You Are The Real MVP - Why Genshin Impact Is The Real Game of the Year in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLxgyp0pnMQ
Hi all, I see there is a lot of anger and anxiety toward Genshin Impact due to the wide audience it brought to the table, as well as a lot of misconceptions about the gacha gaming industry. I am 40 years old and have been gaming for over 30 years. I have 300+ DAYS /played in World of Warcraft and recently, over 1000 hours in Path of Exile with popular build guides with hundreds of replies. I also have played just about every major hit of every era on every platform. I really want to tell you who Mihoyo really is, how the gacha gaming industry works, and what Genshin Impact's future looks like.
Mihoyo's History
In 2011, three college students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (comparable to Cornell in America) released their first game, FlyMe2TheMoon. When they graduated in 2013, they used their own money to make the first Honkai game (released as Zombiegal Kawaii overseas). This game allowed players to farm gold coins to buy all weapons and gear, only spend real money to speed up progress and came with glorious two players co-op way ahead of other mobile games at the time. At end of the day, players just didn't pay money for it. When they took it to investors, they were laughed at and ridiculed by everyone. Nobody is going to pay money for this silly anime stuff! You guys don't know how to monetize a game! Both of these games are still available on App Store, feel free to download them to check them out!
In 2014, on the verge of bankruptcy, the team learned monetization model from Puzzles & Dragons, the first-ever mobile game to break a billion dollars, and released Honkai 2 with the same art style and gameplay. The biggest change was moving to the gacha model. The game became a top-10 grossing title in China, released to overseas market as Guns GirlZ - Mirage Cabin and Guns Girl - Honkai Gakuen. Mihoyo the company was born. Today, Mihoyo has over 1000 employees and pays them more money than titans like Tencent and Netease, and runs their office in the ultra-expensive heart of Shanghai business district. Despite Genshin Impact's smashing global success and player's thirst for more content, they gave many of their employees a full 8 days break, standard with the 10/01 Chinese national holiday, for the historic job they did with the global launch. They understand it is a marathon, not a sprint.
For Mihoyo, the most important metric for their title will always be LIFETIME REVENUE, and they do not abandon their titles. All of them are still available. Honkai 2 is still getting content updates six years after release, even if the game itself is nothing more than a piece of history for them at this point. Honkai Impact 3 hit an all-time high revenue month this year, still makes a few hundred million dollars a year in China/Japan, three years after release, and Mihoyo took every dollar they made and spent an unprecedented 100 million dollars on a mobile game we know as Genshin Impact. You can count on Mihoyo to treat its most ambitious title ever with love and care, but you must remember they will always prioritize LIFETIME REVENUE over any other metric, which is what successful companies do because it is the only way to make the product best in class.
Fate Grand Order - Genshin Impact's TRUE inspiration
In 2015, Fate Grand Order was released as a turn-based mobile JRPG, the first six months it scored just $100 million dollars, and was on the verge of sinking into irrelevance. Five years later, the game grossed 4 billion dollars and became the most successful PVE game on any platform since GTA 5. How did it happen?
Many say it is the fate IP, but the truth is fate's IP is nothing special in a sea of big IPs trying to make a splash in mobile and failed miserably, just ask Nintendo how their two Mario games performed, or Square about their countless Final Fantasy mobile games. 80% of the billion-dollar games on mobile are actually brand new IP's.
The biggest challenge for every PVE game-as-a-service is monetization. PVP games like League of Legends and Fortnite do not need huge content updates to stay fresh and can maintain much higher daily active user counts to sell cosmetics, make $5 per player, and still hit a monster year. Monetizing PVE games is much harder. Players simply run out of things to do and quit the game, no matter how quickly you can produce content. Games like Path of Exile and Warframe struggle to break 100 million a year in revenue.
PVP gacha games like Summoners War and AFK Arena can rely on whales dueling each other to force meta changes, and they grew into billion-dollar franchises in their own right. But Fate Grand Order had a different idea in mind, what if you design amazing characters that are truly desirable, and price them at a low gacha rate so it takes thousands of dollars for rich players to max out their box by pulling multiple copies? You are never going to have the player base of a Candy Crush, let's try to maximize our revenue ceiling from whales instead, and make players emotionally attach to their characters because they are so well designed. The rest was history.
While there are indeed many generous gacha games like Granblue Fantasy, Azur Lane, Dragalia Lost, etc, none of them are in Fate Grand Order's tier if you look at their annual numbers, not even in the same ballpark. Other multi-billion dollar franchises like Puzzles and Dragons, Monster Strike also follow the same concept of greatly increasing the limit of what a whale can spend on a PVE game to max out a character. And yes, we are talking about providing strong benefits for getting multiple copies of the same character.
The numbers have proved time and time again, that maximizing whale spending in a PVE game is far more revenue than maximizing the number of monthly card players.
Genshin Impact's Target Audience
Any product that tries to be everything for everyone is doomed to fail. Mihoyo has very clear audiences in mind:

• Players who love anime graphic and ARPG, there is simply no AAA game out there in this genre. Tales series, Xenoblade, etc. are all low budget, low sales games. Granblue Relink is single platform and dead on arrival. There is no dominant franchise at all.
• Players who love Zelda's open-world exploration and environment interaction, but hate the difficult puzzles and survival/weapon durability/ammo aspect, and want constant content updates. Hey, a co-op mode with a real RPG system sounds amazing!
• Mobile players who want more than a simple game like Fate Grand Order. They want to do dailies during commute and don't mind doing harder content on PC/console. The game needs to look good on a big screen at home. They don't want to learn/maintain two different PVE games given how time-consuming these games are.
• Players who retired from MMORPG/ARPG's due to real-life commitments. Many of us who played World of Warcraft have kids now, and the outdated graphics, 20 buttons skill bar, the social requirements for raids . . . it is just too much to keep up. We want a simpler game that looks good and takes far less time to learn and play.

And let's just say they hit it out of the park with the greatest launch in gaming history. Never before a game hit PC/PS4/iOS/Android with cross-play on day one in 100 countries, 13 text language and 4 fully voiced languages, never before a game hit top 5 grossing in China/Japan/US/Korea at the same time, I don't even recall a marketing campaign did so well across so many drastically different regions and cultures. The AAA graphics, sound, incredible polish, you don't need me to tell you why this game is amazing. But from the competition's standpoint, the launch itself was like watching a bronze player climb to grandmaster overnight, and the game's biggest strength. Far bigger companies, franchises, do not dare to even think about launching a game at this scale. Mihoyo released the failed Honkai 1 overseas when the company was on the verge of collapsing, they always punched way above their weight when it comes to global releases.
Make no mistakes about it, this was never meant to be a single-player AAA game or a direct Diablo 3 / Path of Exile / Warframe competitor. It was meant to be a game that converts PC/console players to gacha gamers, by casting a wider net than any mobile game ever. They only need a small percentage of PC and console players to change their behaviors. The rest of them can play for free or leave and it won't hurt them at all. The monthly card is designed as a super good deal (look, WAY cheaper than World of Warcraft $15 per month) to get PC/console players to spend for the first time ever, breaks down their "why pay for a free game" defense. Once they pay once, the pity 5 star is always just a few dozen more pulls away, let me buy another pack! Before you know it, monthly cards are converted to dolphins, dolphins are converted to whales. It is by far the strongest business model for a PVE game today, and people who are new to the genre won't know what hit them.
Genshin Impact has an excellent chance to end Fate Grand Order's reign as the #1 most successful PVE game on any platform since 2016, by the virtue of being on every platform, and the same version across all regions.
LIFETIME REVENUE = Active Player Base * Spend Per Player * Longevity
For every game as a service, balancing these three variables is an incredibly difficult task. Can Mihoyo increase the rate on an event (like Cy Games gala events), put up a Diluc banner, and greatly increase spend per player? Yes, but they will provide less reason for people to pull on other days and lose out on long term revenue.
Likewise, the resin limitation is to prevent even whales from maxing out their characters and moving onto other games, that is why they have a hard limit on resin refill. Player progression is meticulously controlled to ensure content can keep up. A huge part of internal testing is to test how quickly a player of each spending level can go through content. Two-day, three-day, seven-day, and thirty-day player retention are critical metrics to F2P mobile games, you will always lose a huge number of players during these transitional phases. These are tried and true methods in gacha gaming to preserve the maximum number of players over the long haul. It is basically a much more advanced progression control than say, World of Warcraft's weekly raid lock outs. You have to FORCE your players to take breaks, or you will lose them way faster than you can churn out new content.
All four dailies, spend resins, and open-world exploration for crafting/ascension materials, a couple of chests/quest you missed, that is a health 60 minutes of gameplay. Gacha games provide resources for the next pull on every daily, every quest, every event. Getting a five star is a better feeling than getting any item drop in MMORPG/ARPG. Gacha games have a much stronger hold on its players because of this addiction, you are always very close to the next pull! Genshin Impact takes it a step further to actually encourage you to do single pulls over ten pulls. Over time resources will inevitably be loosened up as more contents are released, and daily quests and slowed down progression is there to keep you playing.
Behind the scenes, there is an ultra-complex data model that works tirelessly to balance all three variables. Looking at Mihoyo's track record with Honkai Impact 3, they know what they are doing to maximize LIFETIME REVENUE. With every gacha game like this, the developer has a price point they need to hit on a five star, then based on the competition they usually adjust the price significantly higher than what they consider to be acceptable. Whether it is gacha rate or stamina, once you reduce the price, you can never, ever increase it again. Start high and drop it when you need to is a much better strategy, and players think you listened to their feedback, win-win! If the daily active user doesn't drop while you keep the price high, why lower the price? The developer and player are always in a tug of war, with the developer testing player's limit on what is acceptable. It is just like how Apple kept iPhone with 2GB of memory and tiny screen size for a very long time because they are looking at the overall LIFETIME REVENUE, not because they didn't know their product needed these features.
Genshin Impact is priced at a premium because it has no competition, just like how Apple iPhones were priced at an ultra-premium when it first came out. Over time, prices will drop, resources will come easier, but until there is a real competitor, they do not need to care what lesser gacha games do. Do you think KeQing should be priced the same as a gacha character with PS1 graphics?
Genshin Impact's Future
100 million dollars estimate from Sensor Tower in two weeks does not include PC, PS4 and Chinese Android. Chinese Android revenue has been 1.8 times of China iOS for Honkai 3, many in the Chinese gaming industry speculate the true global revenue number of Genshin Impact is easily double of what Sensor Tower shows. Mihoyo is a private company and it fired one of the employees who bragged about the 09/15 China PC numbers, which was 10 million dollars, so we will never know the exact figures unless they go public. Don't expect Mihoyo to ever share revenue/player base numbers, that is just not how they operate.
There is no way the game can continue the 100 million dollars a week pace, that is 5 billion dollars a year, so for haters out there, you will see a massive decline in the player base between content updates, you will see the game falling out of top 10 grossing, you will get your "I told you so" moments when the weekly revenue drops by 50-70%. It is perfectly normal for gacha games between banners, and what Gensin Impact is doing is completely unsustainable. This is called filtering out users and building a stable player base.
