OotiniCast | A Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) podcast

OotiniCast Episode 80

teo — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:56:18 +0000

Game Update 2.1: Customization is here! We discuss our initial impressions, and Moff Chong joins the regular crew to give some Seeker Droid tips and tricks.

1. Introduction

Chong has used the Appearance Designer Kiosk to alter his PvP Sniper into a most fierce feline:

2. Trivia Question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Voyak!

3. Holofeed

Game Update 2.1: Customization was deployed on Tuesday. Cory Butler provided an introduction in a developer blog, and there is the usual trailer (also on YouTube).
There were a couple of glitches: a very long load time for some players, quickly resolved, and a crash to desktop for Windows XP users, fixed in the client-side only Patch 2.1.0a deployed on Wednesday.
All subscribers will receive one complimentary Character Rename per account sometime soon.
The somewhat odd price for species change (792 Cartel Coins) was explained by Eric Musco.
To get an item to appear in your Collections interface, you’ll have to have equipped it at least once (so it’s bound to a character). You may also have to log into the character with the item.
While the Dye Modules sold by the CE (Collector’s Edition) vendor are currently not bind-on-pickup, the ones sold in future will be.

4. Community

Thanks to @TheTurg (Terg) for his most generous donation!

Kuze is still working on his instructional video on platforming. You can find his existing guides in Kuze’s Korner.

Dulfy’s SWTOR Dye Modules guide is well worth perusing!

For those interested in joining Ootini Fight Club for some endgame PvP, please contact Chong by email (empiredivider@gmail.com).

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @Jayconnell, @TheTurg (Terg), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @JediKrackr, @KairiahMedens (David), @ForceChuckle, @roguish98 (Matt Roberts), @ChazLobo, @rclemons77 (Brian Clemons), @grimrok (Grim), @joseph_foran, @HamSammich509, @IzaakTheMad, @mmartong (Markos Martong), @rocketman003 (Ki’el), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @masterbearjedi (Raz), @therealHausman (Jacob), @GrahamMSellars, @RoughneckRoy, and an email from Green Armadillo, the author of the most excellent Player vs Developer blog.

6. Sarlacc Digest

Chong gives some expert advice on how best to utilise one’s Seeker Droid.

We also mention the known issue (and its workaround) for the final mission in the Macrobinocular chain.

7. Outro

Thanks to Moff Chong (@EmpireDivider), Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! You can subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and listen to us on Stitcher and Radio Paragon.

OotiniCast Episode 79

teo — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:17:33 +0000

We cover the rest of what’s in Game Update 2.1: Customization, and complete our series of quick guides with the other two level 55 hard modes, Hammer Station and Mandalorian Raiders.

1. Introduction

Hyp provides a few choice screenshots from Baldy’s adventures. First we have Baldy showing a little tough love:

This is Baldy’s frowny face:

A nice bit of scenery from the prison world of Belsavis:

Redna’s in-progress UI update, with his action bars arranged to mimic the layout on his new Razer Naga:

2. Trivia Question

(We are continuing the question from last week.)

Our question is all about New Hollywood. New Hollywood is a period of moviemaking from the mid-60s to the very early 80s. It is usually marked as beginning with “Bonnie and Clyde”, a surprising hit of a movie where the main characters die, and ends with the overpriced flops “Heaven’s Gate” and “One from the Heart”.

New Hollywood was marked by a period of time where filmmakers were still part of the studio process, but allowed greater freedom. So they were a mix of the two things we have today—generally big-budget movies with tight studio control and smaller indie films with low budgets but tons of creative freedom. The occasional big-budget movie with filmmaker control, like Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies, can be seen as a product of this time.

New Hollywood proved that movies could be big successes without being cookie-cutter films, like the musicals, war movies, and horse operas of the 50s and early 60s. They also legitimized the sequel with the critical and successful “Godfather Part II,” brought us the summer blockbuster with “Jaws,” and showed that fantasy and sci-fi could have wide audience appeal with “Star Wars.”

Of course, their successes sowed the seeds of the movement’s failure; more money was thrown their way, which both increased the risk if a movie was a flop, and caused the studios to demand more control over their big bets.

But what made New Hollywood really successful was that this was the first generation of moviemakers who had grown up watching movies. They loved movies and they knew movies. They put references to great earlier movies in their movies, both as a nod to films they loved and also quite frankly to uplift their own films.

Now, we’ve used the Trivia Question to explore Lucas’s influences before. So let’s set aside the movies of Kurosawa. But let’s find as many other examples as we can of famous movie scenes being referenced, either in dialogue, shot selection etc. in the six “Star Wars” movies.

I’ll get you started. (This example won’t count.) The famous Greedo cantina scene is a reference to the wonderful western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, where Tuco is caught by an armed man who has been hunting him. He is in the bath, apparently unarmed, and his hunter waves his pistol in his face and gloats over how happy he is to have caught him. But then Tuco, or Han, fires a hidden pistol and kills his opponent. While Han’s scene has become known as “Han Shot First”, Tuco’s line at the end of his scene is appropriate to both: “When you have to shoot, shoot! Don’t talk”.

Please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com. Whoever gets the most references to earlier movies by next Wednesday will be put in a drawing to win a Taun Fawn code courtesy of BioWare and one of the latest full-size Cartel Packs (or if you’re on The Harbinger, a very special mount!).

3. Holofeed

Disney and EA announced a multi-year agreement for EA to produce Star Wars games. This includes BioWare’s ongoing production and support of SWTOR!
EA had its Q4 FY13 conference call for investors, during which the EA leadership said some positive, encouraging and supporting things about SWTOR. Polygon summarises what was said.
The rest of Game Update 2.1: Customization was unveiled, and our overview has been updated with the new features: character/legacy/guild renames, escrow deductions for Free and Preferred players, and Collections.
Eric Musco, Community Manager, allays concerns that there is no actual content in Game Update 2.1 by firstly announcing it’s going to arrive this coming Tuesday (14 May), and secondly revealing that Game Update 2.2 (which presumably will contain content!) is coming on Tuesday 11 June, 8 weeks after the launch of the expansion.
Not only that, but he tells us the Gree will be back sometime before Game Update 2.2!
The known exploits in the bolster mechanic will be fixed in Game Update 2.1.
Amber Green lets us know that most known crew skill issues will be addressed in Game Update 2.1, though some will have to wait until the following patch 2.1.1.
Rob Hinkle, Senior Designer responsible for PvP, explains the rationale behind 2.0′s upgraded bolster, and why it’s worth sticking it out as they iron out the issues.
There is a known bug with healing companions, which causes them to stop healing players if a cosmetic pet you have out takes damage!

4. Community

We recommend hawtpantsrepublic.com, which includes a most excellent guide for Sentinels updated for Game Update 2.0. You can follow the site’s author via @HawtRepublic on Twitter.

Our guide on 2- and 4-piece set bonuses for all PvE and PvP gear has been updated with the new set bonuses made available in Game Update 2.0.

A very useful summary of endgame (or “elder game”) content from BioWare can be found at www.swtor.com/info/eldergame.

If you live in the US and don’t mind paying for shipping, you can enter a competition to win a 1/6 scale replica of Darth Malgus!

In Kuze’s Korner this week, Kuze provides some extremely useful tips on platforming. These and more will feature in his platforming video, which is coming soon.

For those interested in joining Ootini Fight Club for some endgame PvP, please contact Chong by email (empiredivider@gmail.com). Chong and HamSammich are also planning a PvP tournament on The Harbinger; Moff Chong will be on episode 80 to tell us all about it! You can preview the rules here.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @ForceChuckle, @Weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @hadrian9 (Mikhael Lombard), @TheTurg (Terg), @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @copythat22 (Lance of the Coffee Talk with Lance and Niq podcast), @terencemyers (Terence Myers), @KairiahMedens (David), @JediKrackr and @IzaakTheMad (Izaak), and emails from Oxi-jin, Middle’guard, Rendrin, Graham Sellars, Dri, Hansgruber, Madmar, Socordia, Matt Roberts and Jacob Hausman (Deltia).

Middle’guard provided a YouTube video that he did that shows his UI with the action bars configured to mimic the location of the buttons on a Logitech G600 or Razer Naga mouse.

Matt Roberts (@Roguish98) referred to a couple of forum threads regarding how installing DirectX 9 drivers may improve your performance (fix, CS confirmation). He also recommends this forum thread that discusses general performance improvements.

Oxi-jin’s post-+10-endurance-datacron party on Makeb!

6. Sarlacc Digest

We cover the other two of the level 55 hard mode Flashpoints, Mandalorian Raiders and Hammer Station. Athiss and Cademimu were discussed last week.

Hammer Station (Dulfy’s guide)

trash—some nasty packs, mostly easy
DN-314 Tunneler (droid with the laser):
- cleanse stacks during tunneling laser (when it reaches 4 or so)
- avoid exploding droids, no need to DPS them
Vorgan the Volcano (three guys)
- tank Vorgan and 2R-CH (torch)
- kill Sawbones (on the right) first
- we kill Vorgan then finally the Torch (torch, frontal conal damage, can be interrupted)
Asteroid Beast (bonus boss)
- tank with back to orange force screen
- healer and DPS stack immediately behind boss for AoE healing
- periodic rampage which stuns everyone
Battlelord Kreshan (guy with the adds):
- sweeping gunfire (tank steps out of way)
- knockback is nasty (tank has back to console)
- blue circles which stick around
- adds need to be killed, can be knocked off

Mandalorian Raiders (Dulfy’s guide)

trash—those dogs hurt!
Braxx the Bloodhound (guy with the two dogs)
- tank Braxx away from the two dogs, who’ll switch between the DPS and healer
- imperative dogs don’t get into Braxx’s periodic red circle (it buffs them)
- kill dogs first, then Braxx
Boarding party
- kill order: scoundrel/operative, sentinel/marauder, sage/sorcerer, commando/mercenary
- Sentinel/Marauder can’t be tanked, will constantly switch between party members
Gil (bonus boss)
- periodic circle around him, make sure to stay out of it
- knockback, so stay away from the opening into space!
Mavrik Varad (guy with the turrets)
- follow him into three corners of the room
- in each corner, destroy the turrets that come up (tank will need to hold aggro on them)
- stay out of the red circles

7. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 78

teo — Fri, 03 May 2013 03:30:52 +0000

We discuss some of the content coming in Game Update 2.1: Customization, along with a quick guide to two level 55 hard modes, Athiss and Cademimu.

1. Introduction

Hyp’s Marauder certainly hasn’t been getting much beauty sleep.

Speaking of beauty, Hyp’s Scoundrel, Pearlneck, has a new look.

2. Trivia Question

This week’s question is all about New Hollywood. New Hollywood is a period of moviemaking from the mid-60s to the very early 80s. It is usually marked as beginning with “Bonnie and Clyde”, a surprising hit of a movie where the main characters die, and ends with the overpriced flops “Heaven’s Gate” and “One from the Heart”.

3. Holofeed

Bolster in warzones still has issues, with another known bug that allows players to increase their stats by 15% above what it should be. They are hoping to get it fixed for the next patch.
Game Update 2.1: Customization was announced, and some of its features have been unveiled. You can read our overview, and an extended feature on Dye Modules which includes answers from Cory Butler.
There is a known problem with purchasing Cartel Coins digitally from BestBuy.

4. Community

We recommend hawtpantsrepublic.com, which includes a most excellent guide for Sentinels updated for Game Update 2.0. You can follow the site’s author via @HawtRepublic on Twitter.

Our guildmate Krad highly recommends Geldarion’s various posts about Gunslingers. Probably best to start with his Gunslinger/Sniper Advanced Class Guide.

Kuze is working on his instructional video on platforming, you can find his existing guides in Kuze’s Korner.

For those interested in joining Ootini Fight Club for some endgame PvP, please contact Chong by email (empiredivider@gmail.com).

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @heymason12, @Rrubb, @HamSammich509, @TheTurg (Terg), @roguish98 (Matt Roberts), @EmpireDivider (Moff Chong), @YojeVawree, @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @MrSteveVoss, @KairiahMedens (David), @ChazLobo, @terencemyers, @JediKrackr, @Lawilc01 (Laurie M), @rocketman003 (Ki’el), @ForceChuckle, @Watchman_Marek, @voyak, @tshapedvisor, @Geldarion (co-host of Corellian Run Radio), @rclemons1977 (Brian Clemons), and emails from Jacob Hausman, @1BigBore (Bill), Graham S and Neiro.

The Pearlneck lookalike spotted by Terg:

And the one I spotted:

Graham S recommends the Mad Katz S.T.R.I.K.E. 7:

6. Sarlacc Digest

We cover two of the level 55 hard mode Flashpoints, Athiss and Cademimu, leaving Mandalorian Raiders and Hammer Station for next week.

Athiss (Dulfy’s guide)

you can slice the elevator at the beginning to avoid fall damage
grab the explosives from the room to the left of where you come in if no one in the group has Archaeology
Professor Ley’arsha (woman with adds)
- tank face away from group
- tank moves away with purple circle to drop corruption away from melee
- DPS kill adds (normals) when they periodically turn up
The Beast of Vodal Kressh (big dog)
- adds appear at 75%/50%/25% of boss health; tank needs to pick them up
- huge knockback/stun, so tank with back to wall
- DPS needs to kill the adds ASAP
- can avoid extra adds by fighting boss near pond on the way to the boss
Ancient Abomination (bonus boss)
- tank in alcove behind boss
- DPS and healer sit on boss’s behind, AoE heal periodic damage from knockback
- interruptible ability after each knockback
Prophet of Vodal (guy with the fires)
- move out of small purple circles (note that they stick around for some time)
- healer needs to cleanse the corruption DoT as soon as possible (hits really hard)
- when boss stealths, a random party member will get a flaming effect on them, and four fire adds will spawn and chase that player; they need to kite the flames until they disappear
click on the altar to complete the Flashpoint

Cademimu (Dulfy’s guide)

crew skill shortcuts: gate (Scavenging) and shuttle (Slicing)
Officer Xander (guy with the EN-4C droid)
- when activated, droid will slowly move towards randomly selected player; will switch players over time
- need to kite droid into trap (circle on ground), without any player themselves getting trapped
- when the droid is trapped, kill it (droid won’t take damage otherwise)
- player targeted with large blue circle needs to move away from the group until it explodes (to avoid damaging anyone else)
Captain Grimyk (Wookie captain)
- tank faces him away from group because of his flamethrower
- adds (Ugnaughts) must be brought into the flamethrower before they can be damaged
Sith Separatist (bonus boss)
- periodically pulls everyone in and does massive AoE; need to run out as soon as it happens
- random player will take big hit (healers needs to keep everyone’s health topped off)
- healer and ranged can usually find something to stand behind so they don’t get pulled in while still maintaining line of site
General Ortol (rocket guy with the shackles)
- initially two and then three quarters of the room will be uninhabitable as the rocket engines above fire; group needs to move to the safe area
- each time it changes, the soon-to-be-dangerous quarters fill with steam
- a random player will be periodically shackled, along with anyone close to them; someone else needs to run through them to break the shackle
- boss does a knockback, so tank/fight in a corner of the safe quarter of the room
- 2.0.1 bug: additional players shackled by being too close to the shackle’s targeted player cannot be freed; so melee and tank need to stay a bit spread out (can still be in melee range)

7. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 77

teo — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:31:58 +0000

The news this week is all about Game Update 2.0.1. We then discuss gaming peripherals, based on some insightful information and suggestions from our listeners.

1. Introduction

Hyp is quite taken with our guildmate Ry’s space cowboy hat:

Teo was a guest on The Oceanic Gamer‘s Flash Point podcast (episode 55). Thanks to David and Simon for the opportunity!

2. Trivia Question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Joey Weaver!

3. The Holofeed

Game Update 2.0.1 was deployed during maintenance on Wednesday morning. It had been delayed due to a bug that had to be addressed before it could go live.
The second pack on Shipment 2, the Vice Commandant’s Contraband Pack, is now available.
BioWare clarified that Covered Escape does not release a Sniper from roots/snares, as these are not considered “movement-impairing effects”.
While there are a few updates to crew skills in 2.0.1, Amber Green summarises the remaining known issues.
The level 55 hard mode version of Cademimu now has a bug in its last encounter: the shackles (new to hard mode).
In response to concerns that some warzones seem to be turning up more often than others, BioWare investigated and confirmed that what’s popping is truly random, as intended.
An undocumented feature, that it turns out wasn’t ready to be revealed, was discovered in 2.0.1: when you whisper an offline character, the player will still receive the whisper if they’re logged in on another character of the same faction.
More concerns were addressed for those having problems with the one-time password system, including a late-breaking hot fix for a delay in delivering the mail containing the one-time password.
Dulfy has an excellent guide on obtaining the GSI speeders, though BioWare advises that some components for those speeders are apparently not yet available.
Austin Peckenpaugh, Senior Designer, has done a series of blog posts about the class changes in 2.0:
- Jedi Knight, Sith Warrior
- Jedi Consular, Sith Inquisitor
- Trooper and Bounty Hunter
- Smuggler and Imperial Agent

4. Community

Thanks to Mark Emery for his most generous donation!

William Keele (@DarthKenji) has his latest Lesson from the Holocron for your edification, all about Jawas: “Freaky Little Hooded Creatures”.

For those interested in joining Ootini Fight Club for some endgame PvP, please contact Chong by email (empiredivider@gmail.com).

From Kuze’s Korner, we have Datacron video guides for the four starter planets:

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @voyak, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @StoleTarts (Megan), @ForceChuckle, @GregCarter78, @O_JohnnyBravo_O (JB), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @HamSammich509, @dingwog, @JediKrackr, @TheTurg, @BenAKenobi, @Eskatun, @rocketman003 and an email from Masterjedi (@masterbearjedi).

6. Sarlacc Digest

Our topic of discussion was gaming peripherals, based on tweets from @Jayconnell, @YojeVawree and @rclemons1977 (Brian Clemons) and emails from Rendrin, Quaza Impsbane, Marshall Carr and Azazeal.

The devices that we discussed are from both Razer and Logitech:

Razer Naga

Logitech G600

Razer Nostromo

Logitech G13

7. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 76

teo — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:16:39 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Redna to discuss the latest news and our ongoing adventures on Makeb. As many are getting to level 55, we cover the initial steps in gearing up for hard mode Flashpoints and Operations.

1. Introduction

Hyp managed to get the following companion-related achievement while in a warzone. So to maximise your achievement accumulation, ensure you have a companion out before you enter!

He was quite taken with the appearance of the following characters, particularly their helms:

Teo’s male lowbie Sorcerer and Hyp’s female Sniper (Cyborgyna) in Ancient Hypergate, in the state of undress that became advisable with the (now fixed) naked bug.

Hyp’s Scoundrel, Pearlneck, looking… larger than life.

A little scenery from Makeb:

Hyp would love to get his hands on this pet, a miniature Star Destroyer:

Finally, some pictures of everyone’s favourite, Baldygina.

2. Trivia Question

This week’s questions is a “Who am I?” I have been credited on all six episodes of the Star Wars movies. I am also credited on all four Indiana Jones movies, even the one that shall not be named. I am credited on a Pixar movie. And I am credited on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2. Though I am not credited in SWTOR, my influence is clear as a bell. Who am I?

Please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com. Correct answers by next Wednesday will be put in a drawing to win a Taun Fawn code courtesy of BioWare and one of the latest full-size Cartel Packs.

3. The Holofeed

The Rise of the Hutt Cartel digital expansion launched for all players on Saturday evening, accompanied by a launch trailer (also on YouTube).
Patch 2.0.0b was deployed during regular maintenance on Tuesday, to fix the issues with reverse engineering color crystals and the naked bug in PvP.
While the investigation into the apparently lower TTK (time to kill) is ongoing, it was pointed out that the Expertise cap on healing is now 20% (up from 15% pre-2.0), making it equivalent to how it was before 2.0, as the Trauma healing effect is now 35% (up from 30%).
As part of the fix for the naked bug, Expertise was removed from Warhero and Elite Warhero PvP gear, along with its other stats being boosted, making it equivalent to PvE gear of the same item rating. There remains a bug such that the new PvE gear sets, when bolstered, will give better stats than the equivalent level 55 PvP gear; this will be fixed in patch 2.0.1, coming this Tuesday.
The caps on Classic, Basic and Planetary Commendations are being revised upwards in patch 2.0.1.
A performance issue is the reason our mission logs can hold a maximum of 25 missions.
The current issues with one time passwords are being addressed. This includes a change that has been deployed that extends their lifetime so they are less likely to be expired if the mail in which they are sent is delayed.
How crew skill missions work was clarified, and some issues were listed. Note that these new rules (e.g., only Bountiful and Rich missions will return an Artifact (Purple) quality mat on crit) only apply for the new 401-450 range.
A couple of world designers describe the new Macrobinocular and Seeker Droid systems. They also provide some handy hints for how to most effectively use the Seeker Droids.

4. Community

If you have a Sith Assassin (or a Jedi Shadow), we recommend Mad Sith Assassin.

You can find Lance Cadiz regularly live-streaming his adventures at jediconsular.tv.

Megan (@StoleTarts) has written a review of the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion.

If you are interested in some serious roleplaying, we recommend you join Clan Epsis, on the Jung Ma server (US east coast RP/PvP).

Finally, in Kuze’s Korner, Datacron videos for all the starting planets will soon be available.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @GregCarter78 (Greg Carter), @woutergrys, @Geldarion (co-host of Corellian Run Radio), @AspisVodox, @joseph_foran, @TheTurg (Terg), @JediKrackr, @terencemyers, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @ForceChuckle, @roguish98 (Matt Roberts), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Dimbo56 (SWTOR Mayor), @hadrian9 (Mikhael Lombard), and emails from Quaza Impsbane, Rose and Baffle.

Greg Carter suggests the following rules for the OotiniCast Drinking Game. Please feel free to send us your additions. While listening to the show, anytime one of the following happens, take a drink!

Hyp requests BioWare give him/everyone Cartel Coin compensation
Red has some sort of in-game bug
Hyp requests day/night cycles or starship/fighter inertia
Teo responds to one of Hyp’s suggestions with “Yeah… not gonna happen” (or just “Yeah” and moves on)
Hyp refers to Makeb as some kind of scab
Anyone says “Super Secret Space Project”
Chill skips the Sarlacc Digest
Red complains about the Inquisitor storyline
Teo makes a correct prediction for a patch date

Ray Leamon refers us to Dulfy’s SWTOR Dreadseed and Star Forager armor locations guide, to help you obtain these sets using your Seeker Droid.

@JediKrack’s visual guide to the Priority Transport Terminal outside each class’s hangar on the Fleet:

Chong is quite taken with the helmet which appears to be just a toothpick!

As discussed in the show, you can now find Hyp’s Marauder, Baldygina, on Twitter.

6. Sarlacc Digest

Using Dulfy’s most excellent SWTOR Level 55 endgame gearing guide, we discuss the initial stages of gearing for characters that have got to level 55.

7. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 75

teo — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:22:06 +0000

Game Update 2.0: Scum and Villainy is now live and early access for Rise of the Hutt Cartel has begun! We discuss the news and our initial adventures in the new content.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia Question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Greg Carter!

3. The Holofeed

Game Update 2.0 was deployed late on Monday night, with the intention of being ready to launch at midnight PDT, though was available for play a couple of hours early.
The 50% reduction to repair costs that we’d been enjoying in the leadup to the expansion have now ended.
All members of a guild receive a 5% bonus to XP gain. This is apparently the first of several planned guild rewards.
Those without early access can now earn XP to just short of level 51.
Increasing crew skills beyond 400 before the expansion launches for everyone requires early access. You’ll need to purchase the advanced crew skill upgrade from each crew skill trainer before you can progress beyond 400.
There is a known issue with reverse engineering +41 colour crystals; for now, BioWare advises to not attempt reverse engineering them until it is fixed.
You may receive warnings that you are close to a commendation cap, when you actually aren’t; this is also a known issue, and is planned to be fixed in Patch 2.0.1.
As of Game Update 2.0, the set bonus is always attached to the armoring mod. This includes Tionese, Columi and Rakata items where the set bonus was previously on the item’s shell.
Alex Modny (Assistant Designer) explained in PvP in Game Update 2.0: Scum and Villainy how the bolstering system was being upgraded and the reasoning behind the new PvP brackets (10-29, 30-54, 55 and 55 Ranked).
As most of found out by now, bolster isn’t working quite as intended now that 2.0 has been deployed. Eric Musco, in conjunction with Rob Hinkle and Alex Modny, explains what’s going on with the “naked bug”.
BioWare have published two SIS Intel reports, giving an overview of key locations and persons of interest on Makeb.
Some tips for Game Update 2.0 (thanks to Hru for compiling them):
- To travel between daily areas (and the Makeb Orbital Station), there are now Priority Mission Terminals (located near the shuttles); these replace the option given on the shuttle doors.
- There are trainers for the crafting crew skills in the Makeb Orbital Station; the other trainers are in each faction’s starting area.
- The Makeb Commendation Vendor (located in the Supplies area of the Fleet) sells rating 140 mods for Planetary Commendations.

4. Community

While adventuring on Makeb, you may as well pick up the two datacrons there; you’ll find all the information you need in Kuze’s Korner.

We have two contributions in Raise Your Glass this week:

Ham Sammich: This week for me was non-stop PvP. Sometimes I felt like I would puke if I got another Huttball match, but I kept pressing to get to level 50 on my Mercenary before the expansion. By the time it was done, I leveled from 35 to 50, maxing out my Valor all along the way. Also big thanks to Chong, Teo, Hyp and a few others for the group PvP; you all made it a little more enjoyable.
Kile Lewis: I spent most of my time this past week leveling my Sith Juggernaut, Ty’Ranos, and deciding how I wanted him to look using adaptive/custom heavy armor. When I wasn’t leveling that character I was on my main, Skil’Veros, farming credits to fund my alts.

As I go about leveling or farming I try to level my crew skills just for the sake of being a completionist. I still have a lot to learn about the game since I’m still new to SWTOR. I’ve only been playing for about 3 weeks.

For those interested in joining Ootini Fight Club for some endgame PvP, please contact Chong by email (empiredivider@gmail.com).

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @ForceChuckle, @voyak, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @GregCarter78, @lightsideoflif1, @HamSammich509, @YojeVawree, @therealHausman (Jacob Hausman), @TheTurg (Terg), @ruleoftwocast (Kenzan of the Rule of Two podcast), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @AspisVodox, @weihanthekidsun, @ChazDM (Chaz Davis), @Geldarion (co-host of Corellian Run Radio), @terencemyers, and emails from Rose and Arammus.

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 74

teo — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 05:13:45 +0000

This week we discuss the closure of LucasArts, the latest SWTOR news, and James Ohlen’s presentation at GDC. We also provide some advice on how best to prepare for Game Update 2.0!

1. Introduction

Hyp provided some pictures for us to discuss. The first is his Sniper, Cyborgina, looking surprisingly demure:

In stark contrast we have Baldy. Oh, Hyp.

Finally, the context menu for the shuttle door in an orbital station which caused Hyp some amount of frustration in terms of the ordering of the options:

2. Trivia Question

There are many artists involved in the making of the Star Wars movies, but some of them are also famous outside the movies as well. I’m going to name a few of them, in what I think is easiest to hardest order, and you tell me how they influenced Star Wars, or how they were involved with Star Wars. It sort of starts easier with those who were directly involved, and ends up with the influencers:

Please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com. The prize this week is Benjamin’s Bodacious Booty, donated by our guildmate Benjamin CC to celebrate the release of the Rise of the Hutt Cartel next week!

3. The Holofeed

Disney has decided to close down LucasArts, the game studio responsible for such Star Wars classics as Dark Forces and X-Wing.
Patch 1.7.3a was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance, which fixed a significant memory leak in the client.
The security changes that have been hinted at for the past couple of weeks also went live. These include allowing login to the game and the official site using one’s display name (rather than email address), and the introduction of various self-service options, including the ability to remove the security key from an account without calling customer support.
BioWare didn’t disappoint with their contribution to April Fool’s Day, Game Update 2.1: Dance of the Hutts.
While a deserter debuff is still not going to be added any time soon, the PvP team is looking at ways at changing the Civil War warzone so that there isn’t such an obvious point at which defeat is effectively guaranteed for one side.
Color Crystals will continue to offer a maximum +41 of an applicable stat in Game Update 2.0.
The upcoming dressing room/barbershop will not allow a character’s gender to be changed.
James Ohlen spoke at the Games Developers Conference about the rise, fall and rise again of SWTOR.

