https://www.wehavedelusionsofgrandeur.com/ <Delusions of Grandeur> is a casualcore Operations-running guild. This means we balance casual “real-life-first” timetables with competent performance to yield high level progress through SWTOR’s most challenging operations content. Casual: Our scheduled teams convene once per week, for no more than three hours at once. Hardcore: We clear the most difficult content (Nightmare/Master Mode). So, we raid. It is not, however, our part-time job. We are casualcore. Delusions has maintained at least one continuous weekly raid group since our first full clear of Storymode Eternity Vault in January 2012. Excepting holiday weeks, that’s nearly a decade of consistent SWTOR raiding. During 3.0, the Shadow of Revan expansion, we ran 4 distinct groups. Since the release of KOTFE/ET & Onslaught, we field only a single operations team, and with it we have cleared Revan HM (the usual metric of a team's capacity for success), and other cool stuff. Our Operations team runs weekly on Saturday night, starting at 5pm US Pacific time (Sunday mornings APAC times). We go for 3 hours, and that's it. We recently lost a few members of the team due to Real Life circumstances (changing work schedules, the demands of new marriages and children (Real Life Leveling up), waning interest in SWTOR, etc). Our 8-man team is open with 4 spots, including tank, healer, and DPS. You're a good fit for us if you're the type of person who's always home on Saturday nights, and you're looking for a raid team with good humor, kindness, and sharp and creative intellectuals. We have zero-tolerance for toxicity: yellers, chest-thumpers, passive-aggressive "not my fault" types, etc. And we have a long track record of developing previously casual-level players into highly competent gamers without StarParse-shaming and browbeating. NiM content really isn't that hard if you're just locked in, focused, and knowledgeable. Anyone can be the first two, and we can teach the last one. Contact us via our recruiter and GM, Silverknight (me). I'm available for DMs on Discord @ Silverknight#9346, u/SilverknightLegacy on reddit, or in-game. I have an army of alts, so best to do a "/who delusions" and just message anyone on the list. Hope to hear from you soon!

to Battery Running for the final boss in Dxun, Nature of Progress, 8-man Veteran Mode (HM), Apex Vanguard.

. Mechanics and mistakes highlighted for educational purposes. It's not a perfect kill, but sometimes learning from others' mistakes is a better way to prevent your own.

When we raid, we take the content seriously, without taking ourselves seriously. Too few raid teams do the first thing and can't do the second. Take a moment to review the following video to get a sense of how much fun we have! Guild's first run through Dxun Storymode. Not an instructional video! First 4 encounters.

Guild's first run through Dxun Storymode. Not an instructional video! First 4 encounters. Enjoy!

A non-spoiler review of the first episode, for people wondering if they should invest in Disney Plus.

A non-spoiler review of the first episode, for people wondering if they should invest in Disney Plus. I'd say wait, personally. Looks like they're doing one episode a week, or something. It's not like WOW AMAZING. It's not like "you gotta see this now!" It's more like, wait a few months, and then when the entire series is available, sub for a month, binge, cancel. That's if the only reason you'd consider D+ is for The Mandalorian. If you want D+ for other reasons, then cool. But if it's just Star Wars you want ... eh ... wait.

Which guild perk do you purchase to make the following interface element, (Guild Window -> General Tab -> Conquest Leaders), report accurate information for Current and Previous Leaders? Do I just need to wait for a certain 2-week guild-perk-interval when that perk is available to purchase? Maybe only high-level guilds have access to it? Someone point me in the right direction please. Thanks.

Agreed.

The following link goes to EXACTLY the armor you're looking for: https://torf.mmo-fashion.com/beryllius-armor-mkii-pub/ That's what you want. The armor drops in the level range from 41-49, and can be commonly found on the GTN for affordable prices because it's just green/blue loot that drops off literally anything in that level range. For instance, right now on Satele Shan there are 2 on the GTN, "Prototype Herloss Commando Armor" and "Krail Armory Commando Armor." Both level 41. Just sort your GTN search by Armor/Heavy/Chest/Standard (Rarity) and sort by level, tab through to the 40s, and you'll get what you need. The leg armor comes from the same level range as well, and is also green/blue quality and cheap to buy. If there aren't any on your server at the moment, just check every day for a few days, and in no time you'll get what you need. These items used to be dye-able through the Outfit Designer, but they nerfed that about a year ago or so. Good luck. EDIT: A belt drops in that same level range as well that goes with the outfit, has the same cyan-colored light on it as the chest and legs. The Conservator's Gloves work really well with it also, because they have the same little LED lights in the exact same hue.

