Musician Archive

I can only agree with your observation that there is a profound lack of entertainers that entertained beyond what there char does with game mechanics and that it is a much bigger issue than afk'ers (As long as they don't use speech macros).

I'm finding less and less reason to play my entertainer attended as days go by, since there is no one to talk to most of the time and watching my char doing the same music peace for a few days to level, isn't excatly fun.

I'm prolly going to dump Musician as soon as I hit Master and go tailor instead for customer interaction instead. Put up some harvesters while I'm finishing Musician so I have a large supply of resources for when I go tailor and can make stuff on the spot for people.

I do not se why chatting to the combatants should be end all be all of entertainers. If that was so all the healing abilities of entertainers could be removed and instead people could be slowly healed when they was sitting in a cantina.
Chatting to the combaters we are healing, makes us socialises, not entertainers.

Putting chains of flourishes together in series to create songs that sounds good, coordinating several musicians with band flourishes and matching the outfits of the hole group, are part of entertaining.
When the combats watch the performance for the same of the performance, we are entertainers.
If you just chat with them, then they will likely leave as soon as thair BF is gone and the mind buff is applied.

The fact that that kind of entertainment only is carried out at specific arranged parties, and not every day is a shame. Cantinas should be one big never-ending party. Not a place where combatants go to get entertainers to tell them how kewl they are, or ask them questions about how much "Phat Lewt" they have gotten on a trip. Sucking up is not entertainment, even if it does give bigger tips.

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Tarnak_Archvold wrote:

If you just chat with them, then they will likely leave as soon as thair BF is gone and the mind buff is applied.

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Hmm, that's hardly been my experience.

I've had times that people have come to me, looking for a buff or wanting a heal. And I start to talk to them. About thir profession, about the places they've been. I know ALOT about professions that I've never even been, and I've heard of places that are not on my POI list.

The point is these people will still be there talking to me LONG after I stopped receiving messages about Entertainment Healing. They weren't sticking around for any other reason than the chatting at that point. Sometimes I even get a "Wow, is my BF gone already?!?"

I've been tipped for nothing more than my chat. Being at a Starport where Heling and Buffing don't work and I still get tipped pretty much proves that.

Does that mean that chatting is the only way to make tips? Of course not. It's just another of the services that we offer. I just tend not to discount it.

It's an unfortunate reality that many musicians have their game sound off (I understand it more from non-musicians who might want some combat music while they're off kicking ass).
I've always kept my sound on while playing (aside from while on the phone, of course), and I find that with a little patient pressure, I can usually convince my fellow musicians to play something pleasing to the ears.
I don't think that playing different songs in the same group can happen anymore except when someone is bugged, but if it's possible, and the people have their sound off anyway, you can kindly remind them that as long as they have their best instrument equipped, the song they're playing won't affect their xp. That seems to calm people from insisting on playing the higher level music (although I must say that as a player with the sound *on*, I often felt like playing something other than starwars1 for the variety ).

Tarnak_Archvold wrote:

I do not se why chatting to the combatants should be end all be all of entertainers. If that was so all the healing abilities of entertainers could be removed and instead people could be slowly healed when they was sitting in a cantina.
Chatting to the combaters we are healing, makes us socialises, not entertainers.

No one has said it is the end all. However PART of entertaining IS socializing. And while it seems not many entertainers even do that...you want the whole shabang, lets get a bite before we reel in all the way, eh?

Putting chains of flourishes together in series to create songs that sounds good, coordinating several musicians with band flourishes and matching the outfits of the hole group, are part of entertaining. When the combats watch the performance for the same of the performance, we are entertainers. If you just chat with them, then they will likely leave as soon as thair BF is gone and the mind buff is applied.

Your absolutely correct. But given the recent past since holocrons left (as per keeping with the beat on this post) finding elite profession entertainers out there is uncommon. If a combatant walks in to heal his BF and get buffed, and in the process laughs a few times, recounts a story he/she wants to share? then I AM entertaining. Is he/she not entertained? Did I not give out and perpetuate that entertainment? As for your last above sentence....they may leave, but they can still be entertained....and thats what we do.

