Commando Archive

Lock 'n Load - We're Moving out!

Brothers, sisters, pyromaniacs, lend me your flamers! The Combat Upgrade has officially opened! We have prepared ourselves, even trained ourselves for this moment of truth. Over the course of the next five weeks, we shall be testing the fabled Combat Upgrade/Revamp/Balance - all of us, from the small Rodian Grenadier to the fearsome Wookiee Shock Trooper.

As soon as possible, I will be setting up a commando guild and going through a process of contacting and getting as much of the community into it as possible. Most likely there will be wipes from time to time, so standby if we have to remake our network during the playtesting. Currently, Im looking at Mos Entha, Tatooine to be our initial staging ground to congregate.

Im confident all of you have the heart and the enthusiasm to give the CU your worst - play it till it breaks, play it till its bleeding, play it till its perfect! This is our single most defining moment in SWG, and shall not be our last - this is the start of a new era, a new beginning...one that we can move ahead rather than be forced to dwell on issues that still plague us for more than a year!

This is the deep breath before the massive explosion....lock ‘n load Commandos, we’re going to War! Bones shall be broken...flames shall ignite, rockets shall fly! Follow the lead of the Alpha Testers, Garvin, Lordseckmoth, and finally myself - Together, we will test the Combat Upgrade, as a community of one.

Kote vode an! A tome drote’ren nyn ures adenn!

And thus, it begins. During testing our bible shall be the current top 23 issues in the October 2004 thread posted by Garvin. We will be going through that in our testing and see how the CU affects and fixes us (Im thinking at LEAST 95% of those issues will be squashed, if not more!) Lastly, although this may be fleshed out a bit later on, I would like to organize the community as best to my ability in the following areas:

• Are they working properly? Are they fixed? How are the wind-ups/cool-downs?

From these concerns (more to update most likely), I would like to get quality feedback and even dedicated testers to certain templates (i.e. a "squad" of commandos devoted to Smuggler/Commando templates and their advantages/disadvantages verse other templates/professions). The Alpha testers have already been assigned a varying degree of templates to try out in – if we have a group of willing commandos to dedicate and compile a report (or extensive feedback) concerning what they have tested, it will really help in terms of their jobs as well! Here are the following breakdowns of professions that our alpha testers were asked to look out for:

Razerwolf - Master Commando/Master Rifleman...then combinations of BH and Medic

Ryubushi - Master Commando/TKM and Master Commando/Pistoleer – then combinations of both

Bravenirish - Master Commando/Master Carbineer then Master Commando/Master Smuggler, then mixed combinations of that and further professions

Hellshot - Master Commando/Dabbler...essentially the section that falls under "shopping" for skills.

It would be great if we had groups of the community organized to help out our alpha testers, myself, and garvin in order to help get the fine tunings of these templates and the issues that surround them! For the other melee professions, they pretty much were delegated to me...so Ill be taking some time to test them (Pikes/Swords/Fencer)...so those of you who want to take up melee/Commando testing, will be very appreciated! There will undoutedly be dev-bug/focus threads for you guys, but Ill be putting up specific threads for specific issues/templates/etc from above which we’ll be using in juxtaposition with the reports from the Alpha team.

/turns on radio

/plays Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, 7th Movement "Ode to Joy"

/scene The Flames from a thousand commando brothers and sisters emerging from the shadows ignite...so it begins!

On a more personal level - The forums are slow and wonky, so I wasn’t able to get my "Commandos of the Community" PM to everyone on the mailing list – here it is:

Greetings Brothers, Sisters, fellow gamers and Commandos!

The CU Server will be up soon according to Tiggs, I shall be logging in (if the log-in doesn't crash!) and attempt at getting "Stern Synex" or some variation of Stern as my avatar.

We may not be able to get a guild hall set up intitially (I really hope we can and will be trying to) .If we can, I want to meet in Mos Entha, Tatooine so I can get everyone on this mailing list

(and anyone else not) into the commando guild. If we cant -- still meet in Mos Entha for "first impressions". I'll be seeing you all soon on the frontlines! Please don't reply to this PM as I have over 40 or so people on my list, ill be in touch in the game as well on the forums.

Kote Vode an !

-Starnick