We're going to Hoth's Starship Graveyard! If you're Republic-side, whisper Vivek for an invite. If you're Imperial-side, whisper Cnids for an invite.

Due to real life scheduling mistakes (not by me), "Won't They Rust?" will be pushed back to 9pm EST tonight, Friday, May 16. "Sandy Slavery" will be returning to its original time at 6pm EST, Saturday, May 17. Sorry for the sudden changes! Locations are still pending, but will be announced as soon as possible!

Sandy Slavery (5/17) has been pushed back to 9pm EST due to a real life commitment. I hope this was a far enough in advance warning!

I've only ever played as a Shadow Tank, but I can most definitely understand the frustrations around Phase Walk. The ability does seem lackluster, and quite honestly, the healing buff in the Kinetic Combat (Tank) tree is miniscule, especially when healers are forced to remain in a very confined space to benefit from its effects. Anyway, I'm not much of a theorycrafter, but here are a few ideas I wanted to throw out there. I should also mention that these ideas are meant to be picked and chosen, not necessarily all rolled up into one. Kinetic Combat Phase Walk Expand the radius of Shadow Shelter. Increase Shadow Shelter's healing buff. Add a defense buff (at least to mitigate AoE damage) to players standing in Shadow Shelter's Phase Walk. Clense/Purge all hostile effects/debuffs at set intervals to players who are standing in Shadow Shelter's Phase Walk. Increase the Shadow's defense/shield/absorb ratings for every player standing in Shadow Shelter's Phase Walk. Infiltrate/Balance Phase Walk Eliminate CD upon use (to increase mobility). Activation of Phase Walk Purges and Exits combat (Force Cloak and Resilience wrapped up into one ability). Expand radius to Slow, DoT, or Stun Targets who pass through Phase Walk. Expand radius to apply a debuff for receiving increased X amount of damage to Targets who pass through. Could be restricted to Targets who remain within Phase Walk's radius, or applies a Y amount of time debuff for simply passing through. Activation of Phase Walk gives Shadow a damage and/or defense buff. Shadow can place two Phase Walks, where a Target(s) are instantly teleported from a Sender to a Receiver (I imagine it as a dynamic Force Pull). Offensively, could be used to teleport Targets to less-than-strategic positions, like fire pits. Defensively, it can be used to teleport teammates to strategic positions or used as an instant escape. In this case, Phase Walk would have 3 charges, where every player and/or use eliminates a charge. Meaning, a group of three players can be teleported at once, or a single player can teleport up to three times. All food for thought.

First off, the results of last week's scenes: "Get Off My Lawn" (Republic) and "We'll Be Taking That" (Empire). In this week's scenes, I'll be venturing into new territory (I primarily play a Jedi who's out saving the galaxy, obviously), so please bear with me! Friday (5/16) is the pilot to my business-centric themes, where SyntheTek takes the spotlight. Their scenes are open to pilots, smugglers, pirates, and freelancers. The next day, Saturday (5/17), I'm diving straight into the Underworld with some slave trading. It's my first non-combat centric scene, so it's time to see everyone flex their writing skills. The scene is open to characters interested in purchasing a slave, selling/trading a slave they own, or players who want to make their character available to be owned by another. It's risky business (both IC and OOC), but I have complete faith in your maturity levels. Full details and sign up for "Won't They Rust?" here. Full details and sign up for "Sandy Slavery," here.

I can understand the concern that "following the Dread Masters is OP" because interacting with or having some type of relationship with Lore characters has a greater potential of giving a player-character too much power or authority over other player-characters. Your response to this concern sounds very reasonable because, at least the way I'm interpreting it, your character wasn't actually taught by the Dread Masters, but merely finding a lesson to be learned from their methods. And quite frankly, considering their end goals, they wouldn't have taken on any apprentices at all. Anyway, I think it sounds good to me. The only stipulation I can think of is how your fellow Sith would respond to you having a positive thought towards traitors to the Empire

I'm home. The scene will take place tonight, RIGHT NOW, even! Shoot a whisper to Vivek to get an invite to the Ops group.

The Republic scene (5/6) is POSTPONED until further notice. I am currently trapped at church because I don't have a car at the moment. Providing I do not return home too late the scene will still happen tonight! Worst case scenario, I move the scene to tomorrow early afternoon, around 1pm EST. I will post an update on my decision as soon as I get home. I am sincerely sorry about the inconvenience!

