Hi Guys, Gals, Zach and Brooks!

Another great show guys and the Lightsaber discussion in this one particularly tickled my fancy as my primary character is going to be a Jedi Knight. I'll try and be brief but make a point on each topic

LIGHTSABERS

I'd like to open with a quote from a certain Master Kenobi - "Anakin, this weapon is your life". This weapon IS your life (if you're a force-sensitive class) and I think it's important that people have a weapon that reflects them and what they want (same with blasters - Han's Blaster / Boba's Rifle etc). I've wanted a Lightsaber since I saw the movies at around age 7! I agree that there must be limits, ie: no pulsating sabers, rainbow crystals or candy-cane blades but I can't see any harm in Jedi (particularly Sentinels) using Yellow/ Orange lightsabers. Also, I have many SW comics depicting Sith trainees using pink or white sabers. I can't imagine a Sith using a Blue or Green crystal and they probably wouldn't out of disgust or something. However, a Jedi called Adi Gallia used a crimson saber in "Jedi Power Battles" for PS1 If there were to be any Black sabers or similar things hanging around, perhaps they could be legendary items like Illidan's Glaives in WOW so that not every other high level character in the game is running around with one???

This is taken from the Crew Skills page at swtor.com - There is a crafting skill called....

Artifice – the delicate work of constructing Jedi and Sith artefacts.

Could this include Lightsaber crystals perhaps??? I think that Jedi/Sith should start out with their generic colours and then work towards creating other crystals. I know Sith usually do the "synthetic-crystal making" but hey, this is 3,000 years before Darth Vader and the Imperials are in charge of Ilum.

One final note, in The Force Unleashed, players can find hidden colour crystals but ALSO separate crystals that enhance their blade in a certain way. Maybe players could craft a coloured crystal of their own choice using Crew-Skills and then gain their stats from separate crystals that are dropped by bosses. These crystals could boost DPS, Healing or whatever else a Force-User needs. That way, Jedi and Sith could receive the same crystal as a drop item and it wouldn't affect their colour choice.

PVE vs PVP

OK well I can't say I've ever really played on a PVP server in other MMOs before, (most notably WoW), basically because at a low level I was fed up of seeing high level "tough guys" taking out the lvl 10 NPCs in the area and then getting myself repeatedly taken-out in the same fashion. It's a personal choice and I'm not ashamed to admit that although I have a lvl 80 and other high level characters I don't want to be spending time that I don't have (as a casual player) fighting off other people with much more PVP experience. However... In a Star Wars universe I can really see the importance of holding realms for each of these choices. I mean... could you imagine Boba Fett saying "OI! Toggle your PVP on so I can take you out and collect the bounty please!" A PVP server will just make the whole experience more realistic.

TROOPER DOSSIER

Right, well I think it's clear to see that Troopers are going to be awesome! The video was great and although I'll be playing Jedi Knight for the Republic and Bounty Hunter for the Empire, there is nothing to say I won't try the trooper out. What's more is that we had an awesome update, seeing some more in-game style action and learning about one of the most important classes in the game. As for the permanent advanced class choice, I think that players should be able to change because, for example, I play a Paladin on WoW and I levelled using DPS but then I decided to Heal later on. I don't think we should have dual talent specs though because in my opinion, people flick back and forward through the talents too much and players should learn to play and enjoy their chosen spec. If you want to change you should just pay-up yer Credits!

OFFICIAL FORUMS

Quite simply, I'm a lurker. I like reading the posts that people put up but I don't think my voice is really heard and as you said, some people just seem like they're out to annoy others or put their comments down. I'm also sick of going onto swtor.com and seeing people slagging off the game that I've waited over 2 years for! I think the community on the MER forums is much more friendly

I’m sorry because that wasn’t brief at all but I guess it makes up for all of the previous discussions that I’ve missed out on. I’m a long-time listener and still loving the show.

Thanks guys and take it easy out there.

great show, I'm really only going to comment on the server topic, as i spent most the the show and thus a good bit of my work on wookiepedi, every time brooks says it i have to go digging.

any way, while servers can be expensive to set up and maintain, its kinda like a blacksmiths hammer, you have to have one to do your job. the number of servers is the issue that most companies face and most games launch in the 20 - 80 range, its been a while since i played a game at launch and had to pick a server. the optimal thing i believe would be a single "shard" server. where every one is in the same game world they just jump from server to server as the change zones. this was the most appealing thing to me about eve online and what hooked me for the time i spent there. For SWTOR i think this would be a good approach, especially given there are 16 (announced) different planets you can be on. if the community get split among to many different servers then you could see "ghost zones" forming, much like many of the mid lvl zones in WOW.

