Newbies

I had a fun little adventure on Tatooine tonight. What is it with that planet and adventure? I was playing my lowbie Jedi knight and had just finished up my class quest in the area. I hadn't done anything else though, because I had quested on Tatooine on both of my previous characters and wanted to skip it in favour of other content this time.

As I was heading back to my ship, another knight - let's call him Ben - asked in general chat whether anyone could help him kill the slavemaster at the spaceport. I figured that I might as well help out since I was already there. It was a quick matter of hopping in and out of the hangar, and as we finished, Ben asked me whether I wanted to do the heroic quest Down the Hole too. I figured that I might as well, since heroic quests usually don't have any prerequisites, are fun and offer great experience.

The moment we stepped out of the hangar however, we ran into another Jedi - let's call him Liam - who was standing right in front of the door and immediately turned to me. "Hello, can you help me kill the slavemaster?" I felt like I had landed in some kind of comedy skit, suddenly doomed to help random people kill the slavemaster over and over again! However, I didn't want to be mean, so I told Ben that I'd be right with him and helped Liam get his quest done too.

Liam immediately confessed that he was new to the game and didn't really know what he was doing, so I took the lead and decided to take him along to Down the Hole as well. As it turned out, Ben appeared to be at least somewhat new to MMOs as well, as both of them asked me questions that baffled me in their innocence. I've heard the occasional comment about SWTOR attracting more genuine MMO newbies than most games, but this was the first time that I really got to see it for myself.

"What do you mean, share the quest?"
"How do I find you guys? Where are you?"
"What does need or greed mean?"

Fortunately I remembered that this particular mission was handed out in the cantina, so I made my way over there to pick it up directly, Liam called in via holo, and we were finally all on the same page.

We headed into the heroic area and were off to a good start, but it didn't take long for me to jump one way and Ben another, so that we got two groups at once and died. What followed was a lot of comedic flailing as people resed up, immediately aggroed something and died again, Liam went for the medical droid, tried to run back in and also died again... it was just a giant mess. I couldn't help but laugh though, and eventually we all just assembled outside and went back in again as a team. One of them joked that our first attempt had only been a trial run and didn't count. Fortunately all the dying had provided an important lesson and everyone (including me) was a lot more careful this time, so that we completed the mission with no further problems.

After we had handed in together, my game crashed unfortunately, and when I came back online Ben was gone. However Liam was still around and asked me with puppy dog eyes whether I could help him with another quest, which I did. Can't say that it was hugely engaging to be in spectator mode for multiple conversations, but I felt protective of this (to me) rare newbie I had found. You don't want to put anyone off the game by giving them the impression that other players they'll meet out in the open world are unhelpful or unfriendly.

We finally parted ways because he didn't want to impose any longer, though I left him with a couple of pieces of gear that I had picked up and some medpacs. I have to admit, I kind of had to laugh when I "finally" made it off Tatooine - what a distraction that simple request for help had turned out to be!

One of the best things about this whole encounter though was the fact that it stirred a pleasant WoW memory in my brain. I remember back when I was but a little WoW noob in vanilla, my human paladin was questing in Loch Modan for some reason and I ended up grouped with three warriors that were two to six levels lower than me. I had no real clue what I was doing, but somehow I was both tanking and healing at once, and it was madness. We hunted down Ol' Sooty (a very scary elite back then) multiple times for no other reason than that he had ganked one of our party members and he wanted revenge, and we killed endless amounts of troggs for the local dwarves. I never saw any of those players again, but the memory remains a fond one because to me it exemplifies one of the things that I loved about MMOs from the start: the idea that every stranger is a potential friend, because the bears/troggs/whatevers are out to get all of you.

I'm glad to see this spirit of companionship alive and well in The Old Republic, even if it's Mandalorians that are out to get us now instead of beasts and ugly humanoids. What can I say - Jedi have to stick together.