Trust me, you are not alone! I've gotten quite a few comments about this week's scenes, some of them incredibly hostile O.o To put it simply, non-Force users are often overshadowed by Force-trotting Saber-jockeys, and I felt they could use some loving to show off their skills. While this may seem contradictory to the overall goals of these weekly scenes, which is to promote RP outside of the Cantinas, they are also meant to create unique experiences for specific character types. In the beginning, I designed scenes to be as open-ended as possible, so everyone can get a chance to see how these go down, but as we move forward, these scenes will get more and more specific. If it wasn't already blatantly obvious, getting specific means there's going to be restrictions that limit participation. I feel like this is okay because these scenes are recurring. Just because you may not be able to participate in one week's scenes, doesn't mean you won't be able to participate in next week's, or the week after. If you have multiple characters. Great! This is your chance to brush off a character who's been collecting dust and get them involved in something. If not, there's always next week! To give you a better idea, next week's scenes will be catering to space-faring smugglers, privateers, and pirates; excluding Jedi, Sith, soldiers, and spies. If anything, all of the comments I have received about this week's scenes have inspired me to spread things out a bit. For example, for one week, the Republic scene will have a specific theme while the Imperial scene will be generally open to all types of characters; the following week will flip so that the Republic scene will be open and the Imperial scene will have a specific theme. In this way, at least I'm hoping, players will have a better chance of getting involved every week. TL;DR: Don't worry! These scenes are recurring, so if you can't attend one week, there's always next week, and the week after that, and so on!

In the event that some of you browse these forums, but not the actual Server (The Ebon Hawk) forums, I wanted to inform you all of an initiative by the EH Community staff to host weekly RP scenes. These are one-shot scenes designed to explore a wide range of premises that accommodate specific character types. We started out with the greater conflict between the Republic and the Empire, but we're preparing to branch out to themes that dabble in businesses and piracy and slicing and espionage. I regularly posts updates to the SWTOR server forums for the Ebon Hawk, but if you want all the details and follow up material, I highly recommend joining the EH Community website. With that out of the way, here's the post that pretty much jump started all of this:

Republic and Imperial military get all the love in this week's scenes. Note: the last minute-ness of the Republic scene was totally not my fault. I promise. Click the link for full details and sign up for the Republic scene, "Get Off My Lawn," which takes place Tuesday, May 6 at 9pm EST. Click the link for full details and sign up for the Imperial scene, "We'll Be Taking That," which takes place Thursday, May 8 at 6pm EST.

Hm. I'm not familiar with a lot of guilds, but the ones that do come to mind are The Galactic Fifth Column and Azure Blades. I definitely recommend looking at the Guild Recruitment subforum, though.

You can take a peek at EH Community or SWTOR-RP, two RP websites with guild listings and role players who can point you in the right direction. I recently put up a thread directed at smugglers, pirates, and in-character businesses, and a few of those who responded did mention they're involvement in criminal activity. I'm not very familiar with Imp-side, but off the top of my head, there's Dark Blade Cartel, Ingenium Securities, and The Krayt Armada.

There are so many guilds out there, it can help narrow your search, as well as help guild recruiters, if you were a bit more specific about your gaming preferences. Are you interested in PvE content? Does that include questing, group content, or endgame content? Are you interested in running Operations? Casual or Progression? What's your experience in endgame content? What roles can you fulfill, and what's your experience in Operations? PvP, maybe? Sometimes? All the time? Ranked? Unranked? GSF? Role play? Heavy, medium, or light? Do you prefer in-game or forum RP, does it even matter? Or the ever so general questions: are you willing to use a voice chat service, do you already have one that you use? What's your schedule generally look like on a weekly basis? Are you willing to join a guild website? Fill out an application? How about in-game interviews (for RP)? Age restrictions? Again, there are a lot of guilds ,but there's a lot you can do to narrow that search. After you've figured out what kind of guild you're looking for, I recommend browsing through the guild listings. Want to take it a step further? Look into the many community websites, such as EH Community or SWTOR-RP. Best of luck!

I would like to thank all of the new players who decided to join us for "Target Practice" (previous post), and apologize for the chat issues. I know it wasn't anyone's fault, but it put me in a position where I was forced to alter the scene into something I hadn't really planned for, and I think it made for a lack luster experience, and a really bad first impression. Even still, I want to thank you all for sticking through it to the end and hope to see you for future scenes. If you're interested, I invite you to check out an opportunity for a short, in-character follow up. In related news, I have recently opened up a thread to prepare for scenes that will explore themes of espionage, slicing, and information brokering. If you're interested in these themes, and even have a character this might apply to, I encourage you to take a peek and throw your two cents in! My work schedule's loosened up for the next few weeks, so expect next week's scene(s) to be posted sometime in the near future! Also, also, it's come to my attention that quite a few people are reading these posts, but not exactly commenting on them. It's great that a few of you have approached me in-game, but I think if you publicly expressed your thoughts and opinions of these scenes here on this forum, it would encourage more people to participate, especially when they know they wouldn't be getting involved with something that only a handful of people are doing. Overall, thanks for your continued support!

The Ebon Hawk is still experiencing /say issues. Messages will display for random players or not at all, including the message poster.

Last minute post is last minute (I blame my work schedule!). Premise down below for your reading pleasure, sign up here!