The fact that that kind of entertainment only is carried out at specific arranged parties, and not every day is a shame. Cantinas should be one big never-ending party. Not a place where combatants go to get entertainers to tell them how kewl they are, or ask them questions about how much "Phat Lewt" they have gotten on a trip. Sucking up is not entertainment, even if it does give bigger tips.

I don't think until now, and in only to quote you, but "Phat Lewt" has never escaped my lips. And "kewl"? rofl. ok mate. However given that i know my songs, know my instruments, know every square inch of just about every static city cantina....I certainly don't want to talk about those things, however I am an RPer, so what then may I talk about without what you would deduce as "sucking up"? I am a wookiee, While i can admire how "kewl" someone looks in that duster or composite armor, since I can not wear it, i CAN tell them I envy that. That is not sucking up. I don't know about you, but I have never looted a force crystal or music healing 10 tape off a mob in a cantina. The fact that someone does interests me, its not sucking up.

You call it sucking up. Not entertainment. I call it entertainment, what you want, is showmanship. That too, is a part of the Master Musician/Dancer/Entertainer cookbook.

I've had a similar experience in why I am still an entertainer, but with a bit of a twist. I've been an entertainer for nearly a year now. My first character was an entertainer, and that was about a week before I registered on the forums.

The twist is that it's on a bit grander of a scale for me. Instead of it being entertainer that I picked up then started to drop, and realized it was what I like.. It was SWG.

This isn't my first MMORPG. Not by a long shot. Club Caribe has that honor, though I doubt many have heard of it. It is likely THE first graphical MMORPG ever. More recently, Ultima Online, then Everquest. I never stayed with either for long. The only time EQ held me was after the RP server opened, I started again for about a year, and got decently high level.

But I was starting to get tired of it. I hadn't seen everything or done everything, but it felt like I had. Every new thing was just more of the same.

It was about this time SWG came out. A few people I knew were talking about it. About a week after release, I was at a local bookstore with a video game store attached, and I decided to pop in on an impulse buy to pick up SWG. It was something different, and maybe it would hold me over until the next thing came along. They were sold out.

So I stuck with EQ a few more weeks. Then again a few weeks later I found myself in the same position, and a friend was interested in trying it out as well. I figured I could try it with someone I knew. They had them in stock this time. Since I wasn't planning to stick with it, I didn't get the special edition. I kind of wish I had the shades now, but I'm forever stuck without.

I didn't know anything about the game at all when I picked it up, besides that it was based on Star Wars. I think my idea of what it would be like had been closer to SE than to the base game. When I saw that you could play an entertainer, that intrigued me, so I gave it a try. I forget where I started the first time. I'm sure if I looked around I could figure it out. I do remember being in some sort of square with a fountain. Somewhere on Corellia I believe. I decided to try some music, not knowing that I needed to find a cantina. Some of the local NPCs stopped and started clapping along with my music. No flourishes, because I didn't know what they were yet. But at that moment, I was hooked.

I created a new character the next day on a different server. Same name, roughly the same look, and again an entertainer. Bestine this time. I don't remember much of what happened then. I started with dance, not sure why. I made it most the way to dancer then. I'd taken a trip to Mos Eisley a few times, as I'd heard that's a good cantina to visit. And.. Well, it's Mos Eisley. Then I discovered these message boards, and read about this "city" on Naboo that was forming. Long before player cities, of course, as this was just a month after release. But it was a city out in the middle of Naboo (Literally, just a little over 1km off 0,0). That was my introduction to the concept of player owned houses. I found this fascinating that people were forming a city. Apparently there was a cantina there opening soon, as well. So I saved up my credits and bought a ticket to Naboo. I didn't venture out into the wild to find this city, though. Not for another week. I made Novice Dancer first.

I did finally visit the city a few times. There was, as promised, a little settlement out in the middle of nowhere. But it lacked people whenever I stopped by. Finally someone introduced me to one of the people who ran the cantina there, and I got myself a position as one of the dancers a few weeks later.

