Jaan has recently stepped up to be a PvE Assistant for our SWTOR guild – he has done a fantastic job speaking with new members, and scheduling everyone for both Hardmode and Storymode operations. Our PvE department has been doing great between him and our PvE Officer, in new operations and old ones. He has been a member of our guild for a very long time, and you will most often find him in operations, talking about stats or strategies, or talking about Bloodbourne with our PvE Officer for 6 hours straight.

Hey Jaan. We see you online in SWTOR a lot – what do you do in real life?

I’m a data analyst. I sift through workplace injury and illness statistics and present them in ways that are predictive as possible. Basically, I’m trying to use those numbers to find ways to keep people from getting hurt or sick at work.

(three PvE’rs from our guild in Vegas)

What do you enjoy about Operations that you can’t get from playing solo?

Operations are, at their foundation, about teamwork. There isn’t a better feeling for me in the game than working with other people to accomplish a difficult task. It’s why I play MMOs. Everyone in your group is a piece of that puzzle, and when you make all the pieces fit, it’s very satisfying. This is especially true of the hardest content in the game. Everyone has a role and is equally important to reaching the team’s goal, and barring a few small circumstances, you need everyone to succeed.

How do you keep on track of scheduling all our operations?

Um, I still haven’t quite figured that part out yet. It’s mostly a juggling act. When dealing with so many people there are a lot of moving parts, but I’ve always been good at recognizing relationships and how pieces fit. I think scheduling is a lot like that. I have certain pieces that only fit in certain places at certain times, and I feel like the real goal of my job is to maximize the number of pieces that I can use, while still giving everyone the best chance of success at what they’re doing that week. I wish I could say I had an actual “system”, but I don’t.

Do you have any advice for anyone just getting into operations with [our guild]?

Be proactive. The best advice I could give is to do everything you can on your own to build a good foundation, then seek out people who have done it, and look and listen. I look at this aspect very personally, because when I first started running operations with [our guild] I literally had no experience at all. This was my first MMO, and up to that point I had never set foot in an operation. Over the years I talked people’s ears off looking for advice, and invested my time in things I could do myself. At that point it was farming dailies for Black Hole comms in order to get entry level gear, and then making the most of the limited time I was able to get into operations. I had to learn the ropes to the point that I made myself a better and better option for the raid group over time. Really, I guess what it amounts to is really wanting to learn, and never stopping doing that.

What is one of your favourite memories with the guild?

In game my favorite memory was when our group first cleared Nightmare Mode Explosive Conflict right before 2.0 hit. We had been working on that for a while, and that particular operation was a gauntlet like no other. We had put in night after night working on that final boss, often for 5-6 hours at a time. When we finally cleared it, it was the most satisfying experience.

Out of game it would have to be getting together in Las Vegas last summer. This is my first guild ever, and when I joined I had no idea the types of friendships you could form doing this type of thing. Going from not even knowing what type of social environment this would be, to being invited, along with several others, to join a friend in renewing wedding vows was really cool.

Could you tell us about the backstory of your favourite character?

Despite doing tabletop RP for the past 20+ years, I’ve only ever really put thought into one of my characters. Jaan is the typical tortured soul, which is mostly in line with what I view Jedi Shadow lore to be and eventually lead to. He spent so much time stalking around alone looking for dangerous agents and elements of the Dark Side, that he started to see it in every shadow and around every corner. He was the embodiment of the notion that if you search for something in particular for long enough, you’re guaranteed to find it. This did, as you might expect, lead to his fall and, presumably, to his atonement. At this point in the character arc I have in my head he hasn’t figured out that last part yet. He knows that it has to be on his own terms, but as of this writing I tend to assume he’s still using his training at remaining hidden to do just that while he tries to get it all together.