Take heart; I do not want to persuade you any longer to give this game a chance; I no longer feel the need to do so. As it is right now, Stone as a guild is sitting at roughly 20 ACTIVE -players-, with average of 10 in our privately owned Ventrilo server at any given time (You guys are welcomed to chat with us about anything too: 69.12.72.198:34680, PW:stoners) Stone has merged such guilds as Dread, PXR and some others. We got notable members such as Iray, Prodigalson, Rockett and Prototype. Some names you may remember from back in the day and some are fairly new to the game in general. Stone has even gone as far as dropping its "rebel only" moniker to a degree; there are a few imperial members. We are still rebel pride and true. Space is still my #1 focus and our mains are quite happy with that. Our core group has solidified our roles and our passage through the 5 heroic instances has become pretty standard. we've had runs with some heavy guilds like CHC, AP and even DARK going in with us (Hell, the guys took Necroz in with them to Tusken last night)
As far as the game is concerned; Lemme give you the details.
Since the inception of the NGE, our core professions have undergone the knife quite a few times for balance passes, recurve statistics and straight expertise changes. With the inception of our expertise system (comparable to WoW's Talent system) we are able to personalize the gameplay of each profession to a slightly advantageous or fun degree. If you look back at my chapter 6 post, the last of the expertise lines was added in the form of beast master; the 3rd tree system each profession gets that allows them to use pets again.
But thats not all. Chapter 7 initiated the first of the 5 core heroic instance. Aurillia was brought back in a more vital way giving players a springboard into running the new instances. Each instance is a story driven fight between the player groups (up to
and a series of bosses or challenges ranging from protecting the city of mos espa from the tusken king and the barrage of sand people, to thwarting the assassin droid IG-88 from building an army of like-minded hunter droids to defeating Axkva Min, the Nightsister Queen in her attempts to escape the Chamber of Banishment she and her generals were locked away in. Each heroic instance grants players the opportunity to do 3 things. 1: collect rare loot such as new light saber schematics, weapons and jewelery with sweet mods on them. 2: complete a collection that grants 10 bonus skills permanently based on the instance. 3: collect tokens to which can be turned in at the village for heroic jewelery sets that grant amazing abilities (Like my favorite set; Dire Fate. Dire Fate grants the Dire Snare and Dire Root abilities, allowing my BH traps and snares to add a non-removable snare for a limited duration.) chapter 7 included an all new collection system where players can kill, loot or find specific objects in the game to add to a questline and complete a "collection" of the items to recieve bonus xp, badges and titles and sometimes cool loot.Chapter 8 gave us space jocks some much needed love in the form of a new space sector to fly in; Ord Mantell. Ord has tier 6+ ships in it making fights a harder challenge, plus the Ord Mantell space station, Nova Orion grants a series of difficult quests where you choose which faction you want to join. Nova or Orion. Sweet space loots came with the publish too. Collections such as rebel and imperial space kill missions gave players the kind of challenge worthy of recieving that amazing new Gunship deed and the engine parts are off the hook. 8 also granted a new heroic, rounding off our total to 4. The star destroyer Blackguard was taken over by a rogue admiral who with dealings with black sun is determined to sell the ship off to the suns criminal organization. thwart his plans for another collection; sweet deal weapons and backpack loots and more tokens. The 4th piece set for each heroic jewelery really turned up the game for the heroic set bonus.
Chapter 9 finalized the heroics as of now with the Exar Kun storyline. This storyline grants players the opportunity to fight the -hardest and sweetest- series of battles in the game yet, granting such challenges as deciding specific elements to hit enemies with or getting hit with 40k damage, running around to avoid flames and gases, and avoiding balls of electrical storms from the crystals imbedded in the ceiling. More awesome heroic weapons, collections of different kinds and of course the final heroic jewelery set make this instance the most sought after and hardest to figure out.
Another thing to point out; the current developer team has really stepped up the ball on the chapters and game updates; with 4 major updates coming out in little over a year. Not only that, but they devised a method of delivering game content AND fixing and tweaking the game mechanics so that professions stay balanced and entertaining. Game Updates between chapters grant new and exciting changes to expertise, adding new UI changes, and more. 3 updates have hit live so far since the decision to implement the update/chapter system with GU4 on test as of right now.
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
I'll post more about the actual gameplay later.