Narratively speaking, it's completely justifiable to have no control over losing Quinn should you choose to side with the Republic. Given Quinn's history and personality, it strains credulity to consider that he would abandon the Empire utterly. Joining the Alliance, a neutral entity that, at the time he joins it, is the galaxy's last hope, is one thing for Quinn. But if war between the Republic and the Empire commences, and the formally neutral alliance he joined to save the galaxy decides to side with the Republic, Quinn SHOULD leave, because he WOULD. His allegiance to the Empire has always superseded his love for the female SW. We may wish him to stay, but he would never willingly put his talents to use in a violent war FOR the Republic AGAINST the Empire. Never. Anyone who chooses to believe otherwise is seeing Quinn through the lens of who they wish he was, not who he actually is (as depicted by the entire narrative surrounding him from the minute you meet him through to Ossus). Quinn loves the SW. He loves the Empire more. It's realistic for him to leave, far more than him choosing to go to war for pubs vs imps. That being said ... the fact that his departure is depicted merely in an email, not in a fully voiced and blocked scene where he and the SW have a heart-wrenching argument where he states clearly who and what he is and why he must part ways with the SW forever ... it's disappointing. It's probably a function of limited real-world time and budget, but nevertheless a huge disappointment. Of all the romances available to all 8 classes of both genders, not one of them is more fraught, or more ripe for compelling narrative storytelling, than a female SW choosing to side permanently with the Republic. This one should have been given special attention. Sure, Aric and Elara both married to an Imp-siding Trooper should be a huge deal, and the Kira/Knight thing WOULD be if she were back yet (who knows what they'll do with her for Knights who choose the Empire, since that content is coming up). Felix has enough baggage with the Republic that I can see him staying loyal to a traitorous Consular. Nadia is corruptible. Corso and Risha and Akavi dgaf either way. Vette would stay loyal, DS Jaesa clearly wouldn't, but the breakup between DS Jaesa and a pub-siding SW wouldn't necessarily need a complex scene - they JUST remet, so there's no history with the SW as the Alliance Commander like there is with Quinn, however brief the latter's history is. I think there's a pathway to the continuance of the romance between an Empire-loyal Inquisitor and Ashara. She did that once, she'd do it again, no matter how much she's grown in the intervening years. Andy dgaf either if the Inquisitor stays or betrays - I mean sure, he has a *little* anti-pub baggage unique to him, but nothing that being the consort of the Alliance Commander can't make him immune. Mako prolly prefers the Republic but she'll clearly follow the BH no matter what. Same in reverse with Torian, preference for Empire but would follow a traitorous BH no matter what. Temple is good to go either way, same with Vector. Kaliyo is another companion who dgaf either way. Of all these romances, the one that stands out as having the most potential for compelling storytelling in this choice to stay or betray the original faction, so much potential as to be a necessary, requisite dramatic scene, is SW and Quinn. A few others come close, and the rest don't even. Quinn and a Pub-siding SW need their moment, their final marital argument, one that sets the stage for a 6.0 showdown between them. Imagine the emotional weight this storyline in particular could carry. Nothing else comes close, and this needs to be given its due.

Why exactly do you have a Rishi Trader, Lana Beniko, Senya Tirall, and a Medical Droid all present in your bedroom? I mean, I suppose Lana's Sithy nature might get the better of her at times, hence the medical droid, and, let's be honest, what polyamorous situation isn't improved by the presence of beaks, claws, and feathers? Is that why your camera lingered so long, like ... a lovingly long time ... on that orobird mount at the start?

Electronet really should be a melee-only ability, and not even for mercs/mandos, but rather for Jedi/Sith characters and, even then, ONLY if they're wielding a lightsaber-trident in the MH slot. But back to the actual topic, the game really does need separate buff bars, one for "irrelevant" buffs, the ones we can reasonably assume you always have (like the 4 class buffs and sprint), and then another buff bar for things that have long durations but come from consumables (like Command/Valor/Social/XP Boosts and Stims), and then a tertiary buff bar for things that are short duration and you want to assess (is it on? for how much longer? at how many stacks?) at a glance (a glance that lasts maybe 1/4th or 1/3rd of a second), for things like adrenals, procs, etc. That doesn't seem like too much to ask. But then again, I'm not trying to run a AAA MMO on a ZZZ budget because there's a direct siphon of money from my Cartel Market to the Anthem team's department ... so ...

/signed. And, thanks for the laughs. Are you a comedy writer? Literal lols out of me three different times while reading your post. And don't mind the guy who claims post #2 in this thread. That level of obtuseness is only possible from a guy whose signature demands that we recognize English pronunciation at the front of his name without realizing the irony that he simultaneously expects us to recognize French pronunciation at the end of it.

