karagga’s Palace

I love weekends because all the news flows in on guild clears. This weekend is no exception. Last night I had Khaotikk from the guild Chaos Theory drop me a line:

Hey Guys,

Wanted to drop you a line and let you know Chaos Theory (Empire Swiftsure) have just cleared Hard Mode Karagga’s Palace. As far as we’re aware this makes us the first Oceanic guild to down Karagga’s in hard mode.

Then I heard from Fenix at Redemption:

As I messaged you last night, we cleared Nightmare Karagga’s Palace for (I believe) an oceanic first. We just killed Soa on Nightmare mode also, which I believe makes us Oceanic first for all Nightmare content 🙂

Here’s a pic of Karagga The Unyielding, as downed by Redemption in Nightmare mode (full sized version):

Congrats to both guilds and I’ll let you fight it out on who did what first 😉