However, even with the inevitable massive decline, this is a game destined to be a multi-billion dollar franchise. I personally give it a very conservative estimate of two billion dollars in three years. It will easily outperform the likes of BOTW, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. by the end of the first year in terms of the player base, hours played, and revenue. It will take money away from all other gacha games and force other developers to step up their game. It will take money away from long-standing multi-billion dollar PC PVE franchises like Dungeon Fighter Online, and to a lesser degree, MMORPG's like FF14. It will encourage companies to play with bigger budgets and provide PC/console releases for bigger mobile releases like Diablo Immortal, instead of relying on emulators. It will even change the monetization model for western F2P games. Iksar, lead designer of Hearthstone has been playing Genshin Impact since release. Imagine if Hearthstone didn't allow you to craft cards, and provided benefits to getting multiple copies of the same card. It is way too late for Hearthstone to change now, maybe there is still time to change Diablo Immortal's monetization model, I believe they will need either gacha or real-money auction house to be competitive.
But will Genshin Impact shake up the AAA industry? My personal opinion is no. Japanese developers do not have the technology to make mobile games at this level, you just need to look at the top 20 grossing Japanse mobile games. Western developers do not have the artwork to make characters so attractive, I mean just look at Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 characters, will whales spend $1000 on them? Whales spend enough money in gacha to pick up girls in real life many times over, many of them are ultra-rich and live a lavish lifestyle, just showing anime assets is not enough to win them over.
In all of my years playing Western games I have never been attached to a female character as I did with Artoria aka King Arthur of Fate Grand Order, I played the game for six months even if I don't really like turn-based JRPGs, and always enjoyed listening to her "Excalibur". Mihoyo is coming very close with some of Genshin Impact's character designs. I am not sure if Western culture is capable of creating the type of characters that can connect with players on an emotional level. Lara Croft is definitely not it. I believe Western gaming's general pursuit of realism and grittiness hurts them when it comes to creating an idealistic world and dreamy characters. Top western games tend to expose the harshness of real-world to players, instead of offering an escape. In many ways, Mihoyo's mastery of anime is closer to a Japanese company than Chinese company, it is not something you can just hire a couple of artists for. Likewise, the western market will always be 15-20% of the overall revenue for gacha games at best, it is difficult for western companies to justify making them with a AAA budget.
It is also incredibly hard to make a cross-platform PVE game on PC, Console, and Mobile look this good. It is not something you get from just licensing Unity. There are maybe a handful of companies out there capable of dropping 100 million dollars on a game like this, but until their main cash cow die, which studio dares to take this kind of risk? The tier 2-3 companies are simply not capable of spending 100 million dollars even if they went all in. I don't see a real competitor in two years, not even from Tencent and Netease, the bar is that high.
How You Should Approach It As A Player
If you are not a fan of gacha games, no problem! The best way is to play it like a free AAA game with unlimited free DLC's. With the amount of money this game makes, in a few years it will have more content than any other open-world game, and the developer will also be more generous over time as end game contents become more abundant. As their tools mature, the amount of time it takes to release contents across all platforms at the same time will shrink significantly, there will also be more events they can queue up. Every F2P player can get at least one five star character without rerolling if they complete most of the quests and use up their gifted currencies. I expect 100% F2P players will get at least 4 five-stars per year, 3 from pity, 1 from luck. I believe F2P with limited resources is a lot more fun and only spend money to support the developer. I am still 100% F2P on Genshin Impact as of today, because getting 20 pulls from the monthly card is not that exciting. I will wait for a one-time-only deal later in the game's life cycle.
For players who want to be a bit more involved, you can buy a monthly card, do your dailies, enjoy new content, enjoy the thrills of pulls, and pity 5 stars. Once Mihoyo gets a stable end game loop out there, they will definitely loosen up on resins. Just don't expect to play it like a Path of Exile season start. Save currencies and pity timer for a banner you want. Take it slow! Gacha games are designed to be played over many years, alongside other games. Take your Cyberpunk 2077 break, take your Call of Duty break, but in the end, there is simply no anime ARPG competition on any platform, and if you are into this kind of game, you will be back.

Hi everyone, this is my first contribution to HobbyDrama, I hope this is an entertaining read and also to the community's standards. Let's go!!
Brief glossary before we begin (and some foreshadowing)
MMORPG: massively multiplayer online role-playing game, MMO for short. A videogame genre that generally invites hundreds, or up to thousands, of players to share a space. Depending on the game, anything from general adventure to large-scale war to economy and politics can be simulated. I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this could possibly not know what this is but it's included anyway.
Electro-convulsive therapy: ECT for short, it is a form of treatment where electrodes are "carefully" hooked up to a person's head and a "precise" level of electric shock is delivered, in order to treat major psychiatric disorders. Developed in 1938 when most psychiatric treatments was in their infancy, it is still used today occasionally for serious cases of depression, mania, or psychoses. In its early days however, there were widespread claims of abuse associated with its use.
Pt1: The Root of all that is bullshit
Zhengtu Online (hereafter referred to as ZT) was an immensely popular MMORPG that was developed in China and primarily served a Chinese playerbase. Released in 2006, at its peak it boasted more 2 million players, which while not particularly impressive relative to World of Warcraft (8mil worldwide at the same time), was a truly insane amount of success in a gaming scene that was very much in its embryonic stage.
The game itself was an unimpressive Diablo-style top down fantasy setting, and its gameplay loop primarily revolved around improving your ability to kill various things, but what made it special was the overarching metagame: every player population (sharing a server) was divided into 10 kingdoms. Kings and generals were all individual players, and they dictated politics to their neighbors--primarily in the form of initiating player-vs-player (or PVP) warfare.
Most contemporary MMOs had an upfront price plus a monthly subscription fee. In China, such pricing models were mostly replaced by paying oney for a set amount of ingame playing time. Unlike all of them, ZT was completely free to play (F2P).
Free to play, however, meant pay-to-win: the best weapons and armor, and even leveling up your character, needed you to pay real money. Since so much of the game was focused on PVP, it also created an eternal arms race between players, each paying for the privilege of not being evaporated by a high level enemy.
The way they did this was unique at the time. While F2P online games had already seen their rise in South Korea, equipment was generally priced explicitly via in-game currency and bought in virtual shops. ZT fused this with the sweet, sweet taste of gambling: gear in the game was primarily obtained in loot boxes, and you had to pay for keys to open them.
It needs to be emphasized that gambling of any kind was illegal in China, but, in an eerie parallel of American CEOS in the future, ZT's developers said it wasn't gambling because, well, you weren't getting your money back.
By combining this with multiple other exploitative practices, such as providing a small amount of premium currency like a casino giving you a free bet on the house, or awarding special items to the player with the highest number of lootboxes opened in a day, ZT was making money like taking candy from a candy-hating baby, and made gaming history.
As far as what this means for gamers, this was Eve giving Adam the apple, Oppenhemier splitting the atom, Prometheus stealing fire, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, and goddamn Helen Keller signing "water".
If you play any kind of videogames today, you've stepped through the long shadow that ZT had cast. Zynga (developers of Farmville) would be founded in 2007 and focused exclusively on free games with real-money integration. Lootboxes made it into Team Fortress 2 in 2010, one of the first major western-developed games to include them.
Similar mechanics (with varying degrees of exploitative practices) came to FIFA in 2010, Mass Effect 3 in 2012, Counter-Strike in 2013, League of Legends in 2016, and NBA 2K in 2017, infecting every genre of gaming under the sun, including the most popular MMO, World of Warcraft. As an aside, corporate defense of lootboxes in Star Wars Battlefront II also led to the most downvoted Reddit comment of all time.
Finally someone speaks out
The System, an article published in the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly in 2007, was a hard-hitting expose on the exploitive practices of ZT. It chronicled the rise and fall of a gamer who accidentally becomes the monarch of one of these in-game Kingdoms, her addiction to the game, and final disillusionment when she realized that in-game player behaviour was being explicitly manipulated by its designers for the purpose of creating addicts and selling more lootbox keys.
The whole article is worth a read, even if it is sensationalist in a way that immediately tells you the writer was clearly a failed novelist of some kind - describing virtual destruction with the kind of prose most people would consider and then discard for a gang rape, for starters. But it had gotten its point across. It created an explosive backlash against the game in China, and was even translated into English and propagated across gaming forums.
The fallout
In an act of censorship usually reserved for the CCP government, this article--including its English translation--began to be scrubbed from the internet, with speculation pointing to the immensely powerful CEO behind ZT. I mean, who else could it be, right?
This article would light the fire of China's first moral panic regarding videogames. In its wake, swift legislation would be enacted regarding internet gaming addiction as well as online proxy gambling. ZT would heed the new laws and remove its lootbox mechanics in the following years and many other similar games followed suit.
Most tragically, the panic (which, to be fair, was fueled by a very real problem) allowed unscrupulous characters such as Yang Yongxin, vice chairman of a hospital in Shandong province, to create "internet addiction centres". With its legitimacy established by a docuseries ("Fighting the Internet Monster") on the state-run television channel CCTV, these centres charged terrified parents exorbitant prices in order to keep teens by force in, essentially, private hospitals and asylums, subjecting them to inhumane conditions and abusive ECT in order to "cure" them of their disease. It was estimated that Yang earned the equivalent of more than $6million USD from his addiction centre in the short space of 2 years. While his centre was eventually closed by state order, he received no punishment of any kind.
As for ZT, it limped on until 2018. A mobile game reboot was made in 2015. A tie-in fantasy movie was released in 2020. it was not very good.
~~~~~~
Addendum: how we got here: Of Mice and levers
In the 1950s, an American scientist named BF Skinner discovered the following: when mouse is put in a box with a small lever that, when pressed, dispenses a food pellet, they will quickly learn to start pressing on the lever as fast as possible. If you then stop the food from dispensing, the mouse will lose interest quickly after pressing a few times and seeing no food coming out.
If, however, you hooked up the lever to dispense food at random intervals, the mouse will be practically glued to the lever and hammer on it nonstop, sometimes long after they become full, and long after any food has been dispensed.
This discovery, known as variable outcome operant conditioning, formed the foundation of our understanding of addiction and gambling. Skinner would go on to try and fail to make bombs guided by pigeons, but we're not interested in that here. His research tool--the Skinner Box--would become a descriptor you may have come across when discussing exploitive game mechanics.
Summary
Once upon a time, a game combined the random outcome of videogaming with real-money gambling. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

My family doesn't know what to do anymore, we have tried everything but nothing else seems to interest him other then online gaming like EVE, WOW, ARCHAGE, ARK vanilla.
All the bigger MMORPGS and alike that take real time to progress and literally suck your time away.
It's been like this for as long as I can remember, I am his sister and am worried as it's been affecting my father and other siblings who also don't know what else to do now.
I feel like this information is important, our backstory.
We come from a broken family of two sons and two daughters, mother was abusive growing up and was a compulsive lier who loved drama, plus a bonus of prescription medication abuser *she literally had a bag the size from your knee to waist full of multiple medicine mostly pain medication but is also a type 1/2 diabetic.