Mega guilds will have these camped and farmed, with a perfectly well-oiled machine of scouts and summoners who know exactly the 3-meter-square spot to pull the battlemasters without having to worry about the other guards. Small guilds will be buying encryptions and frameworks on the GTN. Start saving up credits.

My Dark Side Inquisitors choose Zash every time. There are logical, cold and calculating reasons to do so. 1 - Darth Nox is a total newb to Sith politics. He hasn't spent the better part of a lifetime cultivating alliances, learning the intricate nuances of each individual Darth's levels of influence. Darth Nox barely knows anything about the Sith culture he is now 1/12th the god of. Sure, he beat Darth Thanaton, and yeah, he's got the ghosts, but what he doesn't know he doesn't know will kill him, and he at least knows that. When he ascends to the Dark Council, he not only doesn't know the lay of the land, he hasn't been tracking the historical trends of that land to know which Darths are on their way up, which are on their way out, and in a system as lethally political as the Dark Council, the lack of such knowledge is likely to be fatal. Zash knows all of this. That knowledge is incredibly useful and important. 2 - Zash is not a threat. She doesn't command the Force anymore, and she is literally bound to Darth Nox. She can weasel and scheme all she likes, but in the end, she can never harm him. If Darth Nox is clever about keeping her on a short leash until he's plumbed the depths of her knowledge, then he can kill her later. Ultimately, this is exactly what happens with the events at Nathema. A little anti-climactic, but there it is. 3 - Khem is loyal, but his loyalty has less utility than Zash's knowledge. Darth Nox already had loyal servants. No matter how mean you might be to Talos, he commits himself and his descendants to with sincere devotion. No matter how evil you behave, Ashara backs you, because she's weak-minded and easy to manipulate. She only manages to grow up once you're "dead." Andy super loves a Dark Side Inquisitor, and commits himself to your children (even if you're a male inq and the children he's referring to aren't his). And dear old Xalek ... as long as you're more powerful than him, and you will always be thanks to the ghosts you kept, he'll follow you till death (his words, not mine). And this doesn't even count your cult on Nar Shaddaa, or the powerbase you're developing gradually. Khem's loyalty is, relative to the utility of Zash's knowledge, redundant and useless. Now, all that being said, my light side inquisitors always chose Zash, because that's the right thing to do morally. Also, I can't wait to romance him with my light side femsorc. Andy Revel was never really her thing. Theron ... kinda ... but still meh. But Khem ... I hope they do the potential romance there justice, and don't turn it into the punchline that's so ripe for the picking there. Even if they make the Khem romance a joke, though, I'm in to that, because that'll be fun too. I just hope they take is somewhat seriously.

It seems my previous post on this topic was unacceptable. So this time I'll simply lay out quantifiable and observable facts. First, direct quotes from the powers that be: Eric later clarified in the November 14th livestream that what he meant to say was their data shows the "average guilds" going for the Small Yield conquest planets would level 3 times per week, not that merely hitting the 170k Small Yield target would result in 3 levels per week, because mathematically, that would be impossible. But here's what's also mathematically impossible, based on data from the Conquest Event spanning Tuesday Nov 13th, 2018 through to Nov 20, 2018: for any but a few statistically irrelevant Small Yield guilds to level even one time per week, let alone 3 times. The top 10 guilds for the Small Yield Planet that week on the Satele Shan server were as follows: 1) ~2,000,000 Conquest Points, Dark Galaxy Knights 2) ~1,200,000 Conquest Points, Republic's Expendibles 3) ~650,000 Conquest Points, Care Bear Tickle Party 4) ~600,000 Conquest Points, Knights of Decarr 5) ~500,000 Conquest Points, The Sith Order 6-10) <500,000 Conquest Points And let's not forget that the current plan is for 1 conquest point to = 2 Guild XP. We can throw out the top two scores for the Small Yield that week, because they are statistical outliers representing the efforts of mega guilds. For all the normal guilds in spots 3-10, only 3 of them would have leveled that week, and each of them only once, not three times. The rest of the guilds, the highest-performing guilds among all Small Yield guilds that week, didn't level even once. And the rest of the guilds, the average ones for whom we have no data visible to the playerbase, we were told they would level 3 times per week ... the average guilds attempting Small Yield Planetary targets. That is simply wrong. To summarize, Mega guilds will be leveling at a pace of 7 levels per week. Everyone else will be leveling at a pace of less-than-one level per week at best. Most guilds will go much slower than that. This is according to real world data for which one can easily take and upload screenshots for all to see. Three months after this system goes live, mega guilds will be max level of 65 and will have re-dinged 65 multiple times. The "average" guild will be somewhere between level 3 and 6. If you're annoyed with this thread discussing how bad this is for small guilds, just wait until you see the threads coming three months from now, when there is a small minority of max level guilds towering over the masses of normal guilds still literal-YEARS away from max level. You may find my "sky is falling" tone annoying now, but you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait to see the threads people will post when the first guilds hit 65, and everyone else is looking at the their guild being level "not-even-double-digits." The proposed Guild Leveling system, and the Perks that go along with it, are punishing to small guilds. The main way small guilds lose players is not to other guilds, but rather it's when players quit SWTOR entirely. The primary source of recruitment for small guilds is the inverse of the primary cause of attrition: it's players new to SWTOR entirely, or players who took long breaks and have returned. But in a few months, when mega guilds are able to advertise their vastly over-leveled guild perks, players who are new or returning will default to joining mega guilds, not snowflake guilds. That's bad for the game's community as a whole. Forcing small guilds to level at less than 10% the speed of mega guilds is punishing, and will be, for many, fatal. Not all at once fatal. But rather fatal over a span of several months, as we lose players who quit SWTOR and we can't replace them. Why this design? What goal does this serve? Please help us make sense of this.

