A battle hardened Knight once said, “…many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” These are mine.

The vocal minority is making sure the interweb hears how upset they are about SWTOR’s Cartel Market and so called broken promises about subscriptions from the Devs. It all surrounds this post from Jeff Hickman concerning the introduction of the F2P model.

Apparently he stated that subscribers would retain unlimited access to SWTOR content. Well comrades, unlimited depends on your point of view.

Along with that thought, I can’t help but think the vocal MMO minority doesn’t realize what type of genre we are playing these days. Read along for my point of view.

Tanks are expected to know all content and push the group forward without hesitation. Great Tanks have to start somewhere, this is one of those places. Here we’ll examine the ins and outs of being a Professional Tank.

Last week I tossed out an Endurance stat of ‘Over 40k’ in the Professional Tank column. This was in reference to augmenting for Fortitude only. I received some quick feedback on optimal Tank Gearing stats. Apparently the ‘correct’ way to gear does not include stacking HP.

I have four level 55 toons. Two are healers, the others are DPS.

With the exception of my “main”, I leveled those almost entirely through PVP. Hell, I haven’t even finished my Imperial Agent storyline and he’s healing HM Scum & Villainy.

The point is that I have pretty good experience with healing PVP. But something happened this weekend that really made me realize I forgot how rubbish it is to be a lowbie PVP healer early in that toon’s progression.

Players start or join a guild for many different reasons. Friends creating a guild together, an Elder Game player joins a progression guild or players band together for PvP. I’ve even seen one-player guilds just for the vault space. Whatever the reason, guilds can be the one thing that keeps a player coming back.

This morning I read a Guild Leadership focused blog with the title “Command Decisions”. Marjor Snarl’s posts are well thought out and parallel many of the same points I work on daily.

I disagree on his latest blog with his view of a Guild not being a ‘Business.’ In fact this is in direct opposition on how I run the SWTOR Zergadins. If I didn’t take a business man’s point of view to leading this group we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Tanks are expected to know all content and push the group forward without hesitation. Great Tanks have to start somewhere, this is one of those places. Here we’ll examine the ins and outs of being a Professional Tank.

With my work scheduled skewed toward late nights I’ve found myself tanking in the early mornings. These late night runs have reinforced what it means to be a Professional Tank. Level 55 Hard Mode flash points aren’t anything if not Tanking trainers. Every trash pull could use a cooldown and every boss can wipe you if not tanked correctly. While the gimmicks are basic, an unprepared tank will find themselves face down on the decking in an instant.

I hoard raid footage. Prior to cleaning out my hard drive I found clips going back to the first Eternity Vault HM clear and some stuff from when we were running flashpoints every day for Columi drops.

A look through my files revealed raid videos of every operation in SWTOR and multiple files of just about every boss.

There were tons of wipes, several boss kills, and a long list of really good people who I’ve since lost contact with.

Why, though, did I have so many videos? I tend to record most of my raids for both boss kill videos and for a critical look at how I did, regardless of the end result.

I would buy this guy a beer.

Originally posted by Eric Musco(Source)

2.1 page update. Is this all? Nothing there for subscribers? |
05.07.2013, 07:44 AM

Hey everyone,

I wanted to specifically address the concern of “what is a subscriber getting in an all Cartel Market update?” Game Update 2.1 brings a whole lot of customization and convenience features to the game which have been requested for quite some time, such as character name changes etc. As we have stated in the past, we always design systems like this knowing that subscribers will be receiving Cartel Coins each month, and certainly more options for your monthly Cartel Coin grant can’t be a bad thing!

I think the core of some of your frustrations is that you feel like Game Update 2.1 is “eating up a slot” for our regular content cadence, and because of that, you won’t actually be receiving any new content in this “cycle.” I figure the best way to address that is to lay out a bit of a road map of what the next few weeks looks like! This will help especially if you are only looking at what you are getting within one “content cycle.” As I have done in the past, I need to make it clear that everything I am about to say is our current plan and that it is subject to change, but I want to give you as many details as I can! Here is our current plan:

• Game Update 2.1 will release on Tuesday, May 14th
• Game Update 2.2 will release on Tuesday, June 11th

If you are keeping track and we hit those dates, Game Update 2.2 will releasing 8 weeks and 2 days from the time we released Rise of the Hutt Cartel (so basically around our 8 week cadence that is often referenced). What that means is that even though I can’t yet tell you what is in Game Update 2.2, you are getting two Game Updates within that period. I will say this: Game Update 2.2 has no new Cartel Market features… Also, both of these Game Updates will come with the usual bug fixes, quality of life improvements, etc. which you have come to expect (reference the patch notes for more info).

I know many of you will reserve full judgment until you see what happens over the next few weeks. I hope getting a little bit more information on our timeline will help alleviate your concerns. I have stated before that our Cartel Market and content teams are two very different things internally, which is why we can have these two Game Updates release so close together. Hopefully that provides some insight into our plans!

TLDR – If you’re concerned that Game Update 2.1 is taking up space in our content cadence and only contains Cartel Market stuff, fear not, Game Update 2.2 is coming sooner than you would expect!

-eric

PS – The Gree Enclave wanted me to pass on that they will be returning soon…

I’ll miss the Dallas Cantina meet-up, but I’ll make the next southern US venue. Back to New Orleans anytime soon?

Players start or join a guild for many different reasons. Friends creating a guild together, an Elder Game player joins a progression guild or players band together for PvP. I’ve even seen one-player guilds just for the vault space. Whatever the reason, guilds can be the one thing that keeps a player coming back.

Lately the column I keep coming back to is Guild Guidance. This subject is on my mind more and more these days.

The guild and I have been run two days of 16 man OPS for this patch. We all take pride in our ability to execute the bigger and logistically more challenging OPS size. On that same note, it’s been a long time since I was just a Pug in another group. Both those facets of Operations were put to the test for me recently.

Keep reading for the reinforcing lessons learned.

Do you enjoy writing SWTOR guides for your fellow guildmates or on the official forums? Are you always maximizing your GTN profits and coming up with new, awesome ideas for DPS rotations? If so, we want to hear from you!

Force Junkies is looking to add a few more enthusiastic, talented volunteer writers to our team. This time around we’re looking for specific columns to be written.

• Crew Skills and Credits

• Professional Tank

• Dealing Damage

• Warzone Combat Log

If you know your class like the back of your own hand and constantly lead Ops, you might be the Sith or Pub we’re looking for.

All that we ask is that you’re a true fan of the game and can show us that you know a thing or two about writing. You’re more than welcome to set your own schedule and write whenever your feel inspired..

If you have any questions or would like to apply to become a writer for Junkies Nation and Force Junkies, please feel free to contact Jason Dodge at dreagon@rerollz.net or Garrett Charkalis at garret@rerollz.com. Make sure to have a writing sample handy when you contact us!

/Salute

Silverstrike

To parse or not to parse. That is the question.

I was trolling on fleet the other night when the guild’s best healer starting chatting with me in gchat about my heal parses.  He wanted to me to start uploading my combat logs.

I kind of paused because I never really gave it much thought. Only once before had I even looked at TORParse and I used to run MOX when the raid leader would ask us to.

But finding out how many heals per second I put out during a raid is just something I’ve never really worried about. I’m confident in my heals and, to be honest, spend far more time worrying about the group’s performance and whether DPS in the group are quick enough on their feet.