Our father worked away so never really saw the true extent what was going on at home, it got to the point that if we didn't message our father first and explain the true story towards the issue that was happening at the time, he just plain wouldn't believe us. This went in for years, we had an unspoken rule to not wake her up because otherwise she would order us around like slaves and would constantly talk down to us, any little things we did would spike an argument. So I guess we all just stick to ourselves and stayed away from her for that very reason, but even being away from her srill somehow spiked arguments as we where not around and that was an issue. Dammed if you do and dammed if you don't sinario.
Even I am a gamer but nowhere to the extent of my brother, I ran a Minecraft server that become the best in Australia during highschool, all of my siblings enjoy playing games but didnt let it control me as much as what he has, from my first memories of my brother to now has he's turned 30, I remeber him playing games or talking about them constantly.
Yes even I went through a stage where isolated myself and games so I can relate. The online world was my escape and my only friend circle, still have friends in amarica I still talk to today infact, and my gaming experience has given me the skills to build a successful business, build websites and communities #codingsucks (actually understand coding though from java script from hosting a Minecraft server back in the day and an enjin website to boot) gave me the people managing skills I needed to run my own business and understand business structures.
I had to go through a really dark space but I found myself at the end, got fit, went to group activities and made friends outside of the virtual space.
All this would be ok of he too used his experiences to better himself and support himself but he hasn't.
He has since suffered server scoliosis, server obesity I can only guess going on 200kg+, living off welfear as he won't/can't get or hold a job.
The place he was renting was an inclosed unit complex and no outside personal could enter, this wouldn't be an issue if we could contact him to let us in but he doesn't. He doesn't charge his phone so no one can contact him, we can't go to his house either as we can't access the property due to the closed in community. He has gone months without contacting anyone leaving us honestly to think he died in the unit, but his excuse was that he just didn't charge his phone nor leave the unit for that time frame. We
He was barely able to keep paying for that unit and many times went in the red with finances, my father has had to bail him out many times by buying food, paying for his electricity bills or rent. I don't know how but he somehow got a credit card and used that money to buy a new computer. Any finances he's gotten he's used it to buy more games or hardware.
No one had heard from him again in a few months, a few days ago he called my dad to tell him that he had been evicted from his unit..... the reason was due to 2 skip bins worth of rubbish and junk that had been picked up in the unit from the realistate. He just plain has no will to do anything vin his life and it's affecting my whole family. He is 30 years old and my father is still caring for him, he has had to move back in with my dad who had also taken in my other brother, his wife and 2 kids due to covid.
He has lived with my family and others in the past but he does not keep his hygiene up to date doesn't bath in days, wash his cloths and played all night on the computer and is very loud, does not consider the people he is living with and has also been kicked out multiple other times due to this reason.
My father is not going to be around forever nor is it his responsibility anymore to care for a 30 year old child.
We have tried to help him in the past, I have offered him to participate in my group outings, participate in outdoor sports to try and make friends/live a healthier lifestyle. Even suggest outings non sports related, he does not eat to be helped and is conent on quite literally sponging on those around him to satisfy his gaming lifestyle.
If he had the choice to never leave the computer, he would but he needs to eat and sleep, plus go to Centerlink to keep his unemployment payments. He has said this.
I don't know what to do, neither does my father. He will not accept any suggestions of therapy, social outings or healthier eating/lifestyle.
The only thing I think at this point that's going to force him to change is a near death experience, but with his health right now I don't even know if he will survive as he is out of breath just standing up for extended amount of times.
What do we do? Any advice would help.
Edit 1, December 5th 2020
I've spoken to my dad and want to organise a sit down with him to discuss what to do with my brother, out of all my siblings I am the most established living with my partner and running a successful business. Most comments have suggested the rough love approach, intervention or simply kicking him out and letting him do his own thing as my family has been enabling him in a sense.
Am I the idiot if I stratigicly place drops of water on his computer causing it to short out? If he has no physical means of gaming, he will have a safe place to reavaluate his life and hopefully start seeing what's going on. This is one of the topics I want to talk to my father about, the other is the kick out sinario. I honestly don't want my brother turning up on my doorstep, I'm trying to start my own family with IVF and run a business. I don't need the extra stress on-top plus I did just have my own breakdown. Will keep posted and read comments
Edit 2-1, December 6th 2020
I spoke to my dad this morning about having an intervention with my brother, he just said no that there is nothing else that can be done. He still has access to his computer, he still locks himself in his room 24/7. He said he's tried an intervention before but it hasn't worked and just plain refuses to talk about it anymore.
I don't live in the same household so have no say in the matter. I can't do anything, my father has given up. Accepted the face that he has lost his son and is leaving him to his own devices. Any conversation with my brother just gets violent apparently, I'm stuck, I can't do anything if my father won't let me. My father is moving in January to a smaller unit so my whole other family will have to find other living arrangements.
My father said something about renting a place in his own name for my brother but I'm dead against that, I have personally spent time in a woman's shelter and they are not as bad as everyone is making out to be and I feel like it would help my brother. I do feel like other commenters are right in the fact my father is supporting this attitude but he's just lost all hope as his years of effort prior just have not worked.
That major life changing situation is about to happen in January when the lease is up at my dad's place. And by God I'm not letting my father stain his renting name and history on my brother, he has already buried himself, this is the sponge factor a mentioned.
I can't do alot either because I'm not physically there.
Edit 2-2
Something I did not mention before as I did not want it to change the responses of everyone here. My business is personal training and fitness instructor mentoring in an educational facility.
If there is anyone who can help my brother on a healthier lifestyle it's myself and my understudies that I mentor and who work with me to change the lives of those around us. To us it's not just fitness, we don't just train muscle we train the mind too as each one of us has experienced mental anguish. Myself I nearly died from an ex and a bad upbringing in my family home due to my mother, been homeless and all of the above, I lost everything but gained everything from it too.
I have offered for my brother to train with either myself of a close friend of a trainer that I classify as my extended brother now. So even if he didn't feel comfortable with his sister training him, there where other alternatives. I even offer online training especially since covid hit so I wouldn't be Infront of him but through a screen.
This would have been all for free and even I would have picked him up so no travel expenses was needed. We have a private gym facility so all of this would have been private.
I can't reidiate this enough, we have tried, offered more then enough chances and opertunites to change and better himself. Never forced, had interventions, set up great opertunites for him but he just didn't take them up.
I've been on the other side of the fence, I'm not the fucking greedy trainer who has never known what it's like to be suicidal, over weight, homeless and all of the above.putting it simply, I KNOW THE PAIN. I was over 100kg. this is what I'm teaching to my students who will also pass this on. I am a functional strength trainer Master level 1, I now train soldiers to enlist and protect our country.
Again did not say their earlier so there would be no "OMG she's a fit trainer enforcing her views of health onto him" I have never done this nor forced anyone I know. I am a geek too who enjoys playing games but no where near as much, building my website is taking up all my time now but the problem solving I learnt in my younger years in highschool has helped a shit ton.
Edit 10/1/2021
It was my sister's 18th birthday get together yesterday, my family invited me out and there I saw my family for the first time in months. My brother gets long well with my niece and nephew and plays with them for most of the family gatherings. Him and I talk alot about Ark survival evolved as it's the game I play during my down time and he sees me on steam playing it. Inbetween talking he told me that he had a blood clot in his foot and that his foot swelled up 3 times the size because he hasn't been using his legs. He down played it a fair bit but my profession knows the darker truths.
His heart is struggling. The foot is the furthest away from the hearts blood pressure beats, therefore weakest pressure. A clot built up from two factors of cholesterol and a weakened heart not being able to clear it.
He almost lost his foot..... But even that is not a wake up for him... He's even bigger then when I last saw him also.
It broke me after he told me this then started playing with my neice and nephew, I'm watching my brother slowly die infront of me, even a near miss of him loosing a foot wasn't enough of a wake up call.
It's just a matter of time now.... I hate admitting that.

Source
Some of the author's comments while preparing to answer the AMA questions:

I'm going to go ahead and get a head start on some of these, before getting into the bulk of them Monday as planned.
(Also, something added since I posted the AMA announcement: I'm building an interest list for U.S. residents looking to get signed copies of the KOTOR Omnibus this summer. Details at this post. It's not a preorder and there's no obligation -- it tells me you'd like to be contacted when my copies come in.)

Got a start on these — back again Monday at the appointed time!

Okay! Got a little headstart here last night — and am underway here today. I'll continue to answer through the day as time allows.

Rows in table: ~80

Questions	Answers
Thanks for the AMA Mr. Miller! You've mentioned before that you had a light hankering for a Vector-like event for Lost Tribe of the Sith. Did you have any rough ideas about how that would go down?	Yes -- I try not to get too far into talking about stories that were proposed that didn't come to fruition, for the partial reason that I might borrow ideas from them later on. But having done Vector involving several different comics series -- described here -- I realized it would be possible to do something that traced through all three of the timeframes I was writing in. (In 2012, I had miniseries for KOTOR, Lost Tribe, and Knight Errant.)
	My preference would have been to do it in prose, as that involved fewer moving pieces, and I had liked the way the Lost Tribe short stories worked out. But the offer to do Kenobi came through later in 2012, so I didn't pursue it. I ended up putting the short-story energy in 2013 into the Overdraft serial I did, instead. And of course, after that, the EU status had changed.
What’s your favorite EU moment in both legends and canon? Thanks for doing this! Edit: loved your planet of the apes short story btw!	Favorites are always hard. I think being in the audience in 1977 when Luke blew up the Death Star was pretty amazing -- someone actually has audio from a theater back then, and that's kind of what it's like. There was a wilder moment like that at the end of Jedi's premiere, when our whole audience stood up to cheer Vader's decision. Those are moments you don't see very often.
	Probably my favorite Legends story — from before it was Legends — was #29 of the Star Wars series from Marvel, with the bounty hunter Valance dueling with Vader. That was an amazing thing to see as a kid — two villains squaring off in a story with consequences.
	And thank you for the Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone nod. That story, Murderer's Row, is one of my favorite things I've ever written. I had a blast with that one.
What happened to Zayne during the Jedi-Civil War and later? Did he continue with his job as a diplomat? And what about his relationship with Jareal, are they related to Master Fay? Edit: between Atton and Zayne, who do you prefer? And btw, thanks for agreeing to do this! You are one of my favorite Star Wars author! 👍	There are a few clues built into the series about where I thought Zayne was heading; I may share them later in more detail later in the year when the compendium releases.
	But a big factor is that Zayne's future was always a moving target. Had the regular series continued, Zayne's military career would have launched there instead; had we gotten a pick-up from Dark Horse after the first miniseries, we would have seen more of him in action on the Reciprocity. We also would have seen more of the others; it was Dark Horse's preference that the initial War arc feature only Zayne (for simplicity's sake for new readers) but obviously we could have brought more on had things continued.
	We were still a ways off from the events of the game, but we were getting closer to the Civil War itself, and that would have figured into things.
