A Thought

It was like that even before release. Yet most of the "Imperial" players play full light side in the end. I personally suspect it's more a game balance and fixes issue really. I played a Consular and I had to wait months (and even a full year in one case) for things to be fixed that worked since released on the Inquisitor side.
 
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Yes, the devs don't seem to play Republic / Light side much at all. I fear that this might be "their game", and they are playing on the side they had put most energy into, because they wanted to play this side, but not the other, rather. Sounds paranoid, though. ;)

A brand-new bug report regarding faction inbalance, even although all classes are mirror classes : http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7296547#edit7296547



In a different matter, I have found something called the "Golem effect" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

A corollary of the Pygmalion effect is the golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.[1] The Pygmalion effect and the golem effect are forms of self-fulfilling prophecy. People will take the belief they have of themselves (negative in this case) and attribute traits of the belief with themselves and their work. This will lead them to perform closer to these expectations that they set for themselves. Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class.

I noticed this, because in the PvP forum of SWTOR people are always raging and complaining about "bads".

"Bads" has become the common term of PvP players to describe a bad player. And, should I ntake those complaints seriously, 99 % of all PvP players are merely "bads".

There has already arisen a saying : "Bads remain bads and will always be".

Now, if we take this

A corollary of the Pygmalion effect is the golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.

it could be that bad players might indeed perform the worse, the more other playersbelieve that they are not able to improve.

In the end, this is like racism : Applying a wrong, biased statement which is not true, but often stated regardless by racists like "all blacks are dumb" might lead - according to the "Golem effect" in people with a non-"white" skin to perform rather bad.

Rosenthal posited that biased expectancies could essentially affect reality and create self-fulfilling prophecies as a result.

Quotations

James Rhem, executive editor for the online National Teaching and Learning Forum, commented:

"When teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways." "How we believe the world is and what we honestly think it can become have powerful effects on how things will turn out."

On an unconscious level, this "Golem effect" can be used as some kind of "psychological warfare". Let's take a country with 2 groups, for example. One of both gets the riches, meanwhile the other one remains rather poor.

The richer group could now use the "Golem effect" as a way to keep the other group from getting into their ranks and participate from the riches. I think that racism in the U.S. worked a bit like this; "12 years a slave" shows exactly this, in a way : An highly intelligent man is held captive as a slave becauise people considered him to be not being capable of being an highly intelligent citizen. Prejudice made people turn pretty normal citizens into slaves - because the slavers fell prey to the Golem effect, I think. And this bad-mouthing of ethnic and non-ethnic groups happens all of the time. Like for example that German Deutsche Bank boss saying that craftsmen bills were only "peanuts". Or that private data is less "worthy" to be saved than dirms' data.

In the end, everything is there to work out hierarchies. People atr a higher level in an hierarchgy are trying to keep people from lover levels to reach higher levels.
That's how corruption works as well : Through giving the good things to same-levelled people, firms etc. , outsiders are kept away.

And then I find this thing this morning : http://www.technologyreview.com/vie...re-revealing-the-nature-of-human-hierarchies/
 
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A few interesting TvTropes articles :

"Most gamers are male" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostGamersAreMale

This trope holds that the primary demographic for video games is males ages 15 to 25, which explains why games are full of male-only Fanservice, especially in the form of Stripperiffic female characters, gratuitous violence, and concepts that are oriented more to explosions and racking up a high body count than plot or character development.

"The Male Gaze" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MaleGaze

"Girl-show ghetto" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GirlShowGhetto

"The belief that boys shouldn’t be interested in girl things is the main reason there’s hardly anything decent for girls in animation — or almost any media for that matter. It’s a backwards, sexist, outdated attitude."
—Lauren Faust, creator and former executive producer of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Mainly, the Double Standard most people have regarding media: that women's entertainment should only be enjoyed by women with no crossover allowed — despite it being okay for women to watch shows primarily marketed towards men — keeping in mind most media is male-focused. Not to mention the stigma that media specifically tailored for women is 100% guaranteed to be of inferior quality, no exceptions.

This line of thinking is very clear in most creators and executives' minds. Men and women could watch shows meant for men/starring a man, only women could like a female-centered, never mind "girly", show. Watching a girl show would be unmanly and be subject to ridicule. Just watch any show and the guy who's the more sensitive and caring member of the cast is usually the Butt Monkey.