4. Community

Chill interviewed Damion Shubert in Episode 73.

If you’re after a guild on the Republic side of the Shadowlands (east coast PvE) server, check out Jeddit, the official guild of the SWTOR subreddit.

@madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!) is maintaining a list of SWTOR podcasts.

We have two installment’s of “Raise Your Glass” (new and original segment name coming soon):

Ham Sammich: So this week mainly just worked on my Mercenary, going from level 25 to 36. I’m loving the survivability he has and as a PvP toon he’s a lot of fun. Had a really crazy Voidstar warzone this week. Typically when you’re guarding the doors most teams buff and stand ready. I came across a PvP team who staggered on top of each other like they do automatically when you spawn into a wz. To say the least it was a huge advantage as what looked like one man ended up being five; some were stealthed anyway but still a sight to see; I had to relay this on as a great mechanic to try sometime!
Hru: I’ve now completed all 8 class stories and all 40 companion stories, and now have 11 toons at level 50, nine on The Harbinger and two on Red Eclipse… all done solo, of course, and without spending any real world money on Cartel Coins for exceptional boosts.

Our friend and guildmate Kuze has joined the OotiniCast crew with the first installment of Kuze’s Korner in this week’s show. He’s also provided two video guides for the Datacrons that you can get on Makeb.

Darth Kenji’s next Lesson from the Holocron will be about Jawas. Look for it soon!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @qzoid, @terencemyers, @Dimbo56, @ForceChuckle, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @K0h4ku (Amber Green), @BillLentz, @voyak, @ben_b55 (Ben B) and @ChazLobo, and an email from Hru answering a question about moddable vibroknives from @GregCarter (it’s sold by Logistics Officer Sy, just inside the main entrance of Dromund Kaas Spaceport, and by Lieutenant Pell, the Specialty Goods vendor who is with the two regular Commendations vendors in the Senate Commercial District on Coruscant).

@Geldarion (co-host of Corellian Run Radio) offers a list of Twitter resources for SWTOR fans: @CorellianRun, @TORWars, @OotiniCast, @ruleoftwocast, @TheRevCast, @realdarthhater and @dulfycleric.

6. Sarlacc Digest

We discuss how best to prepare for Game Update 2.0. We recommend using our Commendation conversion calculator for Game Update 2.0 to help you ensure that you’ve spent your Commendations and Tionese Crystals such that none are wasted during the conversion on April 9th.

BioWare have finalised the conversion ratios, Commendation weekly caps and maximums, as well as confirming that warzone commendations will be unaffected during the conversion.

In terms of the gear you’ll need for questing on Makeb, we believe that Tionese gear (which you can purchase now using the 99 Tionese Commendations obtained from your class’s Advanced Gear mission, obtained when reaching level 50) should be sufficient. The new tier of crafting will provide mods for your gear, as well as new equipment, to help upgrade that Tionese as you level up. There are also items which drop from mobs on Makeb and mission rewards, as well as what can be purchased using Planetary Commendations from the (new) Makeb vendor on the Fleet and on Makeb itself.

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja), Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 73

teo — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 08:21:22 +0000

Chill interviews Damion Schubert, Lead Designer on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Damion started his career as a designer of text-based MUDs, which led to Meridian 59 (the first graphical MMO), and later to Origin to work on Ultima Online. He eventually joined BioWare to work on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The topics discussed in the interview include:

Striking the right level of difficulty for the Makeb content in the Rise of the Hutt Cartel digital expansion, to make it challenging for solo players while still allowing it to be doable by less combat-effective players (e.g., those spec’d as healers).
The reasoning and method behind the combat team’s update to the skill trees in Game Update 2.0 and the selection of the new level 51 ability for all Advanced Classes.
The philosophy of why crew skills have been altered so that the best operation gear cannot be reverse engineered, and a hint of what’s to come in the future.
The state of character transfers, with some indication that they’re getting closer than ever.
While Cathar as a playable species is not in the Rise of the Hutt Cartel, it seems they’re awfully close to being available (and are why the Cathar NPCs you’ll encounter in the Makeb content are particularly detailed!).
Chill did his best, but Damion was unwilling to divulge any information about the Super Secret Space Project (though he did talk about his hopes and dreams for guild capital ships; if they ever happen, they’re going to be amazing).
While multi-/dual-spec sounds like it’s further off than we’d like, Damion provided some fascinating insight into how features are prioritised, designed and finally implemented into the game.
Because we know it’s an issue dear to Hyp’s heart, we asked about day/night cycles (have no fear, they’re far down the priority list behind other more desired features!).
Damion explained why MMO designers typically don’t talk about upcoming features until they’re sure they going to be delivered; this led into an affirmation of their strategic direction for allowing us the maximum amount of customisability for our characters, with the dressing room/barbershop being the latest feature added to support that.
Why the team has avoided any hint of pay-to-win as part of the free-to-play conversion, and why that’s not going to change.
How free-to-play is going (hint: really, really well) and what that means for the game and the development team.

Thanks to Damion for taking the time to talk to us, and to Eric Musco (Community Manager) for arranging the interview!

OotiniCast Episode 72

teo — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:19:40 +0000

This week is all about the planet Makeb, the centerpiece of the Rise of the Hutt Cartel. We discuss our own experiences with the content on the closed PTS, along with the wealth of material released about the expansion.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia Question

From the several entrants who identified the half-size Darth Vader Bronze Statue for $US18,000 as the most expensive Star Wars merchanise currently available, the randomly chosen winner was Thornwald!

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.7.2b was deployed late last week, just before the second double XP weekend commenced, to remove bolstering from the Western Ice Shelf of Ilum.
Game Update 1.7.3 was deployed on Tuesday during normal maintenance, which included a few updates to the Cartel Market.
The solution to the dwindling population on the APAC (Asia/Pacific) servers has been chosen by BioWare: the three APAC servers will be merged with US west coast servers:
- Mastar Dar’Nala (PvP) merging with The Bastion (PvP)
- Gav Daragon (RP-PvE) merging with Begeren Colony (RP-PvE)
- Dalborra (PvE) merging with The Harbinger (PvE)
Eric Musco, Community Manager, provided some insight into how they reached this decision. Prior to the merger, players will be able to manually transfer their characters to any US west coast server. If you believe that the better solution would be to merge the APAC servers into a single server still located in Australia, then signing this petition may help.
Austin Peckenpaugh (Class Designer) made it clear that the current state of class balance that will be deployed in Game Update 2.0 isn’t the end; further balancing will continue over time.

4. Community

Ham Sammich (@HamSammich) had the idea for us to provide a place for listeners to provide an update on their progress in the same, highlighting achievements, goals met, or just cool stuff that happened to them. We would publish this material in our show notes, and occasionally draw attention to particularly noteworthy items as time permitted. To kick things off, Ham provided the following:

This week I just really tried to focus on leveling my Sith Assassin before the expansion is released. I ran the Foundry a couple times with PUGs and got to level 45. I’m still working on rotation a lot; overload seems to make Warmaster’s Blade only half extend, so I went ahead and submitted a ticket. Outside of that I reached Legend status with the Contraband Resale Corporation and purchased the ever elusive Aratech Eclipse for 4 certificates and 100k credits. That’s about sums it up; see you in space!

If you’re interested in participating, just send a paragraph or two to ootinicast@gmail.com.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @Damaging_Rogue (Les), @JediKrackr, @ThePiousPunk, @terencemyers, @GregCarter78, @ForceChuckle and @AlexDGeslin, along with emails from Howard (who we thank for his most generous donation!) and Baffle.

Here is the JK/BH spotted by Ham Sammich:

6. Sarlacc Digest

This week has seen a flood of information released from various news and fan sites about Makeb, the new planet being added with the Rise of the Hutt Cartel digital expansion, adding to the material BioWare had already produced.

While we mainly talked about our own impressions, we did cover some of the material included in these articles. But if you want to know it all, here are all of our sources:

Developer Update: Overview of the Planet Makeb (BioWare)
Developer Blog: The Art of Makeb (BioWare)
Making of Rise of the Hutt Cartel Part 1: Creating Makeb Video (BioWare, also on YouTube)
Making of Rise of the Hutt Cartel Part 2: Conflict on Makeb (BioWare, also on YouTube)
SWTOR Rise of the Hutt Cartel Interview with Bioware developer Brian Audette (Dulfy)
Assassin Developer Interview (Mad Sith Assassin)
New Details On The Old Republic’s Rise Of The Hutt Cartel (Game Informer)
Developer Q&A: Featuring Bruce Maclean (Darth Hater)
Rise of the Hutt Cartel Preview (SWTOR Hub)
Massively’s hands-on with SWTOR expansion Rise of the Hutt Cartel (Massively)
Star Wars: The Old Republic Previews: The Hutt Cartel is Rising (MMORPG)
Star Wars: The Old Republic expansion to launch April 14 (CNET)
Star Wars: The Old Republic’s first expansion is BioWare’s hope to win back lapsed players (Polygon)
SWTOR: Bruce Maclean Interview (ZAM)
Exclusive SWTOR RotHC BioWare Interview (The Unknown Regions Brewing Company)
Rise of the Hutt Cartel Commentary (IGN video)

Hyp has also captured some images from our time on Makeb, when he and I were questing together. First we have Pearlneck, his Scoundrel healer, with a rather spectacular background:

Next, Pearlneck is working some mischief that may involve the light bridge visible in the distance:

Finally, Pearlneck and my Jedi Guardian, Teol, seem to be rather distressed by a situation they’ve found themselves in:

7. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 71

teo — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 05:27:06 +0000

We discuss Jeff Hickman’s third State of the Game along with other SWTOR news as we prepare for the second double XP weekend on the march to Makeb!

1. Introduction

Hyp is quite taken with his Sniper’s starship:

Speaking of his Sniper (Cyborgyna), he’s dressed her in surprisingly fetching Jedi robes. Keeping them guessing, you know.

It’s getting harder and harder to find Baldy’s inner beauty:

2. Trivia Question

Star Wars has become famous for many things, some of which we have explored in the Trivia Question. But one that we haven’t yet touched on is its famous merchandising. There are tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of items with the Star Wars brand on them. The Star Wars action figures and other toys alone have outgrossed all six movies including re-releases, according to Forbes. And there is clothing, food, and just about everything else out there in the galaxy.

The challenge: find the Star Wars item with the highest non-auction, actual sale price. That is to say, not a one-of-a-kind item put up for auction, like the original Tie Fighter Episode IV model that went for $350,000 or the Panavision camera used to film Episode IV that went for $625,000. So, no auction items. And not an item put up for sale at a crazy price no one would pay. But rather, find an item that is (or was) for sale to the public with the highest price, and send your answer (please include a link to help me research your answers) to ootinicast@gmail.com.The person who finds the most expensive Star Wars merchandise will win a Tauntaun Fawn code courtesy of BioWare and one of the latest Cartel Packs.

In event of a tie, there will be a random drawing. I have found an item, specifically a Boba Fett item, priced at $US1299.99, so try to beat my score!

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.7.2a was deployed on Thursday. No sign yet of Game Update 1.7.3!
Jeff Hickman, SWTOR’s Executive Producer, has published his third State of the Game. Eric Musco (Community Manager) subsequently clarified why they’re charging Cartel Coins for the upcoming “barbershop”, what Jeff meant by 8 week content releases, and that we’d be getting news about the solution to the APAC servers’ population issue early next week.
There has been plenty of work done on the PTS; you can find all the patch notes in the Test Center.
The Old Republic Insider Episode 5 was released (also on YouTube), featuring Bruce MacLean (Senior Development Director) and Cory Butler (Producer).
It appears that the Empire does have a (very) slight lead over the Republic in terms of population.
Players have been using the bolstering system on the Western Ice Shelf of Ilum to level to 50 extremely quickly. While this is not being classified as an exploit, BioWare will be making changes to ensure that this won’t be possible.
A recent issue was introduced that caused a chestpiece’s hood to no longer show, thus leaving the helmet exposed. A different problem resulted in some Trooper helmets not showing at all. Both should be fixed in the upcoming Game Update 1.7.3.
Phillip Holmes, SWTOR’s Senior Manager of Security, announced the self-service options that would be available in April, with some coming with the initial security change on April 2nd. He also answered yet more questions about the change.
EA are having a promotion across multiple free-to-play games that apparently offer unique SWTOR pets for playing those games. Dulfy has a guide summarising what’s known about which games, and what’s required to obtain the pets. Subscribers cannot yet get these pets, though they will become available at some point in the future.

4. Community

A reminder that if you want to know some background on those nefarious Hutts—some of it quite surprising—please see Darth Kenji’s latest Lesson from the Holocron, “Warlords and Gangsters”.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @Bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @MikeG_75 (MikeG) @Jeboneyus (Jared), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @HamSammich509, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @DarthKenji (William Keele, author of our Lessons from the Holocron), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @Adam_Schumpert, @Kingkornholio, @_Baffle6h (Baffle), @ForceChuckle, @Mal_Kizdek_14h (Shammar) and @Thoroughmas12m (Thomas Midena), and an email from Quaza.

You can see a slightly out-of-date spec for Chill’s PvP Powertech here.

Here’s Darth Wantsom, the creation of @HamSammich509 inspired by The Harbinger’s downtime:

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 70

teo — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:27:57 +0000

The Gree are back, the march to Makeb begins, and the Hutts begin offering reward points for the Cartel Market! All this and more as we discuss what’s in Game Update 1.7.2.

1. Introduction

Hyp learns that talking back to a Sith may sometimes end badly.

Baldy models the Cartel Luxury Skiff, one of the most desirable speeders to have been added to the Cartel Market’s Packs.

Baldy certainly isn’t getting any prettier.

2. Trivia Question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Tony T!

3. The Holofeed

Game Update 1.7.2 was released during Tuesday’s maintenance.
It includes the introduction of the Contraband Resale Corporation, a Hutt-controlled organisation with which players can earn reputation. It’s effectively reward points for buying Contraband Packs (introduced with Shipment Two) from the Cartel Market. Dulfy has provided a guide that tells you all you need to know!
Some players’ concerns about the new reputation were addressed by Eric Musco (Community Manager). He also said that the Certificates which (in addition to reputation and credits) are used to purchase items from the reputation vendors are currently bind-on-pickup, and may be changed to bind-to-legacy.
The armor from the character creation screen for the Bounty Hunter will be made available in Game Update 1.7.2; the final class, the Trooper, will have their armor added after the launch of the expansion.
The Gold Scalene armor was removed from the Cartel Market in response to community feedback in Game Update 1.7.2. In addition, our companions can now equip all reputation armor, and the level requirement of that armor (which is all bind-to-legacy) has been reduced from 45 to 10.
The Gree have returned, and there is now a new speeder available, the Blue Sphere Transport Enclosure. While it is currently bind-on-pickup, it will be changed to be bind-to-legacy in Game Update 1.7.3.
The March to Makeb is a promotion to prepare players for the expansion. It includes four double XP weekends. Each weekend starts Friday 1pm CDT (Sat 5am AEDT, Fri 6pm GMT) and runs through to Monday 2am CDT (Mon 6pm AEDT, Mon 7am GMT). Note that it only affects XP (not Valor or reputation), all XP boosts apply to the doubled XP, but rested XP is excluded.
- March 15-18
- March 22-25
- March 29-April 1
- April 5-8
We believe that this means that Game Update 2.0 may be released on Tuesday April 9th, with early access to Makeb beginning shortly thereafter.
There was a SWTOR panel at SXSW Interactive, which can be found on YouTube.
Phillip Holmes, SWTOR’s Senior Manager of Security, provided us with all we could possibly want to know about the upcoming security changes, most notably the removal of logging in using one’s email address.

4. Community

A useful resource for those interested in both the normal and heroic space missions is Nefash’s Pilot Training School.

If you’re into PvP, Jacob Hausman’s Rated Warzone Guide is worth reading; the warzone strategies are good to know even if you’re not in a rated group.

Darth Kenji has resurrected his Lessons from the Holocron series with a new installment, “Warlords and Gangsters”, which reveals some surprising revelations about the Hutts!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @HamSammich509 (Ham Sammich), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @lesman72 (Les), @Eskatun, @GregCarter78 (not of Mars), @TheTurg (Terg), @terencemyers, @Dimbo56, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @grimrok (Grim), @voyak, @thecandalore (Can’dalore) and @Darklighter159 (Dillon Cotter).

Here we have Dillon’s “missing granny”:

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 69

teo — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 01:44:25 +0000

Plenty of news to cover this week, including coverage of the recent Community Cantina held in San Francisco.

1. Introduction

Hyp provides a side-by-side comparison between the gold and red versions of his new speeder:

Here is Hyp’s Marauder, Baldy, showing her inner beauty.

To enhance that lovely visage, Hyp has found Baldy a new outfit.

2. Trivia Question

Just like seeing which actors tried out for famous roles is instructive, amusing, and disturbing, it can also be interesting to see how characters were “tried out” in early drafts before becoming the characters we know.

Which characters started out as the following?

65-year-old General Starkiller?
A 14-year-old princess with two brothers?
A fat humanoid pirate?
A slimy, green alien with no nose and large gills?
Originally named Buffy?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code and a Space Pirate’s Cartel Pack, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

BioWare has explained what everyone will get with Game Update 2.0 versus what is included in the separate Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion.
All issues with the PTS Character Copy should now be resolved. This includes currency conversion. No need to strip your companions before transferring!
While some issues have been fixed that were causing game client crashes, the nasty bug that occurs in the last conversation in both The Esseles and Black Talon remains.
The vendors for Gree reputation items are apparently going to be permanently available, even whilst the Grey Secant is off doing its mysterious thing elsewhere.
Rob Hinkle provides some clarification on the itemisation of PvP armor and weapons in Game Update 2.0.
Marshall Carr attended the Community Cantina in San Francisco, and wrote up his impressions. BioWare have posted the locations of future Community Cantinas—if you can get to one, certainly sounds like it would be a good time!
The long-awaited ready check feature is currently planned for Game Update 1.7.3 (at the time of recording, Game Update 1.7.1 is on live).
The bug that prevented companions from wearing reputation armour will be fixed in Game Update 1.7.2.
From April 2nd, we must use our SWTOR display name to log into the game and swtor.com, with the option of using your registered email address being removed. Security concerns raised by the community were addressed (very, very thoroughly) by SWTOR’s Senior Manager of Security, Phillip Holmes.
Ranked warzones are being actively worked on, but after they were pulled at the last minute last time, BioWare is wary about saying anything more until they know it’s ready to go.
It’s been confirmed that at level 55, we will still only be able to deploy five companions at any one time.
Cartel Coin gift cards are now available in Europe and the US.

4. Community News

Jacob Hausman has written a Ranked Warzone Guide. If you have an existing ranked team, or would like to create one, there’s plenty of great advice here!

Chong created a short Harlem Shake video, featuring a few members of our Ootini Knights and Ootini Rage guilds.

5. Force Feedback

Our sincere thanks to Weihan Sun for his donation!

We discuss tweets from @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @michaeloranje, @Dimbo56, @TheTurg, @ChazLobo, @JediKrackr, @ForceChuckle, @GregCarter78, @DanCremer, @terencemyers and @Geldarion (from Corellian Run Radio).

The site with crafting information that Kara requested is www.swtor.co.uk.

6. Outro

Thanks to Chong (@EmpireDivider), Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Redna also invites players on The Bastion to /cjoin cpunks and/or to friend his characters Numa and Rysto.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 68

teo — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 02:51:21 +0000

We discuss the latest patch (1.7.1) to live, along with the SWTOR news, again focusing on what we’re finding out about Game Update 2.0 from the PTS.

1. Introduction

Hyp provides the following pictures from our second run to get the +10 datacron on the Republic Fleet:

Hyp also provided an action shot of his Marauder (Baldy), in all her… ummm… glory…

2. Trivia Question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Nightmare!

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.7.1 was released during maintenance on Wednesday, postponed from Tuesday. This includes the reduction in repair costs and the further 50% off all repairs until the expansion is released.
This week’s Cartel Market update summarises what’s new in Patch 1.7.1, including the Gold Scalene Armor Set.

Joveth Gonzalez is leaving BioWare for a new opportunity; we wish him the best of luck! However, the community remains in the good hands of Eric Musco (who’s the new SWTOR Community Manager), Amber Green and Courtney Woods.
The CE (Collector’s Edition) vendor will have something added to what’s being sold in patch 1.7.2, with at least the intention of further goodies being added in the future.
Those on the underpopulated Australian servers were reminded that they have not been forgotten, though there’s yet to be a solution implemented.
We discuss the timing of the presumably separate release of Game Update 2.0 followed by the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion, based on some interesting speculation by Mark Emery via Facebook.
The existing commendations will be converted into the new Classic Commendations currency when 2.0 is released, using the following ratios:
- Tionese Commendations 6:1
- Columi Commendations 4:1
- Daily Commendations 4:1
- Black Hole Commendations 1:1
While Classic Commendations have a weekly cap (200) and an overall cap (400), a “soft” cap of 800 will be used for the one-time conversation with Game Update 2.0.
Rob Hinkle answered several questions to do with how the new PvP brackets (levels 10-29, 30-54 and 55) will work, including how bolstering will work (1, 2, 3).
It seems that the plan is for players in high-end operation gear will probably not be replacing anything until levels 54-55 as they level through Makeb.

4. Force Feedback

Our sincere thanks to Voyak and Snowy for their most generous donations!

We discuss tweets from @TheTurg, @HamSammich509, @AHlaenxna (Vis), @DarthKenji, Dan K, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @therealHausman (Jacob), @ForceChuckle, @terencemyers, @GregCarter78, @banyo1984 (Benjamin B), @Eskatun, @ThePiousPunk, @GregCarter78, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @Ryan_B1313, @DanCremer, @MikeG_75, @JediKrackr, @Geldarion, @cwctoby (Toby B), @Justin_The_Nerd and @madmar_sith.

We also give our thoughts on a proposal from Mr Obtuse for the introduction of an intermediate level between Preferred status and Subscriber.

5. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 67

teo — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 03:29:22 +0000

We discuss the initial information about Game Update 2.0: Scum and Villainy, which is now on the PTS for everyone to try!

1. Introduction

This portrait of Hyp’s Scoundrel, Pearlneck, almost makes him look good.

Meanwhile, Hyp’s Marauder, Baldy, receives a Jawagram from an admirer. They’re just good friends.

2. Trivia Question

There are lots of reused items in game, as there are in any MMO. For example, on nearly every fence near a military base or even factory you will find bright yellow signs that say, in Aurebesh, “KEEP OUT.” Also common are Wanted posters, with that word and a credit symbol.

But the most common words I think you will see in-game are the words in Aurebesh for “VIABLE SAMPLE.” So the question is: where will you see them? Hint: you will find this phrase on every planet in the game, excepting the starter planets, and never in a spaceport or cantina.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.7.0a and Patch 1.7.0b were deployed this week, intending to fix the cooldown for the new Priority Transport: Personal Starship. However, it was not to be; the global Legacy unlocks to reduce the cooldown from 24 hours to 1 hour have been disabled for now.
Game Update 2.0: “Scum and Villainy” is now live on the PTS. This appears to be conceptually separate from the expansion, which contains the story content on Makeb. Its patch notes were posted on the forums (part 1, part 2).
The weapons from the Relics of the Gree world event are Bind-to-Legacy, though the components which are needed to purchases the weapons are Bind-on-Pickup. The intention is that players without multiple alts are not disadvantaged in terms of acquiring the weapons.
While companions can’t currently wear Gree armour, this will be fixed in a subsequent update.
BioWare have acknowledged that equipment repair costs are too high with the change introduced in Game Update 1.7, and as of the next maintenance the costs will be reduced. As an apology for the inconvenience, all repairs will be 50% of that reduced cost until early access to the expansion commences.
Rob Hinkle explained the proposed changes to Expertise, bolstering and PvP itemisation that are coming in Game Update 2.0.

4. Community News

Thanks to the Revcast crew for allowing Chill and Teo to join them in their second episode! You can find out more about Revcast at revcast.net.

Chill has written an article that documents PvE and PvP 2- and 4-piece set bonuses for all classes.

Also, a reminder to have a look at Ryan (a.k.a. Grav)’s article “PUG”, which was published last week.

5. Force Feedback

Our sincere thanks to @HamSammich509 for his generous donation!

We discuss tweets from @TheTurg, @mark00z, @DarthSolarion, @EmpireDivider (Moff Chong), @ChazLobo, @JediKrackr, @ForceChuckle, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @Ryan_B1313, @bytorsnowdog, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @AspisVodox, @DanCremer, @Darklighter159, @banyo1984 (Benjamin Becker), @HamSammich509 and @GregCarter78.

6. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja), Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Redna also invites players on The Bastion to /cjoin cpunks and/or to friend his characters Numa and Rysto.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 66

teo — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 03:16:48 +0000

Given the unexpected arrival of Game Update 1.7, we discuss the various additions and changes, including our initial experiences with the Relics of the Gree world event.

1. Introduction

Hyp has developed an interest in Star Wars Origami:

He also models three moods, with the clear winner being “Astounded”:

Ecstatic

Eager

Astounded

For all you need to know about contacting BioWare customer service, see this help center article.

2. Trivia Question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Frankie (a.k.a. Drako)!

3. The Holofeed

Game Update 1.7: Return of the Gree was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
It included the new character perk “Priority Transport: Personal Starship” which is intended to have a default cooldown of 24 hours, with global Legacy unlocks allowing it to be reduced to an hour. This isn’t quite working as intended.
GTN searches are temporarily limited to 4000 results (i.e., 500 pages), and all search terms must be 3 or more characters. Unfortunately this means that numbers (like those used to distinguish between mods) cannot be searched on. This restriction should be lifted in a future patch, as an alternative solution to the performance issue caused by broad searches that were previously possible is found.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Insider Episode 4 was published (also on YouTube).
Cartel Market Update: February 12th, 2013 lets us know what’s changed on the Cartel Market.
Game Update 1.7 Developer Blog: Relics of the Gree Event gives us an overview of the new world event.
BioWare likes the idea of a barber shop, but no promises on when it’ll be added to the game.
SMS billing has been added for a number of European countries and Australia, to allow the purchase of the smallest pack of Cartel Coins (450).

4. Community News

Ryan (a.k.a. Grav) has written another article, titled “PUG”. It may encourage you to be a little more forgiving (or at least understanding) the next time your Operation group or Flashpoint party PUGs in an extra member.

Just a reminder to check out Jacob Hausman’s article, “Enduring Shadow, the PvP Tank Guide”, if you are interested in PvP tanking.

Finally, Dulfy’s SWTOR titles guide may be just what you’re looking for, to find that perfect title that suits your character’s personality.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ChazLobo, @StoleTarts, @tshapedvisor, @Dimbo56 (SWTOR Mayor!), @JediKrackr, @ForceChuckle, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @Ryan_B1313, @bytorsnowdog, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @AspisVodox, @hypknotoad, @Geldarion, @weihanthekidsun and @GregCarter, and a Facebook comment from Mark Emery.

Hyp provided yet another portrait of Pearlneck modelling the “Astounded” mood, this time while raiding in Terror From Beyond:

@JediKrackr sent us a picture of the new companion customisation for the ship droid that makes him look like a Crash Test Dummy:

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Redna also invites players on The Bastion to /cjoin cpunks and/or to friend his characters Numa and Rysto.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 65

teo — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 04:34:44 +0000

In the lull before Game Update 1.7 appears on the PTS, we discuss the newly revealed details about the upcoming reputation system, and an interview with PvP designer Rob Hinkle.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia Question

The original trilogy boasts some great old-time actors, including Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing among them. Using IMDB, answer the following two questions:

What actor with a speaking role of the original trilogy has the earliest acting credit?
What actor with a speaking role of the original trilogy has the most acting credits?

I hope I’ve done enough research to properly identify the correct answers, but will of course check on any new answers that come in.

Hint: Alec Guinness does not have the earliest acting credit.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

In an interview with CNBC, Disney’s CEO Bob Gier has confirmed that they are “working on a few standalone films” that are “derived from great Star Wars characters that are not part of the overall saga”. Can more Star Wars movies be anything but a good thing? Well, maybe…
In Game Update 1.7 Developer Blog: Galactic Reputation, Jesse Sky (Lead Flashpoints and Operations Designer) gives us more detail about how the upcoming reputation system will work.
Rob Hinkle is interviewed in the latest of BioWare’s “Meet the Developers” series. Questions subsequently asked by the community were answered by Rob in a forum post.