	I probably prefer Zayne, for obvious reasons! But everyone has their favorites. :-)
I’m excited for this AMA! I absolutely love your Kenobi book, though I’m a bit of a novice about the Old Republic. I really loved how you explored and humanized the Sand People in the Kenobi novel. Can you talk about what guided or inspired that? I’ve noticed that attitude seems to have been adopted in the new The Mandalorian show on Disney plus, and I hope they otherwise follow your lead in the upcoming Kenobi show. (You touched on this a bit in your last AMA, here’s your comment). It seems like a fairly large departure from the usual “savage natives” trope Sand People have fallen into in the films.	I figured we would be spending a lot of time with the Tuskens, so I was eager to build them out as much as I could. The only existing guidance what they were like had been the Outlander comics — and I figured that the massacre in AOTC would changed them dramatically.
	So I began with the notion that the Tuskens were bound to the planet by a curse, real or imagined — and that they both lived with it and raged against it. And onto that I overlaid the notion that they were always on the edge of collapse even in normal times, and that the events of AOTC had made that much worse.
	I tried not to think in terms of tropes, modeling them after anyone or anything — it really was more a thought exercise of "who would live in such a harsh place willingly, and what might it do to them?" It is clearly not a life for the weak, and that plays out in how they see themselves, and others.
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Thank you so much for the answer! That definitely translated into something great in the book, and it’s always exciting to see Star Wars cultures fleshed out. Thanks!	You're welcome!
Have you ever had any interest in writing for video games? You've written for franchises like Mass Effect & Halo but I wonder if you've ever thought about exploring video games directly. If a new KOTOR project were to happen, would you like to be a consultant and share your ideas or even lead the writing? I can't speak on the differences between writing books and comics to a video game but I believe your style would fit really well. Can't wait to grab the omnibus this summer!	I did so some regionalization work for a MMORPG called Sword of the New World once — I never even played it, but the important thing about it is that work helped me make the break from my day job 14 years ago.
	Certainly I would entertain an offer, but it's definitely hard work. I only did a couple of things for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game and it was some of the hardest work I've ever done. I expect no different from work on a video game.
	I also have been writing solo for a very long time, so the collaboration dynamic would require some adjustment. Working in a shared universe is of course what I do all the time, but a lot of what happens in video game collaboration is that the creators are giving one another real-time feedback. I'm used to getting feedback when the whole project is done!
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Yeah, I see how much of a change working on a game would be compared to your strong body of comics and books. If you were to ever take a shot, I would certainly support it!	Thanks! I'll never say never — there's certainly good money in it, though that isn't always the most important consideration. Neil Gaiman has said everything he ever wrote primarily for the money turned out to be a mistake, and that's a good rule of thumb if you can afford to pick and choose. The big decider for me is whether it's fun to do or not.
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. Thanks Mr. Miller! I would have liked to see what you could have brought to the Post-ROTJ era of the EU, and was wondering if you ever had any thoughts or ideas about continue writing for the Lost Tribe of the Sith beyond Fate of the Jedi, during the time gap between Crucible and the Legacy comics? Or if you wanted to explore that era, what events or characters would you have been interested in writing about?	Except for my Canto Bight novella — which remains one of my favorite stories I've done anywhere — I was never asked to look at the post-Jedi period, and I have to say I never asked to do it either. I was always very busy with the earlier stuff -- and to be frank, back at the time there were a slew of post-ROTJ books, and as I hadn't read them all, I was worried I didn't have a full grasp on things.
	That is, incidentally, an argument for what they did as of New Dawn — if the continuity is so heavily populated that it's challenging even to people who do this sort of thing for a living to approach, that gets to be an issue in recruiting. It's one reason that when I started doing Halo stuff -- beginning with Tales from Slipspace -- I asked to do only stories set far away from any other continuity. The franchise licensing teams are very good at helping new writers adapt, but I prefer working where I pretty much already know what's happened in the past.
I have one about Knight Errant, Mr. Miller. Did you have any future plans for the Calimondra Sith Dynasty? Did any of them survive up to Darth Bane's time?	I didn't think that far ahead, in part because I deliberately padded out a big amount of time.
	That was something I learned from KOTOR. It made sense to have KOTOR reasonably close to the games, because part of the idea was the Covenant was predicting a time of chaos — but eventually there's a magnetic pull as you approach the game's events. By putting a generation between Knight Errant and Bane, I figured I had room enough to go wherever I wanted to go.
Thank you so much for doing this, Mr. Miller. I’m a huge fan of your work! My question is this: If you could continue writing within the Legends continuity, what stories would you see yourself telling? Would you have continued the plot threads of KOTOR, Knight Errant or would you have done something completely different?	As noted in one of the other threads here, I was open to continuing any of the timeframes I'd been writing in — the characters and settings were significantly different. But I think apart from the EU situation was simply the matter that I had done a lot of Star Wars comics in a relatively short time — I had three different series out in 2012, and some Mass Effect issues coming out on the same day sometimes — and so prose was just naturally a direction that I was going to head next anyway.
Thank you so much for the AMA. I'm a big fan of your work, and love the way the From a Certain Point of View books take a scene and explode with all sorts of new content. Are there any scenes in Star Wars you'd like to do a specific POV on?	I was happy with the ones I got to do for New Hope and Empire — in both cases, I got my first choices. I have something in mind for Jedi, but I'll sit on that until we see if there's a third book.
	And, hey, if we ever get back around to Attack of the Clones, nobody had better call dibs on the Death Stick Salesman. He's just got to have a story!
Hello Mr. Miller, thanks for the AMA! In regards to KOTOR (games) what would you say is the true reason Revan became a Sith Lord after the Mandalorian Wars. Was it because he wanted to test the Republic to make sure they were strong enough to fight off the True Sith, or was he corrupted and seduced by the power of the Star Forge?	I am only guessing at the designers' intentions, but I'd have to imagine the latter explanation was a big part. There are secrets good Jedi were not meant to know, and messing with them is perilous. But I confess I never got as far into the game as most people might expect. I did the opening about nine times over the years, but never got past Dantooine. I read all about what happened in them, and saw cut scenes for what I didn't know -- and I watched my nephews' playthroughs.
	As a video gamer these days, I'm much more of a turn-based player — think Civilization — with action being more limited to things like Kerbal Space Program and, because I haven't gotten out of the house much this year, American Truck Simulator. No combat to worry about in those!
Thank you for the AMA! Your work on KOTOR is one my favorite comic runs, Star Wars or otherwise. I was always impressed with how restrained the game cameos were, it made them a lot more memorable. Out of curiosity, were there ever plans to have any of the KOTOR 2 party members make an appearance? Edit: quick addendum, what was it like working on the KOTOR Campaign guide for the Wizards of the Coast RPG? It's been very helpful for a campaign I've been setting up the last few months.	One of the interesting things about the game cameos: unless you were reading at the time and checking places like the Dark Horse boards (sadly vanished forever) there was little enthusiasm for having a lot of game crossovers while the comic book was coming out. Clearly the deepest reference we did was the return to Taris during the Mandalorian Wars, which we figured was pretty organic -- but there was also a bit of "okay, once is plenty" reaction.
	To a degree, we had staked out our own direction; I think also, to a degree, it impacted the drama to have too many people whose fates were known.
	I was less familiar with KOTOR 2 (though I am thankful to designer Chris Avellone, who helped get me the video game work, mentioned elsewhere in this AMA, that helped me break free from the 9-to-5 routine). The main thing I knew of it was that it was significantly down the road from my story's events, so it would have been a long time before I considered adding much from it.
Thanks for agreeing to do this Mr Miller, we all appreciate it. When I first read A New Dawn I never realised just how prominent Admiral Rae Sloane was going to become in the New EU going forwards, even going so far as to appear in major video games such as Star Wars: Squadrons, and along with this, she has become one of my favourite characters in the New EU as well. What I have to ask is when you were first writing A New Dawn, did you write her knowing that she was going to be a significant character going forwards in the EU, or was that something that surprised you as well?	Yeah, as I talk about here, when I went to see Lucasfilm midway through the book, I told the team that she was likely the best candidate for a character that could be used again and again.
	Part of it was her character and situation, which offered a lot of story springboards — but of course another issue was that very few other supporting characters survived that book!
	I'm really glad I was able to get more chances to write her, including most recently the "Lord Vader Will See You Now" story in the Certain Point of View Empire book.
Thank you for your time! I'd like to ask about what it was like writing the Lost Tribe in comparison to other Star Wars books. Having coincidentally just finished a reread last week I was reminded of how much it reads like a fantasy novel sometimes, where the sith are essentially a higher social class of wizards with special glowing swords lol. I absolutely loved the setting/world/vibe on Kesh, and Varner Hilts especially was really fun to follow in my opinion. The restriction of technology and the setting being a single planet was incredibly interesting to me. Seeing them build themselves into Keshiri society and then developing their own among their ranks. So I guess basically, what was it like writing all that in a star wars setting?	It was plenty of fun. It was sort of like they were in a petri dish, where I didn't have to worry about their ramifications on anyone else: I could introduce new concepts and see how they impacted things years down the line.
	A good deal of the social structure, as noted here, came from the Fate of the Jedi authors' document setting up the Tribe's society; I was still drawing from it here and there throughout, even as I added new things. The Spiral comics series took on the matter of slavery, for example, which had been in the initial design of their world — but everything else like the other continents and the presence of rival groups came from me.
	I always describe the series as lightsaber-and-Sith-sorcery, and I think it fits. Very fun stuff to think about.
Squeee this is so cool! My fav so far (albeit I haven’t read kenobi) was the lost tribe of the Sith stories. They were a blast to read. What kind of advice would you give to an aspiring author who is also a huge Star Wars nerd, and hopes that one day her novel will be sold on bookshelves next to yours? That’s my dream and I’m currently writing but it can be intimidating!	I think the best advice I can give is to always be writing something where people can read it and give feedback. I started as a journalist so I was used from the beginning to the idea of writing to be read, with the reader's interests and desires in mind.
	I also urge folks to write in their own universes when they can. Fanfic is good practice and is good for getting that kind of feedback I was mentioning, but just about everyone working in tie-in fiction got to do so because they did something else first. It's good to own something!
Thank you for agreeing to do this, Mr. Miller! If you could write another story in Legends, what would it be?	Difficult to see, the future is! But I did do a fun little KOTOR script for Life Day this past fall on my Twitter account. (My first and possibly last fanfic)
Hi John, I'm unnaturally fond of the worldbuilding you did in Knight Errant books and comics. I've read you essentially delivered all the story you had planned to, but were there really no plans to do more in that time period? I found the idea of Sith fiefdoms run by Sith Lords all uniquely fiendish in their own way, and the bleakness of people not being able to escape because the hyperspace routes weren't readily available information a creative explanation for how people can simply be trapped in a galaxy where people can hop into space ships and fly away. I loved this concept of a galactic dark age/contraction as a way of explaining how the technology of Kotor can feel not too distance from that in the OT (even if that wasn't the deliberate purpose of it) whilst still having it make sense. I would've loved to see this period explored more. (Appreciate that last bit wasn't a question, just wanted to gush a bit)	Dark Horse greenlit the second and third arcs of Knight Errant at once, but by the time a fourth arc would have been considered, plans there had already shifted toward the 2013-14 ongoing Star Wars series, and The Star Wars, which ate up a lot of slots. I sort of knew that, and wrote Escape as if it was the ending. Good advice: always write everything in comics as if there won't be any more!
