Welcome back to the game, and welcome to the server! Maybe someone else can confirm or expand, but when the servers merged a while back, one of the custom channels that someone posted up on a community forum was EmpireRP. I confess to not ever having joined it, and there may be others in more frequent use now. Most OOC stuff happens in Guild channels or, in my guild's case, a guild custom channel. All the best

Update: In an effort to make our guild organization work even better for our characters, we are working to specialize our non-Sith paramilitary forces: Agents and BH's who are more inclined to infiltration and technical expertise will likely find themselves with Reaper Company while those who prefer guerrilla tactics and more straightforward blaster fights will tend towards our storied Leviathan Company. Radhasvi, Jaccob, Rathen, and Agentstep are primary contacts for the security forces. Also, we've had some very promising Sith characters join us in recent days, but we're always looking for more good players and characters whose stories will fit with ours, or who have not fleshed out a personal story yet. Rest assured that although we have a Sith hierarchy within the guild, we are not a guild that asks players to pretend that they aren't ICly full lords or Darths of the Sith Order, for instance, even if within the context of the Harbingers you rate as a recruit or apprentice.

Could just be my experience, but there seems to be more disparity than usual on average right now, perhaps because more individual players who haven't PvPed are PvPing right now (from the effects of F2P and 1.6, I'd guess). Hehe, I had one charming soul who berated me for saying "Good try" to the team when we lost a WZ last night that wasn't super-close but was sort-of close. (Apparently I was "congratulating failure.") Guess he wasn't in the couple of Voidstars recently where my team struggled to defend our own starting platform.... Anyhow, the point being, I can confirm from the receiving end that there are some very competitive folks out there tearing me to shreds in a matter of seconds (I'm an endurance-heavy sniper almost entirely in augmented WH, for what it matters) and coordinating very effectively as teams, particularly 'pub-side. And regardless, as long as you're in there with a friend or two, even losing with a PUG you get some good fights and good fun on a reasonably regular basis.

I personally very much enjoy OWPvP, and have done some interguild and cross-faction things with that in an RP context since the game started with varying degrees of success, apart from small random encounters. My suggestion for what might work best would be to pick two bases, one for each faction, that are fairly close--like the ones near Outlaw's Den on Tatooine or Frostwake and whatever the 'pub one is on the edge of the Starship Graveyard on Hoth. (I'm sure there are plenty of other good examples, but the area around Outlaw's Den--not the Den itself, necessarily--has the advantage of lots of open spaces, more interesting terrain, and lots of different avenues to maneuver and get at each other.) Then you just set a time. WIth two opposing bases as focal points, enough area is in play that it's not restricted to just loggerheads, but we would also be able to find each other without a ridiculous amount of effort. The more people who participate, the more things can spread out a bit, avoiding crippling lag for most people. And guild-based parties who arrived late, didn't fit into the main Ops group for their faction, or did not want to join that Ops group could still find their enemies and participate fairly effectively. Those are my thoughts.

As a DPS in half-BM, half-WH at the time, I dueled a guild tank in Black Hole gear and he nearly beat me. Close enough that it makes me at least skeptical that someone with only Recruit, just starting out, is better off than someone in Black Hole. (Certainly, that it might be a close enough call that folks don't deserve to get harassed about it.) But in general of course, yeah. Expertise lets you tear through PvE gear.

This recruitment post has just been updated with more current information. Also, I wanted to add that although we are always looking to take on a good player who has a character that fits, regardless of class, we are currently in particular need of frequently played non-Sith characters who would serve in our paramilitary security forces. Many of our guild events ("episodes") are structured around security-forces activities, and there is always a significant role for the non-Sith characters in our RP. The paramilitary forces are well-organized, with ranks and units. We are a great home for soldiers and blasters-for-hire, not just Sith!

Hello! Although we generally define ourselves as medium RP, the guild I belong to, Harbingers of the Sith'ari, tends to be more on the heavy side of medium, looking at the broad spectrum of what I've encountered out there. We definitely have a master-apprentice system for the Sith characters; the non-Sith characters have various types of roles to fill, though most end up in the paramilitary security forces that technically serve but in practice cooperate with the Sith. We have some PvE and PvP going on, and occasionally do OOC events, but RP is our overwhelming focus as a guild, and we're always doing it. We operate on EST but as new members soon find out, we've got people on all the time and through the night--and usually have our highest numbers on from about 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. EST. The recruitment page of our website, with some useful introductory links, is at http://harbingers.swtorhosting.com/recruitment. Feel free to check us out!