Maybe you missed where I typed: I hedged my bets. Either way, this lie about the fate of small guilds is absurdly insulting

Eric, either you're lying to us, or you've been lied to. Can't tell which is it, but it's a bad look. A guild earning 3 levels per week would need to be earning 1.5m conquest points. Based on the conquest results for the week of Tuesday Nov 13th through Nov 20th, the "average" Small Yield Guild earned ~500k conquest points. This is for the Satele Shan server, and throws out the top two guilds on the Small Yield planet for that week, because they each earned 2m and 1.2m points, respectively, and the 3rd place guild had only 650k. So throwing out the two mega-guild results, you arrive at an average of 500k conquest points for the servers highest-performing small guilds. Eric ... dude ... that's not 3 levels per week. That's not even 3 levels per month. Meanwhile, the mega guilds hitting the cap every week will level 7 times each week. Why are you punishing small guilds this severely? And yes, it's a punishment. The main way small guilds lose players is not to other guilds, but rather it's when players quit SWTOR entirely. The primary source of recruitment for small guilds is the inverse of the primary cause of attrition: it's players new to SWTOR entirely, or players who took long breaks and have returned. But in a few months, when mega guilds are able to advertise their vastly over-leveled guild perks, players who are new or returning will be joining mega guilds, not snowflake guilds. And that's bad for the game's community as a whole. Forcing small guilds to level at less than 10% the speed of mega guilds is punishing, and will be, for many, fatal. Not all at once fatal. But rather fatal over a span of several months, as we lose players who quit SWTOR and can't replace them, because mega guilds will all be leveled up into the 30s and 40s, and small guilds won't even be in double digits yet. I can only surmise that it is EA's desire to crush small guilds, because the only guild experience available to players in an EA game should be one that is soulless, faceless, and cares exclusively about the bottom line at the expense of that bottom line's producers. Art imitates life, I guess.

I congratulate you on another courageous avoidance of my salient points. Please detail how the changes discussed in the livestream (that you quoted here) affect my assertion that these changes are bad for the game in general, by being bad for small guilds in particular. Go on.