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Thanks John. Man those series that replaced it weren't the best, though they sold relatively well so I guess they knew what they were doing.	Well, fifty issues — as we and Legacy had — are pretty rare these days, so I expected some kind of change would eventually come.
i am a big fan of your Kenobi book and i have a question relating to the book. what do you think happened to Annileen and her family?	This has come up so much that I put it in my FAQ section about the book. The book does tell us that it's a mobile learning program that the university is sponsoring, so the door is absolutely open for them not to be on Alderaan. And again, New Hope is many years later anyway.
	As to what they're doing, I wouldn't guess at specifics, but I would say they're better off than they would have been had they remained on Tatooine. That's also something the book is pretty clear on.
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thank you for the reply i appreciate it. i'm sorry that it is an FAQ. im looking forward to reading more of your books in the future.	Oh, it's a good question -- which is why so many ask it!
Mr Miller! Big fan! Thanks for doing this. What's the best way to cook a steak? & Any era or franchise you have not written for that you would like to?	Solar radiation and a lot of patience!
	I've been fortunate to write for a lot of different franchises — a mix of them are here, and it's a pretty wide range. There have been some labors of love in there, like my 40th anniversary series for Battlestar Galactica.
	Are there other things I'd be interested in? Sure, though some are for franchises that don't have much of a footprint any more. One of my favorite things ever was the Max Headroom science fiction series, which brought several of my obsessions together at once — but it's been decades since anyone did anything for that! On the other hand, there are new Buckaroo Banzai comics, so who knows...
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Thanks so much for the reply! Love your work and can't wait to read what's next!	Much appreciated!
Now knowing what we know about the Kenobi series with Hayden’s return as Anakin, did you ever conceive of any interaction whether physical or spiritual between Obi-Wan and Anakin? Huge fan of your work and thank you for being a great ambassador of the Star Wars EU!	Thanks very much! No, the only thing I really concerned myself with was what Obi-Wan knew about Vader's existence at the time, and that had already been established by another EU book, James Luceno's Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader.
	Further, since I didn't intend to have Qui-Gon answer Obi-Wan, it didn't seem fair for him to be able to get a call from anyone else!
First of all, I'm glad to thank you a lot for your masterpieces, Mr. Miller! KOTOR series are the most loved ones for me because of their in-depth accuracy for Star Wars universe, and they've settled my love for graphics novels! I'd like to know, if there was any other concepts for comics that you had abandoned to start producing these series? What were they all about? Would you return to them now? Thank you very much again!	Well, there are other comics I pitched for that never happened, including some for Star Wars itself. I also had a milieu of my own, Overdraft, which I have been meaning to get back to, among other things, but a variety of other projects keep drawing me away.
	I try not to get much into the things-that-never-happened thing, but I have discussed before there was talk of a Gryph-Moomo Brothers micro-series that would have gotten him from Serroco to Taris. The events of it — some of which appear in just one page of KOTOR #47 would have been almost entirely comedic in nature, and I was considering Calo Nord for the villain, just to show the Moomos what a competent bounty hunter looked like. But we shelved the idea and did the Handbook instead, and "what happened on Serroco" became a running joke in the KOTOR series itself.
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Hello Mr Miller! Thank you for doing the AMA! I've got several questions for you: 1. In the Vindication arc, there is a hint that Lucien Draay could become Darth Sion, although later we learn that this was not the case. Have you ever planned for a bigger connection between Lucien and Darth Sion from KOTOR II game?	There was never any chance that the comics characters would be connected to the game characters in that manner — it was always a tease, and I admit stoking those fires, even dropping Sion's name once.
	Remember what the core concept was: the Covenant had seen a future but didn't know who was who. I was using the story to put the readers in the same position as the seers. All the gamers knew a lot of bad things would happen, but they didn't know what connected to what, if anything.
	The key speech on the topic is in KOTOR #34, where the most visible tease was just a few pages before (the Sion namedrop). Gryph tells Q'anilia that anyone who thinks Zayne could turn evil just doesn't know the kid. Lucien has a chance to go that way in the next issue, but turns away onto his own path.
2. While I loved Zayne and his friends, it was always nice to see cameos of characters from KOTOR games in the series and observe how it's all connected! Besides the characters we've seen, were there any other characters from the games that you would have liked to include in the series, but never had a chance to?	Calo Nord would have turned up in the aforementioned Gryph micro-series, had that happened. That was about as far as I had thought. Zaalbar would have been a nice guest, but he wouldn't have gotten many lines!
3. Of all your numerous Star Wars projects, which one was your favourite? Lastly, I'd like you to thank you for the KOTOR comics - for breathing new life into that era of Star Wars, giving us so many well-written characters and doing it all with one of the best senses of humour in all Star Wars stories to date. To this day, it's one of my favourite parts of the Expanded Universe, so thank you for making it happen! :)	Very hard to pick favorites. They've all been fun, and they've all been very different. Obviously I spent the most time with KOTOR, and I am delighted people keep discovering it.
Hi Mr. Miller! You are a great inspiration, and write in my mind a classic with Kenobi! I am thrilled to get to ask you a question, and if you see this, this is such an honor! I wanted to know, if you could return and write any story in Legends, the old continuity, would you do it, and if so what would it be about? And about the KOTOR Omnibus: How excited were you to be able to see your issues collected in one great volume?	Thanks very much!
	I'm open to anything, but of course I'm fond of the KOTOR characters. I purposefully constrained Zayne's adventures in a very narrow frame of time; he's pretty young, still. And there are probably other ways you could tell stories with those characters. I'm just glad that I was able to tell as many as we did!
	The Omnibus is pretty amazing. I never thought it would be physically possible — 1,344 pages is astounding! I hope the spine is strong (and that mine is, too, as I try to carry them). I don't expect I will be able to haul too many of these to conventions!
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Thank you for this!	You're welcome!
Thanks so much for doing this! I was wondering, with the recent news regarding Lucasfilm Games, do you think we will get a remaster of the KOTOR games?	I don't know. I am pretty far from where things like that would be discussed. Certainly would be interesting, of course!
😃 What do you think did Zayne Carrik do to get a space station named after him in Star Wars the Old Republic after we last saw him? He was a great character.	I laughed when I saw they had done that — as I mentioned to them, he had not done anything worth having that honor as yet. But it does not mean that he would not do something in the future — and there's another possibility: Zayne had four sisters, at least one of whom appears to be in the military when we see them.
Hello, Mr. Miller. Was there a reason the Sunrider family (Nomi, Vima) from Tales of the Jedi weren't present in the KOTOR Comics? I understand there was some kind of legal issue with the name, but was it a decision made by yourself to not include them or were you prohibited from doing it? Also, were you planning to continue the series or was it cancelled? It seems like it only covered about half of the Mandalorian Wars. The other half, that is always referenced in the games were never really shown in any media like the Battle of Malachor V and such. Thank you for all the good content you gave us throught the years. MTFBWY.	I felt like I didn't have anything to add to their stories. If I recall correctly they might have also been slated to appear in a novel that never materialized — Mandorla — but regardless, I was sort of parceling out my dips into Tales of the Jedi, and I just never considered using them.
	This is kind of covered in the #50 writeup, but the ongoing series was wrapped for a few reasons. We were a long way from #1, so the sales were lower — and also the graphic novel collections were moving into double-digit volume numbers, which bookstores don't really like unless you're a manga.
	Dark Horse also wanted to experiment with doing series of miniseries, in order to give their artists time off between each one to catch up; that's what I did with Knight Errant and my Mass Effect comics. The War arc turned out to be the only one we did for KOTOR, though -- 2013 found Dark Horse doing the Brian Wood ongoing series and The Star Wars, which took up a lot of the slots. So I moved on to novels at that time. That's show biz!
I haven't read the book yet, but Knight Errant is one of my favourite SW comics of all time. Before the Legends declaration, were there any plans to further elaborate on the New Sith Wars era? Also, Daimon and Odion were really cool and interesting and with philosophies not seen anywhere else in Star Wars; where did you get the inspiration for them from?	We used to joke that Daiman and Odion were like Snow-Mizer and Heat-Mizer from The Year Without a Santa Claus! But seriously, I was going for a bit of a mythological vibe to this era, and it seemed like giving them two extreme views in complete opposition to one another would be fascinating to work with. I'm glad with how it all played out.
	As to further plans, I never proposed a fourth Knight Errant arc, as it was clear as 2013 approached there weren't slots available. And anything else would have been short-lived anyway, as by early 2014 Dark Horse began winding down on new stuff in advance of the Marvel move.
Wow thank you it's really nice to do this. I know you might have biases since you're the author but as someone who really enjoyed Knight Errant in legends and A New Dawn in canon I almost never see them talked about in the fandom. Have you ever written a book you thought was really good and it didnt get the reception of a book you found to be worse, or was underrated and kind of looked over? If so which of yours is a hidden gem that you wished got looked at more?	Well, Knight Errant is off on its own in the timeline, so that's not a surprise — and New Dawn is very much a prequel to something larger. As to underseen things — "The Ride" novella in Canto Bight encapsulates all the things that made books like KOTOR fun, to my thinking — and the audiobook performance is a delight. I definitely think people would enjoy that one. Part of the problem was it came out before Episode VIII and people — including reviewers — were avoiding spoiling the movie for themselves, even though we really didn't have any spoilers there.
Why did Marvel drop “Knights of” from the title of this collection?	I am not privy to their thinking, but The Old Republic as a sub-brand seems to encompass not just the KOTOR era, but The Old Republic game and connected comics that follow, and could also take in the Lost Tribe comics, Knight Errant comics, and Dark Horse's Jedi series. I could easily see those stories all being part of later Epic Collections in the TOR line for Marvel.
	And note that the TOR Omnibus is labeled as Volume 1, which seems to underscore that.
Knights of the Old Republic is my favorite Star Wars comic ever, hands down. After recently re-reading Kenobi, which was also excellent, I found farawaypress.com, and man I sure wish every Star Wars author had such detailed and thorough BTS note and trivia on everything they wrote as you do! While your KOTOR series has a lot of ties with TotJ and the first KOTOR game, there doesn't seem to be as much related to the second KOTOR. Going through some ye olde Jedi Council Forum posts, back when the series was still ongoing, I read some speculation that Krynda was Kreia, Lucien was the future Darth Sion, Zayne (??) was Nihilus, etc. Were these just baseless rumors/guesses, or was that direction actually considered at any point? Were there any other tie-ins with KOTOR 2 that I just didn't see or were planned for future Zayne adventures?	I appreciate your mention of the website — it was only possible because in the very beginning, I began keeping those behind-the-scenes pages as my creative journal, so to speak. The current design is the fourth incarnation of it — and I am still getting things like links to books installed. But eventually it will be fully caught up.
	Yeah, as I get into in two different responses above, I both was less familiar with KOTOR 2 and it was set considerably later -- and the Sion/Nihilus business was something we sort of stoked to put readers in the shoes of the Covenant. Everyone watching the prequels knew which character would become Darth Vader -- but while all our readers knew bad people were about to show up in the games, they didn't know who, if anyone, was whom.
