T-Shirt Giveaway Goes To…

Posted on 2011 December 20 by Ed Park

Here are select humorous quotes that were submitted in the T-Shirt Giveaway article, in the order they were posted:

  • “You must unlearn what you have learned” (Patrick Glover)
  • “If you can see this then you strafed correctly” (Shin)
  • “Backpedaling? I find your lack of skill disturbing” (Skargust)
  • “No! Try not. Strafe, or strafe not. There is no try” (Tim Langenberg)
  • “The strafe is strong with this one” (Mongol)

There was no guideline that quotes had to be about Star Wars, but I guess it was to be expected that dozens of SWTOR-related quotes were submitted given that the game is launching today.

Here is the quote I picked for the t-shirt giveaway:

“I find your lack of strafe disturbing”

For that quote, there is a complication!

As I posted on the Giveaway article, here’s how it works:

  1. To participate in the Giveaway, post a comment on this article which contains your kick-ass quote that will go on the back of the t-shirt. Your choice of whether the quote is insightful / clever / funny / etc. If you tweeted the quote to me already, include a link to your tweet
  2. At my discretion, I’ll pick the winning quote and the lucky person who gets credit for it. In the case where multiple people tweeted the same winning quote and posted that quote here, I’ll consider the timestamps in making the pick

I setup the Giveaway that way to make my life easy. Comments posted here are easy to track / manage and aren’t buried in a mass of unrelated tweets.

The quote was originally tweeted to me back on December 10th by nova_squad. I waited several days for that person to post their quote on the Giveaway article, even hinted to that person via PM to do so since the quote was so funny, but no dice.

The only person to post the winning quote is Mongol, and therefore he gets the free t-shirt. For full disclosure, Mongol is in my guild. I gave him no information that would have caused him to submit the entries that he posted.

Congratulations Mongol!

Please PM me the following on Twitter or TwitchTV:

  1. Which t-shirt design, size, and color you want
  2. Your name and mailing address (info only used to send you the t-shirt)

However, since it is the holiday season, I’m giving nova_squad a chance to receive a free t-shirt. nova_squad, here’s what you need to do:

  • Post a comment on this article by 12:59am PST today (Dec 20th) – i.e. you have just over 3 hours
  • Follow the instructions I posted for Mongol above

Thanks everyone for participating, it was riot reading all the submissions, and enjoy the SWTOR launch :)

Posted in Swag

Population Skewing Heavily Towards Empire on PVP Servers

Posted on 2011 December 14 by Ed Park

UPDATE (2011/12/14 8:45pm PST): OK, so I’m already getting flak for posting this. For those of you who don’t know me, let me clarify for you: I’m a big SWTOR fan and have and will be cranking out rich content (guides, narrated videos, and streams) for the game. I’m not claiming SWTOR is a failboat. I am concerned about this issue and I want the game to succeed. So take what is written below with that context.

————————————————————————————————-

Let’s take a look at faction and class data mined from the Pre-Launch Guild Program (PLGP): http://swtorprogress.com/members.php. This not a comprehensive set of data, but it is statistically significant set of data: 450k players, or ~30% of the predicted 1.5MM launch.

Here are the totals by server type as of end of day December 13:

  • RP-PVE servers (entire World): Empire 25,986 | Republic 30,393 | Hey look, more good guys than bad guys. A lot of RP players want to be a Jedi or Smuggler. What a surprise! Not :)
  • PVE servers (entire World): Empire 107,974 | Republic 86,269 | Empire +25% population
  • PVP servers (entire World): Empire 137,732 | Republic 66,586 | Empire has 2.1 times the population

*Note: RP-PVP servers were not included in the PLGP.

If this were an election, the faction voting on the PVP servers would be a landslide.

The question is, why the big difference in population?

Some people have generalized the SWTOR situation by saying that the evil faction tends to be more popular in PVP. But there’s more to it than that. The Empire faction is the more popular one because it’s the more entertaining and cooler faction from a character development and storyline perspective. I’ve heard this from numerous people who tried both factions in Beta. PVP players want to feel and look bad-ass, and Empire’s the ticket.

So we have a situation where we’re going to have population imbalance from the get-go, on most if not all PVP servers.

AFAIK, there are no game mechanics to balance the population:

  • No population cap per faction on a server – the cap is for the entire server not by faction
  • No balancing mechanic in Ilum

Some players are hoping that new players joining post-Launch will roll Republic, because everyone wants to be a Jedi like Luke Skywalker or Smuggler like Han Solo, right? While that may be true, if they’re new(er) gamers it’s going to take a significant amount of time before they’re functional in PVP. I can’t speak for you, but I’d kick the ass of me from 3 years ago. Most veterans of MMORPGs are already in-the-know regarding SWTOR and have chosen the cooler, bad-ass side accordingly.

So here are my predictions on how the population imbalance on PVP servers will affect PVP:

  • Republic warzone queues will pop quickly. Empire queues will pop more slowly, or they’ll pop and you’ll see a disproportionate number of Huttball matches where you face a team from your faction. You won’t see as many Alderaan and Voidstar matches as Empire
  • In Ilum, the World PVP zone, there will be significantly more Empire than Republic players, with the obvious implications: Empire will zerg-farm Republic, and this will cause a vicious cycle of fewer Republic players going to Ilum, etc

Duh! These predictions are not rocket science – the 2 bullet points above were what we saw in Beta.