4. Community News

Chong has created a machinima dance video that is well worth watching. Impressive work!

We’d like to introduce Jacob Hausman, who has posted his first article: “Enduring Shadow, the PvP Tank Guide”. It provides a thorough overview of PvP tanking on either a Sith Assassin or Jedi Shadow, with plenty of useful tips and tricks to help one do better in warzones.

5. Force Feedback

We’d like to sincerely thank the inimitable @ForceChuckle for his most generous donation.

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @GregCarter78, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @JediKrackr, @TheTurg, @markthetwit (Mark Power), @obtuseViolator, @MikeG, @StoleTarts, @Telenroidswtor, @Ryan_B1313 (Ryan Barth), @voyak, @DarthBaphomett, @braggge (Lanier), @HolyCrapItsLate, @ruleoftwocast (Rule of Two Podcast) and @Geldarion, and Facebook comments from Eli Ejb and Jeremiah V.

@GregCarter78 provided evidence that the security chests in Outlaw’s Den really do exist:

@EmpireDivider (Chong) sent us this screenshot of a glitch in Void Star, that appears to grant him the power of flight (or at least levitation):

He also participated in a flawless victory in Ancient Hypergate (level 50):

@StoleTarts (Megan) mentioned that the food buffs available from Cantina vendors can make leveling a little bit easier:

@HolyCrapItsLate mentioned that on SWTOR’s Facebook page, a couple of pictures of (presumably) Game Update 1.7 armor had been posted:

The interview with Cory Butler from just over a year ago, in which he answered a question about our starships being used as customisable housing, can be found here.

You can catch @Geldarion on the second episode of TORWars TV.

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Redna also invites players on The Bastion to /cjoin cpunks and/or to friend his characters Numa and Rysto.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

OotiniCast Episode 64

teo — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 04:35:53 +0000

After discussing some SWTOR news, we dive into Redna’s second theorycrafting discussion, this time covering how to balance the defensive stats utilised by the three tanking ACs.

1. Introduction

Hyp shares a couple of memorable pictures of his characters:

Baldy taking the elevator down on Quesh

Pearlneck looking a little the worse for wear

Teo discovered that the PTS Character Copy has been updated to support having more than 12 characters on a server:

2. Trivia Question

The original trilogy boasts some great old-time actors, including Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing among them. Using IMDB, answer the following two questions:

What actor with a speaking role of the original trilogy has the earliest acting credit?
What actor with a speaking role of the original trilogy has the most acting credits?

I hope I’ve done enough research to properly identify the correct answers, but will of course check on any new answers that come in. If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

In general Star Wars news, it was confirmed that J. J. Abrams will direct Star Wars: Episode VII.
The Electronic Arts Q3 2013 Earnings Conference Call was held on Wednesday afternoon. While the slides and financial statements released did not mention SWTOR, the game was addressed in the prepared comments made by Blake Jorgensen, EA’s CFO:

Extra content and free-to-play contributed $185 million, up 50% led by FIFA and Madden Ultimate Team and Star Wars: The Old Republic. These revenues relate to businesses on PC or consoles, where consumers pay for additional digital content—including virtual characters, map packs and micro-transactions associated with browser based games or MMOs—like Star Wars. As a reminder, on November 15 we launched our free-to-play option for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Very early indications have been positive and we are pleased with the initial results but it is too early to know how successful this will be in the long term.
…
Subscriptions, advertising, and other digital revenue contributed $79 million, growing 18% over the same period last year. The current year includes a full quarter of Star Wars subscriptions, but it was offset by a decline in other licensing digital revenue.

Patch 1.6.3a was released on Friday morning, that resolved the newly-introduced bug that was preventing Taral V from being completed.
A player prompted BioWare to update the Patch 1.6.3 patch notes to include the fact that it fixed the bug which left the glow from a companion’s lightsaber after that companion was dismissed.
BioWare confirmed that purchasing account-wide cargo bays and inventory slots will be immediately applied to all existing and new characters, ignoring any level restriction imposed if purchasing them with credits.
Many players have discovered that they did not receive their monthly grant of Cartel Coins. BioWare acknowledges that the issue is being investigated, and all affected players should receive their Cartel Coins towards the end of next week (6-8 February).
Across several posts (1, 2, 3), BioWare attempted to clarify how the “daily” missions for the heroic (50+) space missions work. The intention appears to be that a new mission (one of six) will become available on each day of the week (except Monday) at 6am CST, but won’t be retained in a character’s mission log when the next day’s mission becomes available. The current schedule is as follows:
- Tuesday—Far Cradle Strike (Imp)/Regnant Station (Rep)
- Wednesday—Kabal Station Defense (Imp)/Ardis Outpost Fortification (Rep)
- Thursday—Kanz Minefield (Imp)/New Covar Ice Field (Rep)
- Friday—Duma Strike (Imp)/Baros Ambush (Rep)
- Saturday—Lorta Escort (Imp)/Hypori Escort (Rep)
- Sunday—Cha Raaba Assault (Imp)/Thanium Disruption (Rep)
- Sunday—Operation Foe Smasher (Imp) Operation Clean Sweep (Rep)
Damion Schubert gave some insight into the amount of effort required to add non-human playable species.

4. Force Feedback

Chong’s second article Metal Gear: The Old Republic is now available, revealing why so many of the voices heard in SWTOR are familiar to MGS fans.

For pet collectors, Dulfy’s SWTOR pets guide is exactly what you need!

We discuss tweets from @ThePiousPunk, @JediKrackr, @EmpireDivider (Chong), @rbleamon, @DarthKenji, @GregCarter78, @terrencemyers, @masterbearjedi, @Voyak, @weihanthekidsun, @Evarwyn, @JaeOnasi, @RadioParagon and @Telenroidswtor (Telenroid), a comment on episode 62 from Deavante, and Facebook comments from Eli Ejb and Mark E.

Voyak found us the breadcrumb mission that starts the chain that takes players through the Boarding Party and The Foundry Flashpoints, picked up from the R2 unit as shown on the map (located at 4577, 4692) and screenshot he provided:

The discussion started by Chill was based on his worn out keyboard:

We’d like to shout out to Telenroid’s guild “Blasters and Lightsabers”, who are Republic-side on the west coast PvP server, The Bastion. They’re always open to more fun, friendly members on the server. Anyone in the guild can invite. They’re in the process of filling out extra raid groups, finding it hardest to find healers so far though. They’ve got Explosive Conflict hard mode on farm, and are gearing up to knock out Terror From Beyond (so far just 1 boss in).

There’s also the guild KRATH, on the Empire side of the Ebon Hawk server. They’re all about light roleplaying, warzones and community. If you’re interested, contact “Hydras”. You can find them on Twitter via @krathcult.

Our guildmate Kuze emailed in the following sceenshot of the UI he uses for healing our raid group:

He also provided the following showing that not all the water in SWTOR is ankle deep!

Finally, Kuze also showed that the class buffs do not affect a character’s main stat any more than it does Power:

5. Sarlacc Digest

Redna led our discussion this week, in which we covered the stats affecting damage mitigation and avoidance. The following are the graphs and table that Redna talks to:

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week. You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! You can subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and listen to us on Stitcher and Radio Paragon.

OotiniCast Episode 63

teo — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:04:38 +0000

We discuss patch 1.6.3 and the current news, including some insightful revelations about the Cartel Market from Damion Schubert.

1. Introduction

Hyp received the awesome helmet from Karagga at the end of our run through nightmare-mode Karagga’s Palace:

Meanwhile, on the Imperial side his levelling group toon (who we know fondly as “Baldy”) isn’t looking quite so dapper:

2. The Holofeed

Patch 1.6.3 was deployed during a 5 hour maintenance on Tuesday. For the second week in a row, the maintenance was 3 hours later than usual (starting at 5am CST rather than 2am). This is certainly a better time for Australians, putting the maintenance much later in our evening rather than at prime time!
The new items that were added to the Cartel Market have been documented by the ever-productive Dulfy. This includes the new speeder, the Czerka CR-17 Incendia, which costs 1800 Cartel Coins. Note that this adaptive speeder is per-character, and has greater knockoff protection than is granted by Speeder Piloting III.
A fix was included for Taral V, that requires that the final boss (General Eldikar) be defeated, thus eliminating the exploit that allowed him to be skipped. Unfortunately, it seems that this fix has caused Taral V to be unfinishable under any circumstances, though hopefully that’ll be fixed in the patch being deployed on Friday morning.
Alert players noticed that a new “PTS Character Copy” option has been added to our “My Account” page on SWTOR.com:
We were subsequently told that while the option is functional, it will have no effect until the PTS is again active. The intention is for it to be working for when Game Update 1.7 is deployed onto the PTS.
It was announced that anyone who pre-orders the expansion “Rise of the Hutt Cartel” will receive two in-game items and a title. Those who pre-ordered before January 7th will also get 5 days of early access.
A short video (Rise of the Hutt Cartel: First Look Video) was released (also on YouTube), showing in-game footage from the expansion.
It appears there was never any intention to provide scalable gear for low-level characters who have access to HK-51. The gear that he comes with was not locked to level 50 on the PTS, hence why it was able to be used by pre-50 characters; adding the level 50 restriction when Game Update 1.5 launched made it work the way it was intended. So hang onto the gear for when you reach level 50!
Damion Schubert provides some clear and honest answers to player questions about the Cartel Market (post 1, post 2).
Cory Kolek, a UI programmer working on SWTOR, announced a new feature coming in (it sounds like) Game Update 1.7, where the buffs and debuffs on all target frames will be scalable. Unfortunately, more sophisticated features (such as differentiating ones own buffs/debuffs from those of other players, and sharing key bindings between characters) are on the list but with no ETA.
Dulfy’s High res gallery of SWTOR speeders and mounts and SWTOR Endgame Color Crystals guide are now up-to-date. Well worth checking out!

3. Force Feedback

We’d like to welcome our new writer Grav, whose published his debut article “I can stop whenever I want!” about Cartel Market addiction. More good stuff from him to come!

We discuss tweets from @masterbearjedi (Raz), @ForceChuckle, @tshapedvisor, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @voyak, @Telenroidswtor, @revlo1983 (Rev. Nick Logan) and @vrodcruiser.

Chong (@EmpireDivider) provided a screenshot showing how to see the capture of a cube in Ancient Hypergate:

He also sent us the scoreboard from a warzone dominated (15/16) by Agents and Inquisitors:

Drew emailed in to ask whether we knew of any guilds that offer support for grouping on the long journey to level 50. Please email us if you know of a guild that might suit Drew, I’ll we’ll pass it on to him.

Eli Ejb asked us via Facebook about a issue that some players have been encountering when attempting to purchase Cartel Coins. We found some good information in the Cartel Coins FAQ, including the surprising revelation that there’s apparently a cap on how many Cartel Coins you can purchase in a given day.

In the words of its author (Terg Turgedson, @TheTurg), he provides a “fair and balanced take on SWTOR” in his blog post “The Real Agenda Behind Star Wars: The Old Republic”.

Also, a hearty greeting to the newest member of the SWTOR podcast community, the “Rule of Two Cast”. Best of luck to Virage and Kenzan in their podcasting adventure.

4. Outro

Next week’s Sarlacc Digest will be our second theorycrafting discussion, with Redna discussing defensive stats. We will be live-streaming the recording of the show, with details available on ootinicast.com/live.

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 62

teo — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 04:22:58 +0000

We go over the latest SWTOR news, including the first details to emerge about the upcoming Game Update 1.7 “Return of the Gree”. In our discussion, Redna takes us through the stats affecting damage and healing, including recommendations on how to best balance them on your characters.

1. Introduction

How the Security Key app looks on Hyp’s new Samsung Galaxy Note II:

2. Trivia Question

Han Solo is famous for many things, not the least of which is his own name: Solo immediately points out to the audience that the character tends to be a loner, who will undergo an internal struggle before he might join the Rebellion.

But Solo is hardly the only example of names having something to do with the character. Name as many as you can, within the following guidelines:

They should appear in at least one of the six movies; and
This is for proper names of individuals only, not generic ones like Sand People or one-time insults like “fuzzball.”

The one with the most such named characters by next Wednesday will win a Taun Fawn code courtesy of BioWare.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

Game Update 1.6.2a was deployed during maintenance on Tuesday, which was scheduled to start 3 hours later than usual.
BioWare published Game Update 1.7: Return of the Gree is coming soon!, providing a preview of the next game update coming roughly between the end of January and mid-February. More details can be found on Game Update 1.7′s main page.
They also published Cartel Market Update: January 10th, 2013, showing what was added (and what will soon be leaving) the Cartel Market.
Joveth finally revealed how they’ll be solving the issue introduced with the Phantom and Spymaster gear.
BioWare acknowledge that the server population problems afflicting the three Oceanic servers remain, and are soliciting feedback from the community for what should be done based on the current state of things.
If you haven’t seen it already, Chong’s article A Plague of Hate is well worth reading!

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Voyak, @AHlaenxna (Vis), @vayne_verso, @MikeG_75, @ChazLobo, @tshapedvisor, @rbleamon, @bytorsnowdog, @Rrubb, @AspisVodox and @JediKrackr.

Here is the ship that @EmpireDivider (Chong) saw on Empire-side Balmorra:

There is a new instalment of Dimbo the Trooper available, well worth reading!

@Galdarion refers us to his Gunslinger/Sniper Advanced Class Guide and his Tactical Strike column at Corellian Run Radio.

5. Sarlacc Digest

Redna led our discussion this week, in which we covered the stats affecting damage, specifically one’s primary stat (Strength, Willpower, Cunning or Aim), Critical Rating, Surge Rating, and Power. The following are the graphs that Redna talks to:

Power Damage

Damage from Primary Stat

Crit from Primary Stat

Crit Rating

Surge

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 61

teo — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 03:40:22 +0000

We discuss patch 1.6.2 and Jeff Hickman’s state of the game. Looks like lots to come in 2013 for SWTOR!

1. Introduction

The image from the official site that caught Hyp’s attention:

2. The Holofeed

Patch 1.6.2 was deployed during a long (8 hour) maintenance on Tuesday morning.
Dulfy has provided a breakdown of the new Cartel Market additions, including the contents of the Skip Tracer Cartel Pack.
This includes changes to the purchasable Spymaster and Phantom outfits. Joveth clarified what had happened. Damion Schubert posted about why the change was made, acknowledged that not everyone was happy, and promised that the issue would be remedied soon. He also dropped a very heavy hint that colour dye for armour is coming!
Character slots are now purchasable for 600 Cartel Coins. Up to 10 may be purchased. Each adds a character slot to all servers. Thus for subscribers, who have 12 character slots by default, they can increase this to 22 character slots per server by purchasing the maximum 10 character slots.
Preferred status players now have access to 6 character slots (account-wide and presumably per-server). It’s unclear whether purchasing character slots adds one extra character slot per server, or to the account-wide total.
Joveth provided an explanation for why the credit reward from the Heroic Space Missions was significantly reduced.
The icon for the button used to lock our action bars was unintentionally changed to be a filled triangle whether locked or unlocked (instead of the changeable padlock icon). You can still tell whether your action bars are locked by hovering over the button and reading the tooltip.
Jeff Hickman published his second SWTOR State of the Game blog post.

3. Force Feedback

Thanks to Radio Paragon for including us in their line-up!

We discuss tweets from @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Voyak, @Dimbo56, @AHlaenxna (Vis), @vayne_verso, @terencemyers, @michaeloranje, @MikeG_75, @ForceChuckle, @BillLentz and @masterbearjedi (Raz).

Chong wonders whether the tank dancer is new:

Matt (roguish98) emailed us about whether our expectations for endgame content should be eased to allow for more of SWTOR’s most excellent story content.

Daryl (also known as Wolfgangamadeus, Hansgruber, Fritzdourdan, Karlurban of the Thirteenth Legion guild on the Ebon Hawk) provides some advice regarding the Commando’s Assault spec.

We respond to Facebook comments from Greg C and William C, and a comment on episode 61 from Michael Sawyer.

4. Outro

Next week’s Sarlacc Digest will be a discussion about stats, probably the first in a series. Redna will start with the key offensive stats. We will be live-streaming the recording of the show, with more details available early next week on ootinicast.com/live.

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 60

teo — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 03:06:28 +0000

We discuss two interviews with BioWare’s Rob Hinkle about the current state and future plans for PvP in SWTOR.

1. Introduction

Chong’s awesome new assault cannon:

2. Trivia Question

Now that Disney owns LucasFilm, it seems a good time to ask: what song from Disney’s Fantasia contains a passage that John Williams clearly borrowed for one of his classic Star Wars songs?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @DarthKenji (William Keele), @StoleTarts (Megan), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @Dimbo56, @ForceChuckle, @Bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @MikeG_75 and @ChazLobo.

You can find the forum post that @ForceChuckle referred to about Ancient Hypergate strategy here.

We also discuss some great ideas from our guildmate Dan, and Dillon E’s suggestion for the addition of organic mounts to the game.

4. Sarlacc Digest

Rob Hinkle, Senior Systems Designer specialising in PvP, gave two interviews in recent weeks, prior to the deployment of Game Update 1.6:

Corellian Run Radio’s Exclusive Interview: Rob Hinkle at BioWare on PvP (11 December 2012)
TORWars Podcast #120: Exclusive PvP Interview with Senior Systems Designer, Rob Hinkle (7 December 2012)

5. Outro

Thanks to Chong (@EmpireDivider), Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 59

teo — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 02:06:38 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Red to reminisce about SWTOR’s first year. We also discuss a few things that we’d like to see added to the game in the coming months.

1. Introduction

2. The Holofeed

BioWare released the Free-to-play Preview Episode 3 trailer (also on YouTube).
TORWars published an interview with SWTOR’s Executive Producer, Jeff Hickman.
You have until 2 January 2013 to submit first anniversary celebration screenshots to BioWare.

3. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @ForceChuckle, @StoleTarts (Megan), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Voyak, @Dimbo56, @AHlaenxna (Vis), @hamb0ne10, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon) and @MikeG_75.

An old friend of ours, @Lexx_Sylveste, sent us the following image:

4. Sarlacc Digest

The following events from SWTOR’s first year was derived from Dulfy’s Half year of SWTOR, a timeline of major events, along with our own show notes that documented the news as it happened.

Dec 13: Early access begins
Dec 20: Launch
- operations: Eternity Vault (5) and Karagga’s Palace (3)
Jan 3: 215 operation SWTOR servers (124 in US and 91 in Europe)
Jan 18: Patch 1.1 “Rise of the Rakghouls” [launch + 4 weeks]
- operations: adds 2 more bosses to Karagga’s Palace (5)
- Flashpoint: Kaon Under Siege
- level 50s get their own PvP bracket (separate from levels 10-49)
Feb 2: EA earnings call (over 2 million in SWTOR sales, and currently 1.7 million active subscribers.)
Mar 1: Australian servers opened (without server transfers)
Mar 5: Guild Summit
Apr 12: Patch 1.2 “Legacy” [12 weeks since 1.1, 16 weeks from launch]
- legacy system
- operation: Explosive Conflict (4)
- Flashpoint: Lost Island
- warzone: Novarre Coast
- new daily area: The Black Hole on Corellia
- guild banks
- interface editor
- Sprint at level 1
- combat log
- Ilum “decommissioned” by removing dailies/weeklies
Apr 15: Live event: Rakghoul Plague Outbreak
Apr 18: Transfers to the Oceanic servers
Apr 22: Free 30 days of game time
Apr 24: Daniel Erickson: sub numbers not dropped, but peak concurrent users down
May 7: EA earnings call (1.3 million subscribers)
May 22: Layoffs
Jun 4: During E3 2012, announced Makeb, new operation (Terror from Beyond), new warzone (Ancient Hypergate), new species (Cathar), new companion (HK-51)
Jun 12: First server transfers (moved from Space Slug to The Harbinger, old servers left open)
Jun 26: Patch 1.3 “Allies” [10 weeks since 1.2, 26 weeks from launch]
- group finder
- character-specific legacy perks
- Alderaan updated to allow same-faction matches (previously just Hutt Ball)
- augment kits
- ranked warzones (pulled from 1.2, now here, pre-season)
- single neutral GTN
Jul 10: Mergers coming “later this summer”, origin servers locked to new characters
Jul 10: Free trial to level 15, rewards Kurtob Alliance Speeder
Jul 18: More layoffs
Jul 31: EA earnings call, announcement of SWTOR going free-to-play in November
Aug 14: Grand Acquisitions Race
Sep 17: Server consolidation, 12 characters per server
Sep 26: Patch 1.4 “Terror from Beyond” [13 weeks since 1.3, 39 weeks from launch, 6 weeks after Grand Acquisitions Race]
- operation: Terror from Beyond (5)
- group finder gains “previous location” feature
- delayed binding of BoP gear from flashpoints/operations
Oct 30: Disney acquires Star Wars
Nov 15: Patch 1.5 “HK-51 Activated” [7 weeks since 1.4]
Dec 11: Patch 1.6 “Ancient Hypergate” [3.5 weeks since 1.5]

5. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 58

teo — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 02:53:56 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Red and Hyp to discuss the announcement of SWTOR’s first expansion, “Rise of the Hutt Cartel”, due to arrive in Spring 2013.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Thomas D!

Here is the picture of Darth Vader’s chestplate that Chill found, showing the Hebrew writing which translates as “His deeds will not be forgiven, until he merits”:

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.6.1 was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
BioWare announces SWTOR’s first expansion, “Rise of the Hutt Cartel”.
- It can be pre-ordered from www.swtor.com/buy now for $US9.99 (50% off for subscribers) or $US19.99 (free/preferred status players).
- If you pre-order before 7 January 2013, you’ll get 5 days of early access prior to the expansion’s release.
- We were assured that top-end raiding gear will not be replaced by mission rewards while leveling from 50 to the new level cap of 55.
- A new active ability will be provided for all Advanced Classes, along with 5 skill points (1 per level from 50-55) and revamped/updated skill trees.
- There will not be class-specific stories; instead, there are two faction-specific stories.
- The expansion will take place on a single planet, Makeb.
- Some backstory was provided, explaining why Makeb’s people are seeking help from the Republic to fend off the conquering Hutt Cartel, and how the Empire hopes to take advantage of the conflict.
Unfortunately, dual-/multi-spec remains a distant dream.
The leg component of Revan’s robes, available in the Blockade Runner Cartel Pack, is apparently not authentic (at least as far as Revan’s portrayal in KOTOR/SWTOR). This will be addressed soon.
Damion Schubert (Lead Designer) has ackowledged that something went terribly wrong in the pricing on the Cartel Market of the three bundles containing Grade 7 starship upgrade. He went on to say that something will be done to fix the situation, though there’s no obvious solution that we could come up with.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @ForceChuckle, @StoleTarts (Megan), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Voyak, @Loudshirt0861 and @Dimbo56.

@JediAio (Aio) refers us to the article Very Cool SWTOR PC Case.

Chong (@EmpireDivider) found some awesome Star Wars mechandise in a toy store in Japan. These include two silk screens:

Also chopsticks shaped as lightsabers!

We also read emails from our guildmate Aio who reached legacy level 50, and Trev.

5. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 57

teo — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 03:22:20 +0000

This week’s show is all about the Game Update 1.6, which arrived a bit earlier than expected! In our discussion, we explain the mechanics of the new warzone, Ancient Hypergate.

1. Introduction

Hyp’s two new Empire characters:

Hornigina (Sith Sorcerer)

Baldygina (Sith Marauder)

2. Trivia question

One of the well-known Star Wars characters—let’s define as one who appears in more than one of the six movies—has something written either on their costume or on something their character carries. It is written in a foreign language—not the Star Wars alphabet of Aurabesh, but an actual Earth language. And not only that, but the most likely translation of the words shown describe the story arc of that character. Name the character involved and the Earth language used.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

Game Update 1.6 was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
Jeff Hickman (Executive Producer) and Damion Schubert (Lead Designer) provided a warm Welcome to Game Update 1.6: Ancient Hypergate via the community blog.
The Game Update 1.6 “Ancient Hypergate” trailer was released (also on YouTube).
BioWare have provided 1st anniversary fireworks to all players, and are giving the opportunity to submit screenshots showing anniversary celebration moments to be features on the SWTOR official site and Facebook page.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @Evarwyn, @PadmeAm (Hugo Commandeur), @JediTChalla (T’Challa), @voyak, @EmpireDivider (Chong), @DarthKenji, @Loudshirt0861 and @jerryang128 (Ango-Kyu).

Our guildmate Aio (@JediAio) sent a couple of screenshots, the first featuring his friend McCrash, living up to his name while retrieving a datacron on Corellia:

The second screenshot is Hoth at its bleakest:

Here is Hyp’s Sith Marauder looking somewhat the worse for wear:

Chong tweeted the following “Tane’go Chong is looking to tango…you feel? Brown Chicken Brown Cow… #makelovenotstarwars” with the associated image:

Ray Leamon (@rbleamon) sent us this picture of new armor being worn by an NPC on Korriban:

We also read emails from Jack Holt and Ben Petersen.

5. Sarlacc Digest

We discuss the mechanics of the new warzone, Ancient Hypergate.

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ), Chong (@EmpireDivider) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 56

teo — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 04:02:47 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by PvP veterans Redna and Chong to discuss the state of PvP as of Game Update 1.5, with lots of handy tips and tricks for doing well in the current four warzones.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Christian S!

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.5.2 was deployed during regular maintenance on Tuesday.
Another livestream Q&A was held on Thursday, where Jeff Hickman and Damion Schubert answered questions from the community posed by Joveth Gonzalez. Dulfy has posted a summary, transcript and video.
In a developer blog titled “The Importance of Player Feedback with the New Free-to-Play Option”, Jeff Hickman announced that Preferred players would be getting 4 quickslot bars (up from 2), 6 account-wide character slots (up from 2), and that the current limit of 50 characters account-wide for subscribers would be drastically increased.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @JediAio (Aio), @ForceChuckle, @JediTChalla (T’Challa), @voyak, @KairiahMedens, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @StoleTarts (Megan), @EmpireDivider (Chong) and @BillLentz.

@Ryan_B1313 wonders whether the following two NPCs were added to the Imperial Fleet in Game Update 1.5, or whether they’ve been there all along:

Our guildmate Terg models his latest look, which he has dubbed “cyborg samurai”:

We also read an email from Wolfgangamadeus (a.k.a. Fritzdourdan, Hangsgruber and Karlurban) of the Ebon Hawk.

5. Sarlacc Digest

In a wide-ranging discussion, we discuss the state of PvP in Game Update 1.5, leading into some recommended tactics for the four warzones (using the Reddit /r/swtor thread “Warzone education/discussion” as a starting point).

Next week, we’ll continue the PvP focus with a look at Ancient Hypergate, the new warzone coming in Game Update 1.6.

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Chong (@EmpireDivider) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 55

teo — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 04:01:15 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and first-time guest Redna to discuss the latest news. Our discussion topic centers on the new heroic space missions being introduced in Game Update 1.6. They certainly are challenging!

1. Introduction

Hyp provided a nice screenshot of his Imperial character, Hornigina, sporting the latest fashion from the Cartel Market.

2. Trivia question

We’re extending last week’s question for another week. Please help us find a home for a Tawntaun Fawn!

Detractors of the prequels sometimes argue that George Lucas almost killed the Star Wars franchise. But what other well-known director/writer/producer, who has similarly made at least one sci-fi movie, also came close to killing the Star Wars franchise during the making of the original series, by delaying one of the three original movies for weeks upon weeks and adding 20% to its cost?

Original hint: It is not George Lucas, nor is it either of the directors of Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi.