Due to severe scheduling conflicts, there will be no scenes scheduled for the week of April 20 through April 26, 2014. If you're interested in how last week's "Smashing Ice" (Imperial scene) or "Frozen Galaxy" (Republic scene) went, you can read about their respective IC aftermath here and here, respectively. In the meantime, the EH Community staff is preparing to explore themes outside the war between the Republic and the Empire, and we have our sights set on businesses, smuggling, piracy, privateer-ing, and space-based RP. We're looking for guilds whose premises include any of the aforementioned themes, especially IC businesses and companies. If you're interested in volunteering your guild/character or curious about the logistics of it all, please check out this thread! As a final note, our scenes have seen an increasing number participants, and we hope to see even more players get their characters involved. Even though these are designed to be one-shot scenes, they have so much potential for follow up content.

Sorry for the late notice, work got a little bit hectic for me this week. This week's Imperial scene, "Smashing Ice," is actually tonight (Friday, April 18) at 9pm EST. In this scene, the Empire seeks to retake a few of their old mines on Ilum so they can harvest enough Adegan crystals to experiment with Isotope-5. The scene will be GM'd by Vivek on his Warrior, Adish, and will feature a /roll 20 system. The scene is open to all Imperial-side characters at any level. Follow the link for more details and to sign up. Whisper Adish for an invite to the Ops group a few minutes prior to the start time. This week's Republic scene, "Frozen Galaxy," is tomorrow night (Saturday, April 19) at 8pm EST. In this scene, the Republic travels to Hoth's starship graveyard to recover lost star charts that contain a secret hyperspace route. The scene will be GM'd by Vivek, and will feature a /roll 20 system. The scene is open to all Republic-side characters at any level. Follow the link for more details and to sign up. Whisper Vivek for an invite to the Ops group a few minutes prior to the start time. As always, these scenes are designed to include as many character-types as possible, regardless of guild affiliation. The premises are there to give context, but not necessarily drive the RP to a predetermined conclusion; that depends entirely on who is involved and what they do during the scene. Curious about last week's scenes? You can read the GNN report for the Imperial scene, here, and conversely, the Republic scene, here. Remember, two scenes will be hosted by the EH Community staff every week, and at different days to accommodate as many schedules as possible!

Originally posted on the EH Community website. This announcement is meant to encourage interested individuals to join the EH Community website, if only to sign up for specific scenes and events, so organizers can get an idea of who and what to expect. These scenes are meant to cater to characters, character types, and other themes, and not necessarily guilds. While whole guilds are more than welcome to participate, guild(s) will not take center stage, in a manner of speaking. ________________________________________________

May I recommend giving the EH Community website a look? It's meant to be a server community website, but is mostly dominated by role players. You might find some guilds or players who might be able to help you out!

First, I would recommend browsing through the guild listing sub-forum. I realize it's probably not the most organized, but it is definitely a start when it comes to looking for guilds. I'd also like to recommend checking out the EH Community website, as it is another resource when looking for guilds or other role players who might be interested in RPing with your characters. Off the top of my head, I think Interlude would be a guild worth looking into.

Then get more people to RP with? The only reason I suggested one 'NPC Marker' per player is to limit the potential for spam. If one player could set down any number of markers at any given time, what's to top them from placing 20+ markers and destroying everyone's frame rate? I'm not so sure players would appreciate having their game performance affected because of one troll.

/flourish is what you're looking for, unless you mean something similar, but obviously different? In which case, I'm all for it, but I'd prefer BioWare fix the issue with the drawn weapon after the emote first; it's still glitchy. -- Some sort of /cover or /takecover emotes, where a player takes a crouching position would nice for RP purposes. I'm sure Troopers/Mercenaries, especially, are rather envious of Smugglers/Agents being able to inherently take cover. /lightsaber, /doublesaber, /rifle, /pistol, /sniper to spawn a generic-looking weapon in a certain pose would be cool for RPers who would like to be holding/using a weapon that's impossible for their class/advanced class. And to keep the pressure on, a /die or /laydown would be equally awesome.

First of all, I'd like to thank BioWare for finally implementing RP friendly things into the game as of late. Even though it was a long time coming, the Chair emotes felt like a gift straight from the heavens. So, thank you very much for those and all of the emotes that followed. Hoping to capitalize on the RP centric items, I think it would be nice to have 'NPC markers' that could be placed similarly to the holostatues, rancor statue, holodancer, and operation markers. Essentially, these are NPCs anyone would find around the game world, but one's we'd have limited control over. To limit the potential for spam and to make them useful, limit one 'NPC marker' per player to be toggled on/off. In this way, we don't have to worry about a timer. Since this is a Cartel Market suggestion, I imagine RPers would be willing to purchase different kinds of 'NPC markers' to suit their specific scene needs.