The second 5 hours segment of interaction within SWTOR was much more pleasant. I began by drumming up chat in the box in the upper left hand portion of the screen while completing missions slowly. Sometimes I would just leave my character standing in one spot as long as no battle present condition and just talk and ask questions of other players. Sometimes I lost patience at times because there is so much to take in within the interface, and even other players trying to describe such actions to me proved semi-difficult. It was somewhat irritating but part of the growing pains of learning any new skill. The utter agony I experienced on first contact with this game were gone.
Luckily in my verbal and virtual journeys through Tython, the Jedi home planet in the game’s world, I asked about guilds and was informed of one in which the members had started the night before. I asked how to join, was told I needed an invite, but thankfully all the members of the SWTOR community I have come in contact with on chat have been very helpful and kind, and I was invited to the guild immediately. I felt pretty happy that perhaps I would have a better chance at chatting and interacting more with a more active community within the game. My level of comfort and sense of ease were starting to grow with each progressive step into the community and game.
Of great consequence within the guild is that I was told of this ever evasive place that Professor Jackson had told me about. After hours of play without hearing anything about it, I was beginning to think it was a myth, but sure enough, our guild has a discord server. Although I used the discord app on my phone while playing the game on my laptop, I did download it on my laptop in hopes of getting voice chat to work, which I couldn’t figure out on my phone.
The first time I entered into the discord app, I found someone to talk to within our guild. I asked how we could participate in guild missions and he informed me there were no guild missions, only operations and flashpoints. I have continued to use kind members of the SWTOR community to learn about everything I can, and the judgement free feeling attached to asking a million questions has been refreshing despite alternative narratives about many MMORPGs. I have had a few members reference to me that they had experienced this kind of judgement more so on World of Warcraft (WoW).
As I was trying to complete a mission on a planet other than Thython, which I have no idea how I got myself into, I was unable to defeat a certain boss character. I told my guild buddy on discord and they offered to join me in the flashpoint mission. They helped me through the entire mission, which took over an hour. I asked questions and learned new functions in the menus as I paused and asked questions during the mission. As we were playing, my companion realized I was still using a Practice Saber because I had not completed all my missions back on Tython in my unsupervised exploration of the SWTOR world. It felt great to gain more hours of interaction and build a little bit of community through completing missions with different members of the SWTOR community. My recent experience has been a complete 180 of the first few hours of trying to figure the game out. My original frustrations are gone although maneuvering the menus and entire game world still throws me for a loop sometimes. After they helped me complete the mission, they even gave me a new rank as spectre in the guild. Although I do not know what that means, I felt kind of proud like getting a boy scout badge for completing a mission or something.
Sean's Blog 