New hint: The movie in question is Empire Strikes Back.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.5.1 was deployed during regular maintenance on Tuesday morning. However, it introduced a nasty bug where companion gear did not contribute stats when first summoned; players had to requip all their gear each time. That was quickly fixed in patch 1.5.1a, deployed the following morning.
A post in the Customer Service forum indicates that most players should receive their 100 CC (Cartel Coins) per month for having a security key attached to their account around the 15th (based on the date the free-to-play launched). If you add a security key now, that day of the month will be when you get your 100 CC. This allocation is independent of the subscription CC stipend.
The advertised free character, guild or Legacy name change that subscribed players could get per month is not yet available, but is coming.
In response to player feedback, Preferred status players will be getting 4 quickslot bars (up from 2), in next Tuesday’s patch.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Rrubb, @ForceChuckle, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @grimrok (Grim), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @Arveshet, @Ahnog, @Dimbo56, @vayne_verso, @StoleTarts, @JediTChalla (T’Challa) and @JKremss; we also respond to a forum post from DroidDreamer.

Here’s the picture that Hyp took of his bare-chested Scoundrel, along with Teo’s Jedi Guardian and the Party Jawa:

5. Sarlacc Digest

In the first of our two-part series about the content coming in Game Update 1.6, we discuss the new space game missions. They are introduced by Lead Designer Michael Backus in Developer Update: Heroic Space Missions.

From our own experience on the PTS, they are indeed heroic (in that they’re very challenging), especially with the Grade 6 starship upgrades that are currently available. The missions recommend Grade 7+ upgrades, which Dulfy describes in SWTOR patch 1.6 Grade 7 Starship Upgrades and HM Space Missions. In summary, by ship item slot:

Ship armor: 500 Fleet Commendations
Energy shield: Cybertech schematic (700 Fleet Commendations)
Shield regenerator: 150 Daily Commendations
Beam charger: 500 Fleet Commendations
Beam generator: 500 Fleet Commendations
Missile magazine: Cybertech schematic (700 Fleet Commendations)
Power conversion module: 300,000 credits
Electronic Warfare Pod: Cybertech schematic (200 Daily Commendations)
EMP Generator: 150 Daily Commendations
Proton torpedoes: (no upgrade)

It seems we’ll definitely be needing to run a lot of existing space missions to accumulate sufficient Fleet Commendations to purchase all of the upgrades; at least the ones for Daily Commendations will be easier to obtain! There is an informative Reddit post (Gearing up for HM 1.6 Space Missions!) giving a breakdown of how efficient the space missions are in terms of time versus Fleet Commendations earned.

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 54

teo — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 03:12:34 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss the release of Game Update 1.5 “HK-51 Activated” and free-to-play!

1. Introduction

2. Trivia question

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

On Thursday 15 November, Game Update 1.5 “HK-51 Activated” was released, which included making SWTOR free-to-play! The projected 12 hour downtime was extended to around 15 hours, but once it came up things seemed stable. A short downtime was needed the following morning to deploy a small patch (1.5.0a).
Jeff Hickman (Executive Producer) and Blaine Christine (Senior Producer) posted a welcome for the update, summarising its features and emphasising the awesomeness of those Cartel Packs.
Included with the release was the rest of the pricing information for Cartel Coins (via buy.swtor.com):
- $US4.99 buys 450 CC ($1 = 90 CC)
- $US9.99 buys 1050 CC ($1 = 105 CC)
- $US19.99 buys 2400 CC ($1 = 120 CC)
- $US39.99 buys 5500 CC ($1 = 137 CC)
The monthly stipend was also explained, with more per month based on the length of game time subscribed or purchased:
- 30 days (1 month) subscription for $US14.99 – 500 CC/month
- 60 days (2 months) game time card for $US29.99 – 525 CC/month
- 90 days (3 months) subscription for $US41.97 ($US13.99/month) – 550 CC/month
- 180 days (6 months) subscription for $US77.94 ($US12.99/month) – 600 CC/month
Having a digital (subscribers only) or physical security key attached to an account will grant an extra 100 CC/month.
The Friend Referral programme continues, granting a one-time 500 CC when your referred friend subscribes, and an additional 100 CC/month for each month they remain subscribed.
A few days after launch, a trailer was released: “A Galaxy of Possibilities” (also on YouTube).
For Free and Preferred players, it was revealed that the 2 character slot limit was per account, not per server.
Some new frequently asked questions have been added to the Help Center:
- Physical “Cartel Coin Cards” can be purchased from BestBuy and GameStop in the US, each costing $US19.99, and conferring 2400 CC. A unique account-wide mini-pet is granted the first time a card is used from each retailer (Arctic Manka Lynx from BestBuy, Lobelode from GameStop).
- Free Player Guilds are guilds created by Free or Preferred players, with a slightly reduced feature set for the Guild Leader.
- Legacy will unlock earlier now (previously it was the end of Chapter 1), though it has yet to be discovered just how early, or what the triggering event is.
- Player status (Free, Preferred or Subscriber) does not grant any kind of boost to conversation or loot rolls!
There are breadcrumb missions that lead players to Section X (thanks to Hru for pointing these out):
- Republic Fleet: General Conlath [-4590, -4745] (southern end of the GTN quarter, at the bottom of the steps that lead up towards the Mission Departures elevator)
- Imperial Fleet: Captain Gostel [4710, 4800] (in the main corridor that runs south from the central hub, at the top of the steps that lead down to the Crew Skills quarter)
BioWare’s Damion Schubert (Lead Designer) answered a set of questions from Dulfy in SWTOR F2P & Future content interview with Damion Schubert.
Game Update 1.6 is already on the PTS! You can find the current patch notes in the Test Center. Game Update 1.6 includes the new Ancient Hypergates warzone, and six new 50+/hard mode space missions for each faction.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @JediTChalla (T’Challa), @Dimbo56 (Dimbo), @ForceChuckle, @tshapedvisor, @VinzerFlinn, @killed_bydeath, @TullyAckland, @JKremss, @HolyCrapItsLate, @SWTORReforged, @IRBountyHunter, @sochobbit, @Thoroughmas, @vayne_verso, @copythat22, @terencemyers, and @voyak.

The irrepressible Chong (@EmpireDivider) provided some pictures for our enjoyment:

Chong has a new pimp speeder. Thanks @SWTOR

@SWTOR The temptation is too strong!

Not only can HK51 one shot your foes… He can also get down!!!

5. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 53

teo — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 05:34:20 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp are joined by SWTOR Reforged’s Evarwyn on the eve of Game Update 1.5′s release to talk about the latest news. We also examine three case studies of players wishing to take the free-to-play route, and consider how much it will actually cost them.

1. Introduction

Evarwyn, who we were honoured to have join us this week, is one of the hosts of SWTOR Reforged, a most excellent SWTOR podcast. He also co-manages the Quest Gaming Network, which includes many excellent podcasts in addition to SWTOR Reforged.

2. Trivia question

We had some great entries, which you can see in this post; all easily matched or surpassed the coolness of Chill’s original image. The winner was chosen randomly, rather than trying to judge which was the best: congratulations to Chong!

3. The Holofeed

The announcement confirming our estimate of free-to-play’s release being Thursday 15 November came not long after we recorded. There was also a press conference that was attended by convention media outlets, including Darth Hater, who provided a summary of what was covered.
The second video previewing free-to-play was released (also on YouTube).
BioWare released a developer update that gives an overview of the new Section X on Belsavis and the quest line to obtain our new companion, HK-51.
A developer blog gives some background into what’s coming with the new Nightmare Mode for the operation Explosive Conflict.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @ForceChuckle, @ActiveNick (Nick Landry), @PedroLopezJr, @IRBountyHunter, @Dimbo56 and @voyak, and comments from T’Challa and Murraugh.

5. Sarlacc Digest

We consider three case studies for players who wish to play without subscribing, and attempt to determine the minimum they can spend to do this. In all cases, we assume that the player will either be a former subscriber, will subscribe temporarily, or will purchase at least $4.99 worth of Cartel Coins, thus permanently granting them Preferred Status.

Where prices are shown, they are given as a range; the higher value (shown first) assumes CC are purchased by the $4.99 packs containing 450 CC ($1 buys 90 CC), followed by a lower value (shown second) which is the cost if purchasing the $39.99 packs (5500 CC, $1 buys 137 CC).

Case 1: Former subscriber with an existing geared 50 who wants to raid

As a former subscriber, we assume they will have already unlocked sufficient inventory modules and cargo bays, and thus will not need to purchase more.

If they purchase the following, their initial investment will be either 2050 CC ($22.75-14.99) for a single character, or 4590 CC ($50.90-33.39) for the same items purchased account-wide:

Authorization: Artifact Equipment (1200/$13.31-8.73 or 2700/$29.94-19.64)
Unlock: Additional Quickbar (250/$2.78-1.82 or 540/$5.99-3.93)
Unlock: Guild Bank Access (600/$6.66-4.37 or 1350/$14.97-9.82)

These are probably the minimum that a former subscriber could get away with. After that is the recurring cost of the weekly pass to access operations:

Weekly Pass: Operations (240/$2.67-1.75)

While there is a significant outlay to start, the ongoing cost would end up being lower than a subscription, especially if purchasing the CC in the largest pack.

It’s worth noting that there is no need to also purchase the weekly pass for Flashpoints, as that only is required to obtain more than 3 rolls on loot drops per week. Without the pass, a player can still do hard modes to do the weekly and daily quests.

Case 2: New player who just wants to play KOTOR 3

The assumption is that this player has never subscribed before, wants to play SWTOR for its single-player story, and has no interest in the endgame. However, they may play through multiple times on each faction.

BioWare has actually been most generous for this case, with the only mandatory purchases (we believe) being the following (both account-wide) totalling 1320 CC ($14.65-9.61).

Unlock: Additional Quickbar (540/$5.99-3.93)
2 x Unlock: Inventory Module (390/$4.33-2.84)

There are also recurring cost if the player chooses to purchase consumables, such as:

Medical Probes (500/$5.55-3.64)
Fleet Pass (Single Use) (90/$1.00-0.66)

Weekly passes for Flashpoints aren’t really necessary, as they can be experienced without the pass, with the only limitation being three loot rolls per week. Note that passing on a loot roll does not increment your total (though losing the loot roll does!).

Case 3: New player who wants to do it all, including eventually endgame

This case is more or less a combination of the first two cases. We believe this player will eventually purchase the following account-wide unlocks for 6315 CC ($70.04-45.95):

Authorization: Artifact Equipment (2700/$29.94-19.64)
Unlock: Guild Bank Access (1350/$14.97-9.82)
Unlock: Additional Quickbar (540/$5.99-3.93)
2 x Unlock: Inventory Module (390/$4.33-2.84)
Unlock: Crew Skill Slot (945/$10.48-6.88)

Once they’re at endgame, they can then purchase the necessary weekly passes to do operations, Flashpoints or warzones (240/$2.67-1.75). It seems clear that if a player wants unlimited access to two or more of those activities, they’re better off subscribing.

Subscribing for even a short duration is also a good way to unlock inventory space and cargo bays using accumulated credits.

6. Outro

Thanks to Evarwyn (@Evarwyn) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

OotiniCast Episode 52

teo — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:00:49 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss various developer updates, including Jeff Hickman’s State of the Game. We also review the Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia question

This one isn’t exactly a trivia question, but should be fun. Beat Chill’s cool score! He found a fun place to be in game that he didn’t know you could get to, then took a screen shot.

That’s his sorcerer standing on the cheek of the golden statue of Karagga the Hutt on Nar Shaddaa. Of course, he’d love to be on the hat, but it turns out the brim is too steep. He’s so high up that the ceiling on this screenshot has partly disappeared and the buildings of Nar Shaddaa show through.

Anyway, to enter this week, send in a screenshot of your SWTOR toon at the coolest or just most unusual or hard-to-get-to place in game.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

There was a short maintenance this week, on Wednesday (after being postponed from Tuesday) with no new patch. We are predicting that Game Update 1.5, and with it free-to-play, will launch next week on Thursday 15 November.
Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer for SWTOR, delivers his first State of the Game.
Damion Schubert, Lead Designer, has written the Developer Update: Free-to-Play Option. As Joveth subsequently pointed out, it was actually written a few weeks ago; free-to-play is far closer to being ready than the article implies!
We were provided with some background story for our soon-to-be-acquired sixth companion in the Community Developer Blog: HK-51 Classified Intel.
There is also Developer Dispatch: HK-51 Activated, a short video (also on YouTube) elaborating on what’s coming in Game Update 1.5.
Damion tells us that they’re looking for some more rewards to be added to the Legacy system for those who’ve reached its cap (Legacy Level 50), but we shouldn’t expect them until sometime after free-to-play has launched.
He also confirmed that the new warzone Ancient Hypergates will be delivered in Game Update 1.6, following the launch of free-to-play; he anticipates it’ll be out before the end of 2012.
In Developer Update: Technical Changes in Game Update 1.5, Ben Cloward (Senior Technical Artist) tells us about his enhancement of the shaders used by the game engine to recreate the effect of light shining through leaves and grass. Chill observed this directly on the PTS; the first image shows a scene with the new shaders on the PTS, with the same scene on live:

It seems that BioWare have added voice clips to various character emotes in Game Update 1.5. These are summarised by SWTORFace in their Video Guide to Voiced Emotes on the PTS.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56, @IamAlana (Alana), @StoleTarts (Megan), @AspisVodox, @copythat22 (Lance) and @thehatfield (Hatfield).

@voyak referred us to this thread on the official forum, discussing how the presence of free-to-play players enrich everyone’s experience in the game, especially subscribers.

You can hear Megan’s (@StoleTarts) husband Bordeau as a guest host on episode 139 of the Darth Hater podcast. His livestream is also well worth watching, mainly for his entertaining commentary as he plays.

5. Sarlacc Digest

This week we finally review the Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia.

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

SWTOR Reforged Episode 17: Ootini!

teo — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 02:40:25 +0000

We are cross-posting episode 17 of SWTOR Reforged on which Chill and I were guests. We hope you enjoy the show, and consider subscribing to them if you don’t already!

We have FINALLY returned, and the wait was worth it! The crew sits down with Chill and Teo from Ootini-Cast! After escaping the clutches of Slimey The Hutt, Chill and Teo talk with Evarwyn, Lou and Fred about their week in game as well as the MASSIVE news that Disney purchased Lucas Arts and that there WILL be an Episode 7,8 and 9! Also, the guys talk a bit about F2P model as we learn more information, not the least of which being an announcement from Joveth Gonzalez that 1.5 will not be this week, but rather, VERY soon! After our talk, Lou enters the Jedi Archives where he presents to us the origins of the title “Darth”!

OotiniCast Episode 51

teo — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 04:59:03 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp have much to cover this week: Disney is buying LucasFilm, Star Wars: Episode 7 is coming in 2015, EA had its latest earnings call, and there’s plenty of updates on the free-to-play conversion, as it continues to be tested in Game Update 1.5 on the PTS.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, JT Long. He plays Arveshet of the Timor sub-guild of AIE (Alea Iacta Est) on the Jedi Covenant server.

3. The Holofeed

The news that George Lucas has sold LucasFilm Ltd to Disney took the Star Wars world by storm this week. The sale includes LucasArts, the company which makes Star Wars games, and which partnered with BioWare to make SWTOR. As part of the announcement, it was revealed that Star Wars: Episode 7 will be released in 2015. A source within LucasFilm indicates that it will be an original story, rather than based on an existing story from the Extended Universe.
Fans were quick to create some suggestive imagery reflecting just what the Disneyfication of Star Wars will mean.

Patch 1.4.3 was deployed during a long scheduled maintenance on Tuesday. Along with a few fixes, the patch included a beefing up of the rewards offered by story mode operations. It seems they went a little too far when they were reduced in Game Update 1.4!
Electronic Arts held its 2Q 2013 earnings call this week, though SWTOR was barely mentioned. No subscriber numbers were revealed, and when questioned, the response indicated the subscribed community was “stable”.
Peter Moore, COO (Chief Operating Officer) of Electronic Arts, was interviewed by Wired. Many topics were covered, though a couple of questions directly applied to SWTOR and its free-to-play strategy.
Due to an apparent increase in buying credits with real-world money from unauthorised sources, BioWare has warned that the penalties for doing so are severe.
There was also plenty of news on the free-to-play front, as Game Update 1.5 continues to be tested on the PTS.
- Nathan Emmott goes into detail about Preferred Player status, which is earned once a payment has been made for a given account (e.g., purchase of Cartel Coins, subscription). Any player who has previously been subscribed will automatically be elevated to Preferred status once free-to-play is launched.
- Damion Schubert describes the changes that are being made as testing of Game Update 1.5 continues, including the relaxation of some restrictions on free-to-play players. He also confirms that account unlocks apply to all current and future characters, regardless of server.
- Blaine Christine answered many player questions about the free-to-play conversion.
- It’s well worth checking the current patch notes for the PTS, to see the current shape of Game Update 1.5.

4. Force Feedback

Our sincere thanks to Howard for his donation! He also emailed us for some PvP tips for a Gunslinger; Chill was most happy to oblige.

We discuss tweets from @DarthPops (Marshall Carr Jr.), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @John_K64 (Ry), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @voyak, @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56, @StoleTarts (Megan), @AspisVodox, @Rabbi_Shekky and @bytorsnowdog.

We’d like to recommend the Coffee Talk with Niq and Lance podcast, a general gaming show from the former hosts of Pink Side of the Force.

Our guildmate Terg has demonstrated some quite remarkable pumpkin carving skills for Halloween, creating a pretty accurate recreation of everyone’s favourite Sith, Darth Malgus!

5. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 50

teo — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 03:52:22 +0000

With the revelation that Game Update 1.5 will be the free-to-play release, our discussion topic this week is all about the Cartel Market and the restrictions being placed on players who don’t subscribe.

1. Introduction

2. Trivia question

What SWTOR earnable character title is from something said by Princess Leia, and was not used as a compliment?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

3. The Holofeed

While there was scheduled downtime this week, no patch was deployed.
BioWare have released Free-to-play Preview #1 (also on YouTube), a video introducing free-to-play, and teasing some of the goods that will be available for purchase.
At least for now, reverse engineering mods that were crafted by others is a legitimate (if unintended) way of learning their schematics.
Sith Marauders and Jedi Sentinels (using Rage and Focus specs respectively) are now performing extremely well in PvP, to such an extent that they are over-represented. BioWare is monitoring the situation to see whether this is due to them being the “flavour of the month”, or if they’re overpowered enough that nerfing may be required.
In the minefield (Colonel Vorgath) encounter in story mode Explosive Conflict, the Probe Droid’s Cleave ability no longer cleaves (single-target only); also, while the enrage timer for Vorgath himself has been raised, the timer on the minefield remains as tight as ever.
Enter now to win a SWTOR-themed Razor laptop! Entries close 4 November.

4. Force Feedback

Our sincere thanks to Mags for his donation!

We discuss tweets from @NULLZERO1, @DarthPops (Marshall Carr Jr.), @John_K64 (Ry), @Rrubb (Rub), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @voyak, @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56, @StoleTarts (Megan), @AspisVodox, @Rabbi_Shekky and @TranscendenceG (The Trancendence Guild on the Prophecy of the Five east coast PvP server).

@JediAio linked us to the old (but great!) Saturday Night Live skit, “Star Wars Auditions”.

@voyak recommends this YouTube video of a flashmob in Germany. In terms of personal flexibility (and possibly fitness), he also suggests we try Star Wars Yoga.

Marshall Carr (@DarthPops) showed us how to make pumpkin-carving fun, at least for Star Wars fans!

Kuze shows us that some bugs in SWTOR can have a funny site.

5. Sarlacc Digest

The Cartel Market has been added to the PTS, thus revealing that Game Update 1.5 will be the launch of free-to-play. The PTS patch notes were updated with the new features. In addition to the Cartel Market, more welcome changes have been added to 1.5:

re-specialisations are now free for subscribers
subscribers will have access to 2 additional quickbars (giving us 6 in total)
our inventory’s currency window now includes a progress bar for each currency, indicating the applicable cap

the preview window has been greatly enhanced, showing a fully-animated model of the character, now allowing the equipped (or previewed) weapon to be drawn

Teo spent some time on the PTS playing with the Cartel Market interface, investigating what was for sale:

Cartel Packs (the “gambling” boxes) could be bought for 180 CC or 360 CC
Cosmetic items included:
- a minipet for 240 CC
- an adaptive speeder (matches your current speeder piloting level) for 720 CC, which included Speeder Piloting I
- Carbonite Chamber for 1440 CC
- Rancor Holo-replica for 180 CC
Unlocks were available, primarily of use to non-subscribers:
- Authorization: Event Equipment Requisition (175 CC/char or 400 CC/account), one-off unlock
- Authorization: Artifact Equipment (1200 CC/char or 2700 CC/account), one-off unlock
- Unlock: Guild bank access (600 CC/char or 1350 CC/account)
- Authorization: Crew Member Appearance (325 CC/char or 725 CC/account)
- Unlock: 10 GTN sale slots (125 CC/char or 280 CC/account), apply 5 times for 50 total
- Unlock: additional quickbar (250 CC/char or 540 CC/account), once per quickbar [start with two]
- Unlock: inventory module (175 CC/char or 380 CC/account) per row of 10 [start with three]
- Unlock: crew skill slot (420 CC/char or 945 CC/account) per slot
- Unlock: cargo hold access (475 CC/char or 1050 CC/account) per bay
- each racial unlock costs 350 CC
- Customization control: display titles, display legacy name (100 CC/char or 200 CC/account)
- Customization control: hide head slot, unify colors (350 CC/char or 775 CC/account)
Equipment could be purchased, all adaptive:
- chestpieces, suitable for level 15 (150 CC) and level 43 (325 CC)
- armor sets (containing head, chest, gloves, pants, boot) for 1200 CC
- weapons (e.g., Gamorrean Axe for 350 CC)
- +41 color crystals for 900 CC
Various consumables useful for both free-to-play players and subscribers:
- 25% increased XP boosts, in two versions:
  - major, lasting 3 hours, for 120 CC; also 5-pack for 480 CC
  - minor, lasting 1 hours, for 80 CC
- 25% increased valor (major for 50 CC, minor for 30 CC)
- single-use (no shared cooldown) fleet pass for 90 CC
- single-use quick travel (90 CC)
- 5-pack of medical probes for 500 CC (free-to-play players have a finite number of medical probes, and need to buy these to restock!)
- weekly passes for 240 CC to give unlimited access to warzones, space missions and operations
- weekly pass for 240 CC making Flashpoint boss loot accessible

Items purchased from the Cartel Market are intended to be gifted to other players or sold on the GTN, though some will be temporarily bound so that they can’t be parted with straight away.

The restrictions on free-to-play players were discussed, though given they’re currently in flux, we’ll go over them again the next episode. We were happy to hear that free-to-play players will start with two quickbar slots, rather than just one!

Finally, we speculated as to how much Cartel Coins would be worth. Our best guess is that they’ll be priced like BioWare points (used to purchase DLC for other BioWare games, like Mass Effect), which would be $1 for 80 Cartel Coins. BioWare confirmed that Cartel Coins will not initially be earnable via in-game activities.

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 49

teo — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 05:02:41 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp to discuss the latest SWTOR news, focussing on the features to be found in Game Update 1.5 which is now available for testing on the PTS. Our discussion topic this week is about the newly-revealed details of the upcoming free-to-play conversion, especially the restrictions that will be placed on free players.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Tony Tomkinson!

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.4.1a, a small client-side-only patch, was deployed late last week to fix the hitching/stuttering performance issue that some players were experiencing.
During an extremely long downtime during scheduled maintenance, patch 1.4.2 was deployed.
Game Update 1.5 is now available for testing on the PTS. Probably the most anticipated feature is the quest line to obtain the new companion, HK-51. Dulfy and Darth Hater have both produced guides for how to go about it. In addition, we have the new dailies and world boss (Dreadtooth) in Section X on Belsavis, and Nightmare Mode for the operation Explosive Conflict (Jesse Sky details what players should expect).
Vendors now sell Dread Guard relics for 300 Daily Commendations, and Campaign armoring mods (which are better itemised than the current Black Hole gear, and include the set bonus) for Force and non-Force users can be purchased with Black Hole Commendations.
The Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia is now available for purchase. We will be reviewing it next week.
Jesse Sky, the featured developer from last week, has answered a number of follow-up questions from players.
Congratulations to BioWare for winning four of the categories in the GDC Online’s Game Developers Choice Online Awards.

5. Force Feedback

Our sincere thanks to Grim for his extremely generous donation! It is very much appreciated.

We discuss tweets from @JediAio, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @rickheaton, @adolyte, @voyak, @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56, @DanCremer, @StoleTarts (Megan), @Rabbi_Shekky, @hallhood (Hall Hood) and @TranscendenceG (The Trancendence Guild on the Prophecy of the Five east coast PvP server).

6. Sarlacc Digest

We finally have additional details about the free-to-play conversion. First is the new Cartel Coin Ledger page, found in the My Account section on swtor.com, that summarises how many complimentary Cartel Coins you will receive when free-to-play launches. Below is probably the most common case for someone who started playing at launch with the base edition, has been continuously subscribed and will remain so:

In the updated free-to-play FAQ, it is emphasised that you will only receive the accumulated Cartel Coins if you have active game time at the point that free-to-play launches. As to when that will be, all we know at the moment is that it will be in the Fall (meaning it could be as late as 21 December), though November has been mentioned at various points.

BioWare have also detailed at least some of the restrictions that will be imposed on free-to-play players in the updated Subscription vs. Free-to-play Features matrix.

Story Content
- Premium (FULL): All players can play their full class stories from Level 1-50.
- Free (FULL): All players can play their full class stories from Level 1-50.
Character Creation Choices
- Premium (FULL): Full access to all Character Creation choices.
- Free (LIMITED): Limited Character Creation options.
Operations
- Premium (FULL): Unlimited access to Operations.
- Free (LIMITED): A Weekly pass to unlock Operation access is required.
Warzones
- Premium (FULL): Unlimited access to Warzones.
- Free (LIMITED): Three Warzones per week or purchase a weekly pass to unlock this restriction.
Flashpoints
- Premium (FULL): Unlimited access to Flashpoints.
- Free (LIMITED): Full rewards from three Flashpoints per week or purchase a weekly pass to unlock rewards for all Flashpoints.
Space Missions
- Premium (FULL): Unlimited access to Space Missions.
- Free (LIMITED): Three Space Missions per week or purchase a weekly pass to unlock this restriction.
Cargo Hold
- Premium (FULL): Purchase more cargo space with either in-game Credits or Cartel Coins.
- Free (LIMITED): Gain and expand the Cargo Hold with Cartel Coins.
Inventory
- Premium (FULL): Purchase additional inventory space with either in-game Credits or Cartel Coins.
- Free (LIMITED): Expand inventory slots with Cartel Coins.
Crew Skills
- Premium (FULL): Up to three (3) Crew Skills.
- Free (LIMITED): One Crew Skill, or purchase additional Crew Skill slots with Cartel Coins.
Quick Travel
- Premium (FULL): Unlimited access to the Quick Travel ability with a reduced cooldown.
- Free (LIMITED): Longer Quick Travel cooldown period or purchase an authorization to permanently reduce the cooldown for Quick Travel.
Emergency Fleet Pass
- Premium (FULL): Unlimited access to the Emergency Fleet Pass. Bypass the cooldown by purchasing a consumable item with Cartel Coins.
- Free (LIMITED): No access to Emergency Fleet Pass. Purchase an authorization to unlock quick travel to the Fleet.
Death
- Premium (FULL): Revive at the nearest Med Center or in the field with a cooldown.
- Free (LIMITED): Revive at the nearest Med Center or a total of five (5) times in the field. Unlock additional Field Revive with Cartel Coins.
Game Login
- Premium (FULL): Priority status in the Login Queue.
- Free (LIMITED): No priority status in the Login Queue.
Item Equipping
- Premium (FULL): Equip all purple items they acquire, assuming they meet the in-game requirements (class, level, etc).
- Free (LIMITED): Cannot equip most purple items unless a license is purchased from the Cartel Market.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 48

teo — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 02:14:33 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss patch 1.4.1, which fixes a lot of the issues introduced with Game Update 1.4. As well as covering other news, we also wax lyrical about experience in the new operation, Terror From Beyond.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s question: What Star Wars-related thing do Bill Murray, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone, and Billy Dee Williams all have in common?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.4.1 was deployed during the regular scheduled maintenance early on Tuesday morning. The majority of the issues introduced in Game Update 1.4 are now fixed, though several remain outstanding, including degraded performance.
While the option to allow hoods to be pushed back remains a desired feature, it seems that the team is busy on upcoming content and the free-to-play conversion, and so our hoods will remain up for the foreseeable future.
BioWare have introduced a new community feature, the Developer Spotlight. The first introduces Jesse Sky, Lead Flashpoints and Operations Designer. If you have follow-up questions for Jesse, ask them in this forum thread.
The datamining of Game Update 1.4 performed by Torhead has turned up some upcoming content, summarised in this forum post. Force Junkies has an article (Leaked List of Upcoming Content and F2P Goodies) summarising what was found.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @voyak, @ForceChuckle, @IRBountyHunter, @Dimbo56, @DanCremer, @AspisVodox, @banyo1984, @hallhood and @The_Jedi_Hermit.