"Men act, Women are." : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenActWomenAre

"Men are strong, Women are pretty" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreStrongWomenArePretty

"Virgin Power" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VirginPower

And by virgin, we almost always mean a female virgin. Because male virgins don't exist. Ever.

"A man is not a Virgin" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AManIsNotAVirgin

Note that the term "virgin" originally meant "a female who has not had sex with a man", and thus literally no male was ever a virgin — which sort of underscores the trope. The definition became more vague as language evolved.

Popular sister-tropes:

Sex as Rite-of-Passage: The character is desperately trying to have sex to establish his manhood.

All Men Are Perverts: A man could never not want to have sex with a woman.

"Bigger is better" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BiggerIsBetterInBed


"SoCalization" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoCalization (Why everything in Media looks like Californian)

"Big Apßplesauce" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigApplesauce (Why everything in Media looks like New York)

"We all live in America" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeAllLiveInAmerica (Why everything in Media looks like America)

"Eagleland Osmosis" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EaglelandOsmosis

Louis Ciccone: Your honour, may I approach the bench?
Judge: You've been watching too much American TV, Mr. Ciccone. No one "approaches the bench" in a Canadian court.
—Seeing Things note

A special case of Reality Is Unrealistic, Eagleland Osmosis occurs when people outside the United States consume American pop culture and start to believe that aspects of their own society work like they do in these imported films and television shows.

The most common forms of this concerns the legal system, with people expecting to be "read their rights" if they are arrested, expecting that police should have a search warrant in cases where they do not need one under local law, or calling a serious crime a "felony". Another one is expecting 9-1-1 to be the number for emergency services, even when the actual number is usually displayed prominently on phonebooks and phone booths.

This isn't new, or limited to the United States—it's a side effect of World Power status. Elements of the major power's culture and language bleed into the popular culture of other countries. The Japanese adoption of Western customs like Christmas, Valentines Day, and wedding ceremonies is a good example. In older tales, an astute reader will find Limey Osmosis, Frenchie Osmosis, and even Kraut Osmosis. Granted, modern mass media and the Internet certainly accelerate the effect.

"All our weapons will be boxy in the future" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurWeaponsWillBeBoxyInTheFuture

"We will not have pockets in the future" :http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeWillNotHavePocketsInTheFuture

"In the future, all humans will be one race" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InTheFutureHumansWillBeOneRace

"Reality is Unrealistic" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic also known as the saying "human Imagination is only surpassed by Reality"

"Realistic diction is unrealistic : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic

In fiction, characters inevitably come out with well-formed sentences. They may have a poetic flavor filled with William Shakespeare-like similes and luminous golden metaphors that most people in real life aren't clever enough to come up with on the spot or even at all. They never stumble over their words or say the wrong thing except for deliberate comedic effect. Even "realistic" dialogue is relatively free of errors and padding. It's almost as if it was written by a professional. (It really was.)

"Evil Makeover" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilMakeover

Fantasy : "All Myths are true" :http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllMythsAreTrue

Sci-Fi : "All Theories are true" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllTheoriesAreTrue

Tropes that are no longer tropes :
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DiscreditedTrope
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForgottenTrope
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadHorseTrope

"Our Elves are better" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter

And last :
The Unicorn : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unicorn
 
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Regarding double standards :

"The Unfair Sex" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheUnfairSex

"Men can't keep house" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenCantKeepHouse

"Men are uncuultured" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreUncultured

"A Man Is Not A Virgin" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AManIsNotAVirgin

"Double standard : Abuse - Female on Male" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale

But don't think that people who believe that a woman can harm a man don't believe in this trope, oh no. For those people, there is the belief that any man who is being abused by a woman must have done something to deserve it, because Females Are More Innocent and Women Are Wiser, so they would never resort to using violence against another living thing unless absolutely necessary.

Double standard : Rape - Female on Male : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale

The consequence of this line of thought is this trope. A man raped by an attractive woman is considered a lucky man, and a man being raped by an unattractive woman is comedy gold.

Men are the expendable gender : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender

"To put it simply: men are neither supposed nor allowed to be dependent. They are expected to take care of others and themselves. And when they cannot or will not do it, then the assumption at the heart of the culture is that they are somehow less than men and therefore unworthy of help. An irony asserts itself: by being in need of help, men forfeit the right to it."
— Peter Marin, Jill Gets Welfare--Jack Becomes Homeless
 
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Highly interesting ! Please read !