My dear Andryah, if nothing else, I appreciate your consistency. I'll extend a courtesy to you, one that you did not extend to me, which is to address your salient points one by one. I invite you to the same to my previous post above, of which you quoted but a single line and ignored the rest. It'll be entertaining to see whether you just ignore this in your follow up reply, or if you construct some excuse not to actually have a back and forth conversation. Great, let's consider that possibility. First, please explain how you know there's a "proliferation" of small disorganized guilds that has become a "years' long problem." Are you saying that, for years now, the number of small disorganized guilds has aggressively grown? How have you determined this? How do you know there's a proliferation? You label this as a years long problem, so ... I assume you have years worth of data? Further, how do you know these guilds are disorganized? After all, your mere suggestion that this proliferation phenomenon exists doesn't make it so. Have you sojourned through the multitudes of small guilds in order to collect the data that informs your decree that a proliferation of disorganized guilds exists? If so, please discuss the experiences on which you base these statements. Otherwise, it's rhetorical nonsense. See, your dismissal of concerns about potentially harmful changes to the game is based on the presumption that a large number of tiny bad guilds exists, and that the game would be better off when the proposed changes kill those guilds. But while at the same time you have no objective information on which to base your presumption of a "proliferation of small disorganized guilds," you further then assume that the proposed changes will eliminate those guilds. So let's address those basic assumptions. Firstly, 5.10 won't eliminate the phenomenon of small disorganized guilds, because those kinds of guilds always pop up and die out, because that's just how MMOs churn small guilds in every game at every level. The proposed changes might hasten the demise of existing bad small guilds, but like anti-bacterial soap killing microbes today, new ones will just pop up again tomorrow. What I see is that there is actually stable number of small disorganized guilds. They pop up and die out routinely, but the sum of them doesn't change. One dies, another replaces it. It's not a proliferation, it's just how MMO guild populations work. It's the background noise of guild formation and extinction that has always, and will always be. The only way to meaningfully alter the pace at which bad small guilds pop up would be to increase the difficulty of forming a guild ... requiring 8 players instead of 4, for example. Now, returning to the world of the real and observable, most small guilds I see are stable, long-term endeavors. I know these small guilds because I see them consistently across time in PvP, and on fleet when pugging for operations. I know which guilds have good PvPers, and which have good raiders. If you play enough, you see the same guild names, and you learn who's what. One must develop a new familiarity with such guilds each time there's a server merger, but other than those few times, observations of small guilds across time revleas that there is a large number of stable small guilds, with a minimal and irrelevant churn of small bad guilds popping up and dying out. There aren't a larger number of disorganized guilds now than there was before, unless you can speak objectively to the opposite. I agree that 5.10 will prompt existing, stable, organized guilds to become more focused. You're suggesting, however, that 5.10 will encourage the emergence of all new guilds, and that's a foolish assumption. The game is probably at max "good guildness." Running a guild requires time and organization, and the number of players in the population willing and able to do such a thing are already doing it. The notion that 5.10 will encourage a population of "players who are skilled at guild formation and operation but who are not currently forming and operating guilds" ... is ludicrous. So 5.10 won't be promoting a larger number of good guilds. It will only promote a tightened focus within the existing structure of good guilds. The total number of good guilds won't change, except at the small guild level, where there will be a gradual decline, for reasons I've already outlined quite extensively and brilliantly, and which you've chosen to ignore because ... well I don't know ... I'm going to run with the assumption that you lack the capacity to assail those virtually unassailable points. You suggest an either-or dichotomy here that doesn't exist. There will be long term benefits to existing large guilds, yes. There is also the transactional nature of the majority of players, as borne out of the fact of the existence of a large number of anonymous mercenary mega guilds. MMO players always tend toward transactional behavior. If you want to debate this point with me, then I welcome it, because there are infinite