Darth Hater

This is OpsCom, where we bring you a weekly dose of Operations-related content from the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic. This column will serve as an inside scoop on new content, developer feedback and community gossip. Stay tuned in the coming weeks, and we will keep you up to date on all the news you need to stay on the cutting edge.

In this week’s OpsCom, it’s all about Game Update 1.4! Having finally landed in our waiting hands, plenty of players have been hitting it hard in the hopes of clearing the Operation and getting some loot. We’ll also take a look at some efforts at tracking first kills, some strategy videos, and much more. For these stories, your weekly Community Spotlight, and more, hit the jump.

Weekly News Roundup

Game Update 1.4 went live on the 26th of September, and here is the official news post on it. It will give you a brief summary of what the patch brought, as well as a link to the patch notes.

Recently a controversial decision was made to remove Black Hole Commendations from Story Mode Explosive Conflict. At first players weren’t sure if the change was intentional, but in this thread any misconceptions are put to rest, so have a look.

Over on the official forums, the user Derkae made a thread with the intention of creating and tracking a World Ranking list for kills in the Operation Terror From Beyond. If you’re interested to see who stands where, or even submitting your own guild’s date and time, head on over and have a look.

Community Spotlight

For this week’s Community Spotlight, we’re going to be taking a look at a collection of Boss Kill videos from the guild Chosen on Prophecy of the Five. An Imperial guild, these videos are very well done, and may serve to give other guilds some insight as to how to perform during the fight. The videos also feature points of view from both a healer as well as a DPS, which is always nice. Head on over to this link and have a look.

Are you interested in having your guild featured here? Send us an email at darth@darthhater.com and give us a general run down. Submissions should include Guild Name, Faction, Server and how far your guild has progressed. Bonus points for a YouTube video of any boss kills that we can feature in this section.

Op-Ed: At Long Last

So new content is finally upon us, and many players are very pleased with it. Many guilds have already cleared the encounter on Hard Mode, and will be looking at second clears this coming week, as well as many more in the weeks to come. As always is the case, guilds were basically willing to do anything to be among the first to get their kills, and so they rush to the finish line in the hopes to grab a bit of that glory. But what kind of effect can that have on the content itself?

It’s no surprise that, without a large amount of content from which to draw upon, many players risk burning out quite easily by over immersing themselves in the content, or repeatedly running the same content over and over for an undetermined amount of time. Though this is largely something players can control, by limiting their exposure to the game, many players consider themselves to be hardcore, and thusly they wish to hit the content as hard as possible in as short a time frame as is possible.

In my opinion, to each their own. Players will always find a way to enjoy content just the way they prefer, and casting stones over it is pretty pointless, and that goes for both directions. I believe that as long as the content is being enjoyed, then the rate at which it is cleared is inconsequential. The social aspect of this game is what brought me in in the first place, and that will always remain the most important part to me.

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