We’d like to recommend the fine podcast SWTOR Reforged, formerly SWTOR: Off The Record. Well worth listening to!

October 6 was Star Wars Reads Day. As part of the celebration, several authors of Star Wars books (including Timothy Zahn) have written special blog posts on the official Star Wars Blog.

Grim emails us with some rather clever ideas about how user-generated content could be incorporated into SWTOR, as well as some rather unfortunate suggestions about how BioWare could monetise the process!

In response to Sith Jawa’s comment on episode 47, we can confidently assure him that we plan to remain subscribed when free-to-play launches.

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 47

teo — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 03:27:46 +0000

Chill and Teo (with Hyp’s remote presence) discuss what’s happening in SWTOR, focussing on the issues that have arisen since Game Update 1.4′s release.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Krilltok (John A). His guild, The Brotherhood of Darkness on The Tomb of Freedon Nadd server, cleared 16-man Terror From Beyond. Well done, guys!

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.4.0b was deployed on Tuesday as a hot-fix, with no downtime required.
BioWare has summarised the issues that remain extant since Game Update 1.4 was released; there’s quite a few! They include already-known schematics being consumed if you attempt to learn them (and there’s no way to tell that you already know them, aside from checking your crafting window), the second boss in The False Emperor being bugged, and the win for warzone matches occasionally being awarded to the wrong side.
While Game Update 1.4 was on the PTS, it was noted that there were two expensive items: relics for 400 Daily Commendations, and implants for 350 Black Hole Commendations. We mentioned last week that during the Livestream, it was indicated that these items were there by mistake; it turns out that only applied to the relics. The implants are correctly priced, though given the stat differences, hardly worth 350 Black Hole Commendations!
Story mode operations, including Explosive Conflict and Terror From Beyond, will no longer drop Black Hole Commendations from bosses or in chests. This is due to the progression path being through hard mode operations, with the story mode ops being effectively the entry level.
While you can queue for both warzones and Flashpoints via the Group Finder, as of Game Update 1.4 upon entry to a warzone you are automatically removed from the Group Finder queue. It was explained that this was to prevent people abandoning warzones if their Group Finder popped.
Companions 101: Kaliyo Djannis is the first in a series covering specific companions. Kaliyo is the first companion that joins the Imperial Agent. You can suggest which companion to cover next on the forums.
The Star Wars: The Old Republic Community Cantina Tour is an initiative to allow players to meet the community team and developers at various events.
The Star Wars: The Old Republic: Encyclopedia will be published on 15 October 2012. It retails for $US40, though is available for a reduced price at Amazon US and the Book Depository (free shipping worldwide).

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @AHlaenxna (Vis), @IzaakTheMad (Izaak), @ForceChuckle, @meredithwatson, @EmpireDivider (Chong)`, @Dimbo56 (Dimbo), @grimrok (Grim), @voyak, @IamAlana, @DarthPops (Marshall Carr Jr. of TORWars), @banyo1984 (Benjamin Becker), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @BayCityScramblr (Chris Johnson) and @HolyCrapItsLate (Rob Henriquez).

The following the poster that Chill saw with a vision of the future from the early 20th century, that bears a striking resemblance to Coruscant!

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us (remotely!) this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 46

teo — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 06:36:14 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Izaak to talk about the deployment of Game Update 1.4 and other news. We also discuss SWTOR’s gearing model for endgame, with its proposed three tiers of operations.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Chill provides his interpretation of the new moods that are now available for our characters in Game Update 1.4:

Neutral—Neutral
Alarmed—Stupid
Annoyed—Constipated
Astounded—Macaulay Culkin
Awed—Slightly Stupid
Cheery—Cheery (some of them are named pretty well)
Dejected—Pouting
Depressed—Doing a Robert DeNiro impression
Discomforted—Doing an angry Robert DeNiro impression
Eager—Still Novocaine’d from the dentist (lip sticks out weird)
Flattered—Smarmy
Frustrated—Doing a Gilbert Gottfried impression
Hurt—Doing a Clint Eastwood impression
Joyful—Pleased (looks happy but not joyful)
Meditative—Pretending to be Asleep (also: how am I fighting now?)
Mournful—Puppy-dog eyes
Saddened—Mildly bummed
Scowling—Nearsighted
Stunned—Freshly Tased. Pretty darn accurate, actually. Could use some drool.

3. Trivia question

The following screenshot contains a sample of Aurebesh, the Star Wars writing system. The question is simply to translate it! If you are interested in learning Aurebesh, you can try Teo’s simple Aurebesh trainer.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

While there was no maintenance on Tuesday, Game Update 1.4 was deployed during an 8 hour maintenance on Thursday morning. Patch notes are here, and James Ohlen’s Welcome to Game Update 1.4: Terror from Beyond is also worth reading.
The deployment wasn’t entirely without issues, the most pressing of which was the GTN being unusable. The Preferences option to hide one’s headslot doesn’t work; the workaround is to select the checkbox via the Customize Appearance button (right side of your Character Sheet, near your Feet slot).
An explanation was provided regarding name conflicts with guild names following the recent merger into super-servers: it turns out that if two or more guilds were merged onto a server that shared a common name back on their origin server, all those guild names now have “@ ” appended (e.g., “Despair @ The Harbinger”). Once there is only one guild remaining on the server with that name (due to the guilds changing their name or being disbanded), the “@ ” will be removed.
The first Livestream community discussion was held on Friday. Dulfy almost immediately provided a YouTube copy of the broadcast, along with a transcript.
Damion Schubert (Principle Lead Systems Designer) provided a Quality of Life Improvements in Game Update 1.4 blog post.
An unexpected (but most welcome!) change in Game Update 1.4 was to drastically increase the respawn times of the objectives for the Black Hole dailies.
It sounds like multi-spec is still a long, long way off (unfortunately).
Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer) says that BioWare is considering penalties for abandoning an in-progress warzone, though may instead opt for additional incentives for staying until the end.
The three Oceanic servers also received 12 character slots per server in Game Update 1.4, bringing them to parity with the rest of the servers after the merger. Action is still being considered to alleviate the low populations on those servers.
Bioware has placed a job advertisement for a “Monetization Analyst“. They subsequently needed to allay fears that this implied that the free-to-play conversion hadn’t actually started.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Dimbo56, @voyak, @ForceChuckle and @AspisVodox.

6. Outro

Thanks to Izaak (@IzaakTheMad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 45

teo — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:12:24 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Cypher to discuss the latest SWTOR news, including the surprise super-server consolidation.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Chill referred to Oni’s old guild, who proved to be Ootini Fight Club’s nemesis during the weekly Ranked Warzones Session, as “Paragon”; however, the guild is actually Covenant. Most worthy and honourable foes!

3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Ben P!

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.8 was deployed during a short 2 hour maintenance on Thursday.
After conducting High Population Server Tech Testing late last week, they announced on Monday that the Server Consolidationwould be happening during maintenance. Originally scheduled for 8 hours, it stretched to 12, but after that the deed was done: all the locked origin servers are gone, along with some of the previously-designated destination servers.
For posterity, here is the final list of super-servers, along with the origin servers that wer merged to form them:
- The Shadowlands (east coast PvE) – The Shadowlands, Corellian Run, Giradda the Hutt, Mind Trick, Elysium, Thana Vesh, Colonel Tobin, Krayt Dragon, The Razor, Tarro Blood, Anturi Reach, Firaxan Shark, Sith Meditation Sphere, ICE Breaker, Crevasse City, Darth Bandon, Shadow Hand, Sith Wyrm, Dreshdae Cantina, Grand Master Zym
- Jedi Covenant (east coast PvE) – Jedi Covenant, Canderous Ordo, The Constant, Krayiss Obelisk, Kathol Rift, Whitebeam Run, Khoonda Militia, Ki-Ta Kren, Kaas City, Fort Garnik, Hanharr, Sedyn Kyne, Keetael, The Corsair, Nathema, Zez-Kai Ell, Shii-Cho, The Courageous, Assassins of Sion, Eidolon Security, Axial Park, Keller’s Void, Master Dorak, Juyo, The Defenestrator, Telos Restoration Project
- The Ebon Hawk (east coast RP-PvE) – The Ebon Hawk, Kath Hound, Rubat Crystal, Lord Adraas, Sanctum of the Exalted, Shien
- Prophecy of the Five (east coast PvP – Prophecy of the Five, The Fatman, Firkrann Crystal, The Twin Spears, Anchorhead, Darth Malak, Bondar Crystal, Iron Citadel, Infinity Gate, Saber of Exar Kun, Naddist Rebels, Hedarr Soongh, Davik’s Estate, Gardens of Talla , The Deadweight , Thendys Noori , Sword of Ajunta Pall, Terentatek, Vulkar Highway, Veela, Death Wind Corridor, Cho Mai, Port Nowhere, Kinrath Spider, Rwookrrorro , Belgoth’s Beacon, Helm of Graush
- Jung Ma (east coast RP-PvP) – Jung Ma, Ven Zallow, Ajunta Pall
- The Harbinger (west coast PvE) – The Harbinger, Drooga’s Pleasure Barge, Fa’athra, Veeboo Lunx, Master Gnost-Dural, Darth Xedrix, Gauntlet of Kressh, Zakkeg Beast, Perlemian Trade Route, Zaalbar, Empress Teta, Namadii Corridor, Kaiburr Crystal, Krath, Wall of Light, Vornskr, Soresu, Lord Praven, Master Zhar Lestin, Space Slug, Darth Sion, Hyperspace Cannon, Mask of Nihilus, The Jekk’Jekk Tarr
- Begeren Colony (west coast RP-PvE) – Begeren Colony, Lord Ieldis, Vrook Lamar
- The Bastion (west coast PvP) – The Bastion, The Crucible Pits, The Maw, Rakata Mind Prison, Nadd’s Sarcophagus, Infinite Empire, Daragon Trail, Warriors of the Shadow, Black Vulkars, Shadowtown, The Swiftsure, Dark Reaper, Wound in the Force, Mandalore the Indomitable
- T3-M4 (EU German PvE) – T3-M4, The Jedi Tower, Odacer-Faustin Academy, Lenico Gargantuan, Dreypa’s Oubliette, Stereb Cities, Force Harvester, Opila Crystal, Murakami Orchid, The Cinzia, Sith Triumvirate, Handmaidens of Atris, Supreme Commander Stantorrs, Darth Andeddu, Exar Kun
- The Red Eclipse (EU English PvE) – The Red Eclipse, Nightmare Lands, Dune Bantha, Goluud Corridor, Sluis Shipyards, Dxun Battle Circle, The Arkanian Legacy, Bacca’s Blade, Eye of Ashlanae, Bao-Dur, Flames of the Crucible, Luka Sene, Rogue Moon, Kellian Jarro, Peragus Mining Facility, Ludo Kressh, Hydian Way, Sith’ari, Hidden Beks, Frostclaw
- Mantle of the Force (EU French PvE) – Mantle of the Force, Kissai Caste, Vodo-Siosk Baas, Phateem Halls of Knowledge, Hssiss
- Vanjervalis Chain (EU German RP-PvE) – Vanjervalis Chain, Zayne Carrick, Cassus Fett
- The Progenitor (EU English RP-PvE) – The Progenitor, Shaltin Tunnels, Trask Ulgo
- Battle Meditation (EU French RP-PvE) – Battle Meditation, Kessel Run
- Jar’Kai Sword (EU German PvP) – Jar’Kai Sword, Brianna, Darth Traya, Exis Station, Gnawer’s Roost, Loramarr, The Restoration Zone, Blotus the Hutt, Pius Dea, The Krath Enchanter, Darth Revan’s Mask, Jen’jidai
- Tomb of Freedon Nadd (EU English PvP) – Tomb of Freedon Nadd, The Shadow Runner, Tott Doneeta, The Ravager, The Kumumgah, Hex Droid, Bloodworthy, Scepter of Ragnos, Ahto City, Basilisk Droid, Legions of Lettow, The Exile’s Crystal, Starstorm One, Tassaa Bareesh, Ula Vii, Senator Contispex, Niman, Kai-kan, Chuundar, Trayus Academy, Uthar Wynn, Lord Calypho
- Darth Nihilus (EU French PvP) – Darth Nihilus, Dol Grenn, Mecrosa Order, Atris, Princess Galia, Baron Deathmark, Hrakert Rift, Star Map, Huntmaster
We now have 12 character slots per server. If you ended up with more than 12 characters via the merging process, all will remain playable (e.g., Teo has 27 on The Harbinger now). However, if you do have more than 12 characters, you will not be able to create a new character unless you free a slot by deleting down to less than 12.
As part of the merging process, naming conflicts occurred for both player characters and guilds. In the case of guilds, their names were changed to have “@ ” appended; for players, name clashes were resolved by letting one character keep their name, and the others are forced to change before they can be played. BioWare elaborated on the logic used to determine how this was resolved.
It seems that the three Australian servers missed out on being upgraded to the super-server technology, as evidenced by them not being upgraded to 12 character slots; this is being remedied.
BioWare is conducting a monthly “LiveStream” event, a half-hour live broadcast to answer questions in real-time from players.
We discuss Larry Everett’s Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR’s Gabe Amatangelo on 1.4 and free-to-play article.
The SWTOR client is getting a nice upgrade, as discussed in Developer Update: Shadow Optimizations in Game Update 1.4. Once it’s live, time to switch shadows back on!
Jesse Sky (Lead Flashpoints and Operations Designer) explains why Explosive Conflict (and soon Terror From Beyond) won’t be in the Group Finder initially, though they are coming.
Fansite SWTOR Face published their SWTOR Companion QnA with Lead System Designer, Damion Schubert.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @voyak, @ForceChuckle, @IzaakTheMad, @VodoxSWTOR, @Rabbi_Shekky, @rbleamon and @thehatfield, and a comment by masterjedi on episode 44.

Here is Cypher’s Lego Bowdarr. The resemblance to Chewbacca holding a lightsaber may not be coincidental!

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Cypher (@cypher_x for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 44

teo — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 04:20:04 +0000

This week, Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Chong to go over what’s coming in Game Update 1.4, which has been deployed onto the PTS. We also discuss what we know about the Ancient Hypergates warzone, which was recently playable at GamesCom.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s question: John Williams uses themes to connect the threads of the stories he scores for. For who or what in the Star Wars universe is the theme that Chill whistles (19:13)? Also, at what point in the movies do we hear this theme when what is going on onscreen is seemingly unrelated to the theme’s topic?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.7a was deployed during a shorter 3 hour scheduled maintenance on Tuesday.
Game Update 1.4 is available for testing on the PTS! You can find out more at the SWTOR Test Center, which includes the latest release notes.
Dulfy has a post comparing the current Campaign relics with the new Dread Lord relics, which will be available for 400 Daily Commendations in Game Update 1.4.
In conjunction with Game Update 1.4 appearing on the PTS, the Developer Dispatch – Terror From Beyond video was released (also on YouTube).
The fan favourite reward, based upon a Facebook poll, for current and previous subscribers as of 1 August 2012, who are still subscribed when free-to-play launches, is “The Party Jawa”.

Players who purchases the Digital Deluxe Edition will receive an additional 250 Cartel Coins.
In an interview with the French MMO site Mondes Persistants.com, Gabe Amatangelo revealed that BioWare is working on a SWTOR version of the WoW armory, allowing character information to be viewed via the web.
SWTOR Life also interviewed Gabe Amatangelo, discussing the new warzone, Ancient Hypergates, and other PvP-related topics.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @voyak, @ForceChuckle, @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Dimbo56, @IzaakTheMad, @SithLordKorv and @grimrok.

Jason B requests that OotiniCast be added to the Zune Marketplace: now done!

Grim tells us about some particularly difficult class missions (at least for one of the ACs), and wonders whether we’ve encountered similar problems.

Rei’lar (Gary Foster) wants to start a second raid group within Ootini Knights. They plan to run 7-10pm Tuesdays PDT. If you are interested in joining his group (tentatively called “Rei’lar’s Roughnecks”), please contact Rei’lar in-game or via email (gary.foster@gmail.com).

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Chong (@empiredivider or email him via chong@ootinicast.com) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 43

teo — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:40:29 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and our new guest Chong to discuss the basics of PvP, and how to get into it. We also go over the developer blogs about the new operation, Terror From Beyond, and the class changes coming in Game Update 1.4.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Mosq!

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.7 was deployed during a marathon 9 hour scheduled maintenance on Wednesday (delayed from Tuesday due to the Labor Day public holiday in the US).
Jesse Sky, Lead Operations & Flashpoint Designer, tells us about the new operation coming in Game Update 1.4 via his Developer Update – Terror from Beyond blog post.
Austin Peckenpaugh, the Senior Designer on SWTOR responsible for creating, maintaining and balancing class gameplay, gives us some insight into what we can soon expect in his Developer Update: Class Changes and Balance in Game Update 1.4 blog post. He went on to clarify the resolve changes with some examples, and to explain how the team balances the needs/constraints of PvP and PvE gameplay.
There is a way for players on PvE servers to be flagged for PvP without their consent by other players. BioWare considers this a problem which they will subsequently fix. Chong mentioned that one such method is to attack a mob that a player has already tapped; the player’s companion will then attack the instigator, which will automatically flag the victim for PvP.
While we will remain limited to sending out a maximum of 5 companions on missions or crafting tasks at level 50, our new HK-51 companion will have a small efficiency bonus to all mission skills, and a small critical bonus to all crafting skills.
White colour crystals will eventually be available again, but even when they are, they will be difficult to attain.

5. Force Feedback

Thanks to @ForceChuckle, @Voyak and @Iamalana for the friend follows, and also thanks to @Voyak and @Dimbo56 for retweeting episode 42.

We discuss tweets from @VodoxSWTOR, @bytorsnowdog, @terencemyers, @Dimbo56, @YojeVawree and @Voyak, and an email from Saxe Gotha on the Ebon Hawk server.

6. Sarlacc Digest

Chong’s Champions

Chong is assembling a band of stalwart heroes to join him in an 8-man ranked warzone team. Their initial forays will be on the Republic side of The Harbinger server (west coast PvE), though they also hope to eventually create an Imperial counterpart.

They will start queuing at 8pm PDT on Saturdays, starting on 8 September 2012.

No previous experience is required (though is obviously preferred!). The only gear requirement is (at the least) a full set of recruit gear.

Chong’s PvP primer

Expertise
- If you plan to PvP your new major stat should be Expertise, followed by Endurance and your main primary stat (aim, cunning, willpower, strength).
  - This does not mean you should just stack Expertise; it does require your full attention to balance it with your primary stat and endurance.
  - Endurance and your primary stat priorities change depending on your class and spec.
- Expertise does three important things: it increases the amount of bonus damage you do to players; it reduces the damage you take from attacking players; and it increases the bonus amount of healing to players.
  - A player’s companion counts as a player (only applicable in world PvP).
  - Expertise has a soft cap of around 20%, so stacking beyond that can be wasteful.
Skills tree
- I suggest that if you want to PvP, you should review your skill trees for the role you want to take.
- All classes are good for PvP, even tanks.
  - Tanks are great for holding down a turret or marching to the goal in Huttball.
- The skills you want to grab will be anything that will keep you in the fight or incapacitate others.
- Also anything that will reduce cast times. (Mostly a DPS or healing thing.)
  - Alacrity is good for this and/or spec into talents that reduce pushback from damage.
Gear
- Recruit
  - When you first hit level 50, you can get a free set of Recruit gear from a terminal on the Fleet in the combat training area.
  - If you hit 50 and took the token to get credits, you can still get the Recruit gear from the Recruit PvP Gear vendor in the same area. It will cost you 320,000 credits to purchase the full set.
    - This is blue (i.e., not modded) PvP gear with a significant amount of Expertise to prevent you from being crushed (as you would be in straight PvE gear).
    - If you feel you don’t want to spend that much, you can queue without and farm Warzone Commendations to build up to Battlemaster gear. (It will be slow!)
    - You will not each the Expertise soft cap with Recruit gear.
- Battlemaster
  - Battlemaster gear is purchased using strictly Warzone Commendations.
    - To get a full set, it should set you back 12,500 Warzone Commendations.
    - You cap your Warzone Commendations at 2000, so make sure you buy gear before you cap to prevent wasting the Warzone Commendations you gain.
    - A full set of Battlemaster gear should get you to the Expertise 20% soft cap.
    - Keep this gear for War Hero gear purchases.
- War Hero
  - War Hero gear is purchased using Rated Warzone Commendations from the War Hero PvP Gear vendor in the Combat Training area.
    - You will also need your old Battlemaster gear to purchase the item.
    - You can gain Ranked Warzone Commendations from 3 places:
      - Daily and weekly PvP quests;
      - Purchasable from “Corr”, the PvP Item vendor, at an exchange of 1 ranked for 3 non-ranked at Valor rank 40 or more; and
        
        Pro Tip: The vendor claims to sell them 10 for 30 but you can use the “split item” trick and choose a quantity of 1 to 99 and it will sell you 1 ranked for 3 non-ranked.
      - Doing Ranked Warzones.
- Rated War Hero
  - Rated War Hero gear is also sold at the War Hero PvP vendor, but does require a particular rating to purchase it, plus more Rated Warzone Commendations and non-rated War Hero gear.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Chong (@empiredivider or email him via chong@ootinicast.com) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 42

teo — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 05:37:19 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss a few developer posts, and a few key points from the recent SWTOR-related interviews at GamesCom. We also have the next instalment of our hard mode guides for the level 50 in a hurry, this week covering The Battle of Ilum.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Chill’s Sith Sorcerer has achieved Dark V; he invites us to contrast the appearance from the character’s creation to her current dark incarnation:

3. Trivia question

This week’s question: What does Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope have in common with two other great action films: A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

In an attempt to reduce the lag encountered in operations, their solution—to reduce the population on a hardware shard hosting operation instances—had the unintended consequence of locking some members of a raid out! It appears that subsequent tweaking has resolved the issue.
Jason Attard (Senior Game Balance Designer) gives us some insight on the accuracy of bosses in operations.
When SWTOR goes free-to-play, we are told that cash shop items (boost consumables, unlocks, vanity items, etc.) can be per-character (but will tend to be bind-to-legacy) or account-wide. In some cases, a cheaper per-character option will be available in addition to the more expensive full account-wide purchase.
Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer) answered a couple of questions about PvP:
- The new warzone, Ancient Hypergates, will be added to those available for ranked warzones as soon as it’s available;
- 8-man pre-mades for non-ranked warzones isn’t going to happen anytime soon;
- Queuing with less than an 8-man for ranked warzones is coming post-1.4; and
- Season 1 of ranked warzones (we’re currently in the pre-season) will kick off sometime post-1.4.
Something went wrong earlier this week that caused some players to be unable to access one or more of their characters. The issue was fixed within a day or so.
Jason Attard explains the process used to allocate stats across the armoring, mods and enhancements that are present in operation gear.
Dueling on the Fleet isn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future, it seems.
The first two Lego kits based on SWTOR are available for purchase! You can get a Republic Striker-class Starfighter for $US44.99:

There’s also the Sith Fury-class Interceptor for $US89.99:

You can win your own 1:4 scale Darth Malgus statue courtesy of Sideshow collectibles. Entries close 23 September, you won’t receive it until March 2013, and you’ll have to pay for shipping!
We discuss a few key points that emerged from numerous interviews conducted with SWTOR’s leadership at GamesCom:
- Matthew Bromberg (General Manager, BioWare Austin)
  - SWTOR: Interview with Bioware on the future of the Star Wars MMORPG (buffed.de)
  - Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Free Future (IGN)
- Jeff Hickman (Executive Producer, SWTOR)
  - The Future of SWTOR – Jeff Hickman Interview (SWTOR-Spy)
  - The Old Republic Interview: Bioware’s Jeff Hickman (RPG Site)
- Gabe Amatangelo
  - GamesCom 2012: Interview with Gabe Amatangelo (Darth Hater)
  - Interview with Gabe Amatangelo of Darth Josh (swtor.ingame.de)
- Lars Malcharek (SWTOR German Community Lead)
  - Interview with Lars Malcharek (inSTARWARS.de)

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @rbleamon (Ray Leamon) and @Rrubb, and comments from Voyak and masterjedi.

Mags upgraded his repair droid to the third (the highest) tier, and to his surprise observed that its another C2-N2!

Our guildmate Chong is organising a ranked warzone team, starting at one day a week, kicking off weekly at 8pm Saturday PDT. If you are interested, please email chong@ootinicast.com.

6. Sarlacc Digest

We continue our series that provides hints and tips for the player who wants to get their daily Group Finder hard mode done in a hurry. This week we discuss The Battle of Ilum, a hard mode Flashpoint available to both factions.

Next week, another shared Flashpoint: The False Emperor.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 41

teo — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 05:39:15 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss our impressions of the now-concluded Grand Acquisitions Race. Also included is our third hard mode guide for the level 50 in a hurry, covering Directive 7.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Hru!

The following picture shows why the artist in question was suing George Lucas. Given this apparently pre-dates Star Wars: A New Hope, it would seem he may have had some justification!

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.6 was deployed during the regular scheduled maintenance on Tuesday.
BioWare are considering adding rewards for those with a legacy level above 25.
In the future, the schematics for high-end items will only be obtainable via reverse engineering, rather than as schematic drops in operations.
It seems that an update to the Group Finder that returns players to the starting point upon completion of a Flashpoint is coming in the “near future”. Better than saying it’ll be in some future update!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy) and @thehatfield (Hatfield), and an email from Jason Incles.

6. Sarlacc Digest

We continue our series that provides hints and tips for the player who wants to get their daily Group Finder hard mode done in a hurry. This week we discuss Directive 7, a hard mode Flashpoint available to both factions.

Next week, another shared Flashpoint: The Battle of Ilum.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 40

teo — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 19:37:36 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp go over the latest news, including the announcement of when we can include the next operation, and our experiences with the second world event, the Grand Acquisitions Race! We also have the second hard mode guide for the level 50 in a hurry, covering Maelstrom Prison.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

What rocker, famous both as a solo artist and band member, who became famous in the 1960s and is still performing today, sued Lucas because of something he had on his stage and one of his tour movie posters that he felt looked too close to a Star Wars race? Most people who see the movie assume that Star Wars came first, presumably because ‘Star Wars’ was released before the tour movie.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.5a was deployed during an short unscheduled maintenance on Thursday.
The second world event, the Grand Acquisitions Race, is now live! It will continue until Tuesday 2am CDT. Pictured below is the Lobelot pet, which can be purchased using the event currency, or looted from the Smuggler’s Crates located all over Nar Shaddaa.

If you want to use a guide to help find some of the items in particularly obscure locations, we recommend Dulfy’s.
SWTOR had its own short segment during the EA press conference preceding GamesCon, featuring Matthew Bromberg (BioWare Austin’s General Manager). You can watch it on YouTube (clip will start with the SWTOR presentation).
The rumour that Dr Greg Zeschuk, one of the founders of BioWare, had left was unfounded; the truth was that after handing the reins of BioWare Austin to its new General Manager in May, Matthew Bromberg, he returned to BioWare Edmonton. His role as GM of BioWare Austin was always intended to be temporary, as his family had remained in Canada.
The last weekly Q&A is on the subject of the free-to-play change coming in November.
Speeders will be enabled while doing The Esseles Republic-only Flashpoint, to bring it into parity with the Black Talon, the equivalent Flashpoint on the Empire side.
Nightmare mode for Explosive Conflict is still coming! Our speculation is that’ll arrive along with the new operation, Terror from Beyond, in September.
Whatever incredible changes are coming to the space game are still on track! No ETA, but they’re still working on them. In the short term, we will have new level 50 space missions to keep us busy.
As of now, the Group Finder remains broken—in that you don’t get your 5 Black Hole Commendations upon completion—for pre-made groups of 4.
The cost to extract mods is going to be reduced… sometime soon.
For all you raid leaders out there, a readycheck feature is coming!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @SithLordKorv, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @ForceChuckle, @BigDamn_Heroes (Dan), @IRBountyHunter (Arron Thornton), @terrencemyers, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @Dimbo56 and @Rrubb.
Daryl emails in to provide a detailed overview of what is sold in Turbine’s DDO’s in-game cash shop, giving some insight into the kind of items that BioWare might put in its own store when SWTOR goes free-to-play in November.
In a comment on episode 39, Steve lets us know that passing bound mods between one’s alts is not possible if using bind-on-equip orange gear, but can be done with bind-to-legacy items.

