Where are we now, and where is the roleplay community going? Does our community have what it takes to survive for years to come? This is the sort of thing I'll be talking about in today's article. Hopefully we can look back on some of these things a few years from now and laugh. For now though, join me in a very special edition of The Darker Side of Life where I spew out all my thoughts on RP in TOR out onto the page, and we'll see what comes of it. It should be interesting, and I've already taken to calling the first piece of it, "You are all spoiled brats."

While you can take the last name off those characters and have them show a legacy title instead, it does mean that you're losing out on last names for your alts, and it's a lot better than living without last names at all as we originally feared. In addition, I don't think it's some sort of ploy by BioWare, but if you really want to have more then one last name, you can always make two accounts. You can also intentionally misspell or use accented letters if you want to share last names with another player, though supposedly we'll be able to share legacies officially someday. While it's a great gameplay feature, the system is a bit shaky for RPers, especially since it will be mandatory to unlock RP emote packs. So lets jump in and discuss how legacy stands up to roleplaying expectations in this week's The Darker Side of Life.

As always, I've collected your responses from the thread and worked them into this article where we're going to try and come up with some ways to make stealth RP work, and make it fun for everyone. Sitting cloaked in a meeting watching your enemies plot may be exciting from an adrenaline rush for the first minute or two, but without any interaction it gets boring. After all, if they can't see you, there's a zero percent chance of being discovered, and that's also why many players consider it unfair. Join me as we dive into the issue head first and try to settle the debate over whether stealth powers are acceptable to use in roleplay.

Leap month in now behind us. We may have leapt past a few days of the month, but one thing we didn't surpass was some great reading content from the front page of SWTOR-RP. With brand new columns from the new additions to the Reporting team, to Flashpoint and story progression in-character articles, the readers definitely had more than their fair share of TOR-based reading material. The Darker Side of Life column by Sebaya Keto continued to cover the controversial topics of roleplay, whilst Centerfire's Escaping the Cantina made its debut alongside Kovani's Datapad Notes and Tenebras' A Long Time Ago. 

In the earliest days of February, I took the time to make some new acquaintances in the SWTOR Fansite industry by going on board with the TOROZ podcast, Flashpoint: McGherkinsquirters and Roleplaying. We talked about Patch 1.1, Kate Beckinsale's ability to wear tight clothing, and shared some random Aussie banter. David Holloway and his team at TOROZ are definitely a great bunch of guys, so be sure to head on over and check them out—especially if you're Australia. 

There are several levels of canon. G(eorge Lucas)-canon is the highest level. This includes the two trilogies and anything he writes or says. If Lucas declares Luke Skywalker to be a Gungan tomorrow, everything else must be re-written to suit that, or be expunged. T(elevision)-canon covers the Clone Wars movie and TV series, as well as the live-action TV series if Lucas ever finishes it. C(ontinuity)-canon covers the bulk of Star Wars lore, including the Expanded Universe, the Knights of the Old Republic series, and The Old Republic itself. Anything in this category is considered canon unless it is contradicted by something higher up. Below that is S(econdary)-canon, consisting of things that are not canon themselves, but whose parts can be. Star Wars Galaxies is a good example of this. Finally we have N(on)-canon which includes the Infinities series, and anything else not considered canon, or that has been contradicted, including all your fan-fiction and roleplay. In this week's The Darker Side of Life, we'll dive in and discuss how it affects roleplay.

Not so counters the other group which I like to call the Storytellers. Respect is something a character should earn through solid roleplay, and good storytelling. If a level 10 character can play the part well, why not let them RP a Darth? Any monkey can make level 50 and get PvP gear given enough time, so why not respect things that matter more to roleplay? These are the two sides in this battle, one we're going to comb through in detail and try to work out some answers. 

Join me as we take a look at your responses and attempt to dig through the issue. Does your character's level matter in roleplay? Should a player have to get their character to level 50 to be taken seriously in roleplay, or is it just a form of metagaming? Once again we're back on the same tangent of game mechanics in roleplay. Hold on tight and keep your arms and legs inside the car until we come to a complete stop, because it's going to be a wild ride.

My regular readers know I come from Star Wars Galaxies; an entirely different beast of the MMO genre where players spent eight years in 1 ABY. That's one year after the first Death Star was destroyed in A New Hope, and before the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Sony Online Entertainment kept the game world static, despite releasing a Battle of Hoth instance near the end. BioWare is taking a completely different approach. You may not have realized it but the timeline has already moved since launch with the release of Game Update 1.1. With the release of Game Update 1.2 in March, it will move ahead again, and continue to every major update. How do we work with that in roleplay?

There are a lot of people that want to RP in the cold war a while before jumping into the war. Other people think that since BioWare is moving the timeline, we should jump right to the end. How can we rectify that? After all, if a group is RPing years apart from you in character, how do you interact with them? Clearly we need a way to find out just when we all are. So read on and we'll discuss your thoughts about the issue in this week's The Darker Side of Life.

Star Wars is over thirty years old now though. Back in those dark ages, having Leia running around as a heroine at all was edgy, right? This is 2012 now but because Star Wars fans are mostly made up of cannon nazis, every aspect of the original movies must be somehow interpreted in roleplay. For instance, back in Star Wars Galaxies, the Empire was considered sexist, and to have a female Imperial character was considered taboo. That was just a year ago before it shut down. Are we, and BioWare in creating The Old Republic still beholden to the inhibitions of movie audiences thirty years ago? 

Join me in this week's The Darker Side of Life as we dig through examples members of the community have dug up about sexism in roleplay and the storylines created by BioWare for The Old Republic. Does sexism still exist in TOR roleplay? And more importantly, who is perpetuating it? Has BioWare created stories or female characters that could be considered demeaning, or are we doing it to ourselves through our roleplay? Read on to find out!