examples of the playerbase at large behaving transactionally, and ... are there even any of the opposite? Maybe you can supply some? Ah, here's where it becomes clear you either didn't read my previous post, or you chose not to address ironclad points therein. Players from small unstable guilds will absolutely gravitate toward mega guilds. These players are in a small bad guild because they just joined a random guild without knowing or caring about how to choose a good one. The kind of players languishing in bad small guilds are the kind of players who are new to the game, maybe new to MMOs entirely, and simply don't know better. They have no idea what a good guild is like, so when they abandon a bad small guild, how will they know how to choose a good replacement? Well .. after 5.10, it will be easy to know. Guild levels will be plainly visible, and spammed about constantly in general-chat-recruitment spam. And as a new player in an MMO knows after only a few hours, higher level means "better." So yeah, they'll be joining mega guilds. And they will marvel at the size, imagine all the possibilities, and it'll be weeks or months before they recognize that they are just a cog in an anonymous conquest-point churning machine. This is objectively good ... ish. New players clueless about guilds are definitely better off randomly joining a mega guild than randomly joining a small defunct guild. But ... the problem is the existence of mega guilds as a thing AT ALL ... a phenomenon that exists precisely because of the "proliferation" of perks and benefits available only to mega guilds. Do you remember a time before mega guilds in SWTOR? I do. It was prior to conquests. To be sure, large guilds existed then. But they were well-run large guilds for players who crave that large-guild experience. Faceless, anonymous, soulless mega guilds didn't exist. Those are a phenomenon of disparate rewards for large guilds, and as long as guild size continues to be objectively rewarded, there will be mega guilds. And the MORE disparate the rewards are, the MORE mercenary mega guilds will exist. Please debate this with me if you dare. Granted, good players from good guilds that evaporate due to the attrition of players quitting SWTOR entirely will be looking for a repeat experience, and they will avoid mega guilds. But which population is larger in SWTOR at any given time, the players like you and me who've been here since beta, or the more transient players? And what kind of guild experience is more likely to transform a transient player into a long term player? Is it a mega guild, or a guild with a strong culture? That's a rhetorical question of course, but you see, most transient players who might be converted to long term players won't know that a level 65 guild is less personal than level 32 guild. That's the problem. Really? Let's consider how many really bad guilds there are. Like ... how many ... exactly? Is it 25% of guilds? Unless you have something objective to say, resorting to "too many" is an extremely weak argument, especially in light of the fact that forming a guild is so easy, and people will continuously make new guilds that fail. You can't stop that churn. Quite right, nothing stops guilds from doing what you described. I mean, except reality, of course. It's interesting how you imagine there are stable players in unstable guilds. Players able to be effectively discerning in their choice of guild ... already are. The players available for good guilds to cannibalize from bad guilds are players who don't know the difference between good and bad guilds, and when 5.10 hits, the only way these players will know how to distinguish one guild's quality from another will be guild level. Mega guilds win. And the SWTOR loses, because mega guilds don't have the kind of culture that turns short term players into long term players. Your personal attacks are so expertly plausibly deniable. Honestly, I bow to your brilliance for that. In this, your rhetorical skills vastly outstrip mine. I know. It's too bad too. We complained that CXP and loot boxes were a bad design, and Bioware did it anyway. The game's population took a pretty good hit as a consequence, and those losses haven't been recouped. We complained about the conquest changes, and the game's population took another hit. Each time, Bioware succeeds at fixing the bad design elements, and landing on a good system. I think we can all agree that the current CXP system isn't bad, and we can all agree the current conquest system isn't bad. The problem is that in the span of time between implementation of bad designs, and implementation of fixes to bad designs, the game loses players that it won't get back. I'm not saying 5.10 will kill SWTOR. I'm saying it'll just be yet another badly designed system that will cost the game another chuck of population, and ... mark my words ... a year after the launch of 5.10, the guild perks will be reworked and flattened regardless of guild size, and everyone will be happy. Well, everyone who stayed.