6. Force Feedback

We continue our series that provides hints and tips for the player who wants to get their daily Group Finder hard mode done in a hurry. This week we venture into another Republic-only Flashpoint, Maelstrom Prison.

Coming up next week, a Flashpoint shared by both factions: Directive 7.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 39

teo — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 05:51:20 +0000

Hyp joins Chill and Teo to discuss the latest news, including the sudden flurry of activity on the official forums. Our discussion this week is the first of our hard mode guides for the level 50 in a hurry, covering Taral V.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

Congratulations to the winner, Gary Foster!

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.5 was deployed during an extended (6 hour) maintenance on Tuesday.
Unfortunately the patch introduced at least two issues, one preventing the third encounter in the Explosive Conflict op from being completed, the other affecting pre-made groups using the Group Finder, occasionally preventing anyone from receiving their 5 Black Hole Commendations.
Every character on a destination server should have received their reward for transferring (or for being on the destination server to start with!). Make sure to check your mail on all your toons! Note that the box containing the rewards requires at least level 20 to open—pre-20 toons received the box, they just have to bank it until they hit level 20.

SWTOR will be at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany. The convention runs from Thursday 16th August through to Sunday 19th. There will also be some SWTOR news during the EA Press Conference being held before the convention kicks off on Tuesday 14th August.
Joveth Gonzalez, SWTOR’s community manager, provides an update on the (once again) revamped community team. He confirms that James Ohlen and Daniel Erickson, who’ve been very quiet of late, are indeed still working on SWTOR.
Allison Berryman indicates that an effort is being made to improve the tone of the official forums, reducing the tolerance of negativity and uncivil behaviour.
Hall Hood, Lead Writer for SWTOR, was interviewed on episode 43 of Bombad Radio (Facebook, iTunes), the official podcast for TGC (The Gungan Council), a Star Wars RP forum community. Well worth listening to!
Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities was characterised by GamesIndustry International as being “incorrigibly positive” about the future success of SWTOR now that it’s embraced the free-to-play model.

5. Force Feedback

Hru emails us to ask about whether it’ll be possible to earn Cartel Coins in-game, in addition to purchasing them in bundles for real money and subscribers receiving them as a monthly stipend. He also speculates that the travel restrictions placed on free players may include requiring that speeder piloting be unlocked with Cartel Coins.

6. Force Feedback

In this first of our series that provides hints and tips for the player who wants to get their daily Group Finder hard mode done in a hurry, we discuss Taral V.

Assuming the format is deemed acceptable by our listeners, we’ll be covering Maelstrom Prison next week!

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 38

teo — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 04:21:30 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss all we know about SWTOR’s upcoming conversion to free-to-play, coming in November.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

We’re extending last week’s challenge, with an extra hint: one word which may make this a lot more solvable! This is a ‘who am I’ question—I will describe someone, and you say who I am. I am in two Star Wars movies. I play a leader of some kind in one movie, and that leader’s underling in the other. I am uncredited for both roles. My character dies onscreen both times. Who am I? (If you don’t know the name of the actor, naming both roles will suffice.)

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.4a was deployed during a brief maintenance on Thursday. However, there was no maintenance (and thus no new patch) on Tuesday.
We go over some questions from the Community Q&A: July 27th, 2012.

5. Sarlacc Digest

SWTOR is going free-to-play in November. You can find out more at www.swtor.com/free. BioWare have also provided a FAQ and a chart comparing subscription versus free-to-play features.

A press release announcing the change was provided just prior to the Electronic Arts Q1 2013 Earnings Conference Call.

Jeff Hickman, the new Executive Producer for SWTOR (previously Executive Producer – Live Services, apparently replacing Rich Vogel) provided a blog post, Announcing a Free-to-Play Option. Jeff and the recently appointed General Manager for the BioWare Austin studio, Matthew Bromberg, were also interviewed by MMORPG.com (Star Wars: The Old Republic Interviews: Free to Play This Fall).

6. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @tshapedvisor, @Dimbo56, @IRBountyHunter, @ForceChuckle and @IzaakTheMad.
@toliman (Joli) suggests the program described in this forum post that makes use of a RAMDisk to boost SWTOR performance.
@JediAio recommends a forum post describing what endgame items can be reverse engineered.
Hru emails in with some hints on the best place to farm Ice Scrabbler Livers.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 37

teo — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 05:57:09 +0000

After covering the latest patch and a couple of Q&As, Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss operations, going over interviews with Jesse Sky, Lead Operations and Flashpoints Designer.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: This is a ‘who am I’ question—I will describe someone, and you say who I am. I am in two Star Wars movies. I play a leader of some kind in one movie, and that leader’s underling in the other. I am uncredited for both roles. My character dies both times. Who am I? (If you don’t know the name of the actor, naming both roles will suffice.)

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.4 was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
We go through two Q&As, from 13 July and 23 July.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56 and @BytorSnowdog (Snowy).
Snowy passed on some funny Star Wars-related pics, reproduced below for your amusement:

Snowy also suggests that Teo should create a toon called Inara to do the selling on his ship. As our guildmate Aio will be doing the selling (as he already owns the ship droid). we’ll pass on the suggestion to him.

Hru emails us with a question about where to get the mod and enhancement mods (purple 22s). He also has some great advice about how crafting can help gearing up for endgame.
Ken Kitzman left a comment on our previous episode, suggesting the following rank names for our guild, Ootini Knights:
- Jabber
- Brown Robes
- Scavenger
- SaleJawa
- Ringleader

6. Sarlacc Digest

We talk operations, examining answers from BioWare’s Jesse Sky (Lead Flashpoints and Operations designer) in an interview (“Operations, the Sky’s the limit”) conducted by the Methodical guild on The Bastion (US West PvP server).

Jesse also appeared on the Star Wars: The Old Republic Official Podcast Episode II, along with George Smith, a Senior Designer from Jesse’s team. They provide yet more information about operation design, and what to expect in the future.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 36

teo — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 05:32:21 +0000

Chill, Teo and Hyp go over what little news there is, before diving into the main topic: how to gear up at level 50 in the brave new world of Game Update 1.3, along with some tips on using the Group Finder. We also provide some etiquette recommendations for responsible grouping.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.3 was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
Rich Vogel leaves BioWare ahead of a second round of layoffs. EA BioWare subsequently released a statement about the layoffs.
EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello, says that they’re looking into “different models to bring more users into [SWTOR]“, though he didn’t actually say it’s going free-to-play.
BioWare confirms that no characters will be lost (i.e., deleted) when the automatic transfers from origin to destination servers happens “later this summer”.
BioWare was at San Diego Comic-Con, though the information revealed was fairly light. The one big reveal was the trailer for HK-51! The trailer can also be seen on YouTube.

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56, @IRBountyHunter, @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), and @D_Willoughby (DeWayne Willoughby).
@YojeVawree (Yoje Vawree) retweeted @psynister’s reference to the following that appeared on Reddit:

5. Sarlacc Digest

We start with a summary of how to gear up a new level 50. The following two guides from the ever-productive Dulfy provide more specific details:

Dailies and PVE gearing in 1.2 (still applicable post-1.3)
Black Hole Comms and gearing in 1.3

Then we discuss the Group Finder, hitting the main points in a BioWare post by Toni Phillips (A Guide to Group Finder Part 2), which follows up from James Ohlen’s original pre-1.3 post.

Finally, we give our personal tips on group etiquette, particularly as it pertains to SWTOR.

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 35

teo — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 09:14:07 +0000

This week, Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp to go over the latest news. We also respond to listener feedback, discussing possible extensions to the space game, and whether we really need add-ons after all.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: There are three rock-solid canonical lightsaber colors from the original trilogy: blue and green for good guys, red for bad guys. But let’s break this down: Luke Skywalker originally had a blue lightsaber, which was his father’s. Then his father cut off his hand. Not a good day for Luke; he lost his hand, his lightsaber, and his dreams that his father was merely dead and not the second worst person in the galaxy, all literally at a single stroke. It’s worth noting that his mentor Obi-Wan also had a blue lightsaber. So the question is: why, in Return of the Jedi, does Luke have a green lightsaber?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.3.2 was deployed during an extended (6 hour) maintenance on Tuesday.
The unlimited (up to level 15) SWTOR free trial has begun!
It was revealed that the Kurtob Alliance Speeder, a picture of which was revealed on Facebook last week, is the account-wide mount that is the reward for referring someone to SWTOR who subsequently buys the game and subscribes.

It would appear that server mergers are coming “later this summer”. It was explained in a blog post (Character Transfer, Server Populations, and You (Part II)) that all servers that were designated as origins (such as our own former home, Space Slug) are now locked to new players, and sometime this summer any toons remaining on those servers will be automatically transferred to their associated destination server. After that, presumably the origin servers will be shut down.
For every character on the destination servers (those who transferred there or natives), BioWare is giving each character a Gannifar mini-pet and 25 Black Hole Commendations. So get those characters slots filled to take full advantage of the largess!

In an interview with GamesIndustry International, James Ohlen gives some insight into the game’s early development, including its use of the NWN (Neverwinter Nights) toolkit for initial prototyping. He also mentions the “megaserver” tech that is on its way.
We go over some questions from the latest Community Q&A: July 6th, 2012.

5. Force Feedback

@ForceChuckle referred us to the article EVE Evolved: Four things MMOs can learn from EVE from Massively; a couple of things there that could improve SWTOR.
Thanks to Belthallusii of The Sith Dynasty guild on the Nightmare Lands server, and to our guildmate Mags, for their most generous donations!
Belthallusii wrote in with some speculation about the upcoming expansion of SWTOR’s space game, which gave us the opportunity to once again discuss just what they could be dreaming of.
Bill D commented that it’d be better to provide better in-game visualisation of aggro levels and fight mechanics, rather than opening the field for add-on developers to provide their own solutions.
Saj commented about the Group Finder issue where you need to click the [Update Roles] button for a change in your role to take effect.

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 34

teo — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 05:48:33 +0000

In this week’s show, Chill and Teo are joined by Oni and Hyp to talk about our adventures with the Group Finder, speculate about the next world event, and chew over the two latest Q&As.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Voyak!

4. The Holofeed

Following Game Update 1.3′s deployment last week, there were two unscheduled maintenances required to fix some initial issues, patches 1.3.0a on Thursday morning and 1.3.0b on Friday. During Tuesday’s regular maintenance, patch 1.3.1 was deployed.
BioWare clarified that the “Legacy of Crafting” character perk, each tier of which indicates that it “Increases the chance of an augmented result while crafting by 1%”, also applies to the chance to crit when crafting non-wearable items (e.g., stims made by BioChem).
On Tuesday morning, the following teaser image was posted on SWTOR’s Facebook page:

A couple of days after we recorded, the full picture was shown:

This is apparently a Kurtob Alliance Speeder, which will be available sometime soon.
Thanks to some data-mining of Game Update 1.3 done while it was on the PTS, we have a suggestion that the next world event will be the “Grand Acquisitions Race”.
Additional character transfer options were made available to players on the European RP-PvP servers; in addition to the original same-language PvP server, they can now transfer to the same-language RP-PvE server instead. For those on the sole US west coast RP-PvP server Ajunta Pall, whose initial option was the east coast RP-PvP server, they now have the option of transferring to the west coast PvP or RP-PvE servers.
We catch up on the last couple of community Q&As, from 22 June and 29 June.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle and @TShapedVisor.
Griseus of the Tempest guild on The Bastion emailed in to ask whether you could double up on set bonuses by putting Armoring mods from the Campaign gear (which includes the set bonus) into Tionese/Columni/Rakata shells (which also have the set bonus). He also asked about whether we’d been experiencing any lag spikes in operations; his own raid team had been having problems with this in Explosive Conflict.

The mighty Chong emailed in to ask whether it would be possible for one member of the guild to purchase Legacy Repair Astromech Unit for their ship, and then to let others onto their ship to purchase the sensor units that provide efficiency/critical bonuses for one’s ship droid when crafting. The Legacy Repair Astromech Unit costs 1,000,000 credits to unlock; each sensor units costs 100,000 credits, and is bind-to-legacy. The following are available:

Engineering Droid Sensor	+5 Scavenging Efficiency	+5 Cybertech Critical
Exploration Droid Sensor	+5 Archaeology Efficiency	+5 Synthweaving Critical
Hunter Droid Sensor	+10 Investigation Efficiency	+ 2 Armstech Critical
Scout Droid Sensor	+10 Artificing Efficiency	+2 Treasure Hunting Critical
Medical Droid Sensor	+10 Biochem Efficiency	+2 Diplomacy Critical
Security Droid Sensor	+10 Armormech Efficiency	+2 Underworld Trading Critical

It is also worth noting that you can now increase affection with your ship droid, to make them more useful when crafting for you, by giving them gifts:

Loves: Cultural Artifacts
Favourite: Technology
Likes: Republic Memorabilia (C2-N2) or Imperial Memorabilia (2V-R8)

Ape2man left a comment for episode 33, where he asked whether we thought that further transfers would be needed given the current occasional queues, especially when new subscribers are taken into consideration.

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 33

teo — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 09:18:18 +0000

In this week’s episode, we go over what’s been added in Game Update 1.3, giving our impression of the changes. The panel includes Agi, Hyp and Oni, as well as your hosts Chill and Teo.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Teo used this guide to help maximise the affection gain with Qyzen when running the Esseles on his Jedi Sage.

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: How was Star Wars used in real life by certain official members of Britain to thumb their nose at a foreign emissary they didn’t like?

HINT: The Imperial March figures very strongly in the answer.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

The three European RP-PvP servers (English, French and German) have been granted free character transfers to the single PvP destination server of the same language. BioWare explained this was what they deemed to be the best compromise, choosing a destination that offered the same (PvP) rule set, even without the RP designation.
Game Update 1.3 (release notes) was announced last Friday, and deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance. While scheduled for the normal 4 hours, the servers were actually down for closer to 8 hours.
James Ohlen (SWTOR’s game director) penned a Welcome to Game Update 1.3: Allies post.
Damion Schubert provided A Guide to Group Finder a couple of weeks ago, prior to Game Update 1.3′s release. We are now very much enjoying it! SWTOR developer Antonia Phillips gave some more detail about the Group Finder, including letting us know that sometime in the future we will be shuttled back to our starting point upon completion. At the moment, when you’re done, you leave the instance normally.
David Hunt (System Designer) authored Crew Skills and Items in Game Update 1.3, giving an overview of the final state of the itemisation changes, as well as going into detail about adding augment slots.
William Wallace (Senior Game Designer) wrote Legacy Perks in Game Update 1.3, explaining about the per-character legacy perks that have been introduced. A useful summary of what’s available is provided by the endlessly productive Dulfy in her post Patch 1.3 Legacy Character Perks.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @lesman72 (Les of the Saltedslug legacy), @voyak, @sterlinglee38 (Sterling), @Rippthedeceiver (Ripp), @tshapedvisor, @Dimbo56 (Dimbo) and @ForceChuckle.
Thanks to @voyak for adding us to the Dead Men Walking gaming community’s list of unofficial SWTOR podcasts. He also provided the solution to the issue Chill encountered where copying his 8th character.
If you’re interested in some Trooper SWTOR-based fan fiction, check out Dimbo’s blog, Dimbo the Trooper.
We very much appreciate the generous donation from @ForceChuckle. Thank you, mate!
Doc Ropata raised the excellent issue of being unable to easily identify the numbering of mods, and the somewhat odd numbering scheme.
Grim emailed in with his impression of free-to-play in LOTRO, giving some more insight into how it could be implemented in SWTOR.

6. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja), Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Agi (@Agitarsi) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 32

teo — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 19:50:07 +0000

Hyp joins Chill and Teo to discuss the aftermath of the character transfers, and revel in being on a heavily-populated server at last! We also talk about the latest BioWare hints that SWTOR may one day go free-to-play.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

We discuss our experiences in transferring from Space Slug to The Harbinger. Hyp expressed his sadness at leaving our old server through art:

All SWTOR servers have now been allocated in this first (and possibly final) round of free character transfers. You can see how things ended up in this chart (click on the image to see the full-sized version):

During the discussion, we mention that after your characters are transferred to their destination server, your legacy name has to be chosen again. You can choose any name, either the one you had on your old server (if available) or a new one. However, until you do so, your legacy unlocks will not be accessible. So don’t hold off choosing a new legacy name! After you do enter your legacy name, you’ll have to log out; the next time you log in to any character, all your legacy unlocks will be available.

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: How was Star Wars used in real life by certain official members of Britain to thumb their nose at a foreign emissary they didn’t like?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.2.7b was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance. It appears to be server-side only, as it simply lowers the number of characters to allow in a given instance of each faction’s Fleet (we believe from 300 down to 250).
We go through most of the questions from the Community Q&A: June 15th, 2012.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @IzaakTheMad (Izzy), @RippTheDeceiver (Ripp), @Dimbo, @thehatfield (Hatfield), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @IRBountyHunter, @JT_HoloNet (Jason Taylor), @lesman72 (Les), @sterlinglee38 (Sterling) and @Rrubb (Rub). A common theme was commiserating about the departure from our former home, the mighty Space Slug server!
Sizzlor emailed in to ask us about the usefulness of Courting gifts when trying to increase your companions’ affection. In answering his question, we reference Dulfy’s most excellent Companion Gifts and Crafting bonuses for 1.2 guide.
Grim tells us that his computer has struggled to run SWTOR reliably since the move to the Harbinger. We’re working with Grim to help diagnose what’s going wrong, to hopefully get him back into the game!
Ripp tested the theory that if you delete all your toons on a server, your legacy there is preserved. After deleting all his characters, he created a new toon, and confirmed that it retained the legacy XP and unlocks that had been attained with the deleted (or transferred) characters.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

BioWare have announced that they will be offering a free trial that allows players to get to level 15 before there is any need to pay for the game or subscribe. We anticipate that this will be delivered as part of Game Update 1.3.

Lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi, in an interview that will be published in issue 124 of games™ magazine (to be released on 5 July), said the following in an excerpt that was subsequently removed from the magazine’s site:

“The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well,” he says. “Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations. So we are looking at free-to-play but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on.”

Adding fuel to the free-to-play fire, EA’s Frank Gibeau (President of EA Labels, the division which includes the BioWare “Label”), in an interview with GamesIndustry International, also left the door wide open for a free-to-play conversion at some point. The sense from the interview was that this wouldn’t be any time soon; instead, they are going to see how the free trial goes as an initial foray into the free-to-play space.
Finally, James Ohlen (SWTOR’s Game Director) said in an interview with PC Gamer that:

“I think it [free-to-play] can work for different games. It really depends on how you go with your game. Games that have been built to be free-to-play from the start definitely work out. Now, there have been games that weren’t free to play from the start and transferred over to becoming free to play that have worked as well. But it’s definitely not something that’s super easy to do.”

Our conclusion is that they’re actively thinking about going free-to-play, but at best it’s in the conceptual stage. Converting a subscription-based MMO is a non-trivial exercise, and it would probably takes many months of development effort to achieve. If it happens at all, we don’t think it will be this year!

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 31

teo — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:56:30 +0000

Hyp joins your hosts Chill and Teo to discuss the latest news, including the additional post-Game Update 1.3 information that has trickled out of last week’s E3. Our discussion is once again about server transfers, talking through how they’re progressing and speculating on how things will shake out.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. The Holofeed

Patch 1.2.7 was deployed onto the live servers during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
The first update to Game Update 1.3 that is being tested on the PTS was deployed.
We discuss a couple of remaining answers from the Community Q&A from 25 May, then go through the latest Q&A from 8 June.
Last week at E3, BioWare developers gave interviews to a number of news outlets. While the information didn’t change much, the occasional extra tidbit did slip out.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic Gameplay Video With Daniel Erickson For E3 2012 (G4TV)
- TORWars interview with James Ohlen (part 1 and part 2)
- SWTOR Allies Update: E3 Interview with Daniel Erickson (Curse)
- SWTOR New Features | Bioware at E3 2012 Video (Newsarama)
- E3 2012 Interview with Daniel Erickson (MMORPG)

4. The Sarlacc Digest

Character transfers are underway! You can see the current state of things in this chart. It’s obvious now that BioWare have chosen to consolidate players onto far fewer destination servers than we’d previously imagined. It seems to be averaging out to one or two servers per type (PvE, PvP, RP-PvE and RP-PvP) in each region: US West, US East, Europe (English), Europe (German) and Europe (French).

No news yet on Space Slug, though the way things are going for PvE servers in US West, it looks like we may end up on Drooga’s Pleasure Barge or The Harbinger. We’ve decided that if (when?) Space Slug is designated as an origin server, our guild will indeed be moving to wherever we’re being herded. When we find out for sure, our guild page will be updated with our plan.

Our discussion covers the state of things at the time of recording (Wednesday evening US time), how we feel about the process, and our plans for dealing with the apparently inevitable move.

5. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 30

teo — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:09:34 +0000

Oni returns this week with Hyp to join Chill and Teo to discuss the revelations coming from E3 about what’s coming beyond Game Update 1.3. We also talk about the sudden revelation that server transfers would begin next week on Tuesday (12 June).

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge is carried over from last week: what do the following Star Wars terms have in common:

Palpatine
Mon Mothma
AT-AT Walkers
Sandcrawlers
Slave One
Ewoks

Hints:

The fact that the terms are all from Episodes IV-VI is not the answer; a similar list could have been compiled for Episode I-III
It has nothing to do with grammar or spelling
The following terms would NOT be on the list: Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, Landspeeders, the Millennium Falcon, Wookies

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.2.6 was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
Dr Ray Muzyka, CEO and co-founder of BioWare, gave a 3 minute presentation as part of the EA (Electronic Arts) press conference at E3, being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This included a trailer which was later made available on YouTube. SWTOR’s existing achievements were described, and then Dr Ray gave some glimpses of what was to come over the next year:
- Level cap increase
- New planet: Makeb
- New operation: Terror from Beyond
- New companion: HK-51
- New warzone: Ancient Hypergates
- New race: Cathar
Dr Ray also announced that the unlimited free trial, up to level 15, is coming in July.
Elaboration on the E3 presentation was provided to game journalists in behind-closed-doors press conferences, including DarthHater.
Game Update 1.3 (patch notes) has arrived on the PTS!
Gamespy had a great interview with Daniel Erickson, including some the best indication yet of what’s coming for the upcoming evolution of the space game!
There was yet another Community Q&A (June 1) this week.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @weihanthekidsun, @CaptainCheebra and @ForceChuckle.
Masticon emailed us with a clear description of the bug that causes companions weapons to be readied when out of combat, and (if you so desire) how to get your companion to put it away.
Carlo Cravatzo emailed us with an explanation on what we were doing wrong in the final encounter in Cademimu: our DPS was simply too high, triggering the next rocket firing sequence (which is based on percentages of the boss’s health) before the previous had completed, thus filling all four quadrants with fire. This has been fixed in Game Update 1.3, to ensure that there’s at least 15 seconds between each time the rockets fire, regardless of the boss’s health.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Sooner than we expected, BioWare announced (Character Transfer, Server Populations and You) that character transfers will commence next week on Tuesday, 12 June. Plenty of BioWare answers were provided in the discussion thread in the forums to the questions that inevitably followed.

We discuss the mechanics of the process, and what this will mean for the SWTOR community, and for us. Will we be gently herded off Space Slug? Are they going to salt the Slug?

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 29

teo — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 20:45:11 +0000

This week your hosts Chill and Teo are joined once again by Hyp to go further into Game Update 1.3, discussing the information coming out of the SWTOR panel at MCM Expo in London.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Palpatine. Mon Mothma. AT-AT Walkers. Sandcrawlers. Slave One. Ewoks. What do all these Star Wars terms have in common?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.2.5 was deployed during maintenance on Wednesday, which was delayed from Tuesday due to the Memorial Day holiday in the US. Things didn’t quite go as smoothly as usual, with the downtime extended from the expected 4 hours to 8.
A lot of extra detail about Game Update 1.3 was revealed by Emmanuel Lusinchi (Technical Design Director) during the SWTOR panel held at the London MCM (Movie Comic Media) Expo, which is also known as London’s Comic Con. You can watch the panel via the coverage provided by Gamespot on TwitchTV, or browse Dulfy’s most excellent summary and transcript of the panel and the subsequent Q&A.
We also go over a few answers from the latest Community Q&A (25 May) and DarthHater’s interview (Game Update 1.3 With SWTOR Development Team).

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @sterlinglee38 (Sterling), @MuskokaJ and @IRBountyHunter (Arron Thornton). We leave @ForceChuckle’s question for Oni until next week.
Our guildmate Visaan provides an audio contribution, summarising the game Star Wars: Battlefront II that was mentioned in Episode 22. Sounds like it has a lot of elements which would make fantastic additions to SWTOR’s space game!
Eric Zeigler emailed us to confirm that the issue with companions being in combat stance appears to be a bug that appeared in Game Update 1.2. He also indicates that alacrity is fine as it is: players just need to learn to manage their resources. Similarly, generalising companions isn’t needed; keeping their fixed roles associated with their character is a good thing.
We also apologise for any misunderstanding associated with Hyp’s attempt at humour relating to “dirty RPers”.

6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 28

teo — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:53:21 +0000

Hyp once again joins Chill and Teo to go over the detail revealed this week about the upcoming Game Update 1.3. We also discuss the layoffs at BioWare Austin affecting the SWTOR team, and what this means for the game.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

The UI setting that takes the pain out of having multiple windows open is accessible in the main window of the Interface Editor:

Ensure that checkbox for “Enable Movable Secondary Window” is set, and all will be well!

3. Trivia question

From last week’s challenge, here is the entry sent in by Visaan and Chong:

Vis and Chong dancing on the datacron!

This week’s challenge: where in the game can you find a Hutt frozen in carbonite?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Space Slug (either faction), please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

There was no maintenance this week, and no patches deployed.
BioWare released a trailer for Game Update 1.3 (also on YouTube).
The trailer included a couple of teaser images for what’s coming after Game Update 1.3; make of them what you will!

The trailer was initially released as part of an IGN exclusive (Star Wars: The Old Republic’s 1.3 Patch Revealed), which included an interview with Daniel Erickson.
Daniel also did an interview about Game Update 1.3 with Ten Ton Hammer (SWTOR Patch 1.3 Interview with Daniel Erickson) and PC Gamer (The Old Republic’s Daniel Erickson talks Legacy system update, group finder, and adaptive gear).
Teo spotted what appears to be a major reveal in the PC Gamer interview, where a response from Daniel indicates that SWTOR is moving towards merging their current servers into “super-servers”. Follow the discussion in the Reddit post he started.
Teo also finds that referring to himself in the third person is just a little weird.
The Inquisitor’s Roadhouse blog published an entry (Patch 1.3 Crew Skills Changes: Q&A with SWTOR Systems Designers David Hunt and Patrick Malott) that reveals a lot of detail about how exactly the Augment Stations will work in Game Update 1.3.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @IRBountyHunter (Arron Thornton), @John_K64 (John Kuntz), @cypher_x (Cypher) and @lesman72 (Les).

Cypher suggests that the following Star Wars-themed bed, though sadly it remains only a concept at this point. As Hyp suggest, perhaps this warrants a Kickstarter project?

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Early this week, the BioWare doctors announced that their Austin studio was restructuring, which would result in a number of layoffs. While no further details were released about who was let go, we’ve subsequently found out that Stephen Reid (Senior Community Manager), Brian Arndt (Senior Video Editor), Tina Wall (QA) and David C. Simon (Writer) lost their jobs.

We attempt to remain objective as we discuss what this could mean for SWTOR. Our consensus is more or less that it’s too early to tell, and that we simply have to wait and see what impact the reduction in the size of the development team has on the rate of content production and its quality.