	The truth was our story was always its own separate thing; our main contribution would be to show a little of Malak's path, and to show that Revan's splinter movement wasn't the only game in town.
Thank you for giving us this honor Mr. Miller. Big fan of your work! -What was your inspiration for the way Kanan was written in A New Dawn? I enjoyed seeing this jedi who lost his way gradually find it back as a rebel before becoming a jedi once more on the show. Seeing that he wasn't always the serious rebel fighter we know was very shocking yet interesting to me. -Also, what was the reason for his animosity towards Skelly? I felt for the poor guy throughout the novel but Kanan took it a bit too far. LoL. I get that Skelly is annoying if you don't realize he's right, but Kanan kinda continued to disregard the poor guy. -Where was Chopper during the Novel? I don't recall out favorite cantankerous droid being there. * Do Zayne and Jareal get married following "Knights of the Old Republic?"	I touch on the genesis of Kanan's character a bit here — Dave Filoni had told me he was a "cowboy," and I was sort of working to figure out what that meant in a Star Wars context. I figured he needed to be doing something death-defying, yet mundane — so making him a daredevil truck driver, so to speak, was my way into it.
	I think I pictured Kanan as having a long experience with Skelly well before we meet them in the book; in addition to being annoying, he was just a trouble magnet, and somebody that Kanan couldn't afford to have around. Hera worries about him in the same way, but she's much nicer about it. That was a distinction I wanted to draw: Kanan still really wanted to be left alone to stew in his disillusionment and sadness, so he's just not that nice a person around then.
	Never any talk of Chopper being in the book — Kanan and Hera were the only characters I could use, and the Ghost only appeared at the end. It's possible he was on the ship by then, but I just don't know. It wasn't for my book to speculate on.
	As to Zayne and Jarael, I never thought that far, but they were in a good place when the first series stopped and I made sure not to change that with the miniseries. Anything's possible!
This is a question not about KoToR, but I love your Lost Tribe of the Sith novellas. They are some of my favorite Star Wars content, and you are a great writer! If I had a question, I guess it would be how you went about writing such a good entry into Star Wars?	I get into the whole process here -- it really began with Del Rey providing me with a look at what Aaron Allston, Troy Denning, and Christie Golden had written up as the backstory for the Tribe.
	That document had the broad strokes of their culture, government, and legal system, as well as the explanation of how they had gotten to Kesh and their relationship with the Keshiri -- but it was left to me to fill in the hows, whens, and whys of the story.
	It was a great deal of fun, and I am delighted that the collected edition is still motoring along. Something like 14 printings at this point!
I don't have a question really, I just want to say how much I loved Kenobi. Annileen and Orrin were really great three dimensional characters and you captured Obi-Wan perfectly, particular Ewan McGregor's younger Obi-Wan. I would have happily read 500 more pages of Ben just coming to the oasis now and then or even occasionally seeing the Lars'.	Thanks very much. It was the first of several "winter novels" I have written here in Wisconsin, and it was nice to spend that time thinking about a warmer place.
	If anyone hasn't read them yet, I have updated notes about the book, including a link to maps of the events, on my Star Wars: Kenobi page.

tl;dr 1 - I am an amateur game researcher so my predictions will probably be way off on some of these, but I have had some success with my predictions in the past so here is the list: Wild Rift, Frostborn, Diablo Immortal, Devil May Cry, Apex Legends, Project: Odin, The Ragnarok, Code-T, Among Us, H1Z1 (already regretting not putting Genshin Impact on there, but oh well) (explanations are in the post)
tl;dr 2 - I made all of this with game footage into a short HQ video here https://youtu.be/TAgwjIJlLQs
But for those of you who rather read, here is the video script:
Today is the first day of 2021 and game developers are already vying for the top game of the new year. Some of these top games will not be a surprise to you, in fact, some of them have been promised to us for years, but then there are a few that so far have stayed a secret.
Let me start off by saying that this video is not going to be predicting the top 10 games of 2021 in regards to google play or the app store. There are a lot of casual gamers out there Which allows money spent on Advertising to greatly affect those numbers which is why games like candy crush, state of survival, and Clash of Clans are so often at the top. Those games will always be at the top of those charts because of their advertising techniques, but then there are the games that start to explode among serious gamers. PUBG and COD are some of the more famous ones, but each year brings forth new games that catch fire so let me tell you about the games that will be the 10 best games of 2021.
The first game is Wild Rift. This will probably not be a big surprise to many of you because there has been a lot of excitement building up to its release as Riot games has worked hard to recreate League of Legends into a game that is both fun and balanced for the mobile phone. As an esport, wild rift fanatics will enjoy unlimited fun for very little updates from the developers. Wild rift has already been released in Europe and the rankings are going through the roof staying in the top 10 in most categories of it’s genre and Riot has stated that they do plan to release the game to the rest of the world at some point this year. So this will definitely be one of the top games of 2021 as I promise you guys last year, I will be making one of my tips and tricks videos for this game once it comes out in the United States.
The second game on the list is Frostborn. This will probably come as a surprise to many of you because most people have never even heard of this game so let me explain why it will be a top game this year. Some of you might remember a game called last day on Earth that came out 4 years ago and exploded to millions of players in just a few months and then won the award as the most innovative game of 2017. Well, it turns out that the game was built on a technology that couldn't support its original intention which is why the AI multiplayer aspects of the game never got replaced with actual multiplayer. But Last Day on Earth has been making that small game company Kefir millions and millions of dollars and it still often shoots up into the top 50 of highest grossing games. So what it looks like Kefir did over the last 4 years is invest a lot of that money into a new game with more advanced technology to support a more advanced version of their game. Kefir just released frostmourne globally a month-and-a-half ago and It is quickly becoming evident by the amount of content they have saved for subsequent updates that it seems like their plan is to make this game their next Global phenomenon. So I think frostborn will definitely be a top 10 game for the 2021 and I'm actually so confident about this that starting about six months ago, I dedicated my other gameplay Channel exclusively to Frostborn so that it can explode with the game. Obviously, they have a long way to go to become a top 10 game, but the quality of the game is already there, now they just need to do all the right advertising and bug fixes to reach the top.
The third game is Diablo Immortal. Like WIld Rift, this is another long awaited game from a big game company. Netease confirmed years ago that all of the game mechanics in content in the game was complete and ready to go, but the bad publicity gained in the way that blizzard announced this game’s arrival caused them to postpone it. Some of us were starting to wonder if they were ever going to release this game, but a few months ago they started a pre-release version which means that it should surely come at some point this year. Diablo Immortal is a hack and slash RPG and the game play I've seen so far is impressive.
The fourth game is Devil May Cry. The reason I'm putting this game so high up on the list is because Devil May Cry is a fantastic game on the PC and there aren't a lot of high quality mobile games like it so with Yun Chang putting so much work into creating a quality version of their game, I believe this game will perform a lot better then it might seem at first glance. Furthermore, the flexibility offered in the fighting style of Devil May Cry should pair perfectly with the serious mobile gamer.
The fifth game is Apex Legends. Now, the only thing novel about this game for 2021 is that it will be new to mobile, but apex legends is a very popular game and any time a very popular game is able to successfully port them game over to mobile they experience a lot of success. Furthermore, battle royale game like apex legends are really well on mobile phones because it is so easy when you have a 30 minute break just to get on your phone, just to get on your phone and play a game real quick. So even though this game is not going to be offering something novel to the mobile gaming community, it will be a new high quality version of something they already love.
The sixth game is Project: Odin from LionHeart Studios. This prediction is a little bit more of a gamble for me than the other 5 games I've mentioned because what some people love about vast World RPGs others find boring. And then when coupled with the nature of mobile gaming, it is likely that this game will not reach the top 10. I was very underwhelmed with the response that Bethesda got by their new mobile Elder Scrolls game, but there's something about this game that makes me think it might reach the top 10. Norse mythology is really in vogue right now and the idea of being able to fight giants is really attractive to RPG gamers. So if they are able to pull it off well, then I think this will make it into the top 10.
The seventh game is the upcoming Netease game The Ragnarok. This is another Norse mythology based game and it looks unbelievable! Now they call this demo footage so I don't know what the actual game will look like, but if they are able to add this type of climbing mechanics into a mobile MMORPG it will definitely be in the top 10 and then if they're able to add these type of fighting mechanics mobile or PC, then it would likely be the number one game for the year, but I'm sure these fighting mechanics are choreographed because this surpasses current gaming technology even for MMORPGs on the PC. But regardless, this game looks incredible and netease has been doing really well in the area of mobile gaming. Their games are incredibly innovative, in touch with what is Fun For Mobile gamers, and have a frighteningly well done blend of free-to-play and pay-to-win features. So I'm confident this will be a top game for this year.
The eighth game is also a Netease game called Code-T. Code-T is a new cyberpunk themed game in which gamers become bounty hunters against an overwhelming force of crime rooted in a futuristic world. Just like the Ragnarok, this game does not have a release date, but generally when Netease starts releasing teasers, the games are not that far off which is why I'm predicting that this will be one of the top mobile games of 2021.
The ninth game is Among Us. This game was for 2020 what I am predicting Frostborn will be for 2021. This time a year ago almost no one would have predicted that Among Us was going to be a top 10 game. In fact, the game has been out since 2018 so it's explosion with someone up phenomenon. Now I almost didn't put this game on this list because just like pubg and call of duty mobile exploded in 2019 and are still great games with big player bases, the hype around those games have died down too much for them to be on this list. But the reason that I am keeping Among Us on this list even though it had its big explosion last year is because it is still unique enough of a game that it will continue to stand out and be talked about therefore increasing the longevity of that game. In fact, just two weeks ago when I got together with my in-laws, they told me that they found this new exciting game called Among Us and wanted to play it as a family. I was of course happy to hear about their discovery and told them I was excited about playing it with them.
And then the tenth and last game will go to H1Z1. This game is not that different then some of the other games we've already mentioned, but the reason I am putting it on this list is because the devs have a lot of things going for them. First, h1z1 is the classic with the first version of Battle Royale and when classics do something that everyone else is doing, there is less resistance among players to check it out. Second, h1z1 is putting a heavy emphasis on cars, which of the Mechanics for car driving on the mobile phone has gotten a lot better in the last 2 years. Now I do have a few concerns that they will be able to pull this off well because shooting from a car that someone else is driving is really difficult, but if they're able to pull it off, it should be a lot of fun. And then lastly, H1Z1 seems to be doing a pretty good job of advertising which of course helps mobile games a lot.
Well, that's it guys. If there is a game that you think should be on here that I missed or something else that you think people should know, make sure to put it in a comment below so that I can improve so others can see it.
