Entry #47

Tuesday, February 10, 2004, 11:05:12 PM (ScreenShot1337)

Far be it for me to withhold the “l33t” screenshot. That’s right… screenshot 1337 depicts me, and someone who I cannot possibly identify with the HUD turned off because everyone looked exactly the same during this period in SWG history. All leetness aside, it is a good shot of the Krayt Graveyard, which was a hotbed of loot whoring, and subsequent PVPing. I’m willing to bet that every server had a city placed as close to this location as possible, just so it’d be easy to shuttle over and keep the Krayts on permafarm. By that time, Krayts dropped multiple items that were useful to more then just one profession. Jedi could use the pearls when constructing lightsabers, while some weaponsmith schematics utilized the scales (I think), creating the most uber weapons in the game. The result was a location that was heavily camped, and thus usually contested.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 12:09:35 AM (ScreenShot1340)
On February 11th, the order of the day was PVP, as <HATED> decided to go turret hunting around the galaxy. While waiting for our troops to muster, Fuschia decided to give me a makeover… and of course, just like many a human in SWG… I too sported a super tall Mohawk for a time. Image Designer was a profession that once again showed the creativity of SWG’s original allowances. Not only was the character creator epic in comparison to other MMO’s of the time, but the ID profession allowed players to alter character appearances after the fact. The result was that no matter how you looked, you could always change your appearance. Considering that many MMOers played these games for hours a day, no one wanted to be stuck with a character that they were sick of looking at, so Image Designer was an interesting addition to the profession list. Having acknowledged that, I cannot agree that the amount of skill points required to master the ID profession would really be “worth it.” I could be wrong, but I’m willing to bet that ID was the least common profession mastered, other then the hologrinders that mastered it and then dropped it 20 seconds later.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 1:09:21 AM (ScreenShot1341)

We had a list of waypoints, and one by one, we swooped in, took out the turrets, and moved on to the next target. Without vehicles, this would not be possible. We could take out every single turret on an entire planet in a few hours, depending on how many bases they had, and how far apart they were. Each base had four turrets, and it would take about 10 minutes per base, so on average, we’d destroy a good 20 turrets per night of hunting.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 1:12:28 AM (ScreenShot1342)

Due to the faction point exploit, we were no longer dealing with the smaller turrets. Now, most bases had top of the line defenses, so we had to be a little careful. Even a few defenders could keep us occupied long enough for the turrets to cut us down… but the weird thing was… there were no defenders on that night. We were on our third or fourth base, and realized that there was no player resistance what so ever. How could this be? Usually there were always a few Rebels that would mobilize and try to thwart our efforts… and then it hit us… our bases were vulnerable!

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 1:45:26 AM (ScreenShot1345)
It took us a half hour to make it back to GAT City, but we were too late. By the time we arrived at a starport to get us the hell off Tatooine, Inache had already been ganked while running missions from our bases. While we were turret hunting, the Rebels, most important of which, the guild <REB>, had paid us a visit at a time where we were too far away to do anything about it. As we spawned one by one at our shuttle port, we pulled our AT-ST’s and burst ran to the bases. The first reports came in… at least one base had vanished. We quickly gathered in front of the western base, knowing that we just got pwned. The bigger issue was, now with the implantation of shuttles in PRC’s, we had no idea where they went. Did they take our shuttle to any number of locations on Naboo? Did they ride their swoops to Theed? Or were they… still here…

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 1:48:11 AM (ScreenShot1346)

I started to make a joke out of it, complaining that I ate some food buffs that were really expensive and hard to come by… and really, we could afford to joke. So what, they knocked down a base. We had stockpiled 20 of them thanks to the faction point exploit, and we’d put it right back up. The only real thing we suffered was the same thing that the Rebels suffered when we took out their bases… bragging rights. <REB> had noticed our PVP pattern, and when they realized that like morons, we were running around while our bases were vulnerable, they took advantage and vanished before we could even put up a fight. Or did they? “THEY’RE IN THE STREETS,” someone shouted into GAT Chat.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 1:52:49 AM (ScreenShot1347

We split up and ran between the alleys of GAT City. You can see Doomnu’ub about to run between the houses to my right, as I’m about to do the same. We combed the “streets” of GAT City, and finally, sporadic red dots were appearing on some of our HUDs. “SHUTTLEPORT,” someone would shout out, and we’d all start to head in that direction, “BEHIND THE CLONER,” someone would interrupt, and we’d start to lean back the other way. <REB> had taken out our base just as we shuttled in, and instead of PVPing, they were just a tiny strike team, so they decided to make a break for it. We hunted them down like dogs in the streets, but in the end, they scattered and swooped without so much as one lost soldier. There was no doubt, <REB> got the better of <HATED> that day… but, in GAT City, there was always one thing that made everything better no matter how badly the pwnage… The Gungan Railroad.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 1:59:33 AM (ScreenShot1349

“The Gungen Railroad” is what we dubbed the group of planetary natives that loitered around the ruins in front of my house. The name was derived back in the days before we had a shuttleport or mounts/vehicles.” Instead of doing the 15 minute run to Theed, we’d take our armor off, aggro the mobs, and then let them triple incap us so we’d have a free ride back to Theeds cloner. They had become our mascots over the months, but of course we’d frequently take out our frustrations out on them as well. I mean really, if a group of low level Gungens was constantly in your city… what would you do?

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