Kohlrieser 1

Nick Kohlrieser
Professor Sarah Haak
ENGL 2089
11/6/20
Word Count: 1812
Discourse Community Ethnography: Star Wars The Old Republic Discord Server
Discord is a social media chatroom that allows users to connect and communicate

through messaging in text channels, talking over voice channels and recently adding video calls.

Discord has over 100 million active monthly users [CITATION DiscordUsers \l 1033 ] that

communicate through the service. It is broken up by servers which can be created for free by

any user. There are many other features that Discord has. An important one that we will discuss

are server roles. These roles allow people to access certain things within a Discord server and

have an impact on how a user interacts within a server. The Discord server community that I

will be discussing today is built on a fanbase of Star Wars: The Old Republic. It is commonly

referred to as SWTOR.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMORPG developed by Bioware and published by

Electronic Arts. An MMORPG is a video game where many players can interact with each other.

There are many mechanics that the game has to offer, and it can be beneficial to players to talk

about these mechanics to get the most out of them. Discord was used by the SWTOR

community to create a chat forum where these discussions can happen.

The SWTOR Discord server is a server that hosts 1300 active monthly users to discuss

game mechanics and create a community around SWTOR. There are multiple public channels
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that users can use to share different things about the game. There is an ask for help channel

that gives users a place to ask and answer questions. There is also a channel where users can

share pictures of their game characters. I am the creator of this server, so I have as much access

as possible to gather information from.

My research method involved monitoring the server over the last month and picking out

common topics in public discussions as well as getting a grasp on a new user experience, a

veteran user experience and a moderator user experience. Moderators are the law of the

server. They usually create rules and enforce them. I researched how these groups see the

server rules and how differently these groups interacted with each other. Most of the data

gather was gathered publicly and you can also find most of this data by visiting the server at

discord.gg/swtor.

As I can look through the SWTOR Discord server, I will be searching interactions of users

that are under one week old to see how a new user would operate in the community. For an

old user, I will choose a user that has been in the server six or more months and check how

they communicate. I will be sharing my own experience as well as show experiences of other

moderators in the server for the moderator demographic. Discord also has a feature called

Server Insights which show detailed charts on user activity within a server. Some of the key

metrics in that are the number of new members, number of new communicators, and the new

member retention percentage. These insights are a helpful way to chart how well a new user

interacts in the server.

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First, we should look at how users access the SWTOR Discord server to understand how

a new user interacts with the server. The main source of new users comes from using the server

vanity URL which is the link I shared above. The only other source is through Discord’s server

discovery program where they promote large and established communities. When a new user

joins using one of these options, they are brought into the server where they are messaged by a

bot and see six different channels. The bot informs the

user to view the rules of the server and to participate,

they will need to select a role.

There are six rules for the Discord server that every

user must agree to use the server and they select a

role when they agree to the rules (see fig. 1). The

SWTOR server is a Partnered server which means it is

held to a certain standard that Discord states in their

community guidelines. Each rule outlines things that

the community follows according to the moderators.

These rules are drafted in good faith so that they will

be used to best regulate the server from behavior and

topics that do not fit the community. These rules are made to be as simple as possible because

the users can join from anywhere in the world and

Fig. 1. There are 6 rules that are defined to
help with the moderation of the server. they can be as young as 13 years old to participate.
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After reading these rules the users are told to select a role to participate in the rest of the

server.

The role system is complex so I will try to give a general overview on how the system

works for a typical user. A new user will select the channel where roles are allocated. They are

given a list of options which include which server the user plays SWTOR on. There is also a

cosmetic role that changes the color of your name in

the server (see fig. 2). The user will select a role by

clicking to the corresponding emoji underneath.

Most users in the server choose the Sith Empire

Fig. 2. A user can choose a cosmetic role by
role which makes their name red when they talk in clicking one of the react emojis.

the server. Getting one of these roles allows the

user to access more of the Discord server and where the user can interact with the rest of the

community.

