An update on Republic Trooper and a massive thank you to all of our readers!

Written By: Andy Muchmore

This past week, July 2nd to be exact, Republic Trooper turned 1 – happy birthday RT! Although it is our birthday week, I felt it was appropriate to update all of you with the status of RT as a whole. Obviously over the past several months things have slowed to a crawl and I would like to personally address the situation.

Three years ago a very good friend of mine, Dave, approached me with the idea of RepublicTrooper.com. At the time I was neck deep in other projects and I was unavailable to help out, even though I was eagerly following the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Over the years I would get phone calls, emails, texts, and the like asking if and when I would be available to “make it happen.” Around May of last year I was finally in a place where I could offer my services to Dave and help build Republic Trooper from the ground up. After several months of planning and development RT saw its first public reader and we were off to the races!

Since that time RT has seen tremendous growth and acceptance within the overall Star Wars: The Old Republic community – and I have to say, all of us cannot thank you enough for being readers, listeners, fans, and for not only playing the Trooper class in game, but being believers in BioWare and SWTOR to begin with. When RT went live we were woefully late to the game, in terms of established fan sites, but we did this for the love of the game, the love of the class, and to be honest – the love of the company that made it all happen. As long time gamers we had faith that a company like BioWare would, without a doubt, blow our minds with their new MMO.

Tags: Andy Muchmore, Ask A Jedi, beta, Bioware, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, community, David Bass, David Souza, EA, Early Game Access, Electronic Arts, fan fiction, LucasArts, Mike Kern, MMOs, Patch 1.1, Project Titan, R2-DB, Republic Trooper, Sith Empire, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Stephen Reid, SWTOR, Titan Everything, TOR, TOR Syndicate, TORWars, Trooper

Command Decisions is a column where Republic Troopers can get the skinny on the ins and outs of guilds and the officers and members that keep them running like well-oiled war machines.

Written By: Lady Republic

Hello and welcome to another installment of Command Decisions, the column for guild leaders, officers, or anyone else interested in guilds and their management. Last time, we discussed guild banks – the pros and cons of them, and how to set up funding for them. This week, we’re looking at another issue entirely. Unless you’ve been living in a cave or off the net, odds are you’ve heard that The Old Republic has begun instituting server moves for a number of servers. The long term plans for this are still a bit murky, though rumors abound about the intention of creating “super servers” and such. What we do know in the short term is that a large number of servers have been marked as either origin (where you can transfer toons from) or destination (where you can transfer toons to) servers. There are multiple origin servers feeding into the same destination servers so far, so this does look like the first step in a larger server consolidation process. You can read more about the overall process here.

Now for individual players, this appears to be a pretty welcome direction. Many servers have suffered from low populations and Fleets with barely ten to twenty players online at peak hours. Moving to a larger population server opens up all sorts of welcome opportunities such as the ability to get flashpoint groups, faster PvP queue times, and people to buy or sell from on the GTN. What does it mean for guilds though? This week, let’s look at some of the pros and cons of the server transfer in TOR and how it impacts guilds.

Tags: Bioware, EA, Electronic Arts, Flashpoints, Galactic Trade Network, GTN, guild bank, guild master, guilds, Lady Republic, LucasArts, Operations, PvE, PvP, Republic Fleet, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, TOR

Command Decisions is a column where Republic Troopers can get the skinny on the ins and outs of guilds and the officers and members that keep them running like well-oiled war machines.

Written By: Lady Republic

Hello, and welcome my first article for Republic Trooper’s Command Decisions column – a place to talk about all things guild-related. As some of you may know, I used to write Council Chambers, which was the guild management and advice column over on the former Ask A Jedi. We’ve always enjoyed a close partnership with the folks at Republic Trooper, and I’m delighted to be able to continue writing about guilds and troubleshooting over here! On that note, as with my former columns – always feel free to post in the comments section below with any questions, topics for advice, suggestions, or helpful feedback.

This week, we’ll be talking about one of the new features introduced in Patch 1.2 – Guild Banks. Guild banks in TOR are very helpful – but also very expensive. In fact, to purchase all 7 tabs for your new guild bank, you will be spending a total of 59,910,000 credits. At the Guild Summit in March, the developers said that in their demographic data, the average player only has about 400,000 credits at any given time. So – saving up for nearly 60 million credits is a serious endeavor.

Tags: Ask A Jedi, Bioware, Council Chambers, EA, Electronic Arts, guild, guild bank, guild master, Guild Summit, guilds, Lady Republic, LucasArts, Patch 1.2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, TOR

Command Decisions is a column where Republic Troopers can get the skinny on the ins and outs of guilds and the officers and members that keep them running like well-oiled war machines.

You’ve formed your new guild and are determined not to make the Top 10 Mistakes a New Guild Leader Makes but you’re still having problems gathering new people to reach your ideal critical mass. Most guilds are set up like a business: you’ve got your guild leader setting strategy like a company president, your officers fielding complaints and helping people achieve their career goals like Human Resources and you’ve got to have advertising marketing you to the public. Like any good business you need customers and your customers are your guild members: you need to attract them with good advertising, help them achieve satisfaction with an initial product and keep them coming back by continuing to provide excellent products and services.

Tags: Austin Murrey, Bioware, community, EA, Electronic Arts, guild master, guilds, LucasArts, PvE, PvP, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, TOR

So you’ve decided to form a guild for Star Wars: The Old Republic. You’ve picked your side, your server type, set up your guild website, and you’re all lined up for BioWare’s Pre-Launch Guild Program. You’ve managed to attract a solid group of guild members, and everybody is eager for launch and for the beginning of the adventure. But wait! Before your guild goes off to save (or conquer) the Galactic Republic, there are some common errors new guild leaders should be aware of. As someone with over 8 years of guild management experience at the executive level across two game platforms, I hope the following will be helpful to new Guild Leaders. This list is by no means exclusive – I’m sure one could think of other potential pitfalls – but these ten items are, in my estimation, the most serious.

Tags: Adam Fitzgerald, Bioware, EA, Electronic Arts, Galactic Republic, guild master, guilds, LucasArts, officers, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, TOR