The hosts of the show wish those affected the very best in finding alternative employment, and offer our sincere thanks for the wonderful work they’ve done in helping to create the game that we continue to enjoy.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 27

teo — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:37:19 +0000

Your hosts Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp to catch up on the latest news, as we attempt to resist the siren call of Diablo 3 (with only partial success, regrettably). We also go into detail on how to obtain Matrix Cubes, which remain some of the best relics in the game.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. SWTOR challenge

This week’s challenge: send us a picture of your character with the codex open for the Endurance holochron on Hoth. You may need to adjust your UI temporarily to have the codex open and your toon’s name showing. This one is fun to get!

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Space Slug (either faction), please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.2.4 was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
Yet another weekend pass is being offered from Thursday 17 May through Sunday, ending 2am Monday morning.
BioWare responds (1, 2, 3) in a thread on the forums about the testing of minor patches on the PTS (and how it’s not happening), giving us some insight into their process.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 11 May. The next Q&A won’t be for two weeks, and will focus on questions about the upcoming Game Update 1.3.
Dulfy and Zoopercat of Ask Mr Robot are collaborating on the new community site Tor-Fashion. Well worth a look!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @OriginalBioZed (from the Oz Gamers League), @weihanthekidsun, @cypher_x, @Freakin_Ninja (Oni), @thehatfield and @askmrrobot.

Our guildmates Chong and Mosq provide some correction and elaboration on last week’s news about the change to the PvP daily.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Matrix Cubes are relics that are constructed from Matrix Shards. Matrix Shards come in four colours: blue, red, yellow and green. You can obtain Matrix Shards from Datacrons, which are usually located in hard to get at places on all the accessible planets. The table below shows where the datacrons containing Matrix Shards are located:

You can check which Datacrons you’ve already collected (if any) by going to your Codex for a given character, and checking under the appropriate section. Ask Mr Robot’s Character Builder allows you to track on a per-character basis which Datacrons you’ve collected.

Matrix Cubes are created using either a Republic Matrix Assembler, located in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, or the Imperial Matrix Assembler in the Dark Temple on Dromund Kaas. The Assembler appears as a bench surrounded by three pillars, each pillar holding a shard input panel. To create a new Matrix Cube, you set the three colours of the Matrix Shards you wish to combine. Note that order is unimportant, and that you can have multiple of a given colour (if you have sufficient Matrix Shards of that colour).

The table below shows all the known colour combinations of Matrix Shards that result in Matrix Cubes. Each Matrix Cube will have a minimum level (15, 24, 32 or 50).

Once the three colours are set in the shard input panels, right-click on the Assembler to create your Matrix Cube, which you then collect from the Assembler. It will appear in the Mission Items tab of your inventory, from which you can then equip it into a relic slot on your character sheet.

To recover the Matrix Shards from an existing Matrix Cube, you need to use the Matrix Cube Disassembler located at the back of the room. This requires a Reconfigured Disassembler Core, which is purchasable from several vendors for 8000 credits. The vendors can be found on Tatooine (Kitpth. a Jawa near the Sandcrawler just north of Anchorhead), Taris and Balmorra. When you use the Matrix Cube Disassembler, your Matrix Cube will be broken into its constituent Matrix Shards, and returned to the Mission Items tab in your inventory. The Reconfigured Disassembler Core will be changed into a junk item; unfortunately, it’s only good for a single use.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 26

teo — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:55:56 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Oni to go over the latest news. We also discuss how easy (or hard!) it is to gear up a new 50 to catch up with an established raid group.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Some of the best LucasArts films, other than the Star Wars movies, are the three Indiana Jones movies (yes, there are only three). What you may not know is that each of the three movies has a Star Wars reference hidden somewhere in it. Name two out of three.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize (this week not limited to characters on the Space Slug server), please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.2.3 was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
Episode 1 of the official SWTOR podcast has been released, which includes details about the upcoming patch 1.3.
SWTOR was discussed in EA’s Q4 FY12 financial results investor call.
To celebrate the unofficial Star Wars Day (“May the Forth be with you!”), BioWare brought back Fan Friday.
BioWare warns that using game codes purchased from dodgy sites (which apparently are buying those codes using stolen credit cards) will result the account being banned, due to such codes now being used primarily by credit farmers.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 4 May.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @ozgamersleague, @cypher_x, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @shotgun_burger, @Freakin_Ninja (Oni), @D_Willoughby (DeWayne Willoughby) and @OriginalBioZed.

Lesman emails in to ask whether we believe SWTOR will eventually switch to a free-to-play business model.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Chill is already one of our raid group’s regular tanks on his Vanguard, but is thinking he’d prefer to tank on a Jedi Shadow, which he’d just levelled to 50. He talks about his own experience in getting the Shadow raid-ready, with suggestions on how to do this quickly and efficiently.

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 25

teo — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:01:55 +0000

Your hosts Chill and Teo are joined by Agi and Hyp to talk about this week’s news, and to discuss whether having fully-voiced cut scenes for almost every mission may have gone too far.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. The Holofeed

During unscheduled downtime on Sunday morning, patch 1.2.1a was deployed to fix an economic exploit.
Patch 1.2.2 was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance. Downtime was a couple of hours earlier than usual, to accommodate a holiday in Europe. Servers came up after two hours, about when they’d usually go down!
While the search feature with the GTN was meant to be fixed in the latest patch, it was broken in a different way for specific searches: you must now specify a Rarity to get any results. BioWare says this will be fixed.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 27 April.
BioWare confirms that you will not be banned from using a combat log parser (if you had any doubts on that matter).

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @toliman (Joli), @OriginalBioZed and @shotgun_burger (of the Oz Gamers League and OGLCast), @nethwench (Neth), @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @IzaakTheMad (Izzy), @wrxlvr (Arron Thornton), @MuskokaJ (Jason) and Ryeesa.
Many thanks to @ChewUI_SWTOR for the #FF. Check out the many fine UIs on display at ChewUI.com!
Joli refers us to the most excellent Crafted Gear & Mods infographic provided by Ask Mr. Robot.
Arron Thornton emails in to ask what to do with Warzone Commendations accumulated while one is levelling, as it’s only too easy to reach the current 2000 cap.

5. The Sarlacc Digest

Fully-voiced cut scenes in SWTOR are a key part of the SWTOR experience. But can you have too much of a good thing? We discuss whether BioWare went too far in making the vast majority of missions require an interactive cut scene.

6. Outro

Thanks to Agi (@Agitarsi) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 24

teo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:34:05 +0000

This week, Agi and Oni join your hosts Chill and Teo to go over the latest news, including our own experience with the Rakghoul Outbreak. We also discuss the new gear added in Game Update 1.2 and how to get it.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: The following real things had real implications for Star Wars design. What Star Wars people, places, or things were based at least in part on these items? 5 of 6 correct will be enough for an entry.

An outboard motor
Einstein’s face
A radar dish
A spray bottle
A hamburger with an olive next to it
NASA’s crawler-transporters which were used to bring the space shuttle to its launch pad

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize (this week not limited to characters on the Space Slug server), please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

On Thursday night, we had unexpected downtime to deploy patch 1.2.0c. Patch 1.2.1 was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
The free transfers to the Oceanic servers have begun! Teo’s had already been processed by the Wednesday morning (Australian time) following maintenance. All went perfectly, with his legacy level and unlocks from Space Slug being successfully transferred to Dalborra.
Daniel Erickson has been busy: in another interview published by NowGamer, he mentioned how awesome the next iteration of the space game would be, without giving any details. He was extremely forthcoming on all kinds of subjects in an interview with Zach on Mos Eisley Radio.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 20 April.
As of patch 1.2.1, there remains a bug with slicing missions, where the lock boxes returned have less credits than they should. Best stick to the Sliced Tech Parts missions until it’s fixed!
Some melee classes (particularly Sith Marauders and Jedi Sentinels) may be doing too much damage to the training dummies, due to them currently being unable to “dodge or deflect attacks”; a fix is in the works to make them a little less dumb!
Georg Zoeller explains why the TTK (time to kill) in PvP as of Game Update 1.2 appears to be significantly lower that it was previously. It boils down to the Expertise stat mattering a lot more than it did, some buffs from Legacy unlocks adding more than BioWare expected, and stacking debuffs from multiple players on a single target being a little too effective.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @thehatfield, @shotgun_burger, @MuskokaJ, @wrxlvr, @D_Willoughby, @killacayne and @PaulDemars.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

We discuss itemisation in Game Update 1.2, based on a post by Georg Zoeller. Some of the key points:

The stats on the original tier of gear—Tionese (126), Columni (136) and Rakata (140)—remain unchanged. While the armoring mod on these items can now be removed, the set bonus (if present) is associated with the item shell, not the armoring mod.
You can now get Columni from all bosses (except the last) in the new Lost Island Flashpoint; its last boss drops Rakata.
Rakata items can also be obtained from bosses in the new operation, Explosive Conflict in story mode.
There are two new sets of PvE gear in the next tier: Campaign and Black Hole.
Campaign items share the same set bonus as the original tier, but this bonus is carried on the armoring mod, and thus may be transferred to any orange item. Note that these armoring modes are “bind-to-slot”, and so can only be inserted into a like item (e.g., an armoring mode from Campaign gloves can only be placed in an orange gloves).
Campaign items are obtained (via tokens) from the operation Explosive Conflict in hard mode and the new world boss on Belsavis.
Black Hole items have a different stat distribution to Campaign gear, and no set bonus. They items can be purchased via Black Hole Commendations. They also drop from bosses in Explosive Conflict on all modes.
For PvP, a new entry-level set of blue items, purchasable with credits, has been added for level 50s wanting to get into PvP. Due to the increased value of Expertise in PvP, this set may be more effective than Columni in warzones.
The existing Battlemaster gear no longer has a valor rating requirement, and may be purchased via Warzone Commendations.
War Hero is the new tier of PvP gear. It has no valor rating requirement, and is purchased via Ranked Warzone Commendations, which may only be obtained at the moment by exchanging Warzone Commendations (at a 3:1 ratio).
In Game Update 1.3, a crafter-friendly way will be providedto allow an augment slot to be added to an orange item that doesn’t already have one. Currently, an augment slot is only present if the orange item was crit-crafted.
No higher level augments will be added in Game Update 1.2 (and probably 1.3) beyond the current highest, which have an effective level of 49.
There is a known bug that prevents crafted orange items from being reverse engineered.
Hopefully Game Update 1.3 will bring social gear that will adapt its armour type to that of the character’s Advanced Class, rather than being only light armour as it is now.

7. Outro

Thanks to Agi (@Agitarsi) and Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 23

teo — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:02:29 +0000

This week, Chill and Teo and joined by Agi, Oni and (gatecrashing) Hyp to discuss the latest news in the aftermath of Game Update 1.2′s release, including the Rakghoul Outbreak live event!

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Storm troopers in Star Wars are left-handed. We know this because they all sign their mortgage checks with their left hands. Just kidding! They hold their guns left-handed. The lore explanation is that they are all cloned from the same person. Let’s not bicker and argue about all the issues that raises. After all, there is also a non-lore explanation. What is it?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize (this week not limited to characters on the Space Slug server), please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.2.0b was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
SWTOR.com has a new look!
The free character transfers promised for late April commence on 24 April. If you’re eligible, you’ll need to specify which characters you want moved before then. More information can be found in the FAQ.
James Ohlen told Darth Hater that server mergers, as a solution to helping populate low-pop servers, were off the table during an interview at PAX East. However, Daniel Erickson subsequently told NowGamer that they were very much an option, though character transfers would be used first to help balance server populations.
In this week’s poll, James Ohlen wants to know what players would like the Group Finder (definitely coming in Game Update 1.3, though it will be limited to finding players on the same server) to handle first.
The Rakghoul Outbreak live event is keeping players busy this week, though it concludes on 24 April. Head to Tatooine before it’s gone!
Daniel Erickson let players know that some short-term changes to warzones would be patched very shortly.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @wrxlvr (Arron Thornton), @toliman (Joli), @Nethwench (Neth), @sterlinglee38 (Sterling), @ChewUI_SWTOR, @D_Willoughby (DeWayne Willoughby) and @Freakin_Ninja (Oni).

6. Outro

Thanks to Agi (@Agitarsi), Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 22

teo — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 07:56:37 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Agi to discuss Game Update 1.2 which, while certainly fantastic, has had its accompanying trials and tribulations.

1. Introduction

Teo’s initial foray into UI redesign. Note that he’s got his ship droid with him because the rest of his companions are on slicing missions!

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Tatooine is rightly a famous planet, not because of its location, which is always described as backwater and off the main space lanes. It is famous because it is the homeworld of Anakin and Luke Skywalker. It appears in most of the six Star Wars movies. However, it is never seen in one movie, and never named in one movie. Which one or two movies?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed

Game Update 1.2 – Legacy (patch 1.2.0) was deployed on Thursday night, requiring 8 hours of downtime.
It had actually been accidentally made available for download in a 15 minute window the day before; anyone who tried to login during that time had their game installation corrupted, requiring a full reinstall. All those affected will be granted 3 free days of gametime.
It was followed by patch 1.2.0a on Friday night, needing another 4 hours of downtime.
Unfortunately, this didn’t go so well: many things had reverted to their pre-1.2 state. The servers were then taken down an hour or so later for repairs, coming back up 6.5 hours later. As compensation, all players will get a free day of gametime.
BioWare announces that to celebrate the release of Game Update 1.2, everyone will get a Tauntaun Ram. In addition, anyone with at least one level 50 and/or have achieved legacy level 6 will get a month of free game time, and anyone who has cancelled their subscription can come back for 7 days for free!
We discuss the community Q&A published on 6 April.
FORCE Junkies provides a most helpful pair of infographics to interpret the somewhat obscure icons used to identify the various classes and ACs.
Hyp refers us to the Kickstarter project Plastic Galaxy: A Documentary About Star Wars Toys.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Rrubb (Rub), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @Praemorior (Henri Huittinen), @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @thehatfield (Hatfield), @Rippthedeceiver (Ripp), @sterlinglee38 (Sterling), @wingthequick (Wingy), @PaulDemars (Paul Demars) and @Lexx_Sylveste (Sylv).
Here’s the Rebel Bass (sic) that Hatfield found:

BenC tells us that cybertech is extremely viable at the moment, particularly when selling earpieces with and without an augment slot. He’s making some serious credits!
Jedidiah refers us to Ask Mr Robot’s database of items to help sort out what’s new in Game Update 1.2.
We discuss Eric’s idea for providing some community-driven direction for players to help fill out currently under-populated servers.

6. Outro

Thanks to Agi (@Agitarsi) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

Thanks for listening. We hope you continue to enjoy your time in Star Wars: The Old Republic!

OotiniCast Episode 21

teo — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 09:14:13 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined once again by Hyp and Oni to discuss the news, again focusing on Game Update 1.2 which is drawing ever closer. We also look in depth at what the Guild Bank will offer, and discuss some of its limitations.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: We’ve already mentioned in a previous trivia question that Return of the Jedi’s shooting title was “Blue Harvest” and why. But another fact about Jedi’s title was that it was originally going to be “Revenge of the Jedi.” But the producers changed the name for two reasons. One was that revenge didn’t feel very “Jedi-like.” What is the other, Star Trek-related reason for the name change?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.5e was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
BioWare released the video “A Quick Look at UI Customization” (also on YouTube), presented by Michael Voigt, Lead Interface Artist.
The eight videos taken of the panels during the recent Guild Summit have now been released on YouTube.
A trailer for Novare Coast, the new warzone coming in Game Update 1.2, has been released (also on YouTube).
A delegation from BioWare is currently at PAX East in Boston, which is being ably covered by DarthHater for SWTOR-related events. It seems that one reveal (apparently unintentionally!) was that Game Update 1.2 will probably be deployed on Tuesday 17 April.
Yet another Weekend Pass Free Trial (the third so far) is currently under way, running April 5-9.
BioWare made a worthy contribution to the April Fool’s Day efforts this year, with their Live the Ship Droid Experience article, which includes five short videos. Stephen Reid had to step in to confirm that it was indeed a joke.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 30 Mar, which focuses on Game Update 1.2.
Gabe Amatangelo provides plenty of detail in his article PvP in Game Update 1.2.
James Ohlen has been soliciting feedback on the official forums. Last week’s poll asked “What kind of Open World PvP excites you most?”. This week, he asks “Which Star Wars fantasy excites you most?” The choices are full 3D space battles, vehicle combat (AT-ATs), pod/speeder racing or capital ship battles.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @OriginalBioZed (BioZed), @shotgun_burger, @Jimothyk and @Rippthedeceiver.
Hatfield emails in to let us know how he’s going with his Jedi Shadow.
Snowy has compiled a list of the top 5 features he’d like to see added to the game, and sent them to us to discuss!

6. The Sarlacc Digest

We give an overview of the guild bank that is available in Game Update 1.2, based on our own experiences on the PTS, Larry Everett’s Hyperspace Beacon: Breaking the bank and Dulfy’s Guild Bank and Vehicle Achievements in 1.2.

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 20

teo — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:04:02 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Oni to discuss the news, focusing on the upcoming Game Update 1.2 and our time on the PTS. We also talk through our first SWTOR raiding experiences as a guild.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: The Millennium Falcon has a history of association with gambling. After all, the current owner, Han Solo, won it in a game of sabacc from its previous owner, Lando Calrissian, that famous “card player, gambler, scoundrel.” And you might not be surprised to learn that Lando also had himself won the Falcon in an earlier game of sabacc. But not only that, the Millennium Falcon has on board a piece of gambling equipment. The question is: what gambling equipment, and where is it seen? (No, I’m not talking about the chess board.) Hint: you can definitely see it in “A New Hope,” and I’m not sure if you can see it anywhere else.
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

No new patch was deployed to the live servers this week. While there is a 5 hour maintenance this coming Tuesday, this will not be the deployment of Game Update 1.2.
However, plenty of patches were made to Game Update 1.2 on the PTS! You can always find the latest PTS patch notes here.
William Wallace, Senior Game Designer, goes into lots of detail about the new legacy system with his developer blog, Your Legacy Begins.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 23 March.
Stephen Reid gave a couple of hints (1, 2) about the dynamic events that will be appearing sometime after Game Update 1.2 goes live.
SWTOR now has an official podcast, hosted by Brooks Guthrie and Eric Musco.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @bryterside (Bryter), @JDawson268 (Beardsley), @thehatfield (Hatfield), @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @shotgun_burger (who else?) and @sterlinglee38 (Sterling).
Ben Murray, who plays Monk (a Mercenary on The Harbinger server), emailed in about there being nothing useful to do with Warzone Commendations while leveling up solely through PvP; you quickly run out of things to buy, especially if you’re in orange moddable gear. He suggests that one possibility would be to make mods purchasable with those commendations, rather than having to spend credits to buy them from crafters.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Our topic is our first experience raiding in SWTOR as a guild. We’ve raided twice since our last show; the first time was Saturday 24 March, where we cleared 4/5 in normal/story mode Eterity Vault, and had a few goes at Soa. We raided again on Wednesday 28 March, this time clearing EV, and then taking down the first boss in Karagga’s Palace.

The raid team consisted of a Vanguard tank, Jedi Sage and Command healers, three DPS Commandos and two DPS Scoundrels. Not the most diverse group!

Overall, it was great experience, comparable with anything we’ve seen in WoW. We’re looking forward to getting back in there next week, to continue gearing up to hopefully start tackling the hard modes before too much longer.

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 19

teo — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 07:58:59 +0000

This week is all about the detail in Game Update 1.2, which is now being tested on the PTS! Oni and Agi join your hosts Chill and Teo to discuss the changes that are coming.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Being stealthy on the Death Star is a good thing if you’re part of the Rebel Alliance. But in “A New Hope,” there was one Imperial who walked around silently on the Death Star, despite apparently wearing boots. Which Imperial, and why?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.5c was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
An unexpected patch 1.1.5d turned up on Friday morning. This was during early evening Friday night for Australia, with Stephen Reid posting about why this was necessary.
For the second weekend in a row, anyone who has never tried SWTOR may try the game for 4 days (22-26 March).
We discuss the community Q&A published on 16 March.
Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer, gives us a detailed overview of crew skills in Game Update 1.2 in the latest developer blog.

5. The Sarlacc Digest

The subject this week is Game Update 1.2! A wealth of detail has emerged; we discuss:

Your Saga Continues: Story in Game Update 1.2, a community blog post by Charles Boyd (Writer).
The Legacy System, the latest developer dispatch (also on YouTube).
Game Update 1.2 patch notes on the PTS, with additions made in an update on 22 March.

6. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @sterlinglee38 (Sterling), @anditwasgood, @wingthequick, @new5thpants (D.A.Leary), @CarlosAlejandre, @Lexx_Sylveste (Sylv), @shotgun_burger, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy) and @rippthedeceiver (Ripp).
@tinokwow refers us to this YouTube video about lightsaber techniques. Most educational!

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Agi (@Agitarsi) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 18

teo — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 08:24:14 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Rub and Hyp to discuss the news, focusing on the clarifications provided for the imminent Game Update 1.2; we also talk about some interesting issues and questions raised in listener email.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Lucas’s “American Graffiti” is basically how we ended up with Harrison Ford in Star Wars. We also got something else from “American Graffiti,” specifically from the second dialogue of the second reel. What else did Star Wars get from American Graffiti?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.5a was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
In addition to the Friend of Star Wars: The Old Republic promotion, BioWare launched The Old Republic Weekend Pass to allow anyone to try the game over this weekend.
Patch 1.1.5b was deployed during 2 hours of unexpected downtime on Thursday afternoon.
More information was revealed about Game Update 1.2 on the second day of the Guild Summit. DarthHater provides a great overview.
Augment slots may eventually be addable to existing gear.
The existing BioChem reusable stims, adrenals and medpacks will not be removed in Game Update 1.2. Instead, they are being deprecated, with no now reusable versions of this items being available in subsequent tiers of content.
You will be able to queue a pre-made 8-man raid for a ranked (not normal/unranked) warzone in Game Update 1.2.
Larry Everett of Massively provides a detailed description of the new warzone, Novare Coast, in his overview of what he experienced when playing with Game Update 1.2 at the guild summit.
BioWare’s Richard Vogel (Executive Producer) and Dallas Dickinson (Production Director) gave a talk at this year’s GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) about the process of building SWTOR.

5. Sarlacc Digest Feedback

We discuss tweets from @thehatfield (Hatfield), @shotgun_burger (ShotgunBurger), @OriginalBioZed (BioZed), @bryterside (Bryter), @toliman (Joli), @Lexx_Sylveste (Sylv), @Vallant1985 (Val), @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @MIZM764 (Mitchell Hill) and @ForceChuckle.
If you are interested in general gaming, we recommend that you subscribe to the OGL Cast on iTunes, the podcast hosted by the Oz Gamer’s League (including BioZed and ShotgunBurger).
JD let us know that the datacron location guide from RepublicTrooper.com that he recommended previously wasn’t working out too well; he advises that it be used with caution.
Jed emailed us to ask when is an explit really an exploit? An inconclusive discussion failing to resolve this question ensued.
Evan from Boston (Orlin on our Space Slug server) emailed to ask about differences in playing the mirror classes between the factions. He also was wondering that if it were possible, who (or what) would we like to have as a new companion?
Snowy has been experimenting with hybrid specs on his Jedi Sage. He wonders whether we’ve been doing the same on our characters.
Alex Young emails to propose dishwashing as an addition way to keep our companions out of trouble, asks how to use shields and torpedoes in space missions, and hopes that they’ll be a vendor for those who manage to maintain a neutral light/dark side alignment.

6. Outro

Thanks to Rub (@Rrubb) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 17

teo — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 08:46:43 +0000

Chill and Teo are once again joined by Hyp and Oni to discuss the avalanche of information unleashed at the Guild Summit about Game Update 1.2.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Hyp’s Scoundrel is at least wearing clothes now, but you’ll have to decide whether it’s an improvement…

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Some Star Wars math: How long does Obi-Wan consider a generation to be? To answer, you’ll have to know both your “New Hope” trivia, plus some information available on SWTOR.com. Answers within 5 years will be considered correct.
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.5 was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
The following colour crystals are being sold from the vendor added in patch 1.1.5, located in the GTN quadrant of the fleet, in the alcove next to the light side vendor:
- +41 expertise (green, blue, cyan, red): 125K
- +41 crit, power, endurance (cyan): 125K
- +41 crit, power, endurance, expertise (purple): 250K
- +31 crit, power, endurance, expertise (white): 1M
- +41 crit, power, endurance, expertise (white): 2.5M
The Friends of Star Wars: The Old Republic promotion was launched on 6 March, which allows you to offer up to three friends a 7 day free trial of SWTOR.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 2 March.
Damion Schubert answered many questions during a Facebook Q&A.
There are no plans for a 64 bit SWTOR client.
Electronic Arts reveals that SWTOR retains 1.7M active subscriptions now; this matches the number reported in their earnings call a few weeks ago, when a large proportion of those being counted were in the first free month of game time. Now the free month has elapsed for most, but the number of subscriptions remains stable. Good news for SWTOR!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @OriginalBioZed (BioZed), @PaulKearnan (ShotgunBurger), @Vallant1985 (Val), @Tinockwow (Tinock), @MesecLegacy (Zosimah), @Wingthequick (Wingy) and @toliman (Joli).
Due to all the Game Update 1.2 content, we’ll be going over the emails we received next week, in episode 18.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

We discuss Game Update 1.2 “Legacy”, many details of which were revealed during the Guild Summit, held earlier this week. The features we cover include:
- New warzone: Novare Coast. Same-faction, like Huttball.
- New operation: Explosive Conflict.
- New Flashpoint: The Lost Island (sequel to Kaon under Siege, more Rakghouls!).
- Expanded legacy system:
  - family tree
  - legacy unlocks (class buffs, species)
- When character transfers become available in late April, the legacy level goes with the character being transferred, unless the player already has a legacy on the destination server which is higher (in which case the higher legacy level is retained.
- UI customization
- Improved character textures (probably means that high resolution textures are now available outside cut-scenes)
- Appearance customization (head, hands, belt, legs, feet, bracers have a “match colour to chest” option)
- Mission tracker usables (lets you click the item via your mission tracker, rather than having to find the item in your inventory’s “Mission Items” tab)
- Warzone rankings, which are individual rather than team based; as with non-ranked warzones, you can queue solo or as a party
- New items (tier 2, where the Tienese/Columni/Rakata make up tier 1)
- Learnable tier 2 crafting items
- New Corellia dailies
- New minipets
- Guild banks
- New speeders, cybertech vehicles no longer BoP
- The cost of speeder piloting will go down across all tiers (90%, 100%, 110%)
- The cost of all 110% speeders will go up
- Those speeders which had their price reduced in patch 1.1.5 will no longer be purchasable in Game Update 1.2
- Craftable augments (craftable by synthweaving, armstech, armormech; mats from slicing)
- Crit-craft orange gear (to give augment slots)
- Increased chance of researching schematics
- Reverse engineering random drops
- Retractable tier 2 mods
- Ship droids gain affection
- They’re adding a vocal restraining bolt for our ship droids, to keep ‘em quiet. Thank the Maker!
- New roleplay emotes
- Stackable companion gifts
- Companion gift cooldown (currently 30 seconds) removed
- More craftable colour crystals
- Sprint (140%) at level 1 rather than level 14
- Crafting mats from Ops may no longer be BoP, and become tradeable
- Phasing out reusable BioChem items over time
- They are indeed giving up on Ilum for now; a better open world PvP experience coming sometime down the track.
- Group finder in 1.3 (not 1.2) for Flashpoints and missions.
- As discussed in episode 16, a very detailed combat log, only parseable out-of-game will be available; this will only show what happens to your character, no others in your party or raid

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 16

teo — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 08:40:45 +0000

Hyp and Oni once again join Chill and Teo to discuss this week’s news, including the imminent patch 1.1.5, the upcoming Game Update 1.2 and the latest community Q&A.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Beyond both being in Lucas-produced movies, how are the characters of Chewbacca and Indiana Jones connected?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.5 wasn’t deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance, though a few more changes were added to the build on the PTS.
Georg’sblog post offers some hope for crafters who may be frustrated by the current lack of endgame utility with their crafting crew skill.
SWTOR launched in the Asia Pacific region on March 1st, with an initial set of three servers: Dalborra (PvE), Master Dar’Nala (PvP) and Gav Daragon (RP-PvE).
Unfortunately for players wanting to transfer their existing toons onto the new Asia Pacific servers, the free one-off character transfers won’t be happening until “last April”.
This is apparently due to the complexity of dealing with the legacy system, which currently is associated with all characters on a given server.
TOROz were on hand to cover the launch event that was held in Sydney. They also managed to snag a most enlightening interview with Gabe Amatangelo.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 24 Feb.