The three things that I have seen kill World PVP in other games have been:

  1. Crappy class balance, which causes individuals to quit (so far, not a significant issue in SWTOR, although the JK/SW’s should get their CCs earlier)
  2. Crappy world PVP implementation (can’t comment on this, haven’t experienced Ilum yet)
  3. Population imbalance, which causes different issues on both side: boredom for the zergy faction, frustration for the gets-zerged faction (there is significant risk here for SWTOR, given that it’s a 2-faction game)

Hopefully BioWare will be able to sort out the population imbalance somehow that makes sense, especially for Ilum.

We shall see!

P.S. I’m rolling Empire on a PVP server with my guild Irony. My preference was to roll Republic but we just merged into Irony so we’re rolling on the server and faction they’ve already chosen. Irony’s leadership has asked that we not publish our server until December 20th. I’m also rolling Republic alts, so that I can group with my followers from social media and other friends.

When it’s appropriate, I’ll let you know which server(s) my characters are on.

P.P.S. see more responses about this article on Reddit.

UPDATE (2012/01/01): I decided to re-roll as Republic on another server, Ajunta Pall. Out of the 115 matches I tracked on Empire side for Jung Ma, 23 of them (20%) were Empire-vs-Empire Huttball. The speed of warzone queue pops and diversity of warzones has been much better as Republic.

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GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

Posted in PVP, SWTOR

Smugglers and Imperial Agents: Take Cover Via Keybinds

Posted on 2011 December 12 by Ed Park

Some players in Beta reported delays when trying to Take Cover. I figured out a simple solution during my level 12 Gunslinger stream and shared it on the Smuggler forum on November 30. Given that forum threads from Beta are now gone, I wanted to make sure to document the solution here.

As you know, you can activate Take Cover and Take Cover in Place by:

  • Putting the abilities on your Quickslot bar, or
  • Using the keybinds in Preferences -> Keybinding -> Target

When triggering Cover via a Quickslot bar, there is sometimes a delay not related to the GCD before Cover activates. This unresponsiveness is crippling in PVP.

When this was happening for me at levels 10-12, I (incorrectly) assumed it was due to lag from my streaming. By level 12 I was getting frustrated with the lack of reliability for entering Cover, so I removed Cover from my Quickslot bar, set the keybinds, and *boom* Cover activated immediately in PVP.

This makes a monstrous difference. Even a slight delay in activating Cover can put you at a significant disadvantage, especially when an opposing melee is trying to charge/pull/interrupt you.

Many (most) Beta players are not aware of this simple solution, so please spread the word.

EDIT (2012/03/19): the issue with activating Cover from Quickslot bars seems to have been fixed, you don’t have the rely on the Keybinds.

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Twitter: @taugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
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GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

Posted in Gunslinger / Sniper, PVP, SWTOR

T-Shirt Giveaway

Posted on 2011 December 12 by Ed Park

EDIT (2011/12/18): quote entries must be posted by 11:59 pm PST on Monday December 19.

Over the weekend, I launched my Swag Shop over on CafePress.

As mentioned in my first SWTOR show, I’m running a Giveaway for one t-shirt from my shop.

Here’s how the Giveaway works:

  1. To participate in the Giveaway, post a comment on this article which contains your kick-ass quote that will go on the back of the t-shirt. Your choice of whether the quote is insightful / clever / funny / etc. If you tweeted the quote to me already, include a link to your tweet
  2. At my discretion, I’ll pick the winning quote and the lucky person who gets credit for it. In the case where multiple people tweeted the same winning quote and posted that quote here, I’ll consider the timestamps in making the pick
  3. That lucky person will receive from me a t-shirt product of their choice, with the quote on the back of the t-shirt
  4. That lucky person will need to PM me (on Twitter or TwitchTV) their mailing address information and the shirt design, color (if applicable), and size. I won’t use that info for any purpose other than sending you the t-shirt. I’ll ship to any destination as long as the cost of shipping does not exceed the cost of the shirt minus my $7 USD markup
  5. I’ll announce the lucky person via social media this month. If they don’t respond fast enough, I’ll pick someone else
  6. Remember, this is not a “contest”. This is a “giveaway” and I reserve to right to make any changes / decisions on how it works :)

/startyourengines

Follow Me

Twitter: @taugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
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GAMEBREAKER Host: http://www.gamebreaker.tv

Posted in Swag

Taugrim Talks SWTOR: Episode 1: Pre-Launch Thoughts and Q&A

Posted on 2011 December 11 by Ed Park

Today I launched the first “show” on my TwitchTV channel.

Here is the link to the recorded broadcast:


In this episode, we cover:

  1. The most frequently asked questions for me from Beta
  2. Schwag & Giveaway announcement
  3. Live Q&A and discussion

Please let me know what you think – positive and constructive feedback is welcome and appreciated.

I will be streaming SWTOR game footage (PVP and PVE) once I get into Early Access and my guild Irony gets sorted out as far as where we’re playing. You can expect a lot of ad-hoc streams this week, and hopefully by next week I’ll have a regular schedule.

Information about our guild is in the broadcast, so I won’t say more – watch the recording.

As discussed in the episode, my CafePress store is now up at cafepress.com/taugrim. Let me know what products I’m missing that you would purchase.

I’m going to order a t-shirt and hoodie tomorrow, just need to pick the designs / colors I want to wear.

Follow Me

Twitter: @taugrim
Stream: http://twitch.tv/taugrim
YouTube: http://youtube.com/taugrimtaugrim
Facebook: http://facebook.com/taugrim
GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

Posted in Livestream, RIFT, SWTOR, World of Warcraft
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