Darth Hater

The people who say "no" to this are incredibly frustrating. Why? Because they expect people like me, who DO organize community events, to do all the work, so they can just show up, without giving anything back or doing the same thing in return. I love running events. But sometimes I would like to not be the organizer.

This is why organizers burn out and you quickly go from an event-filled server to "I wish someone would give me something to do." Because you keep expecting the same people --anyone so long as you don't have to lift a finger yourself! -- to do nothing but exist to make YOUR gaming time better, without doing a damn thing to make theirs more enjoyable. We don't do it for thanks and we're sure not getting paid for it. But a little reciprocation now and again wouldn't hurt.

If you want something to do? Get people together and do something. Tired of warzones but want pvp? Get as many people on your flist and from /general as you can and go hit a random outpost on Tatooine or Alderaan or the Black Hole Daily area. Bonus points for having someone switch to the opposite faction's fleet to request help because they "got ganked" in that area so you actually get people to show up. Tired of flashpoints? Run newbs through Esseles. Get a theme guild together made up of alts who are all one thing -- say, a bunch of Twi'lek dancers or Alderaanian nobles or Mandalorians or whatever, and level en masse. Make sure you only interact while on those characters as the characters would. Yeah I know, the dreaded roleplaying. But you're doing it for fun and you're enriching the game world for the people who run into your group. Run a slave auction on Nar Shaddaa. Get some friends together and go to the starter worlds handing out free crafted equipment (bonus: this is great for guild recruitment too). Organize a hunting party for either hunting down a PC of the opposing faction or for "big game" like world bosses. Our guild runs cross-faction "swoop" races on Tatooine once a week (if you're on Jung Ma hit me up for details if you're interested in racing). Get a full ops group to go hunt datacrons. Bonus points for getting a full ops group on each side hunting simultaneously so you end up with lots of pvp to see who can get to the datacrons first!

These are just the ideas that come off the top of my head before I've even had my morning coffee. I'm sure if you put as much thought and effort into coming up with your own event ideas as you do with complaining because no one else is running them, you can easily triple that list. 

Consider that some people who voted "No", like myself, simply have no interest in community organized events. If people want to get together and duel or roleplay or whatever else they're more than welcome to do so. None of the above suggestions interest me in the slightest, however. I'm more than content to log in a couple days a week to run guild operations and spend the rest of my time doing warzones and ranked warzones. To each their own.

Two things: This is a column specifically about community events. So most people who read far enough into to take the poll are most likely to be interested in events. And this is a followup question to the one where "Just give me something to do" was 2nd place in terms of what events people enjoy. My response is addressed to the intersection of those two answers, which is a sizable -- and frustrating -- proportion of people, in my experience.

If I could figure out a way to do something I wanted I might host an event to make the game world 'better'.  I just don't think there are much in the way of good mechanics to facilitate that many events as well as issues with hopefully getting too many people to participate. 

 Edited to add:

I'd like more mechanics to facilitate social action, gambling, racing, bounty hunting system, space ship race/hunt, blaster shooting contests, sabre duals/contests but the last few require your actual skill in the game to matter which mechanics do not allow. 

One community event I'd like to see possible is a scavenger/treasure hunt that could be done by more than a handful of players or wouldn't be hours on hours of 'work' to make happen.

I just see so many barriers to any event I'd be really excited about running.  Beyond things with guildmates/friends everything has to be so 'small'.  

Gambling is specifically disallowed for legal reasons. Which is annoying because there are a few pazaak tables around that are clickable and you just know they originally intended to make it a mini-game and got denied.

Racing all you need is someone to front the prize money (or you can take entry fees from participants to cover it. We don't but the guy who runs it is crazy rich), and someone to stand at the finish line. Pick a route that has some pitfalls, mobs that can knock people off their speeders, etc, and make sure to have everyone use the same level speeder (we use 90% so everyone who has access to any speeder can join us on an even footing). Voila! No extra mechanics needed.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you want mechanics to facilitate social action. Holding a party or running a tavern or caff stand (I have a caff shop on Tatooine. It often ends up being a place of philosophical debate for Jedi, which is appropriate since I'm basing it on the coffee shops of the market in Cairo), having training sessions for Jedi padawans and masters either on Tython or somewhere else... None of these things require ANY mechanics of any kind. Just space and people. Advertise it on the official forums and any forums specifically set up for your server and talk the event up for several days before... and there you go.

Blaster shooting contests could be held in a couple ways. One is to go out somewhere that there are mobs with high hp, and see how many shots it takes to kill the mob. No healing, no abilities, just your basic shot. Whoever does it in the least shots without dying wins. Or you could get someone of the opposite faction as a prisoner and whoever comes up with the most creative description of their shot on the prisoner wins, or have two people duel but they have to take off all their armor first and then exchange gunfire one shot at a time. Last one standing wins. As far as duels, yeah, you have to have actual skill in the game to win a duel. That's the way it SHOULD be. If you want to come in and RP a badass but don't have the skill to back it up, you should _expect_ to get beat down. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that mechanics don't allow either of those things...

Most events are "hours on hours of work to make happen." You have to advertise them if you're running it outside your normal small group of friends and guildmates, you have to consider everything that could go wrong and plan contingencies. That's what being an organizer is.

Oh! It just occurred to me another way you could do blaster shooting contests. Many classes have a ranged ability that you use a targeting reticule to use rather than targeting an individual mob. You could pick a particular object and then have people drop their targeting behind it. Whoever's animation of their blaster first is closest to the center of the object, wins. That might run into issues with the differences between clients, where my client thinks I'm standing here but on your screen I seem to be three feet to the left (which is sadly very common I'm finding). But it might be worth a small test run of that.

Ooh. That sounds fun. I may have to try that. That sounds like something my main would do...

If I wanted to create my own content I would play a open world sand box MMO... SWTOR is a them park MMO so I expect the devs to create all my content. If they fail that I go some where else.