I was having a lot of fun in the cantinas, but what happened once I took that gig I wasn't prepared for at all. It started just two afternoons a week. Saturday and Sunday, 4 hours each day. Customers were rare, but they were there because they wanted to be. Considering how dangerous a trek it was, they kind of had to be.

The one thing I will always remember, was the first time we went out as a troupe on a gig. The biggest imperial guild on the server (At the time - since disbanded and moved on, though I still have a WP to their PA hall) was throwing a ball. They wanted entertainment, and at the time, we had quite a name on the server. So they hired the cantina's management to provide entertainment. We worked out what music to play and what dances to do ahead of time. I was to direct the dancers, not just bandflourishes, but as far as where to go, what to do, and the like. This ball is, to this day, the biggest event I've ever performed for. It was in a generic style PA hall, and the main room was packed wall to wall. To put it in other terms, doing Knowledge I level content (Dancing popular2, but imagine playing Ballad) I was getting well over 300xp. I made most of Tech III in those 2 hours, and I wasn't even the one doing the flourishes the whole time.

From that point we started doing more and more gigs, even some regular performances for other people's venues. For a good two months we were hot, and all over the place. Some weekends we had 3 or 4 events booked. As you can imagine, people were getting burned out. The troupe started to break up in November. About that time, player cities were new, and being one of 3 master dancers in the city, I ended up being the owner of the cantina. So as the old went out, I refocused on the cantina, and getting it to be one of the most fun places there was.

I spent nearly the next month in my cantina, rarely going anywhere else. If I was alone, or there were no musicians about, I'd play some music. I had already been master entertainer, but was not picking up some musician skills, since I had all the extra xp. In the end, my efforts payed off. The cantina was a very lively place. I had some of the best entertainers on the server in my cantina. To these people, it wasn't about talking to the audience, or hitting flourishes, it was about putting on a performance. It was always a performance, and it drew people. Even non entertainers couldn't help but get into things. One day in one of the side rooms, a couple people were quietly discussing some secret information. Quickly, however, the discussion turned into the type of thing you'd hear between Abbot and Costello. The place was truly alive.

Still, without the troupe about, I was finding myself losing interest. This is where the twist comes in. A few people I knew were starting to look at Horizons. So on another impulse buy, I picked up Horizons. While it wasn't actually giving up skills, in a way I was bit by bit giving up entertainer to try something else. For about a week I barely even logged into SWG.

I was on the verge of leaving SWG. When I finally did log in again, though, everything was happening at once to remind me why I should stay. I had logged out in my cantina. When I logged in again, I found things were as lively as ever. I hopped on the Omni Box, and joined what then became a full band. Exactly one of each sound. The place was packed, and everyone was having a good time.

I never logged into Horizons again.

Those days have passed. People were taking a break for the Holidays, and one by one the entertainers disappeared. Some of them never came back. Those that did, didn't stick around in the empty cantina. To make things worse, hologrinding had already started to take it's toll and was in full force with all the free holocrons floating around.

It was then I took up a combat profession. It was a hard choice to drop master musician. I loved playing the Nalargon, and jamming. But I was a dancer, not a musician. The few gigs I was still involved on seemed to forget that, and tried to get me playing music. So I went with the profession that had intrigued me - TKA. I even made master. I don't regret it - I had a good time with it. And if I'd not done TKA, I wouldn't have been able to beat up one of the server's big name griefers when he decided to drag my nalargon around the cantina. Once I got master, though, it was just .. dull. I was able to take on a pair of rancor and not be scratched. As I recall, I dropped master TKA within an hour of learning it. Instead I picked up tailor. That was in January, and I'm still a tailor/dancer.

Entertainers back then and entertainers now just aren't the same. I quickly recognized that people play entertainers the way they are taught. More and more, that was was a macro. So much community knowledge was being lost. That's why I started a community web site for entertainers - in an effort to capture that community knowledge, so entertainers wouldn't forget.

People say there is no content or end game for entertainers. I say those people have never looked. For me, the content is performing and the end game is making a name for yourself and your group.