Taken from the SWTOR forums :

RiVaN_ said:
To make a long story short I studied psychology and worked in the field for several years before going back to school for Networking and Security. I have friends and family in the field of psychology who are doing everything from long-term studies, case studies, counseling etc. If you really want the long version let me know.

Anyway so here is what I know; most console multi-player games are very much PvP focused, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo even Madden etc pit human against human. The largest video game player base is males ranging from ages 12 - 24.
Interestingly enough there have been a number of studies over the past decade following the theory of; it is now taking our youth longer to mature (mentally and emotionally) because we expect everyone to go to college. As more and more people enter college those years are being seen as an extension of ones youth. So you really aren't considered "grown up" until you are out of college.
There are more and more people waiting until their 30's to get married and even till their 40's to have kids. You know, all of the precieved "adult, settling down" things.

Where I currently work deals only with youth and I can tell you after working with kids for 7 years that most adolescent boys first reaction to any opinion that differs from theirs, or some one who is different than them is to lash out. Their arguments (as in bullet points of a debate) are more likely to focus on name calling and drawing attention to the weaknesses in their opponent/target. They are more likely to try to persuade you to understand their point of view than they are to attempt to understand yours.


So my theory is that the PvP player base tends to be those young boys making the jump from console games to PC MMO's and they are looking for some familiar game content, pvp is that familiar teritory. The PvE community tends to be more of the grown ups, those of us who grew up with Super Mario Bothers, Metal Gear, Sonic, Mega Man etc.
I meet many more folks between the ages of 30 and 60 in PvE and I meet a lot of teenagers and folks in their early to mid 20's in PvP.
There are plenty of jerks in the PVE world and there are some cool people in the PvP community. I think the jerks, d-bags, etc are actually the minority, but they are so outspoken and so arrogant that it feels like they are the majority.
No matter what, Wheatons Law should be required reading for all MMO players. I don't always do a good job of this myself, but I try, which is more than some people can say.

Source : http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7422108&postcount=146
 
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I'm between ages 30 and 60 and I hate PvE as it's boring but enjoy PvP. And that text got it completely wrong. It has nothing to do with my age.

It has everything to do with only one thing: trolling.
To troll, you need an audience. You can't have enough of audience in PvE. Thus if you're about to troll, you go PvP.

So to troll, to have an audience, you desperately need a MMO.
Now I'm not just any common troll out there, I do my share in PvP, rarely though, and most of the time I play only singleplayer games. Because I don't really need to troll much. Only when my boss steps on my toe so I need a vent somewhere where everyone does the same thing. That's not Facebook of course, I'm not joining that international lonely hearts club.
Which MMO has the worst community, is fun enough, has exciting PvP, and you may troll like crazy, still it isn't pay2win?
League of Legends. :)

And then there is one sad thing also. To PvP… You really don't need to speak a language. To PvE you need at least to read and understand the quest text.
How many kids do (try to) speak the foreign language?

Yes, I'm saying today's kids are ignorant fools not capable to read! If that was not true, they'd watch movies with subtitles, not rubbish dubs!! And instead of bloody notext FPS they'd play storyrich RPGs!
 
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I'm between ages 30 and 60 and I hate PvE as it's boring but enjoy PvP. And that text got it completely wrong. It has nothing to do with my age.

It has everything to do with only one thing: trolling.
To troll, you need an audience. You can't have enough of audience in PvE. Thus if you're about to troll, you go PvP.

So to troll, to have an audience, you desperately need a MMO.
Now I'm not just any common troll out there, I do my share in PvP, rarely though, and most of the time I play only singleplayer games. Because I don't really need to troll much. Only when my boss steps on my toe so I need a vent somewhere where everyone does the same thing. That's not Facebook of course, I'm not joining that international lonely hearts club.
Which MMO has the worst community, is fun enough, has exciting PvP, and you may troll like crazy, still it isn't pay2win?
League of Legends. :)

And then there is one sad thing also. To PvP… You really don't need to speak a language. To PvE you need at least to read and understand the quest text.
How many kids do (try to) speak the foreign language?

