I'm going to try to answer some questions that have come up in this thread and others. All answers are to the best of my knowledge at this moment, and subject to change if new information comes to light or I am instructed otherwise or a different consensus is reached among guild officers:
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I assume the guild name will be Order 66 or The Order 66 ?
[*]Looks like TheOrderofSixtySix is the way it'll go at the moment. According to Kat, the system would not accept numerical entries and there seemed to be several impediments to getting it any other way. It'll be fine for now and I'm reasonably certain based on no evidence whatsoever that there will be a way to rename it should we need to.
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so are we gonna be republic or sith?
pvp or pve?
rp or whatever?
[*]Republic and RP. See our guild back story for reasons why
http://www.d20radio.com/theholocron/?page_id=568.
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I believe the plan was to infact to have TWO guilds on the same server.. One Republic and one Empire.
[*]This may or may not be correct, but at this point in time The Order of 66 is our one and only guild. Votes were taken, etc., etc. and Republic was chosen. The back story was written with this in mind. IF others wish to create a Sith guild, please do so and we would be happy to tag you as one of our alignment choices. I would recommend treading lightly on this point and consulting both among yourselves and with Dave or I about how this should be done. You will have many members of Gamer Nation among your ranks and we don't want to leave a bad impression if at all possible. HOWEVER, the only OFFICIAL d20 Radio guild at this stage is The Order of 66. There is no way I am going to be capable of running two separate guilds in an efficient and proper manner which both guilds will surely deserve. I will be happy to join your guild as would our other officers and members I'm sure. My intention is to have a go at both Republic and Sith classes as a whole and I'll certainly want somewhere for the Sith Characters to call home.
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So this is like my fleets in Star Trek right? Not sure about the whole server thing. Will our guild only exist on one server? (Star Trek only has a single server setup with lots of instances.) I know I will want to do all the things listed and be mostly a casual player. How is that going to work out?
[*]First, don't panic.
Yes, this is exactly like STO's Fleets, they just happen to call their guilds Fleets over there. We will be on one of many servers. STO takes an unusual approach to their server structure. Normally in an MMO there are many servers all playing the same game, if you will. Cross server communication is usually very limited if it exists at all. Therefore, it is within the realm of possibility that someone could create a similarly named guild on another server that has no relation to us at all. This is just the way things are although it usually doesn't happen because people enjoy having a unique identity and being distinct from everyone else. Casual play is absolutely fine. We won't be putting many demands on your play time or style at all. The idea of the guild is to have a place for everyone in Gamer Nation to call home regardless of where their game interests lie. The single exception to this is PvP (player vs. player) game play. We won't be on a PvP server, so someone whose interests are exclusively PvP may not find as much to do on an RP/PvE (Role Play / Player vs. Environment) server as they may like. My understanding of the PvE setup at this point is that here WILL be PvP opportunities, but that they may be limited to certain zones or missions rather than server wide.
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As far as I know, the only two criteria for staying in the guild are:
-Don't be a dick.
-Don't stay logged out for more than 60 days (without letting someone know when you'll be back.)
[*]Perhaps 90 days, but essentially correct in all material points. We're not going to present you with a massive list of rules and regulations. Much like the way these very forums have a small set of rules of conduct the guild should have the same. In any case, all rules will boil down to basically "Don't Be a Dick", though it may take a little refinement to specify areas in which dickish behavior may not be immediately obvious. Primarily we want to have fun and that which gets in the way of doing so, or prevents others from doing so will not be taken kindly.
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Oooh! Does this mean The Holocron can start back up?
[*]I won't beat around the bush about this, The Holocron has a problem right at the moment. Dave's schedule has become such that he is frequently out of town or unavailable much of the time. Mostlyjoe has withdrawn from the realm of podcasting. That leaves me to try to resurrect The Holocron and, given the fact that I just returned from a several month hiatus from Game On partially because of the amount of work it was requiring of me, I am not prepared to jump on The Holocron and do it solo. Kat and I had a plan for getting it into production again, but that fell through due to Kat's changing workload. Compounding this problem are two additional problems: 1) Dave has the 'keys' to the RSS feed (see above) and 2) Dave has all the musical bits. You'll note that I have, over the last year or so, but out various feelers to see who might be interested / available / etc. in participating regularly and consistently in producing additional episodes, but, if the workload is entirely on my shoulders, it's probably not going to happen any time soon. To be honest, my ideal Holocron situation would be to find someone or several someone's interested in doing the production side in addition to hosting and so forth so that I can simply be a host with them, rather than having to do it all myself. I'll happily _help_ create show notes and such, but the actual recording and editing should fall to someone else. Essentially the show will need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
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If we want the chance to have our villains interact with our heroes, the creation of a Gamer Nation Imperial Guild may want to wait until Launch (whenever that is).