Alright guys, I'll see you next time.
tl;dr 1 - I am an amateur game researcher so my predictions will probably be way off on some of these, but I have had some success with my predictions in the past so here is the list: Wild Rift, Frostborn, Diablo Immortal, Devil May Cry, Apex Legends, Project: Odin, The Ragnarok, Code-T, Among Us, H1Z1 (already regretting not putting Genshin Impact on there, but oh well) (explanations are in the post)
tl;dr 2 - I made all of this with game footage into a short HQ video here https://youtu.be/TAgwjIJlLQs

So, you decided one day to start searching for an MMORPG and after lots and lots of tries, you managed to find Toram Online which resonated a lot with what you wanted. OR maybe your friend recommended this game to you and you decided to try it out. In either case, either you are terribly lost about what to do in the game or your friend is too busy to help you learn all the mechanics, tips, and tricks. So, I suggest reading this starting guide about Toram Online, preferably before you begin, but any time is good too.
​
How this guide is structured:

• Since Toram Online was launched in 2015, by the time you read this, a lot of the things might be changed and/or improved upon. Not all things in this thread might help you. Check out when this wall of text was updated by the following bullet point.
• Last Updated: 23/12/2020

The Basic Things:

• Toram Online is designed for Andriod and IOS smartphones, so trying to play it on an emulator on a PC with a mouse will not be favorable to you at all. Combat AND movement would be difficult.
• Toram Online is an immersive 3rd person (non-isometric) and requires both hands to perform combat effectively. If you like playing with one hand, Toram may not be the game for you.
• Toram Online DOES NOT HAVE PVP as of the latest date mentioned above. If you want PVP content then you might have to search for another game.
• Because I am a Minecrafter, I tend to refer to monsters as mobs. Please bear with me.

The Tutorial:

• The tutorial makes it clear that your character doesn't have any specific lines. All lines are said by NPCs. The NPC lines are based on your most probable real-life response. There are some instances in the story where you can choose different options, but trust me, none of them affect the story's progress or direction. Just some lore if you are interested. Don't be afraid of being rash or whatever.
• Toram Online tutorial says that Combat is automated. This is only partially true. Tapping the action button once selects the nearest mob and switches the camera to it. Tapping it again makes your character continuously Normal attack it until it dies, after that, your character sheathes your weapon.
  • The normal attacks are the only things automated in combat. You cannot automatically switch to a different mob. You either tap the action button to select the nearest mob or if you want to fight a specific faraway mob, tap on that mob. You can hold action button to see a list of all mobs and players on the map.
  • Normal attacks deal pathetically low amounts of damage once you reach level 50 or above. (Even at level 25-30 they are weak). The main damage dealing concept in Toram Online are 'SKILLS', specifically attacking skills. You'll figure how to get and unlock and upgrade them on your own. Those are NOT AUTOMATED and require you to focus to use skills at the right time in the right order or to know when to stop using skills and dodge.
  • Therefore, COMBAT IN TORAM ONLINE IS NOT AUTOMATED AND REQUIRES A LOT OF WORK. If you favor automated combat, Toram is not for you.
• Wondering what happens when you kill the dragon in the tutorial?
  • It takes a long long long time to kill the dragon and you get a 'Proof of Resistance ring.' It does absolutely nothing and is a symbol of wasting your time before the game even begins.
  • For more info on the story mode of Toram Online, visit https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/main-quest-catalog-trivia-updated-to-26-11-20-mq.46239/
• Chat is of 5 types:
  • Say - To speak to all people on that map on your channel. The channel number is given in the right-hand bottom corner.
    • Channel number can be changed by MENU -> TERMINAL -> Switch Channel.
  • Shout - To speak to all people on that map on all channels on your server.
    • The server can be changed by MENU -> TERMINAL -> Switch Channel ->Switch world.
    • Switching worlds removes you from a party.
  • Party - To speak to the 3 members of your party.
  • Guild - To speak to your guild.
  • World - This feature is unavailable as of the given date above.

Characters

• Characters are separate experiences within the same account.
• All your items, your username, achievements, emblems, Premium currency, and avatars(cosmetics) are shared between all the characters.
• The characters don't share levels.
• More info on levels in 'Levels' section below.
• If you want to start fresh, instead of creating a new account, create a new character. That keeps any valuable items you have with you.

Ease of Playing:

• There are a lot of things not mentioned in Toram's tutorial that makes your experience of Toram much much easier. Here are some of them.
• Remember when I said that selecting a mob causes the camera to lock onto it? If you don't like this, you can change it using
  • MENU ->Settings -> System ->Autofocus -> Off.
• If you want to run faster, you can go to
  • MENU ->Settings -> System ->Dash -> ON.
• If you don't like the annoying numbers that always pop up when you deal damage, go to
  • MENU ->Settings -> Graphics ->Damage Font Size -> adjust.
• If you don't like the annoying spammers spamming in the 'SHOUT' section of the chat
  • MENU ->Settings ->Chat -> Chat Filtering Settings -> Turn off Shout.
• If your phone can't handle Graphics, go to MENU ->Settings -> Graphics and check out the settings.
• You can fiddle around with a lot of settings here, it would be really useful.
• MENU -> Map -> World map are also helpful. Please use those instead of asking 'where is this or where is that'.

Shortcuts:

• In MENU -> Settings -> Shortcuts, the different sets are literally different sets of shortcuts, for different situations. You cannot access a shortcut from set 2 if set 1 is enabled.
  • The list is also a shortcut menu. You can tap the top of the page where it says " Page 1 < --- " and go to next page. Then tap the bottom "Shortcuts Off" to turn them on.
  • How to access this list? On the home screen, there is a literal button called 'LIST'. Tap the top to go to next page, tap the bottom to close list.
• Tap on your name when on the Home screen. You can set up Auto Potion (you need to have potions in your inventory and potions are not unlimited). You can also set up at what % of HP you want to consume the potion.
• Go to MENU ->Settings -> Guard/Evasion settings -> Set both to Manual A. Those will be important later.

Inventory

• You access your inventory by MENU -> Items. Unlike most games, equipping a weapon/armor doesn't vanish it from the inventory.
• There are 50 inventory spaces, each can hold 99 items. A group of 99 items is called a stack.
  • Weapons and armor and additional gear and ring are non-stackable.
• You have a storage space, similar to a 'bank'. You can access it at any NPC store that has that feature. Usually in Sofya City, El Scaro, and Hora Diomedea. (Unfamiliar names, yes, but soon they will be familiar.)
  • This also has storage space. For increasing storage space you can use orbs.
  • One orb increases one storage space in personal inventory. (which you can move around)
    • However, instead of spending one ORB on inventory space, you can spend one orb in the NPC store bank which opens up 5 slots in the bank Storage. (which you can't move around)
    • I will differ them using the words BANK and INVENTORY.
  • When in your inventory, tap an item. On the left are options on what to do with that item. Tap the 1/2 icon to open up more options on what to do with that item.

STATS:

• Early game, monsters are fairly easy, so it is recommended to add all stat points to boost ATK/MATK. For now, you don't have to worry about VIT stat. Defense, MaxHp, and MaxMP can be gained from equipments.
• This site will help you a bit: http://coryn.club/guide.php?key=status
  • Please act like a literate and use the sidebar to navigate.
• HIT and FLEE are useless. The game is very unbalanced with respect to those. Monsters have unreasonably high HIT and FLEE compared to players. Don't try to increase these.
  • 'But how can I not miss if I don't increase Accuracy?'
    • Magic never misses.
    • Criticals never miss either, but their damage fluctuates a lot if they graze. (If an attack was going to miss but it was also critical, it will graze. Graze reduces stability.)
• http://coryn.club/index.php
  • On this site, scroll down the sidebar and use the feature called advanced search to find out what equipment give what. Like, what gives MaxMP, etc. Please don't make a post just to ask how to increase MaxMP or something. You are playing an MMORPG! You should learn those things by searching for yourself.
• If you need the MATHEMATICS behind damage calculation, https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/thexiiithguys-tome-of-offense.50196/
  • Good luck.

Levels:

• The current level cap is 220 as of the given above date.
• Toram Online is a 2015 game, obviously, most players are high level and most events are aimed at 150+ players. But, there are also events for all levels. You need not worry.
• Money, (currency called spina) is currently earned by mass killing mobs with an AOE and selling the materials (mats) to the NPC stores. The good AOE skills unlock at level 70, and if you need boosts on those you need to be level 150+.
• If you don't want money and want to enjoy the game and the story normally while defeating mobs with hard work, you can do that. However, don't expect us to help you. That is because we already have a helping system in place by the name of mercenaries.
• Using MENU -> Community -> Guild -> Mercenaries or just simply friend mercenaries or even hired mercenaries, you can easily fight bosses. Furthermore, if a boss is hard, you need to exit (standing on exit for 10 seconds) and reenter in easy mode.
• That's why, if you chose to do story mode while having fun, (while I will help because I enjoy helping) players will not help you and suggest you to put down your pride and do it in easy mode. If you want to do story with hard work and the feeling of winning, you need to do it on your own (or get a new player like you alongside)
• Iv'e already told you why people want to level up to level 150, it's to get stronger to fight mobs to earn spina.
• If you are a newbiethe fastest way to get to level 150 is to play story up to chapter 9 complete. You'll be at level 150 at the end of it. People will tell you to do chapter 10 too. No need to do that, level 150 is enough. Save it up for future when you need exp to reach a benchmark level like 205 or 200.
  • This link has in depth info : https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/general-leveling-guide.51846/
  • Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEGoAVVSoMw
  • If you already have a character at level 150, then the faster way is to get your guildmates and do something called as Powerleveling. It is the most efficient way of leveling. But you will need strong skills (tier 4 skills unlocked at level 150) to powerlevel fast. Your Guild will be able to help much better.

Skills:

• Toram has a classless system meaning you can get skills from any skill tree. The weapon you choose in Tutorial only determines which skill page you unlock first.
• To upgrade skills you need to get skill pages. Those can be bought at the Sofya City library. Some pages are in books that you can't find in the library. Those books have special skills. Those can be purchased from other players or be won as prizes from treasure chests. (Complete chapter 2 lesson 1 to understand what those are.)'
• Skill pages are divide into tiers. Tier 0 to 4.
  • Most (NOT ALL) main weapon skill pages from tier 0 and 1 are unlocked at level 0
  • Tier 2 pages unlock at level 30
  • Tier 3 pages unlock at level 70
  • Tier 4 pages unlock at level 150
• Those levels are the levels of your highest leveled character. If you have a level 120 character and a level 40 character, then even the level 40 character can use tier 3 skills. If you then delete the level 120 character, then whatever pages you had purchased for the level 40 character remain. But you cannot get new pages.
• Tier 4 skills are the strongest and help you level your other characters faster and also farm faster. Hence everyone keeps telling you to do story up to chapter 9 and to get to level 150. If you want, you can enjoy the game at your own pace (It helps you learn combat skills and mechanics. I recommend it) But you won't find many people around your level because, Toram is an old game. People are already high level.

Trading and Economy:

• You can trade with other people by tapping on them and clicking trading. You don't need to actually give them anything in trade, or even coins, though. You need to be able to see them though.
  • As always, more options show up on list when you tap the top arrow.
• You can gift a friend, party member or a guild member from long distance. This is however only one item at a time. You can also mail them over long distances, so they can see it when they come back online.
• Sofya City, El Scaro and Hora Diomedea have Trading boards called consignment boards. You can register your item there, and people will search for your item and buy it. However, the government taxes you. You can even do cross - server in this method, but then there's an ADDITIONAL tax.

