Welcome to The Lying Darkness (LYDARKOS), a Imperial Guild in SWTOR MMO for Daily Kos members and friends. If you have not heard of Star Wars The Old Republic by all means, check out the game and see if this new Massively Multiplayer Online Game with a strong fourth pillar emphasis on storytelling and voice acting by BioWare and EA appeals to you at http://www.swtor.com
At the same SWTOR site, you can find our guild signup, which you can join whether you are preordered for the game or not.
http://www.swtor.com/...
This group is not only for discussion of our guild in game (beginning Dec 15 for preorders and 20th for other players) but of any topics related to SWTOR. In The Lying Darkness Guild, feel free to discuss topics of democracy and left leanings freely, or leave all that behind, it's your call.
We do not object to advertising of other Daily Kos MMO game groups (indeed of any type of roleplaying or tabletop games) but we do frown on insults and criticism of the hobby itself. Without elaborating we refer you to site rules and Kos group guidelines for respecting of diaries and wish you well with your external interests.
That should not be taken as a criticism of calls to activism, which are welcome and keep us all on our toes.
Welcome! The Lying Darkness will be located on a West Coast RP Server and we have been assured of early preorder entry for our members. We hope to have Operations (raids) up and running twice weekly in three months.
The Thanksgiving Beta Weekend Stress Test ended this Monday, and boy, that was a great weekend. I had minimal lag, which may have been my computer (built to handle Age of Conan.) or a data leak within the company. One of our members is a eletronic engineer who has a new hot-to-death-overclock system, and he got the same lag issues, so that is encouraging. Otherwise, the Stress Test ran so smooth, like a baby's bottom.
I have been haunting http://www.Reddit.com recently, as they have an information thread called r/swtor. While it is also filled with the musings of eleven year olds, it is a frequent watering hole of players in the active, long term game Beta, and their wisdom in crafting, fighting, pvp, Operations, Companions, crew skilling and excelling at the game in general should be heeded. Minus a few complaints about lingering comparisons to WoW.
I think the biggest community with gripes about SWTOR's opening (and an entirely legitimate beef) would be the Star Wars Galaxy community, most of whom I believe are coming to SWTOR with some degrees of reservation. I was an ardent SWG player for a year, during a period regarded as their last failed restart. Jedi were made a unlocked starting class during the Rebellion era. It was a nice to players who wanted the thrill, but it just didn't jibe with continuity anymore and looked very weird and non canon.
Hey, but SWG sandbox elements, houses and variation of races were great! Anyway, bygones and all that!
It has been speculated that of surveyed players in WoW's population, 50% may make the jump to SWTOR, and 38% surveyed have already preordered. (Edit) At 900K preorders, the game is looking at minimum 1 million subscribers by year's end, and that is a super conservative lowball (some analysts say as high as 3.5 million may be expected based on the preorder.) number.) (data http://www.gamespot.com/... ) At current 10.6 million players in World of Warcraft, don't worry for them.
While amazing, that number may not translate into the 'crowded field' of players games have accustomed MMO players to in the past. Despite being massive, SWTOR has instanced so much of their game in class missions, Heroics, Flashpoints, that the streets have an empty, free quality. I recall seeing perhaps 50 players a day in passing during the final Stress Test, while all servers were reported full or close to it.
So Guild will be doubly, triply important in this game, for support, looking for group (lfg), and the three levels of raids (Heroic, Flashpoint, Operations.) And perhaps crafting support in general, which I did not get nearly enough of in game. I hear there are a lot of Bind on Pickup items, and a few which can be sold, but since a market exists, I know there is more to this story.
I have two brief things I want to squee about before I tell you a little about myself and the guild in it's current incarnation and leave you to your thoughts.
First, Bioware has promised to include romantic subplots for LGBT Companions in a later update in the model of all their games (Dragon Age and Mass Effect especially). Last year there was a huge tumult about whether or not this would be put into game, and the gaming community rose as one to subdue it's own hater minority and Bioware responded positively. I look forward to exploring this.
Second, if any homegrown Occupy protests occur in the SWTOR space, I think they will be as harmlessly regarded as the Occupy protests that happened in WoW. I think we can all take an hour out of our busy gaming schedule and try to raise a little gamer awareness of the need to quit giving corporations free welfare at the expense of the rest of the country. The Lying Darkness Guild leader Vectorketh is a huge Occupy supporter and while I question their tactics, I support them in general. Anyway, follow your own conscience, you can just game if that's what you need/want. /rant
Lastly, the current Guild. There are five members, mostly from the Greater Bay Area. Most of them are computer geeks (I mean serious computer engineers who are also geeks.) We play Sith side because with the current Light-Neutral-Dark rank system, you can be a goody2shoes on either side of the Force. We have one of each Empire Class and an undecided so far. Vectorketh and I speculate that once word gets out about Imperial Agent, it will rise to become the most popular class in the game, but this may be naive considering the burning 30 year love for lightsabers. We run our guild 10-20 hours per week, as both a roleplaying light and Operations (Raiding) guild, so it is a tight ship filled with snarking jerks. Proviso: We keep our guild welcome to LGBT and Minorities of all flavors as a welcoming leftist home for evils. :)
If you wish to join, please go to http://www.swtor.com/...
If you have questions, please send me site mail or comments.