Introduction

Greetings Dark Jedi Brotherhood!

The year-long resurgence of Star Wars: The Old Republic continues. The game really is in a good spot, not just within the DJB but in the general gaming community. So much so that not even Odin's Tenth World of Valheim has been able to keep me away from The Old Republic (TOR).

Side Note: Valheim is pretty darn good if you like open world survival but hate forced PvP. But before you ask, there is pretty much no way to report activity in its current state so not much hope for support.

With TOR still one of our most active platforms in the club and still having a very active general community, I am ready to see if we can re-launch our guild. The game has had some small but very solid updates over the last few years that has breathed life back into it after some miscues by the development team in earlier expansions.

But I won’t mince words, this will not be easy and the chance of failure is high. However, fortune favors the brave and I am ready to at least give it another shot. If enough of you join me, we can get this done. I will need help because one person alone can not make a guild successful. If you continue reading below you will read my thoughts on why this is a worthy cause and the role I intend to play to make it successful.

Why Are You Even Doing This?

In the TOR Guild Survey I sent out we had 22 respondents, with 20 saying they would join a DJB guild if it were active again. That is enough for me to give this initiative a shot. Additionally, the 2020 statistics showed us that TOR was one of our highest volume platforms for the club and that still hasn’t died off in early 2021.

Since January 1, 2021 TOR is currently tied with Heroes of the Storm (HotS) for the most activities submitted to the site. It does lag behind HotS in unique participants but with a solid base of current players and some in-game incentives to take a peek at the game again, I think we can pump those numbers up.

Which Side Are We Focusing On?

The Sith Empire is going to be our focus. I’ve almost finished leveling up a new main to make this faction my focus as well. My main character has been a Gunslinger with the Galactic Republic for quite a while so I have swapped factions to push this initiative forward and to show my own commitment to it. This is going to take a lot of time and credits to see success so we can’t split ourselves between two guilds like when the game was brand new.

I want to be clear though, I’m not asking anyone to abandon their Republic side characters. Our club will still treat all TOR activity, competitions and submissions the same for both Sith Empire and Galactic Republic characters as well as for those in the guild and outside the guild. There will not be competitions the are only for DJB guild members.

However, in my plan to rebuild the Dark Jedi Brotherhood guild there are going to be in-game events, contests and incentives that will only apply to guild members. None of these will tie back to any Dark Jedi Brotherhood website awards, competitions or character progress. These will only have an impact within TOR itself. I will not be bribing anyone with any site awards to join or participate in the DJB guild.

The focus one one faction is important as the costs to run a guild have increased significantly since the game launched. The biggest difference being that perks are now given by the guild flagship to all guild members. This is a huge benefit members look for but they only last for 14 to 28 days and require a credit expenditure to renew when they expire. I am ready to use a significant portion of my own credits to get this guild going again but if it is to continue we’ll need participation for our members. Participation in our focused guild activities is one of the best ways to help advance the guild.

So What Are These Activities You Speak Of?

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone that as a general rule, we are not a club of hardcore gamers. With that in mind, our Guild will focus on casual activities that members of all character levels, skill levels and subscription statuses can participate in. In broad categories these are:

• Guild Invasions and Personal Conquest
• Flashpoints both Veteran and Heroic
• Heroic Missions

With these serving as our areas of focus, the in-game events I have planned will revolve around them. It is important to note that you can fully gear out a maximum level character doing only veteran flashpoints, if you so choose. In the current state of the game, raiding is not required for almost anything so by leaving that out of our plans it doesn’t hamstring anyone's gearing progress. I have multiple max gear level characters and have never stepped foot inside a raid.

Maybe I’m Intrigued, Maybe I’m Not, But Tell Me About Events Either Way

My plan is to use the DJB Event Calendar along with in-game messaging tools such as guild emails and pop-up messages to communicate events. If you’d like to add your own events (for TOR or any of our supported platforms) please email [Log in to view e-mail addresses]. Examples of events I plan to get us moving again are:

• Weekly 50/50 Raffle: Guild needs funds but I don’t like just looking for handouts. For those unfamiliar, a 50/50 raffle means that at the end of the raffle half the funds go to the winner and half to the organization sponsoring it. In this case, a donation of 50,000 credits will be worth one ticket, with any one DJB member (not character) able to purchase up to five tickets. This will start with the Conquest reset on Tuesday with the winner drawn on the Monday following.

• Heroic Mission Galaxy Tours: Looking to set specific times, probably weekends, to get groups going to make the rounds on Heroic Missions. Heroic missions are great to level up and gear lower level characters and to collect crates to increase Alliance reputation in the later expansions.

• Flashpoint with the Fist: Looking at scheduling these for early afternoon Eastern Standard Time on Saturdays, exact times will be on the calendar. My hope is that around that time will be able to include the most time zones as possible. Many of my characters are max level and max gear score so I’m happy to bring along anyone interested to help them learn the ropes or gear up a new character. Don’t be scared of FPs, you’ll get the hang of them in no time.

Some future events I’d like to run if this takes off are:

• Outfit Contests
• Stronghold Decoration Contests
• Scavenger Hunts
• World Boss Kills

Note: I’m not familiar with RP events but I’d be happy to advertise them for someone who is interested in running them.

Conclusion

I’m very excited about the prospect of getting the TOR Guild up and running again but I can’t do it alone. Any assistance you can give to get it back off the ground is highly appreciated. Whether that be donating credits, spreading the word to your clan mates, or just joining up and helping us gain guild levels and Conquest points simply by playing the game, every little bit helps us move forwards.

If you are new to TOR or just haven’t been online in a long time I am happy to chat about what has changed and how to get back into the swing of things. Shoot me an email or a DM on Telegram.

My goal is to see what kind of progress we can make with our membership before moving onto any external recruiting efforts. Let’s get some guild levels, let’s build up our guild bank and let’s get some perks going so we can be a legitimate guild once more!

Dauntless Removal

Now to the bad news.

The Game Removal entry on the Gaming Information Wiki page states that there will be a two to three week window in which a game can be saved from removal but Dauntless is not being given that chance due to a major change in the game itself. No longer do teams go on instanced hunts, which resulted in a final score screen that had all of the information required for submissions (party member names, difficulty level, etc). The game now has a more open world approach with islands that multiple parties and players can access simultaneously.

The only real solution seems to be the ”stand in front of the monster and take a screenshot” method. This is still not conducive to our system. The first challenge is that this makes identifying the behemoth slain and the difficulty level of that monster much more difficult. More importantly, I am accelerating the removal of this game because there is no way to prove effort in this model. In this new island format, there would be nothing stopping our members from running up to a behemoth that was killed by others and taking a screenshot for submission.

Since this game can no longer be supported by our submission system, and has had only one submission to our site in the past six months anyways, it is being removed effective immediately.

Helpful links

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DJB Event Calendar

Send us an email at [Log in to view e-mail addresses].

Regards,