Yes, I'm saying today's kids are ignorant fools not capable to read! If that was not true, they'd watch movies with subtitles, not rubbish dubs!! And instead of bloody notext FPS they'd play storyrich RPGs!

Very true.. I love when developers take the time to leave things that explain the world (for example books) it really helps me appreciate the game.
 
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I still believe the "masters of PvP" are those with more time to spend / to polish it.
Just take a look at thise streams, take a look at those Games Com shows showing the - supposedly - world's best guild players battling each other - they are nowhere 40-60 years old. And their audience isn't either.

People who work all day are usually a bit too tired in the evening to do as much PvP as young people going to university are able to - just in terms of free time.
 
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I get home very tired, too tired of grinding I do at work. And I need to break away from it. Sometimes I do PvP, sometimes not. But god save me from more grinding.

You are completely right about pro-s, I'd say the average age of League of Legends pro teams is 25. Although it's maybe subjective, I know for sure Koreans can be 40 and still look as they're 25. ;)
But I can't be world's best guild player because I work on another job. Besides I'm not interested into becoming a pro player. Games are my hobby, not a job.
Maybe if playing games could have been a payed job when we had 25, maybe I'd go into it. But it was not.

And the audience age… Really. Alrik. Cmon.
In my (our, right?) age I'd rather spend my time chattying to a friend somewhere aside about everything and nothing. There was a time I adored to be in masses thinking about nothing, ignored by everyone, waiting to be served. But a few weeks ago I went out to a (sort of) rave party, it just wasn't fun. Too loud and mostly crap music (which didn't bother me when I was younger), pushing your way to the bar among a horde of cretins to get a beer, getting burned by some underage punk who still didn't learn how to hold a cigarette, I just couldn't stand it. Yea… Maybe if I took some pot with me I wouldn't get grumpy, but then again, I can roll one with friends any time and still have more fun being not surrounded by brainwashed teenagers.

And all those bloody publishers underestimate our generation!
If a game is good, I'll still buy it, my presence or nonpresence on Games Com means nothing.
 
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Is this a new trend ?

Tropico 5 - Day One Edition
Sacred 3 - First Edition

Is this some new kind of "Collector's Edition" ?
 
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One view on the current state of PvP in general ( and SWTOR PvP specifically ) :

Venilator said:
This is my view as an owner of a Pencil and Paper Roleplaying games company so please take it as you see it. I find that PvP in most MMOs today have followed too closely to the Blizzard WoW PvP paradigm. The idea that in PvP you must work hard to get gear to be on an equal footing with your opponent is absurd. In PvE you can create system where players can gear themselves to do content in a brief period so a player never gets that moment where they are like "damn, we do not have the gear for this match!". Example getting 162 gear is simple and easy especially with the Dailies and Tacticals.

Now in PvP you really do not have a tiered system like this other than just the grind. Sure you can grind PvP while low level but that does not address the issue. You hit the end game and are literally running around grinding for coms and sandbagging your team because you do not have the gear to fight on an equal footing. How can you really have fun when if you want to compete the very gear to allow you to play on equal footing is used as a carrot to play....

This was something that was of an extreme issue with Arenas in WoW where you played a season in hopes to get geared enough so to be competitive in the next season. If we are to talk about well gear is for the "skilled" players well that is a joke. The characters effectiveness is based on optimizing builds and stats so to produce big numbers in the form of damage, mitigation, and healing. Sure, you have utilities but if this was about skill not gear than a team in green gear would be able to shut out a team in Brutalizer gear. The truth is that won't happen and we all know it. So why is PvP gear treated as a reward and not the required equipment needed to play? PvP gear is not useful in PvE... A set of 162 PvE gear blows away the PvP ranked set while the 168 (which is so easy to get) there is no question. PvP gear is terrible for PvE so one cannot make the argument of "for the sake of PvE".

Sooo, that begs the question again what real reason to make the PvP sets as the carrots to work to obtain, especially when you look at ranked. What is the USE of a rank format if the players in the ranked format are not fighting on equal footing. The idea of PvP is to have players fight in groups and use unit cohesion and teamwork to accomplish their goal. Unfortunately, PvP is treated an FPS shooter which is mind boggling because this is a Roleplaying game.. your effectiveness is not on you twitch skills but how you built your character, knowledge of the class, and using the right abilities in concert with other players to achieve a kill or a score.. This is different than in a shooter where you can have a team running around with Pistols headshot killing the opposing team. Gear is a measure of effectiveness in an RPG. Lets be blunt.. it is not fun to play with friends in PvP in an MMO when you are out geared. New players get discouraged because losing knowing that your gear doesn't allow you to heal enough or do enough DPS to kill someone is annoying.