It looks like our Guild-Reservation will be tossed onto one of the RP Servers at launch. Since it sounds like there will be many such servers, we may want to wait to see where the Order is assigned, then start a Dark-Side guild on the same server after Launch.
[*]See above post about Phase 2: Alignment, but it amounts to this:
If, when the game goes live, we have tagged 3 other guilds with similar server preferences, in our case RP, then Bioware will do it's best to move those aligned guilds to the same server. This is not a guarantee, simply a statement that they will try to do it. So at this point it would seem we could go either way, either align them at the launch of phase two, or wait until the game is live.
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So, why is there ony two time zone choices?
[*]It has to do with the structure of the internet and getting data to flow as quickly as possible to reduce lag. Which, you will agree, is pretty critical to a MMO. Major internet nodes, backbones, etc are located on the West Coast in California and on the East Coast in a couple of spots. The closer your servers are to these locations, the better chance you have of reducing lag and other disruptions to your game or information flow. You aren't really choosing time zones, you are choosing which batch of servers you want your game information to come from. Although probably not a conscious choice on Kat's part, the West Coast infrastructure in general, most of the time, tends to be slightly more stable and efficient for most games and heavy data usage. Additionally, with a three hour difference in time, server downtime for maintenance and the like on the West Coast means all you other people who aren't on the West Coast and keep somewhat normal hours stand a better chance of having uninterrupted play time because the servers will be down during your off-peak times.
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Out of curiosity, are we going to be an RP guild? On an RP Server? Because, really, I don't want to be running around seeing guys named "Leftnutz" and "Pwonsyerface".
[*]Nor do I. Mainly though our choice of RP for our Guild is because we have a guild theme and back story from which players can build their characters and tie them together. Those who want to make extensive use of RP opportunities can do so much more freely on RP servers, while those who don't will find that being on an RP server does not hinder their game play experience over much. Again, only dedicated PvP players will need to consider if a PvE server is going to offer them enough opportunity to satisfy their PvP desires.
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Ok, I admit, I just read the back story for the first time. So basically we are descendants of Revanchists right? Ok, I can live with that, however given the background and goal of "our people" it does not make sense to have a Dark Side version of the Guild. So I suggest that we create a completely different concept for a DS guild with a different name and background. In addition, I would support revising our back story to focus on the light side rather than on a Unified Force theory. I think we clearly need to state that we are light side followers of Revan before he became Darth Revan.
[*]I'm answering this here because others who come along will surely have questions.
In writing the back story for the guild I was conscious of two things that would influence the guild and it's direction.
The first was that this is The Old Republic we will be playing in and, as such, there would be certain expectations for the feel of the thing based on KoTOR I and II and I wanted to be able to address some of the larger things that obviously fit into that
without actually knowing what Bioware was going to write about the history leading up to the game. That's right, I wrote all that before Bioware had even said a peep about the timeline. I was extremely pleased to see how well it all meshed when they finally began revealing things.
The second consideration was that everyone's game experience in KoTOR I and II was going to be different based on what choices they made while playing. Especially the light vs. dark side elements. So the challenge was how to incorporate all this, tie us as guild members into the story for our roleplay basis and still respect people's individual interpretations of what Revan's story, and subsequently the Old Republic as a whole, would be.
Honestly it was KotOR II that sort of gave me the key to it. Whatever Revan actually was in your play through of the game he began and ended his (your) journey as someone who believed that what he was doing was right for the Republic. This is born out through dialog and discussion in KoTOR I and II at various points. Note the quotations I specifically highlighted as part of the back story / prologue. There are many more similar to them throughout both games.
Given all that, and I know this is getting long, it made further sense to view Revan as pragmatic in his dealings with the force and to use it in whatever way he saw fit to accomplish his goal of preserving the Republic. Hence the gray shading (interpretation if you like) to the overall guild back story.
The big bonus to all this was that it meant that any character of any race and any class could join the guild and fit in perfectly with the theme of the guild regardless of your perception of who your character is and what their history is. Being something of a pragmatist, Revan would have accepted anyone who seemed like they were, or could be, useful to his cause in the Revanchists and, by extension, stepping 300 years out from those events, their descendants could be anything and anyone for those same reasons.
In terms of light side vs. dark side versions of the guild or restating our back story to make us clearly light side, I can only say that that is not the way I see the Original 66 that returned. I think, and I feel there is great support for this in the canon of KoTOR, that your 'side' didn't matter to Revan. What mattered was that you were willing to fight and die if necessary to preserve the Republic. Does this mean the Revanchists had some Dark siders? Absolutely. They had light siders, too. And people who weren't any side at all and just wanted to see the Republic maintain control instead of the Sith. Maybe it meant better business, or was an element of revenge against some Sith injustice. This is where what you write as your character's back story will define who you are and where you or your ancestors fit into Revan's plans, the Revanchists as a whole and The Order of 66 in particular.
AS other questions come up, I will make additional posts.