This will mean that every one has the same set of rules, from a community stand point i think its a crucial part of making a committing that really stand out and grow. The WOW community is a scattered and divided one,with over 200 servers its not hard to see why. In an mmo no matter how lone wolf you are your experience in the game world revolves around the other people. On your server a big servers its gonna be full of "world firsts" and the "epic" but it will also be crowded groups a plenty, and diversity with all the pros and cons that come with it. a smaller server will be a little more tight nit but will also lack the luster of a bigger server. and cross realm grouping is not the same.

I want to Really be in The old republic, not shard 46 of 100 shards of the old republic.

Excellent job as usual guys!
Keep it up!
~ Red89

Wow alot of first time posters in this topic. Welcome all new comers hope you enjoy your time in this much more lvl headed community forum, and i look forward to taking that slow grind to lvl 1 with you all.

I am extremely encouraged by the number of "first time" posters in this thread (and on these forums in general). I am also unsurprised at the level of maturity displayed. Great people tend to eventually find each other, as the guys mentioned in there discussions in the podcast (actually, I think they said that the bad ones find each other :p).

I like forward to communicating with you all. All that I would have said has been mentioned very eloquently many times already, so thanks to all of you for saving me the keystrokes!

Great job, as usual, MER dudes!!

Continuing my mathematical analysis of server costs for Blizzard.../boring

Big thanks to Ken for counting the number of servers on the link I found. 241 will be the number we will consider to be accurate for the server numbers throughout the world running WoW. Keeping in mind that the "other" article I posted regarding the cost of running ALL the game servers is $200 million dollars, that would make the cost of each server to be $829,875.52. That is almost 1 million dollars a server!

Disclaimer: The article that gave $200 million as the cost to maintain, support and purchase each server sited no sources regarding the origin of that number.

If that is even CLOSE to the correct number, that is quite an investment for Blizzard regardless of the income that WoW subscriptions generate. That is quite a gamble they took early on. Of course, now that they have 6 years of data to look at, I am sure they can calculate the need for more servers quite accurately.

Upgrading those servers as technology marches on has to be a pretty penny as well. I will happily pay my $15/month in light of the above information.

alan-

it was no prob to count, i actually meant to count it at some point, you gave me a reason other then curiosity

when they launched im pretty sure it was under 100 servers, i dont remeber cuz when i joined it was shortly after the launch of the extra servers and there were alot then. but by tbc they had atleast 100, pre wrath it was around 200, cuz by then they had either 10 or 11 mil. wrath's launch or shortly after they had put in the more and with cata's they added more, not many...

in short, they started with very little and accommodated with the greater number of subscribers. im betting that bioware is looking into the original number of wow servers as the starting point, if not less to be conservative, and the number of servers aion is currently runnin with its 3 mil + subscribers.

Thanks for posting another episode.

That said, if people who want PvE should never play MMOs, then people who PvP are griefers. I have witness lots of times where someone 25 levels + decides to gank people for laughs. If you are stuck not getting to play a game for 30 minutes cause you cant find a group then there is a problem. ( and PvE has that problem on a different way - EQ "LFG!!" )

Bounties dont work. You have yet to mention a counter for putting a bounty on someone and having thier alt or a friend collect it and share the money. See Eve Online bounties, its the style you are talking about. Also if you can get Npc gangs to hunt you - that leads easily into griefing.


Ive only posted on the forums about a FAQ for your audio setup. But i keep hearing PvP and bounties had me churning. Then to tell me I should not play cause I am tired of dealing with griefers was too much too keep my mouth shut.

All that said. I do thank you for getting toghter and putting the podcadt out. Its a high quality product that I am striving to achieve to.

Respectfully,
Jason

I really like the idea of bounties and I kind of think that maybe it could be used as a 'punishment' for open world pvp. Say a Republic PC kills an Empire PC in Open PvP, he might get a bounty of X on him. If he kills another PC, it goes up and will keep going up until he is killed in PvP by an Empire player. Then the player that killed him could collect the bounty from an NPC.

The only thing I don't like about bounties is that there is a class called Bounty Hunter. If there are bounties some how integrated into the game play, then technically everyone could be a bounty hunter. So now there are Bounty Hunters (class) and bounty hunters (play style).

Nice idea about bounties only working on opposing factions. But then it is not really open world PvP. More like Realm vs Realm.

You can still have your alt kill you and collect the reward. Unlike real life - you can have 2 accounts. Nothing is to stop you from working together.