Something has been bugging me about Star Wars Galaxies: The Entertainer Professions (Entertainer, Musician, Dancer). During the beta, I made an entertainer as one of my characters and was quickly impressed by how boring the profession was. At the time there were assurances (more from the players than from the devs) that by release the so called “social classes” (politician was still a glimmer in the dev plans eye) would be rich and compelling.
Not too long after, it was announced that the game would be released unfinished, everybody gasped and ranted, and on the penultimate character wipe I said “screw this” and went back to playing Everquest. But I digress.
Fast forward almost a year to when I actually bought the game. After getting my bearings a little bit, not to mention accumulating a few hundred points of battle fatigue, I remembered the “social” aspect of the game… that is, the part where part of playing was being “encouraged” to go to a cantina.
So to the cantina I went, to find pretty much what had existed through much of the beta: the AFK entertainer. Oh sure, they’re called many things such macrotainers, holodancers, cantinaspammers, etc. Most of the names are nasty, and I’d rather not get into a discussion about the right or wrongness of this development.
What I am interested in is the availability of a class that can largely be played AFK, with only a few exceptions. We’ll get to those in a minute, but first:
Meet “Twi’lek X” (not her real name), a pretty Twi’lek that lives on a server that is not Corbantis. I made her for experimental purposes, to prove to myself that it is possible to make a MASTER social class char with minimal time spent actually playing.
Why I care, I don’t know. I think it’s just the pride (if that’s the right word) of being able to say “I have a Master Musician/Dancer/Entertainer on [server name] that I spent about 1 hour actually playing.”
- With the exception of macro tweaking and talking to people to get training, time spent at the keyboard should be minimal. If I’m really bored, chatting for a few is fine, but no extended play. The character will be played at night and while I’m at work.
- An exception will be made to the above rule so that I can grind out the Image Design tree in order to master Entertainer. I will however grind on myself to avoid interacting with other players.
- I will also probably have to spend a little time logged in to amass the 1860 AP I need to master 3 skill trees, but I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.
- I will spend NO MONEY, so that I can get good numbers on how much an afk entertainer can expect to make. I will accept clothes as tips, if I happen to be watching when they are offered.
- I will not ask for tips in my macros. At least not at first.
- With the exception of getting training, I will not leave the Cantina where I began entertaining. I will definitely not leave the city.
- When I master Dancer I will become a buff bot. At this point, I will write a macro that autojoins groups and asks for tips in group chat.
(more…)