I will try to round up a group of Harbingers--should be at least a few of us there, at some point during this. If it gets too big for Outlaw's Den, the areas surrounding Outlaw's Den are pretty nice for mass PvP, too, I think, as long as we're just doing cross-faction and everyone's flagged for World PvP.

The Harbingers of the Sith'ari are always open to meeting and possibly bringing aboard cooperative, reasonably mature RPers who like to have fun but keep any drama in-character. We are a pre-launch, medium-RP guild (from Kath Hound server originally) that holds regular and spontaneous RP events. (We also do periodic PvE endgame events and spontaneous PvP groups. Our RP events tend to include PvE and sometimes PvP as well as RP.) As far as RP theme and story, the Harbingers are centered on a group of devotees to the prophecy of the Sith'ari, awaiting the arrival of the Sith King who will one day remake the Empire, bring the Republic to heel, and forge a new order for the Galaxy. However, we have many different types of characters and personalities in the Harbingers. In general this is a good home for those in the grey areas of the Empire--Sith who do not believe that the current Imperial regime serves Imperial values; disaffected soldiers and Intelligence agents; smugglers and bounty hunters looking for steady employment; and anyone who's an Imperial at heart but has run afoul of the government for one reason or another. Agents of the Dark Council, Intelligence infiltrators, and psychotic Sith tend to be the only types of characters with whom we will not get along. If interested, please check out the website at http://harbingers.swtorhosting.com to find out more about our guild arcs, structure, expectations, and characters. The recruitment page, with some links to helpful introductory information, is at http://harbingers.swtorhosting.com/recruitment. We have a very active website community (posting scores of character stories), Vent, and interguild relationships (including cross-faction). Good in-game contacts include: Jihanna and Nadezhdekh (recruiters), Vhron (GM), and Jaccob, L'yn, Radhasvi, Rag'narok, and Zar'a--though, starting with a website application or looking for Harbingers at Vaiken late at night can be helpful since we're often working on alts in-game. Thank you for your time!

I agree that distance is partly scaled (otherwise, as mentioned, these are super-tiny galactic capitals) but also planets are not entirely shown (hence a reference...I think on Balmorra, that 'pubs are being brought from one of the "other continents"). Regarding the original question posed, many astute points have been made. I will only contribute by taking a step backward to note: Isn't it more of a shock that any one or two governments encompassing thousands of star systems is anything but a completely failed state? Given the cultural similarities between SW and RL, an enormous suspension of disbelief seems in order even for that.* * (by which I mean everything from the sheer logistics of maintaining political and military control that far out from the home territories to accomodating the incredible amount of diversity that would have to exist)

Poor Yoda. We definitely don't see him at his best. He seems essentially retired by the time we meet him, more monk less warrior. He spends a lot of scenes spouting profoundly unuseful fortune-cookie wisdom, but when he's right about something--don't train Anakin, he's too old--he gets ignored. Why he wasn't smart enough to team with Obi-wan and take out Sidious and Palpatine one at a time...I can't really say. Going into self-exile and slowly losing his sanity in a swamp just because he fought Sidious to a draw also seems a bit extreme and unhelpful to the galaxy at large, but very impressively...well, Japanese/E. Asian of him, in my understanding. Comparing him with most of the others seems a little apples-and-oranges to me.

Messing with lore tends to annoy me as it does many of you it seems, but at the end of the day, SW is gonna have plot holes and things that just don't quite make sense, and personally I'll excuse a lot for a good story. Bless Lucas's daughter and everyone else responsible for that last Maul-as-Shelob-and-Gollum-combined episode. The last couple episodes struck me as the all-around best written, acted, animated, directed, etc. of the whole series so far. I actually forgave them, mostly, for the R2 and 3PO go-to-the-spa episode and the exceptionally, irritatingly meddlesome TCW Padme.

Your insight, wit, and constructive contribution hath astounded me. (Seriously, it's just hard to know what you're getting at if that's all you're going to say. Seems like a why-bother post.)

Sinemetu, I concur wholeheartedly. I'd say that's an excellent synopsis.

Apologies if I misread you, and I'm not necessarily disputing everything you're saying, but just for the sake of clarification, many if not most Republic Senators, and perhaps all, are NOT popularly elected to my knowledge. The more or less sovereign leaders of a member state tend to appoint the Senator, I believe, who's more like a UN ambassador in that regard.

Whew. I'm not the only one who was thinking this after all!

Agreed. It's naiive to think that every society doesn't have its elites. A natural aristocracy of Force users makes more sense to me than one of rich people like ours. The whole kidnapping-kids* bit shows a very ugly side of the Jedi Code, though, I'll agree there. *somewhat hyperbolic, but still...