I missed the bit about "not PvP" for stat bonuses. I'm glad the college-educated forum trolls disregarded my other salient points just because of that. Small guilds held together by bubble-gum and bailing wire will fail. I'm glad Andryah agreed with me on this. But that's only a minor point of my overall argument. The rest of the small and medium guilds, the perfectly healthy ones, the ones I mentioned who either don't know or don't care about the perks available to large guilds will continue to exist ... and be relegated to permanent second-class. Exactly. An entire range of perks will exist in-game that players in these small guilds will simply never have access to, except for years later than the mega guilds. I'm sure it consoles some of you to say "meh, I don't care about the perks," but the only people I believe when they say it are Role Players. Everyone else ... we play MMOs to fill bars and raise stats in a persistent shared world with friends and strangers. We fill XP bars, and Reputation bars, and Valor bars. We raise stats with gear upgrades. We grow the size of our bank accounts. Bioware creating an entire class of perks that make bars fill faster, but available only to large guilds, will have the opposite effect of Bioware's stated goal of "community-building." I'll explain more verbosely for the obtuse crowd looking to nitpick. Similar to xordevoreaux, I run a small guild held together not by bubble-gum and bailing wire, but by meaningful bonds of friendship and camaraderie. We also freely permit players to have alts in mega guilds expressly to access achievements and XP/Rep bonuses on leveling characters, and more recently to access the crafting/credits boon available in "large yield crafting box" rewards. Our guild won't die after 5.10, because the quality of our guild culture transcends badly designed game systems. Our guild, like literally hundreds of other small and medium guilds, is well-run, happy, and fulfilling. It's just small and intimate. Why should our guild not have the full range of benefits available to a large guild that is also well-run, happy, and fulfilling? If your argument in favor of preferential in-game benefits for large guilds is limited to "well, large guilds are harder to run," then you actually have no valid argument. According to that line of thinking, 16-player raids should award a higher tier of gear than is accessible, ever, to an 8-player raid, and that's not how it works in fact, because that would be awful. So why is Bioware expanding a system that forces scenarios where small guilds must un-guild and re-guild characters in order to access a full range of guild benefits? What problem does this solve? It certainly creates problems. I don't see how it solves any. When the conquest system first came out, the top rewards were exclusively available to large guilds, but almost no one cared, because the benefits were few and inconsequential. It amounted to a few titles, more opened areas of a flagship, and that's about it. All cosmetic, nothing that affects game play. And even in that environment, where the rewards exclusively available to large guilds were relatively meaningless, certain mega guilds filled with a mercenary cast of achievement/title-hunters cropped up, and ruined the experience on a few servers for the population of large guilds that were actually well-run, happy, and fulfilling. The dominance of mercenary, faceless, soulless mega guilds under the old conquest system inspired Bioware to fix the problem, and although their initial pass at that was flawed (because conquest-point acquisition was too hard and not fun), the overall design was a distinct improvement (with three tiers of access). Small and medium guilds had a chance at greater participation and rewards. They could more readily fill out their flagships, and even acquire titles for the lower-tier planets. Great! But the difference in value between the large yield crafting box and the medium/small is significant enough that mercenary mega guilds still exist, and still dominate large yield planets week to week. These are guilds where no one knows your name, no one cares, no one even really wants their name to be known, because none of that is why anyone joined the guild. They all joined to be mercenaries, to generate conquest points as quickly and efficiently as possible, and then log off to go hang with their real homies in their real guilds with their main characters. Not all large guilds are faceless and soulless. But many are, and that's a thing that didn't exist prior to the original conquest system, because there was no point. It still exists now in the "new" conquest system, because there IS a point, however minor (titles/crafting boxes). The difference between small and mega guild rewards, being so relatively inconsequential, creates an environment where mercenary guilds thrive, and people in small guilds who want to experience the full range of bonuses available to them must have a few characters unguilded from the guild they love, and warehoused in a mercenary mega guild. Consider how motivated people are to join a mercenary guild just for titles and crafting mats ... and now add to that all the various perks that will actually meaningfully affect gameplay itself under the new system. Instead of creating community, what will actually happen is a decrease in community. Weak small guilds will die. Strong small guilds will have all new incentives to unguild their alts. The number of mercenary, faceless, soulless mega guilds will grow, organizations whose populations consist almost exclusively of players from small and medium guilds who just log in to hit their conquest bonus, and that's it. If Bioware wants to foster the construction of deeper and broader communities, this is the wrong way to do it. So it calls to question whether Bioware is lying about their goal (of greater community), or merely pursuing that goal incompetently. Either way, there's a divergence between the goals they are purportedly trying to advance, and the actual effect this change will have on the game. The guild perks system as currently designed will make the game less personal, and more mercenary, in aggregate. If you think there's an argument to be made for how the guild perks system will actually increase community, I encourage you to elucidate it. Meanwhile, continued slow updates continue to drive away players. In the past 2 years, I've lost half of my guild's players ... not to other guilds ... but from the game entirely. And the players I'm atriting aren't the kind that are borderline anyway ... no these are players I've met in real life only after meeting in-game, because we form bonds that deep. Now that's a complaint about the pace and quality of content updates, which is a separate complaint for a separate thread. The point is that, previously, I've been able to replace these loses, because having a great guild culture makes acquiring and retaining high quality, super cool people possible. Pace and quality of updates won't be improving any time soon. So we're going to continue to lose players who quit subbing. But replacing them will be harder after 5.10. It won't be impossible, but it will be harder, because the lure of mega guilds with their massive perks, and easy-to-see labels of "betterness" related to guild levels, will impact the number of players looking to join small guilds. Lots of players who join small intimate guilds didn't even know they were looking for that experience until they stumbled upon it. It's going to be harder for them to stumble upon it in a future where there are a larger number of mercenary guilds than we already have now, all filling starter-world general chat with their spam about what level their guild is, and what perks it offers. Again ... all of this ... to serve WHAT POINT EXACTLY? Why must small guilds be left out of the full range of benefits available to large guilds? Previously, you only needed 20 players to get the full XP bonus, and what? Like 35 or 50 or something to get the full Reputation bonus? At those levels, the full range of guild benefits is available to almost every guild. Going forward ... it'll be different. And it'll hurt the community in sum, at every level of guild size, and for no particular reason at all, except to give us all something to grind on till the next big content update. I'm not salty about artificial things to grind on between content updates. MMOs, as I said, are all about filling bars in one way or another. Usually the systems the developers come up with for new bars to fill don't significantly and negatively affect the community. This one will.

