Oceanic Soap Box: Remembering The Fallen

I thought that this week, we’d get a little sentimental. It never hurts to take some time to remember lost comrades – and it applies in the MMO sphere as well. What prompted me was the announcement over the past week that City of Heroes will be closing.

It’s an MMO that’s been around since 2004 and like any game of that longevity, it has a devoted following. All too soon it’ll become one of those games that we remember we ‘used to play’.

So on that note, let’s talk about games that have closed / become no longer playable. For me a standout is Raid on Bungeling Bay on the Commodore 64. I got to play at once for around 20 minutes at my parent’s friend’s house and spent the weeks (and months) afterwards obsessing about it. I’d still love to give it a try although I’m pretty sure I’d find it disappointing now.

Which games do you miss most? It doesn’t matter whether it’s PC/Mac/Console/Handheld/Online – let us know what used to float your boat!

Oceanic Soap Box: Guild Wars 2 Eve

This week it’s a bit hard to ignore the huge MMO launch on our doorstep. Guild Wars 2 launches for some tomorrow afternoon, and for the rest three days after that. So let’s make that the topic for debate this week.

Will you be jumping into GW2 at launch? Will you be playing it at all and if not, why not?

For mine, I’ll be there Saturday afternoon to check things out and to start levelling but for me GW2 is going to be a casual thing. Something I jump in and enjoy once a week or so.

What about you?

SWTOR Suggestion Box: F2P as saviour?

Ok I promise this will be the last SWTOR Free to Play post for this week, but it’s an obvious topic for some more discussion. Specifically, is the change going to affect your relationship with SWTOR? Will you be playing more, less, don’t care about the change?

My best guess is that there will be some growth as a result, but a guess is all it is. So educamate me: do you think this is a new dawn or the start of the sunset. Jump in!

SWTOR Suggestion Box: Daily Quests

Another work week is close to done for a lot of us, so it’s time to get excited about some weekend gaming time. While completing some Ilum dailies last night, I got to thinking about the dailies grind in general. Wouldn’t it be great if there could be more variety built into dailies.

This isn’t a criticism of SWTOR specifically, as I’d argue it has one of the better daily/weekly quest setups around.

Still, I’m sure there could be improvements, and that’s where you come in: if you could design daily or weekly quests, what would you change in SWTOR? Be as brave / zany / silly as you like!

Suggestion Box: HK-51 Abilities

One of the more exciting pieces of information coming out of BioWare over the past week was the teaser on HK-51. Which got me to wondering what people would like their favourite killing machine companion to do, besides.. killing.

So over to you: if you could decide a useful / funny / bizarre ability your HK-51 could have, what would it be?

Suggestion Box: Group Finder


Now that SWTOR 1.3 is well and truly ensconced in our lives, it’s worth a debate on one of the key features that update brought us: the LFG tool. I picked up my first PUG via the tool to complete the False Emperor Flashpoint, and it was a hoot, with no wipes or other issues.

How about you? Have you found the group tool useful? Post away below!

Suggestion Box: 1.3 impressions

It’s been two and a bit days since SWTOR 1.3 Allies went live, so most of us have hopefully had an hour or twenty to check it out. Therefore, it’s  the perfect candidate for our weekly debate.

So, jump in and tell us: what do you think of 1.3 so far and do you think it’ll give some new momentum to the game outside of that initial excitement? Post away in comments!

Suggestion Box: Funniest SWTOR Username

My wordy lordy it’s the end of another week, so it’s time to mount the soapbox and give your thoughts to the gathering throng. This week I thought it was time to discuss funny SWTOR usernames seen in-game. Now that a whole bunch of server mergers have been done and there’s on the whole larger populations online at the one time, we’re all seeing a lot of new ‘faces’.

So: what username (or even guild name) have you seen that’s given you a good laugh?

That laugh may be because the name is funny, or it may be a horrified laugh that someone could call themselves that. Post away in comments so we can all share in the mirth!

Suggestion Box: Favourite Planet?

With the 1.3 update not far off, there’s a focus on new content in the game, but I thought this week we’d talk about the foundation of most gameplay in SWTOR: the planets. I’m still pretty enamoured with Voss and if I had to list a favourite, that’d be it. What I’m most interested in though is what planet you either love or hate the most. Does Taris make you want to use a cheese grater on your inner thigh? Does Corellia warm the cockles of your dystopian heart?

Jump in and give your 2 cents worth!

Suggestion Box: Predicting Subscriber Numbers

With winter officially hitting Oz and NZ today, it means we’re officially allowed to spend more time indoors playing SWTOR. That means there may be a bump in local subscribers numbers, although with the US and Europe hitting their summer there will be the usual seasonal drop off in playing time which could affect subscriber numbers.

So on that basis, let’s play Nostradamus. By the end of our winter on September 1st, what do you think SWTOR’s subscriber numbers will be?

Suggestion Box: Celebrating Star Wars’ 35th Birthday

In what has been a gloomy week for SWTOR, let’s try to get into a weekend frame of mind by talking milestones. In this case it’s the fact that 35 years ago on May 25th 1977, the first Star Wars film opened in US cinemas.

So, in that vein, this week’s discussion topic is the original Episode IV: A new Hope: tell us when you first saw it, where you saw it and the impact it had on you. Jump on in!

Suggestion Box: SWTOR playing time

This week’s topic of debate is the amount of time you spend playing SWTOR. With Diablo 3 released this week, there’s a lot of people who seem to have taken a breather from SWTOR to kill their wrist clicking a mouse to move their hero round some dark dungeons and cathedrals. Once people have had their fill of that, there’s plenty of other games coming up.

So it’s over to you: compared to say 3 months ago, are you playing SWTOR as much as previously, more than previously or is it playing second fiddle to something else?

Post away in comments!