Now a new user can interact with the server. They are immediately pinged by a bot to

direct them towards the main chat channel in the server. To be pinged is to get a notification.

From here, the new user can text chat other users. Most users that join do not communicate.

Only around 30% of users that join participate in

the community. A lot of user’s first interactions

can be of confusion (see fig. 3). Most veteran users

Fig. 3. A new user, Skyeborne, interacts with a

veteran user, Roan, and the bot that pinged him.
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tend to be helpful towards new users and are the driving force in the discourse the community

provides.

Some of the data that the community provides can be accessed by all members. Some

of this data includes crowd sourcing the data of the sales on the in-game market where users

tagged by the moderators can submit information that anyone in the community can benefit

from. There is also a frequent asked questions channel that the moderators set up to help new

players of SWTOR. There is also a resources channel that was curated from members of the

community about what they most like to use. Those channels were not created for discourse

but there are many other channels that can offer that.

One of the most popular channels in the server is the ask for help channel. This is where

most active new users end up when they have a problem in SWTOR. A recent question in that

channel comes from Badakface. They ask, “Can you get the newest legendary 77 mods from

spoils of war vendor?” I don’t expect you to understand that question but a user named Riku

was able to help by replying with “learn the schematic form the crrafting vendors than u can

buy mats on gtn or get them from content and craft.” This is one of the important things that

the discourse community provides. They are a nearly instantaneous help on any issue related to

the game. New users have a lot of ways to interact with the

server but there is even more.

Veteran users are the backbone of the community.

They are the ones that usually create and increase discourse.

In the examples of the new users, they were the ones that
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came to help. They are not always around to strictly help since there are other ways they can

interact with the server. One popular way is through sharing character screenshots (see fig. 4).

Users enjoy doing this to garner criticism or praise from other users. Often a lot of these

interactions can help improve a poster’s self-esteem and give positive change to their

characters.

Recently there was a trick or treat game offered by Discord to all Discord servers. It was

added to the SWTOR Discord server with great popularity. 52 users participated and earned

1133 unique items that the game offered. POT, a veteran user, was crowned the winner of the

game by collecting 120 unique items. He was congratulated by several users and given a special

role to mark the occasion. This game was brought to the server’s attention due to a feedback

channel that the moderators set up.

The feedback channel was created by moderators to help garner feedback on how the

server should be run or any changes that could be helpful. Plant Friend, a user in the server

offered feedback that the server should have pronoun roles. There was a lot of discourse on

this topic. It ended with Teddy, a moderator, telling the users that he suggests they put their

pronouns in their username and the discussion of the roles would go to the moderators.

Moderators are users put into a position of power to moderate the server in a way that

it continues to run smoothly. They have powers to mute and warn users if needed as well as the

ability to ban users that repeatedly cause issues. The moderators in the SWTOR server try to
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focus away from the server to not stifle the community. All are fans of the community and are

chosen by the current moderators on how well they interact with the community.

Sometimes these moderators put out announcements. The announcements could be

announcing a new event such as a movie night or an announcement on a rule change. One

announcement was searching for helpers to be a part of the crowd sourcing team I talked about

earlier. They are usually accompanied by a ping with notifies all the users that there is an

announcement. They typically follow an email format as if the announcement were a letter

being sent to the community.

There is a lot of interesting things that the SWTOR Discord server offers to its

community. The interactions are almost entirely informal which gives it a strong sense of

connectedness between the users. The lawful moderators try to keep everything in order as the

veteran users create discourse and help new users get their bearings. I’ve always appreciated

this community, but I believe I can appreciate it more now that I’ve looked at it through this

kind of lens.
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Works Cited
Chin, Monica. Discord raises $100 million and plans to move beyond gaming. 30 June 2020.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308194/discord-gaming-users-safety-center-video-
voice-chat. 31 October 2020.