Disclaimer and blah blah blah: Everything on the PTS is subject to change. But by Eric's own statement, what's not subject to change is fundamental design. They may tweak numbers on various perks here and there, nudge them this way or that. But the overall design is locked in and they wanna see how it plays out before making any substantive change. So here's what you can expect with your guilds when 5.10 goes live. ---------------- Small-Guild Extinction Event: Small guilds will die. Not all at once, of course. Give it 2 or 3 weeks for the first wave to die out, and a few months after for all but the most dedicated small guilds to perish. Players will plainly see the mega guilds level 6-7 times a week for 2 or 3 weeks, while small guilds will level maybe once in that time, or maybe not even once. By the end of that third week, the stink of the rotting corpses of small guilds will fill the servers. For each individual small guild, there's a different breaking point where perks and bonuses available in large guilds will supersede the value of being a snowflake guild. By the third week, when the mega guilds are already leveled into the teens and beginning to feel the benefit of the perks, those break points will be challenged and breached in most small guilds. Are you a PvPer, and are you noticing that your enemies from mega guilds are taking 5-10% less damage while stunned? You'll notice that. You'll recognize that you need it too, and your snowflake guild might never get it, at least not for untold months. The only small guilds that will survive 5.10 are the ones populated by players who are ignorant of the perks they might enjoy in a large leveled-up guild, and the ones populated by the stubbornest of players pointedly eschewing mega guild bonuses on pure spiteful principle alone. Players who are informed and sensible, however, will either vacate small guilds in favor of mega guilds, or vacate SWTOR entirely, just like each of the previous times Bioware forced major systemic changes. How many players did the game lose to Galactic Command? How many of those who remained then left after the Conquest Revamp? Players will leave, small guilds will die, and they won't come back. They won't be able to compete for the interest of players against mega guilds leveled into the teens and twenties. But what about 6 months from now, when the mega guilds are level 65 and the few hold out small guilds are level 7? Who will want to start a new guild with friends when there are 25 guilds on the server at level 65+? The only reason to start a new guild will be when a mega guild lacks enough slots for all their members and alts. They'll start a new project to quickly level up a new guild, and be done with that in a matter of months. Remember BBBs 1, 2, 3, 4, and Pub? Yeah, like that. The intimate small guild experience will be forever lost. If Bioware's goal is to shift 80% of the game's population into a total of 30ish guilds per server, this will be a huge success. But what will life be like in those mega guilds? ---------------- The Nobility and the Peasantry: Some perks will be available for only 1 hour per 6 hours. In a mega guild with 300 players, what are the odds your 8-player raid team or 4-player PvP premade will merit the cooldown for a given 6-hour window? Well, if your team has a guild officer or GM in it, the odds are 100%. If not, then 0%. If you're not spending the time to play guild politics, or you aren't organically in the leadership clique when this all becomes a thing, then your individual efforts as a player earning conquest points will help level a guild, but your rewards will be limited to whatever always-on guild-wide bonuses are active at any given time. The mega guilds will tell you to be happy about that because, after all, without their efforts, you'd have to be in another anonymous faceless soulless mega guild. What are you going to do about it? Start your own guild? lol The bonuses you enjoy will come at the whim of a guild leadership team you're not on, and never will be. Maybe you're cool with that. I hope you are. Because that's your fate. Be sure to schedule your raid time around the officers' raids. Be sure to plan your PvP for when they activate those 1-hr bonuses to energy-regen and healing-received. ---------------- Eric: Guild systems that segment players won't create greater community. Now we'll be forced to move our PvP characters to PvP guilds, and our raiders to Ops guilds? What if I wanna PvP and run Ops/Flashpoints on one character? Do I need to join a mega guild that maintains separate guilds, like <Blah Guild PvP Edition> and <Blah Guild Ops Edition>, and then bounce between them via /ginvites as I shift my play in a given day from PvP to PvE? The IDEA of PvP guilds and Ops/Flashpoint guilds SEEMS like a good idea, but in practical application ... how does that work for players who want to enjoy both facets of the game? What about crafters? Will mega guilds have enough "guild currency stuff" to always have full PvP/PvE/Crafting bonuses at all times? If so, then that only FURTHER incentivizes the concentration of all players out of "guilds with my friends" and into "faceless mega guilds." And if mega guilds WON'T be able to have all bonuses always on ... then ... do I need dedicated crafter characters in crafting guilds ... and separate dedicated PvP characters in PvP guilds ... dedicated PvE characters in PvE guilds? This design makes no sense even in theory, and it will work outstandingly bad in practice. As is customary when the team you represent to us designs and implements entire new systems, what you identify as the new system's goals, and what goals will actually be served, are only vaguely related to each other. And where they diverge, you'll find players giving up and, at best, enjoying their game time less, or at worst, just quitting altogether. This system has fundamental design-level problems. It's not about how you tweak the size of the perk, its duration, or cooldown, or cost. It's about the entire design itself. But I guess we should just all buckle in for the next phase of this inevitably-circular experience, where you introduce new systems badly-designed and poorly-thought-out, we gets weeks and months of players complaining while you tell us you're monitoring it, the servers lose population more and more, you decide that the loss of players isn't worth your fixation on some design goal written on a white board in a conference room 8 months ago, you start designing fixes, it takes forever, we all get used to the new terrible normal, and then you roll out fixes and adjustments that correct the problems identified in testing about a year before, and each time we have to endure this vicious circle, the game loses 10-20% of its players. Do we really need to do that again?