Awww, don't be that guy. Some of us just see this is a "name your poison" situation, and we think that the Imperial "poison" offers the potential for more strength, order, and even stability. Something like that. Dunno who says the Empire is "a good place" as is. Both options are morally deficient in their own special ways, and the Republic can't really hope to purge corruption (for reasons others here have explained well) any more than the Empire can permanently curb the ambition of powerful warlords. Whether it's outlawed in the Republic or not, slavery still exists there. (Ineffectiveness is, after all, a deficiency.) Personally, and I'm in no way suggesting that I speak for anyone else in this, I just find the premodern concept of political systems based on personal loyalties to be more appealing than modern systems predicated on bureaucratic authority and bland impersonal, institutional loyalties or rabid individualism. Both have drawbacks but, like Tolkien as he got older, I'd probably prefer real monarchy or community-oriented forms of anarchy to the insipid pretensions of the modern "democratic" state. Within the SW universe, I see certain Imperial ideals and institutions being closer to my druthers than the Republic's ideals and institutions. Why bore you with this? Because people can be a little reactionary or complicated in their tastes and reasoning without being a "terrible person" or a fascist, or at least those you don't agree with oughtn't be brushed off that way as you try to. All good-natured, here, mind you, it is after all just a game. P.S. - I think sometimes of the young Imperials in the Legacy of the Force book series who grumble that if there had been an Empire rather than the New Republic, the Vong could've been dealt with more easily. Impossible to prove or disprove, but it's possible they have a point. A strong Empire could offer more security than a confederation, regardless of quality-of-life issues.

Indeed. The IA's governing ideology tends toward totalitarianism because any individual is held to be insignificant except as a means to protect the group and serve the Council's wishes...personal loyalty being something that some agents value in spite of this...but they have every right to do what they do to terrorists, the Republic, and rebels, and they hold the ship of state together quite effectively.

I see your points...but overall I don't think they're the best characterizations. Sith are very much like feudal lords in that they are aristocrats with independent power bases, who are sometimes unruly and compete with each other, leading to some instability, but the majority don't let the worst of those get too out of hand. Moreover, at the end of the day, they'll band together to thrash the Republic when needed, and the infighting keeps 'em from going soft in the interim. A lot of feudal parallels there, and when you toss in Intelligence with their greater-good mentality, "individualistic" doesn't quite work. More like Feudalism and Totalitarianism grafted together, keeping each other stable...and highly effective, militarily, more often than not. I entirely agree with those who say the Senate is more like the UN than anything else. Athens and even Rome were relatively homogenous in their ruling class of citizens and unitary in their political systems. The Republic, like the UN, has member states with diverse governing institutions, though the supra-legislature is democratic.

Your first point? Exactly. Your second point? Alternative version: Republic-A confederation that won't really let you leave voluntarily, a galactic body that claims benevolence but is really too large and unwieldy to be effective most of the time. I'd take the potential for occasional, honest effectiveness over perpetual hypocrisy and systemic ineffectiveness any day. To the extent that SW has an overall political point, it's that it doesn't matter what kind of institutions you have if you don't have the right quality of people in charge. Both sides COULD be much better than they are, it just depends on what the philosophies, goals, and mindsets of the individuals running the show are.

tobarstep: Ah, yes, there are some hardy Kath Hounds over here trying to advance the RP cause when and where they can. I've picked up on some of the challenges, though I don't really have much in the way of standards for comparison. If you ever come our way, feel free to let Aeth'iss or Bra'dhas'vihang know.

Well said, exactly my take on the whole mess. There's a fair amount of this Weberian loyalty-to-institutions-not-people on the Sith side, too, but less so than the Republic. We founded our guild based on the personal-loyalty principle for this very reason.

Oh, how I wish...problem is, I'm pretty sure some serious lore would have to be expanded first to allow it; this is during their isolation period when they're just starting to consolidate control under a Queen and Consortium, if I remember correctly. Plus the problem with explaining why a male would be a playable character rather than a docile servant. Maybe they'll make a game ABY someday....maybe!

Tell us how you really feel, please. But, seriously, if I had one choice, it'd be Quarren. (You're upset that something in Star Wars doesn't make sense? Truly?) Thanks to the others who brought them up, though I know it's a long, long shot. Poor Quarren just wanting to mind their fishy business, but those stupid progressive Mon Cals with their miraculously unaccented* Basic won't leave 'em be. I'm a good Imp but I'd roll a Quarren regardless of faction. I think adding more species will help the Republic where there's faction imbalance, even though Imps will need some new choices also. *Human-accented, that is...how Humanocentric of me