SO, yeah the way you have to grind PvP gear to have fun in PvP is one of the main reasons PvP is not fun and becomes work. I could go on but i think this post is too long as is.

Source : http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7457605&postcount=52
 
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SWTOR Spammers seem to know the English language nowadays :

One spammer is named "Useedalewd" what could be transcribed as "U see da loot".
 
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The above is about the amount of players in LOTRO divided into different groups. It says that Raiders (of any Lost Ark or otherwise ;) ) are the smalles group.



Now, one of my rather crazy thoughts :


If there exists a game ( and it does ! ) about Zombies, which is called "DAYZ",
then, what would be a game named "BOYZ" be about ... ? ;)
 
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I post it here : Rants from 2005 and what has changed since then - and what not : http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...other_highlights_from_the_Rant_Apocalypse.php

Romero also told of another disturbing incident, this time involving herself. (I suppose I might need to insert a trigger warning here for sexual harassment!)

Romero explained how she was in the lobby of a hotel during GDC, having what she thought was an interesting and enlightening conversation with a colleague she respected. The other person then moved his jacket, which was on his lap, to show that he had an erection, right there — in his pants, but there.

She left, and went back to the conference. “I felt like a deer in the fucking headlights,” she said. “And we know what happen to deer.”

Part of her point was that in awful situations like that, you don’t know how you might react. But one thing is for sure. “Nobody wants your fucking cock, ok?" she said angrily. "Nobody.”

What a weird incident, I have no idea why they'd even put that on Gama Sutra. Of course Brenda pretty much claimed to be the designer of wiz 8 when she was just a minor part of it so in that light maybe it's all BS. Or maybe she was just mistaken, like the first episode of curb your enthusiasm.
 
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Me using my infamous graphic pictures of speech again in an reply in the SWTOR forums regarding Ranked PvP getting smaller and smaller (XSQ means "Cross-Server-Queuing") :

Then ask yourself : "Why is it so that there are only so few people left ?"

And : You all in this forum do so as XSQ and Merging was THE solution to ALL of your problems !

But you NEVER ask why it became how it is now in the first place … Aka : Self-analysis …

There's a well-known saying out there : "The bad ones, that's always the other ones …"

Or in short : You want to go on like this forever, never changing your habits, never changing your pla styles, never changing ANYTHING - and you ALWAYS call for OUTER solutions to your problems, and NEVER for inner inner ones …

If you go on like this firever, never changing a thing, but ALWAYS demanding a change on the outside, then you are going to die out like the proverbial dinosaur.

If the problem could have been solved via the outside, then there would have never been any reduction of players or of the player pool in the first place … The PvP community would have maintained itself like water is flowing down the river into the sea, evaporates there, travels back to the land, gets down as rain, and flows down the river again, like the eternal cycle of the water is.

But thatz there has been a constant loss of so many players in the Ranked PvP Scene must have a reason, because there must have been a drought. Water is evaporating, but it never gets back to the land again, and thus never rains down.

Therefore the cycle must be broken.

The question is now : Where ?
 
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Me using my infamous graphic pictures of speech again in an reply in the SWTOR forums regarding Ranked PvP getting smaller and smaller (XSQ means "Cross-Server-Queuing") :

But they act like everything in an MMO is a standalone thing, when it's not. MMO is like an amusement park. It needs to have lots of attractions to draw people in. There's an amusement park I went to a few times here that barely had anyone even though another one is always packed. Each individual ride was good but they didn't really have much in the way of little stuff to do and they charged for each ride instead of an all inclusive pass. It led to a really boring experience.

MMO designers love to go aha and point the finger and say fans were wrong about something being a draw when they spend time on it and don't get more people playing. But in swotor the whole thing just seems boring and there's all kinds of similar places to go to do the same crapola.

There's nothing new in it, no gimmick, no hook. That's what's needed to make people do the same stuff they can do anywhere, do it there. Simply being star wars themed is not enough, especially when they have disneytized it and made it so boring.
 
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