The best way to earn spina

• For some reason people keep asking this on Reddit. So here are the ways:

1. Earn via farming and selling to NPC.
   1. A farmer could be a mage farmer, a dancer farmer, a hunter farmer, a halberd farmer, etc. Any class that can regen MP quickly and perform strong AOE skills effectively is called as a farmer. You will need to max out the LUK stat for this. Also get the 'Drop rate UP' skill from the Survival skill trees.
   2. Farm the mobs Bubble angel, Venomsch, Grape Jelly, Ivy, Underground Nemico, etc. for this method.
      1. Use the 'Monster name' feature in the sidebar to find out where these mobs are (and don't ask us again): http://coryn.club/monster.php?name=jelly
   3. You need to keep lots of empty space in your inventory to fit stacks upon stacks of items. Then you go to nearest NPC store and sell everything. (Not your weapons!)
2. Farm items to sell to other players (only need tier 3 skills for those) (either directly or via Consignment board.) Those are:
   1. Minotaur skin
   2. Flower Nectar
   3. Hematite
   4. Mithril Ore
   5. Bird Wing
   6. Lapin's soul
   7. Bitter nut
   8. Nisel wood
   9. Event limited drops.
   10. Please use the 'Item name' feature in the sidebar to find out where to find these : http://coryn.club/monster.php?name=jelly
3. Craft Weapons or armour using a blacksmith (late game)
4. Refine Weapons to +B or +S using a black smith (late game)
5. Stat (enchant) weapons. (late game)
6. Be a synthesist who crafts potions, purifies ores and changes appearance of Armours and weapons. (mid game)
7. Be a pet tamer and sell pets. (late game)
8. There are some items in game that can be bought with real money only but they can be traded to other players for a big amount of money. You can try your luck in that.

Orbs:

• If you want to spend money on this game, I don't care how you spend your orbs. Toram is not P2W anyway. There is nothing to 'win' either.
• If you are an F2P player then DO NOT spend your orbs on :

1. Item chests
2. Avatar chests
3. EXP or Drop rate Books
4. Revival droplets
5. Teleport tickets (Stupidest move ever)

• Spend your orbs on:

1. More storage space in BANK.
2. More character slots.

FAQ:

1. What's the best weapon?
   1. If you don't spend spina then Staff is the best. If you spend decent spina then BOW is the best. So best that it is unbalanced. DW is also good if you have enough skill. (not a starter class)
   2. The best solo weapon may be THS or Halberd. Find guides for those.
2. Do my stat and skill points retain if I delete my character?
   1. There are achievements in game called as emblems. They sometimes reward stat and skill points. Those are never deleted.
   2. You get two stat points for every level and one skill point for every level.
   3. At 5,10,15,20, etc. you get an extra skill point. At 5,15,25,35, etc. you get 5 extra stat points.
3. What's proration?
   1. I believe I added this link above : please refer chapter 9 : https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/thexiiithguys-tome-of-offense.50196/
4. What are piercer prices?
   1. I have no idea. I will update this section according to veteran comments and will update this FAQ as those prices change. Hopefully.

Useful links:

• https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/thexiiithguys-tome-of-offense.50196/
• http://coryn.club/
• https://aminoapps.com/c/toram_online/page/blog/blade-skills/kw7q_MKQtGupJ4MQ4ZNDg5637pXXEjE0oKm
  • blade skills info
    • If you want detailed info like this for all classes then type '______skills info Toram Amino' and use your brain to select the link that leads to a page that looks like the one above. (some of them might be outdated.)
• https://toramonline.com/index.php?threads/small-info-dump.52152/#post-532635
• https://toramonline.com/index.php
• https://www.reddit.com/ToramOnline
• Please join a guild for more intimate help.

{Veternas help me refine this}

Game Information

Game Title: Kingdoms Of Amalur: Re-Reckoning
Platforms:

• PC (Sep 8, 2020)
• Xbox One (Sep 8, 2020)
• PlayStation 4 (Sep 8, 2020)

Trailers:

• Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning - Choose Your Destiny: Sorcery
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning - Choose Your Destiny: Might
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning - Choose Your Destiny: Finesse
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning - Collector's Edition Trailer
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning - Announcement Trailer

Publisher: THQ Nordic
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 76 average - 77% recommended - 26 reviews

Critic Reviews

ACG - Jeremy Penter - Wait for Sale

Video Review - Quote not available

Cerealkillerz - Julian Bieder - German - 8.5 / 10

Ironically, this straightforward mix of Roleplay and Hack n Slay still holds up strong today. The element that might seem apalling to hardcore RPG-Fans is the same element that saved it from getting irrelevant - easy accessibility! Combined with the motivating story it is still as fun to play in the present as it was back then.

Cultured Vultures - Jimmy Donnellan - 7.5 / 10

Kingdoms Of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is less of a wholesale remaster and more of a reminder of the original's quality outside the hype bubble and separated from its controversies. With this second chance, Amalur stands on its own as a weird and often wonderful action RPG.

Digitally Downloaded - Matt Sainsbury - 4.5 / 5 stars

This "Re-Reckoning" doesn't do anything more than test the waters for a potential future for the franchise, but I do think it deserves one. It has been a real pleasure to have the opportunity to re-experience this game.

DualShockers - Scott White - 8 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur is still a damn fun game to play in 2020, jankiness, and all. Galavanting across the wilds, exploring caves, and helping (and murdering), the townsfolk never stopped being fun, and I was always looking forward to what new piece of gear or fight I would get into next.

GameSkinny - David Jagneaux - 9 / 10 stars

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning changes little from its original release because it doesn't need to. This is immediately one of the best RPGs you can play this entire generation.

GameSpace - Catherine Daro - 6 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning provides the best possible way for old fans and new adventurers alike to check out the world of Amalur. However, before purchasing the game you have to know what you are getting for you money - an HD version of highly polished 2012 game with or without an upcoming DLC depending on your edition.
Quality of life, UI and many other aspects of the game fit the time of its original release. If you are not put off by rough around the edges gameplay, the world of Amalur awaits!

GameWatcher - Robert Honaker - 6 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur was one of the most underrated games of the previous decade and its return will make that pretty clear to some players. However, the remastering of this borderline classic is hamstrung by a 2012 inventory and menu system, a 2012 user interface, and 2012 icons and health bar.

GamingBolt - Shubhankar Parijat - 7 / 10

If you've never played this game before, or if you want to dive back into it but don't have access to an older copy, Re-Reckoning is easy to recommend- but only because the game itself is as good as it is. If you were hoping for an impressive visual upgrade, this isn't it, and those who already have access to a copy of the original game should probably save their money.

God is a Geek - Mick Fraser - 8.5 / 10

It may not be the most important remake of the year, but Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a gorgeous, dense, and charming adventure.

Hobby Consolas - Álvaro Alonso - Spanish - 80 / 100

A notable remastered work, especially when you take into account the original game's limitations, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a great way to discover this universe and a well earned second chance for a game that was unfairly forgotten.

IGN - Jon Ryan - 6 / 10

Re-Reckoning is a reminder of what made the original great in 2012, but mostly a testament to how far we've come since.

IGN Italy - Andrea Giongiani - Italian - 8 / 10

A fairly easy and light RPG experience. Kingdoms of Amalur is a game that rewards the player with new gadgets and powers and tries to be a nice, laid back experience.

Kakuchopurei - Jonathan Leo - 80 / 100

You’d be hard-pressed to find a 30-to-60 hour RPG with a lot of meat & teeth in its gameplay & story for just US$40.

Merlin'in Kazanı - Samet Basri Taşlı - Turkish - 68 / 100

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a good game with a strong storyline, fluid combat system, and advanced character customization. While it's not a perfect remaster, it's a good option for players who haven't played before and for those looking to experience it on next-generation consoles.

Nexus - Andrew Logue - 7 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning still plays much the way it did in 2012 – ambitious in scope but lacking in depth. You may not be compelled to see it through to the end, but you’ll enjoy most of the time spent with it.

PlayStation Universe - Garri Bagdasarov - 8 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is just as fun as it was eight years ago. Though the game didn't get any updates to its inventory management system or the criminally long load times, the combat is still great and the vast world is a blast to explore.

RedTieGuy - Basil Frank - 7.5 / 10

Re-Recking is a solid experience for any RPG fan.

SECTOR.sk - Táňa Matúšová - Slovak - 8.5 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning balances difficulty issues and shows it's magical world in 4K. The "MMORPG for introverts" is now available for current consoles, but PC players might stick to their copies of the original game.

Saving Content - Scott Ellison II - 4 / 5 stars

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a weird release. It doesn’t have any substantial improvements compared to the original, and maybe on PC there’s going to be less of difference than for consoles. So if you have the original on PC, there’s basically little reason to upgrade except to play the upcoming Fatesworn expansion next year. That said, if you’ve never experienced this game, now’s a great time. Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning really holds up as a great RPG filled to the brim with content, and its build-your-own class system remains a highlight, backed with some really fun combat. Don’t miss out on one of 2012’s best games now.

Sirus Gaming - Rhett Roxl - 8 / 10

Whether you’re a fan of the original game or you haven’t played that and are just planning to explore a new open-world RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a must-try for its fun combat, exploration, interesting narrative, and the wide experience it provides. Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning may not be that compelling as a remastered work, but what it already is is quite compelling enough.

Spaziogames - Adriano Di Medio - Italian - 7.9 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning is one of those rare cases which a remastered has got its sense out of commercial reasons. A fine tuned narrative background plays well with a stylish system and shining environments, with some good ideas both on scenography and characters. If you will have the will to overcome a game structure that directly comes from 2012, you can rediscover a very underrated game. Let's just hope they will fix its technical issues.

TechRaptor - Tyler Chancey - 6.5 / 10

Divorced from its original chaotic development, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning feels like a remix of old gaming trends that are pleasant, if a bit generic.

The Games Machine - Erica Mura - Italian - 8.2 / 10

If even the original game wasn't able to take that extra step and stand out among its competition, you shouldn't expect that its remastered version will be able to accomplish this task. Nevertheless, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning remains enjoyable despite its age. It is a "vintage" game, capable of entertaining for hours (and hours and hours and hours) with its classic fantasy story full of fantastic creatures, epic legends and fairy lands.

TheSixthAxis - Aran Suddi - 7 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning is a good solid remaster, just don't expect much to have changed compared to the original. The world is as magical fantasy as you could get, and it really does draw you in, but some technical issues and a number of repetitive quests can dull the otherwise colourful experience.

Wccftech - Francesco De Meo - 8 / 10

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning finally gives a second chance to one of the best role-playing games released in the previous console generation, making the gameplay even better with select balance tweaks that increase the challenge level and make it easier to engage with side content. Despite some issues and a dated gameplay design, the game's battle system, great writing and extremely deep lore make Re-Reckoning a game that most role-playing game fans will enjoy. Especially if they like juggling enemies to death.