#hyperspace beacon

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Hyperspace Beacon: Five reasons I still play Star Wars: The Old Republic

It’s hard not to be negative about your favorite game when it appears that it’s changing its original goals. “What? You’re just now realizing this, Larry?” you might be thinking. No, I recognized it when Star Wars: The Old Republic launched its Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion. The studio head James Ohlen is a great nerd and wonderful creator, but he’s easy to read. Fortunately for us, he cannot eloquently lace a presentation with PR speak. During his Star Wars Celebration faux interview (finterview, fauxnerview… there should be a term for that) with Warwick Davis, he couldn’t call the game an MMORPG. It truly appeared that some public relations rep was hanging over his shoulder whispering, “Remember to call it an online roleplaying game.”

This irritated me, but I still log in at least every other day to hang out with friends and play this not-MMORPG. And thanks to positive proponents in the community like Vulkk and SWTORista, I performed an assessment of the reasons why I still played Star Wars: The Old Republic. And in the process I’ve come to realize that some of the reasons are very personal. I understand why some of these reasons aren’t enough to keep some people around. Some people will believe that these reasons are weak reasons to play a game, but that’s OK. I’m not going to attempt to try to convince you to come back or to stick around. I felt that I should share because people have asked.

Catch the rest of the article on Massively OP!

Continue reading on http://www.hyperspacebeacon.com/2016/08/02/hyperspace-beacon-five-reasons-i-still-play-star-wars-the-old-republic/

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Hyperspace Beacon: Wild speculation about SWTOR's Knights of the Eternal Throne

Who else was disappointed by the Star Wars: The Old Republic presentation at Star Wars Celebration over the weekend? I had really hoped that it would be more, but I guess it’s difficult to give too much information about a story-driven expansion when the last expansion hasn’t even finished its sto

Continue reading on http://www.hyperspacebeacon.com/2016/07/19/hyperspace-beacon-wild-speculation-about-swtors-knights-of-the-eternal-throne/

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Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR's mid-term report card scored by Bartle's taxonomy

Well, BioWare, it’s half-way through the year. It’s time to look at how you’ve done with Star Wars: The Old Republic and what can be done for the rest of the year to improve on what you’ve given us. I like to make my judgments based on the Bartle Taxonomy. I believe that it’s a worthy and tested wa

Continue reading on http://www.hyperspacebeacon.com/2016/07/13/hyperspace-beacon-swtors-mid-term-report-card-scored-by-bartles-taxonomy/

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Hyperspace Beacon: The SWTOR community divide over Knights of the Fallen Empire

The past couple of weeks have been kind of strange for me. For five years, I’ve written about Star Wars :The Old Republic. I’ve embedded myself in the game and the big news and community discussions. I’ve seen some great websites come, and I’ve seen them go. There was even a point when this column had to take a back seat to another game. And somehow, there always seems to be something to talk about.

Now thanks to the announcement at E3, there has been a resurgence of discussion about what BioWare will do with its next expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire. Circus owner and showman P.T. Barnum is often credited with the quote, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” Hopefully, that is true for SWTOR because it’s certainly been a circus of criticism, zealous excitement, and wailing disappointment. In fact, it’s possible that this next expansion will do more to polarize the followers of the game more than anything that BioWare did or didn’t do at launch.

Catch up with the rest on Massively OP->>

Hyperspace Beacon: The SWTOR community divide over Knights of the Fallen Empire was originally published on Hyperspace Beacon

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Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR's game-changing expansion

As I’m writing this, it’s been several hours since Jeff Hickman, the general manager for Star Wars: The Old Republic, stepped on the stage at E3, yet my head is still spinning from all the information that BioWare dropped about its MMORPG. Perhaps it’s the games journalist in me, but I have far more questions than opinions about what we all saw today. I am both intrigued and a little scared, and I’m also extremely disappointed that SWTOR didn’t get more time on that stage if for no other reason than to explain what the hell we just watched.

I’m a person who likes to keep his sanity, so the first thing we need to do is separate the fact from the fiction. It’s also good to know what we do know and what we don’t know. Only after I’ve gathered all the information can I even begin to form a respectable opinion. So let’s do that. What do we know as truth, what has been speculated but not truth, and what does Knights of the Fallen Empire mean for the game itself?

Continue reading on MassivelyOP.

Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR’s game-changing expansion was originally published on Hyperspace Beacon

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Hyperspace Beacon: Five tips for making SWTOR conquests work for smaller guilds

In my last column, I explained the shortcomings of the conquest system in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Despite the issues I have with the system, I still think it’s a great way to encourage players to revisit older content, and most importantly, to build guild unity. I know there are some guilds on my server in which members don’t even have to participate at all in conquests for that guild to appear on the top ten. But what about those guilds who don’t have hundreds of members? What about those guilds who have maybe 20 or so members? Can they even compete?

My guild has about 20 people who log in on raid nights; when the raid is done, maybe five or six will stick around. Now, I’m not saying that this is a healthy state for a guild (we are looking for more members!), but the few dedicated members pulled us ahead. For the last two weeks, our guild was in the top 10, and not barely in the top 10 either. This week we hit number seven, and the week before we were six.

Here are my tips for how your small guild can get ahead in conquests, too.

Continue reading on Massively.

Hyperspace Beacon: Five tips for making SWTOR conquests work for smaller guilds was originally published on Hyperspace Beacon

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Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR conquests are good but not there yet

I’m writing this late on Sunday night, and I have some disappointing news: My Star Wars: The Old Republic guild did not make the top 10 on the planet we were attempting to conquer. It’s partly my fault; I happened to choose the planet that would be the most hotly contested. Who knew that other guilds would flock to Makeb when conquests went live?

It wasn’t all bad. In fact, I’d say that SWTOR kind of pulled our guild together a bit. We participated in content we hadn’t done in a long time. It was a rallying cry for us: “Hey, look, this stuff is fun, and you can still have fun doing it.” On top of that, it’s reintroduced the idea that open-world PvP is possible. But with all the good that it’s done — player housing, guild housing, and open-world PvP — there are somethings that have fallen short of what it could be.

I think the best way to explain is to tell you about my week.

Finish reading on Massively –>

Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR conquests are good but not there yet was originally published on Hyperspace Beacon

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Welcome to the new Hyperspace Beacon

Ever since I started Hyperspace Beacon, I’ve wanted it to be a site for the community of Star Wars fans and Star Wars gamers. And with the support of those on Patreon and the followers I have on Massively and Twitter, I’ve been able to move HSB to its own server instead of the Tumblr page that is was on before. But that doesn’t mean that anything is going away. It actually means that everything is expanding and growing.

I will continue to post on Tumblr and Twitter like I have in the past, but I will also have this site, too. On top of that, we can use Tumblr, Twitter, and now Facebook as a communication tool for this site and more importantly fans of Star Wars games.

I am always open to suggestions as far as articles are concerned, and if you want to write up something, we should talk, especially if it’s something you’d like to do regularly.

There might be a few bugs as I transition things over (like all the Disqus comments are missing for the moment), but they should be fixed soon.

Thank you for sticking with the Hyperspace Beacon. You can to catch it every other week on Massively, follow the site on Twitter, ask questions on Tumblr, catch the RSS feed, like the site on Facebook, and now read it on this brand new website!

As always, may the Force be with you.

Welcome to the new Hyperspace Beacon was originally published on Hyperspace Beacon