5. Sarlacc Digest Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ben_b55 (Ben), @OriginalBioZed (Dale), @Paulk2225 (ShotgunBurger), @HalfMet, @Rippthedeceiver (Ripp), @StiffishCracker, @Wingthequick (Wingy) and @Aprillian.
We recommend listening to the OZG Cast, the official podcast of the Oz Gaming League, covering general gaming topics.
Snowy points out that there are Mission Support Vendors on Belsavis, not just Ilum, who sell mods, earpieces and implants for Daily Commendations.
Fellow Robes on Head member Fizz emails us with some great ideas on how to improve the game, including the fantastic notion of making our ship droid into a combat dummy!
Our fellow raider Sylv emails in to tell us about his SWTOR performance issues, and to ask how a social gamer who likes to hang with his friends can do that while still enjoying SWTOR’s story.

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 15

teo — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 08:59:49 +0000

This week Chill and Teo are once again joined by Oni and Hyp, to discuss the news, the community Q&A, and to talk about what there is to do at level 50.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Here we see Hyp’s Scoundrel in all his massive glory. He has acquired the disturbing habit of surreptiously stripping down prior to entering a cut-scene when grouped with Teo. It is hard to convey just how much of a shock this was the first time it happened.

Hyp asks us to compare the loading screen for Belsavis with that used in World of Warcraft’s Razorfen Downs instance. He claims a striking similarity, and in examining the images closely, he may have a point!

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: In wars, areas can be strategic because they are important in terms of their location or in terms of their resources. For what strategic reason are the Republic and the Empire fighting over Ilum?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.4 was deployed during Wednesday’s maintenance, and patch 1.1.5 has just appeared on the PTS.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 17 Feb.
More information about Game Update 1.2, coming in March:

Apparent confirmation that we’ll be able to remove armoring mods from purple gear
Differences in timing of abilities between classes will be evened out with modified animations
Additional schematic drops for Artifice (and hopefully the other crafting professions!).
Legacy name change is coming (eventually).
In the case where both sides in the Void Star warzone are tied, the winnder is determined randomly for now, with a more sophisticated mechanism being implemented for Game Update 1.2.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @IzaacTheOrc, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @Vallant1985 (Val), @CG5wan (Nick Swanson), @toliman (Joli), @JohnBarlak, @Rrubb (Rub), @Rippthedeceiver, @PallySayce, @Paulk2225 (ShotgunBurger), @StiffishCracker and @thehatfield.
@IzaacTheOrc pointed us to J!NX (purveyors of fine WoW shirts) have expanded their range to include SWTOR merchandise. Looks good!
@IzaacTheOrc also referred us to a list of useful SWTOR tips, which we’ll go over next week, adding our own to the mix.
Joli’s is managing a thread on the official forums that collates a long list of suggested GTN improvements. Why not add your own?
You can try out the beta version of Ask Mr. Robot’s SWTOR gear tool here.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

What do I do at level 50?

Finish your class story if you haven’t already; this will provide two breadcrumb quests that will send you to Ilum and Belsavis.
Each of those quests starts a chain that will unlock a number of daily quests.
There are 5 solo daily quests on Ilum, each awarding 1 Daily Commendation and 10762 credits. Doing them all takes 25-30 minutes.
There is also a heroic 2+ on Ilum, the reward for which is 3 Daily Commendations, and Enhancement 22 and ~16K credits.
There are 8 solo daily quests on Belsavis, each awarding 1 Daily Commendation and 7175 credits. Doing them all takes 45-60 minutes.
There is a heroic 2+ and two heroic 4s on Belsavis, which each award 3 Daily Commendations, a Mod 22 and ~16K credits.
The two Mission Support Vendors on Ilum will sell you:

Armoring 23, Barrell 23 and Hilt 23 mods for 8 Daily Commendations each
Rakata earpieces and implants for 120 Daily Commendations each

The level 50 gear comes in three tiers:

Tionese/Xenotech/Energized (rating 126)
Columi/Exotech (rating 136)
Rakata (rating 140)

Each class has a Tioese, Columi and Rakata vendor in the Supplies quadran of the fleet.
There is a daily quest to complete one hard mode Flashpoint.
The weekly quests include:

Complete all four level 50 Flashpoints on normal (Directive 7, The Battle of Ilum, The False Emperor, Kaon Under Siege)
Complete any three hard mode Flashpoints

The following hard mode Flashpoints are available:

The Esseles
Taral V
Maelstrom Prison
Directive 7
The Battle of Ilum
The False Emperor
Kaon Under Siege

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 14

teo — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 07:18:17 +0000

Teo and Chill are joined by our guildmate Agi to discuss our experience doing hard mode Flashpoints. We also go over the latest news, including the announcement of the Asia Pacific launch and last week’s community Q&A.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: In SWTOR’s character selection screen, what are the two factors that go into determining the order your characters appear?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.3 was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance.
The client-side only mini-patch 1.1.3a was made available soon after, to fix the problem with the use of mouse button 5 causing the game client to crash.
Patch 1.1.4 is now on the PTS, and includes the capability of configuring how cooldown notification are displayed in the UI.
We discuss the community Q&A published on 10 Feb.
The upcoming 1.2 content patch will include some kind of deserter debuff for warzones, and will apparently remove daily quests for warzones.
The Asia Pacific launch of SWTOR is on Thursday 1 March at midnight AEDT.
In a special edition of the TOROZ podcast Flash Point, the crew interview Stephen Reid about the upcoming Asia Pacific launch.
Coming soon are two Lego sets based on SWTOR: a Republic Striker-class starfighter, and the Sith Warrior/Inquisitor starship, a Sith Fury-class Interceptor.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @CarlosAlejandre, @toliman (Joli), @wellerj1 (James Weller), @JDistheWP (JD), @grimrok (Grim), @Rrubb, @CG5wan (Nick Swanson) and @bytorsnowdog (Snowy).
Kym (Zigarot from “The Australians” guid on the Empress Teta server) emailed us about the extremely informative email being sent to new players when they reach level 10, such as this one.
JD pointed us towards a superb guide from RepublicTrooper.com listing all the datacrons, their locations, and videos for how to retrieve them.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

We discuss Snowy’s email, in which he recounts his journey to level 50 on his Jedi Sage.
This week we also finally had enough level 50s from the guild in the same place at the same time to allow us to attempt some hard mode Flashpoints. We discuss our experiences doing The Esseles and The False Emperor.

7. Outro

Thanks to Agi (@Agitarsi) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 13

teo — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:20:18 +0000

Returning guests Oni and Cypher join your hosts Teo and Chill to talk about the aftermath of patch 1.1.2, and to discuss how to make your companions love you to boost their productivity!

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: Standing near the western entrance to the cantina in Anchorhead on Tattooine, you look across the street and see a yellow datacron on the opposite roof. No stairs present themselves to get up there, and you decide to find out how to get it. The question is: where do you start?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.2 was deployed during Tuesday’s maintenance, with two major issues subsequently emerging:

Valor awards for player kills in the open world PvP area on Ilum were not working; this was patched on Thursday in patch 1.1.2a.
There was an uproar and a great deal of disapproval about the latest enhancements to the display of cooldowns on the ability bar. They will be providing, in patch 1.1.4, the ability to tailor how this is displayed via configuration options.

Patch 1.1.3 is on the PTS, and is planned to be deployed during the next maintenance on Tuesday.
Reverse engineering appears to be not working as intended, with the chance of discovering a blue or purple schematic appearing to be lower than they wanted. Until this is fixed, it’s probably best not to try, and save your mats!
BioWare have released the first in a series of “Begin Your Journey” videos, intended for newcomers to MMOs, to help them get started in SWTOR.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @John_K64 (Ryeesa), @wingthequick (Wingy), @toliman (Joli), @Jimothyk, @JohnBarlak, @bytorsnowdog, @Vallant1985, @SumDuud and @new5thpants (D.A. Leary)
@OriginalBioZed let us know that if you want to join “The Australians” guild on the Empress Teta server, you can contact @OriginalBioZed, @Paulk2225 or @Zigarot for an invitation.
@OriginalBioZed also provided us with the following links:

Assembling Matrix Cubes (Relic Items) (RepublicTrooper.com)
Complete Datacron Location List (SW:TOR Strategies)
Useful info: mods, crew skills, equipment, stats
PvP Gear Min/Maxing or: How I Learned to Love Champion Gear

Kym emailed in to let us know about a tweak that allows you to greatly increase your view distance.
Wingy emailed us to share his leveling adventures on the Empire side.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

We discuss companion affection in detail. It’s a fairly light topic, though there a few tricks to it that are worth remembering. We found the following articles to be useful:

Companion Affection: What It Does and How to Get It (ForceJunkies)
Companion Gifts Guide: How to buy your love (OldRepublic.net)
List of Companions in Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR Spy)

7. Outro

Thanks to Cypher (@Cypher_x) and Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) for joining us this week. You can find out more about Cypher’s show on its website, and follow them on Twitter via @TheAddictedCast.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 12

teo — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:48:00 +0000

Teo and Chill are joined by Hyp and Cypher, his co-host from The Addicted, to discuss a bumper week of SWTOR news, including various patches, the upcoming patch 1.1.2, the announcement of the guild summit, and the EA earnings call.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: What in SWTOR was “Forged from solid gold and sculpted by no less than eighty-three artisans?”
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.0c was deployed with little notice on Friday to fix an issue with player disconnections on the character selection screen.
Patch 1.1.1, which had been on the PTS for a couple of weeks, was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
Stephen Reid explains why the forums go read-only during maintenance.
Patch 1.1.1a was deployed on Thursday morning to fix a “hitching/freezing” issue that some players were experiencing since patch 1.1.1 went live.
The issue where winning a warzone may not count towards the victories required for the PvP daily or weekly quests was not actually fixed as had been initially reported, but a fix has subsequently been identified though still needs to be tested before going live.
Patch 1.1.2 is now on the PTS.
Georg Zoeller explains why further nerfs have been made to Biochem in patch 1.1.2, and elaborates on their strategy for making all the crew skills viable and attractive for those doing endgame content.
The TOR-Talk podcast interviews Stephen Reid about how things are going and what’s coming up in the future.
The DualShockers gaming site has published an interview with Cory Butler asking a wide range of questions, including whether Georg Lucas has tried SWTOR.
BioWare announced a guild summit, to be held in Austin on 4-6 March 2012.
Electronic Arts had their quarterly earnings call, which was covered by DarthHater. Key points include over 2 million in SWTOR sales, and currently 1.7 million active subscribers.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @grimrok, @zachpsx, @CG5wan, @sterlinglee38, @Continuumm_PoH, @Paulk2225, @Vallant1985 and @Ahigabg.
ShotgunBurger (@Paulk2225) let us know about TORHead’s data-mined leaked information, which supposedly reveals details about upcoming patches 1.2 through 1.5. These are spoilers, and could very well be inaccurate!
@Zigarot provides a link to a 1-50 leveling map/flowchart, showing level-appropriate planets and Flashpoints for both the Republic and Empire sides.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Chill goes over his analysis of whether post-nerf slicing is actually profitable, using the data he accumulated when power-leveling it after dropping Armstech.

7. Outro

Thanks to Cypher (@Cypher_x) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week. You can find out more about their show on their website, and follow them on Twitter via @TheAddictedCast.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 11

teo — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:28:04 +0000

Teo and Chill are once again joined by Oni and Hyp to complete our coverage of the space game, going into detail about the various missions. We also discuss the news, including the recently deployed patch 1.1.0b and the upcoming patch 1.1.1.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: When someone speaks like Grand Moff Tarkin in real life, we say they have a British accent. When someone speaks like that in SWTOR, what is that same accent called?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.1.0b was deployed during the regular Tuesday maintenance this week.
Patch 1.1.1 was announced and is currently available on the PTS for testing.
Georg Zeoller talks about the various fixes planned for the ability delay issue; also, a couple of follow-up posts: 1, 2.
Total Biscuit’s interview with Gabe Amatangelo on YouTube.
Georg reminds us that an item’s mods can be changed by ctrl-right-clicking on the item, and hints that the now redundant workbenches may have a new purpose in the future.
Stephen Reid tweets that the “green ray” graphical issue is being looked at (but no fix yet), SWTOR now has a suggestion forum, tells us there are no current plans for a Mac (OS X) client, lets us know we’ll be getting /roll, and that we’ll soon be able to attach both a mobile and physical security key to the same account.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Burritobread, @sterlinglee38, @Paulk2225, @Rippthedeceiver, @DarthGally, @Grizzlebeee, @DarthBaelok and @CarlosAlejandre.
Ripp’s suggested forum post to fix post-patch 1.1 lag issues.
Paul recommends SWTOR Things summary of vanity pets for those, like @Nethwench, who love their pets.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

In the second instalment of our two-part discussion about the space game, we go into detail about each of the missions, describing its scenario and some handy tips and tricks that we’ve picked up along the way.

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 10

teo — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 09:31:32 +0000

Returning guests Oni and Hyp join Chill and Teo to discuss the aftermath of Game Update 1.1′s deployment, especially the initial issues with Ilum’s open world PvP. We also discuss the space game, covering the basics of ship upgrades and piloting.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: You go to Tatooine’s Dune Sea. you head west to the Republic’s Outpost Thorazan. Heading southwest from there, you come across some Jawa bodies surrounding an animal skull. The skull is clickable and you click it. The question is: what happens next?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Game Update 1.1 “Rise of the Rakghouls” went live this week.
The changes to Ilum’s open world PvP didn’t initially work as intended, as summarised by Gabe Amatangelo and Jeff Hickson.
BioWare releases their “Coming Up in STAR WARS: The Old Republic” video (also on YouTube).
Those who initially subscribe will gain the “Founder” title.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Paulk2225, @altwowEU (Leralond), @toliman (Joli), @Freakin_Ninja (Oni), @DarthGally, @JameyTyler, @CarlosAlejandre, @Rippthedeceiver, @Burritobread, @thehatfield, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy) and @sterlinglee38.
Our guildmate Magneto recommends the site SWTOR Human Relations, which has plenty of guides and other useful information.
The list of companions and their details provided by SWTOR Face is recommended by Rub.
We go over emails from Dan Scholes, John Barlak and Snowy.
Below is the picture of the Lego Super Star Destroyer that John took last week, in the window of a local toystore:

6. The Sarlacc Digest

In the first of our two-part discussion about the space game, we go over the basics, including how to equip your ship and the essentials of piloting and targeting.
Listed below are the types of ship upgrades that are available:

ship armor (increases toughness)
energy shield (how much shields absorb)
shield regenerator (how fast shields regenerate)
beam charger (how much damage per blaster bolt)
beam generator (how many blaster bolts per second)
missile magazine (how many missiles available)
power conversion module (level 25, “Power to Blasters” [button 1], “Power to Shields” [button 2], 30 Fleet Commendations)
electronic warfare pod (level 35, 90 Fleet Commendations, 10 seconds of invulnerability, “Jam” [button 3])
EMP generator (level 45, 150 Fleet Commendations, damages nearby enemies and allies [button 4])
Proton Torpedo Tube (level 50, 50 Fleet Commendations)

Below are the specific upgrades that you can get for your ship given the level of your character:

14: Grade 1 Beam Generator, Grade 1 Ship Armor
15: Grade 1 Beam Charger
16: Grade 1 Energy Shield, Grade 1 Shield Regenerator
17: Grade 1 Missile Magazine
18: Grade 2 Ship Armor
19: Grade 2 Beam Generator
20: Grade 2 Beam Charger
21: Grade 2 Energy Shield, Grade 2 Shield Regenerator
22: Grade 2 Missile Magazine
23: Grade 3 Ship Armor
24: Grade 3 Beam Generator
25: Power Conversion Module
26: Grade 3 Beam Charger
28: Grade 3 Energy Shield
29: Grade 3 Shield Regenerator
31: Grade 3 Missile Magazine
32: Grade 4 Ship Armor
33: Grade 4 Beam Generator
34: Grade 4 Beam Charger
35: Electronic Warfare Pod
36: Grade 4 Energy Shield, Grade 4 Shield Regenerator
37: Grade 4 Missile Magazine
38: Grade 5 Ship Armor
39: Grade 5 Beam Generator
40: Grade 5 Beam Charger
41: Grade 5 Energy Shield, Grade 5 Shield Regenerator
42: Grade 5 Missile Magazine
43: Armek Ship Armor
44: Rendili Hyperworks Beam Generator
45: EMP generator
46: Sienar Systems Beam Charger
47: Quellegh Industrial Energy Shield, Hoersch-Kessel Shield Regenerator
49: Kuat Drive Yards Missile Magazine
50: Proton Torpedo Tube

7. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 9

teo — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:26:08 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Neth and Rub to discuss the latest news, go over the feedback from the slicing debate held in our previous episode, and then to talk about what one does at level 50.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: A ship says something about the person who owns it. What are the names of these three ships: 1) Boba Fett’s ship, 2) Darth Vader’s Super Star Destroyer, 3) Lando Calrissian’s pleasure yacht. The last is the hardest, but does appear multiple times in the expanded universe of Star Wars. If you can’t come up with the Lando Calrissian one, we will accept a humorous answer instead.
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.0.2d went live during this week’s maintenance which was delayed until Thursday
Game Update 1.1 “Rise of the Rakghouls” will go live this coming Tuesday 17 January. You can find all the details in the patch notes (original post and a subsequent post with additional changes).
Game Update 1.1 will include a new level 50 flashpoint, “Kaon under Siege”. You can see its trailer on the SWTOR site or YouTube.
Stephen Reid explains why only low and medium resolution textures are available during normal gameplay, with the high resolution textures only being used in cut-scenes.
It turns out that the final mission in the Jedi Knight’s class story really was too hard to solo, and BioWare is going to fix it.
Georg Zoeller confirms that the cover mechanic is indeed meant to prevent Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors from leaping on them.
BioWare is going all the way with gear customisation, removing the limitations on the modability of operation-level gear, and allowing the stats to be pulled from that gear (including set bonuses) to be used in your existing orange items.
Damion Schubert reveals that the equivalent of World of Warcraft’s Dungeon Finder is coming eventually, but at least for now the team is philosophically against ever making it cross-server.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @toliman (Joli), @DasDec (Skove), @DarthBaelok, @CarlosAlejandre, @Continuumm_PoH and @cypher_x.
Thanks for the kind words from @MainGaming1, @DarthGally and @SumDuud.
We go over emails from Snowy, the Grey Gamer, Hrugaar, Kono of Keller’s Void and Grant Hennig (Agitarsi), who all comment on the slicing debate which featured our good friend, Oni.
Damion Schubert provides BioWare’s reasoning behind the slicing nerf.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Chill has just reached level 50, and so we discuss just what there is to do once you get there. This mainly involves going over the daily missions that become available on Ilum and Belsavis. We also discuss open world PvP and its current state which is clearly not what BioWare intended. BioWare’s Gabe Amatangelo provides a view on how it ended up as it is, and how it’s being fixed in the imminent Game Update 1.1 in an interview with Massively.
A few extras:

The hanger doors on the main level in the Fleet lead down to the hangar deck, which is actually a big ring road—if you take the wrong door, you can ride around to your hangar without having to go back up.
Any lift in the Fleet can be used while mounted on your speeder (no need to dismount when moving between levels).
While there are no Quesh commendation vendors on the Fleet, they can be found on Quesh itself, close to the shuttle debarkation point on the planet’s surface.
There’s a little padlock icon to the right of the player portrait which can be used to lock and unlock your ability bars.
If you are using Windows 7 and use Ventrilo, be sure to run your Ventrilo client as the Adminstrator to ensure your push-to-talk button still works while playing SWTOR.

7. Outro

Thanks to Neth (@Nethwench) and Rub (@Rrubb) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 8

teo — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:18:02 +0000

Our guests this week are Neth and Oni, joining your hosts Chill and Teo to discuss the latest news, go in-depth on crew skills, and finally engage in a lively debate on the slicing nerf.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: The phrase ‘Blue Harvest’ doesn’t appear in the Star Wars movies, yet that is what Family Guy called their first Star Wars hour-long parody show. Why is ‘Blue Harvest’ an appropriate Star Wars parody name?
If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for an in-game prize offered on Republic-side Space Slug, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com

4. The Holofeed

Patch 1.0.2 went live during this week’s maintenance on Wednesday; it was followed by further patches over the subsequent days to fix further bugs and exploits
BioWare posts that the elusive bug that prevents some players from seeing guild/party chat has had a fix identified, and will be patched very shortly
James Ohlen talks about BioWare’s process for priortising how fast bugs are fixed, and when those fixes are deployed
Patch 1.1 is now available on the PTS, and includes a new Flashpoint (Kaon Under Siege), four new bosses for the operation Karagga’s Palace, and much more!
A native OS X version of the SWTOR client may be coming (sooner or later) for Macs, according to the BioWare doctors
Stephen Reid talks about recent bans for credit farming and people identified as exploiting the game
BioWare quashes a fake post that said they were banned for dancing outside of special “Dance Zones”

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @sterlinglee38, @AndrewBruhl, @delonbellmont, @Buggerwow, @altwowEU, @Draezoth, @CarlosAlejandre.
We express our appreciation for Ben CC’s comment about episode 7.
Snowy emails us, and subsequently discusses his first successful foray into PvP healing.
Mursie (Jedi Shadow on the Belgoth’s Beacon server) tells us about a datacron available on each faction’s fleet that provides a +10 to all stats (currently bugged for the Republic, apparently).

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Mission

Diplomacy

Medical Supplies, light/dark side points, companion gifts

Investigation

Researched Compounds, prototype schematics, companion gifts

Treasure Hunting

Gemstones, lockboxes, companion gifts

Underworld Trading

Underworld Metal, Luxury Fabric, companion gifts

Gathering

Bioanalysis

Biochemical Sample, Biochemical Compound

Scavenging

Scavenged Compounds, Scavenged Metals

Archaeology

Power Crystal, Artifact Fragment, Color Crystal

Slicing

lockboxes, Cybertech schematics, mission discovery objects
augments

Crafting

Synthweaving

uses Power Crystal, Artifact Fragment [Archaeology]
uses Underworld Metal, Luxury Fabric [Underworld Trading]
feet, legs, waist, chest, wrists, head for Jedi Knights and Jedi Consulars, Sith Warriors and Sith Inquisitors

Armormech

uses Power Crystal, Artifact Fragment [Archaeology]
uses Underworld Metal [Underworld Trading]
feet, legs, waist, chest, wrists, head for Smugglers and Troopers, Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters

Armstech

uses Scavenged Compounds, Scavenged Metals [Scavenging]
uses Researched Compounds [Investigation]
mods (Barrel)
weapons (Assault Cannon, Blaster Rifle, Blaster Pistol, Techstaff, Techblade, Electrostaff, Vibroknife, Scattergun)

Artifice

uses Power Crystal, Artifact Fragment, Color Crystal [Archaeology]
uses Gemstones [Treasure Hunting]
mods (Color Crystal, Hilt, Enhancement)
offhand (Shield Generator, Focus)
weapons (Lightsaber)
relics

Cybertech

uses Scavenged Compounds, Scavenged Metals [Scavenging]
uses Underworld Metal [Underworld Trading]
mods (Armoring, Mod)
droid equipment (Sensor, Parts, Motor, Core)
ear
grenades, bombs
ship equipment (Armor Plating, Beam Generator, Shield Generator, Shield Booster, Missile Launcher, Capacitor)
Portable Transport Beacon
speeder

Biochem

uses Biochemical Sample, Biochemical Compound [Bioanalysis]
uses Medical Supplies [Diplomacy]
stims (long-term stat boost)
adrenal (short-term stat boost)
medpacs
implants

7. Outro

Skove, a regular guest on the show, tweets on behalf of his guild via @ItsATrapTOR. His post “Warzone Commendations and how to spend them” is well worth reading if you’re doing PvP!

Thanks to Neth (@Nethwench) and Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 7

teo — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:42:00 +0000

This week Chill and Teo are joined by two returning guests, Neth and Skove, to discuss the news and go into some depth on the subject of PvP in SWTOR.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: In “A New Hope,” Mark Hamill played a young, fresh-faced farmboy. In “Empire,” filmed just three years later, he looks very different. This was not the effects of aging three years, nor was it a director’s choice. What happened at the end of the filming of “A New Hope” that changed the face of Luke Skywalker?

4. The Holofeed

SWTOR’s regular maintenance window will be on Tuesdays 4-10am CST (9pm-3am AEDT, 10am-4pm GMT), commencing 27 Dec
Players who are disconnected while in the queue to join a server now retain their position upon logging back in within a reasonable amount of time.
James Ohlen provides a sneak peak into how content will be introduced post-launch
Best Buy sponsored a live chat with BioWare developers
BioWare’s Your Saga Begins launch documentary
Georg Zoeller explains about orange/moddable items, and also gives some helpful advice for handling tougher encounters
Alexander Freed tells us that BioWare are doing all they can to ensure continuity in the game’s voice work
Dr Greg Zeschuk’s launch beard and SWTOR tattoo:

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Grizzlebeee, @Nethwench and @sterlinglee38.
@Draezoth asks about the different categories of yields from crew skill missions.
Wingy emails us with a cautionary tale about setting up and remembering your five security questions to protect your account.

6. The Sarlacc Digest

PvP in SWTOR, including discussion of the three warzones (Huttball, the Void Star and Alderaan), open world PvP, how bolstering works and an introduction to purchasing PvP gear
A few other tidbits:
- Speeder prices (updated from last week)
  - Level 1 (90%, level 25): training is 40,000C, speeders are 8000C
  - Level 2 (100%, level 40): training is 210,000C, speeders are 25,000C
  - Level 3 (110%, level 50): training is 330,000C, speeders are 55,000C
- What to do with leftover planetary commendations
- The only way to remove a security key from your SWTOR account is to contact customer service by phone
- Shift-right-click AND DRAG on a stack to split it. This is also how you buy in bulk from vendors
- Space missions cut you off from chat and do take a while; may be a good idea to announce when you are going to start your space missions, especially if you like to chain them, as Chill does.

7. Outro

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 6

teo — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:39:52 +0000

This week Chill and Teo are joined by two newcomers to the podcast, Ripp and Gabe, to discuss the news and our experiences over the remainder of Early Game Access and the launch of the game.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: What is the name of Jabba the Hutt’s monkey-lizard jester, who laughs a lot and gets zapped by R2?

4. The Holofeed

The grace period ends. As well as a product registration/game code, a valid payment option and a subscription type must be specified; note that PayPal as well as a credit card can be used.
The Taris bug is fixed!
SWTOR is coming to Australia and New Zealand, with a tentative date of 1 March 2012. There will be local servers physically located in Australia. BioWare is considering some way to allow Australians currently playing on US servers to continue playing on the servers down under (player or even perhaps guild transfers?). Robes on Head will be staying on our west coast US server, Space Slug.
James Ohlen (BioWare Game Director) is interviewed by IGN.

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @lealaturkey, @sterlinglee38, @Buggerwow, @toliman and @BenC82.
@Draezoth refers us to TORStatus.net, a site that gives an up-to-date indication of server populations.
Wingy emails us to ask a couple of questions:
- 1. Why SWTOR was released so close to Christmas? It seems to him that it’s a little inconvenient for those visiting family and going away on holidays. Or perhaps that makes it the perfect time? He also wondered whether the timing making it close to Blizzard’s release of WoW’s patch 4.3 was a coincidence.
- 2. Server queues are terrible on the unofficial oceanic PvP server, The Swiftsure. Are there any other PvP servers specifically set aside for Aussies?

6. The Sarlacc Digest

BioWare’s staggered launch of SWTOR: technically brilliant and yet socially awkward?
Is SWTOR anti-social? It’s hard to quest while in vent, as the game really demands your attention, especially during cut-scenes.
A few other tidbits:
- Speeder prices
  - Level 1 (90%, level 25): training is 40,000C, speeders are 8000C
  - Level 2 (100%, level 40): training is 210,000C, speeders are 25,000C
  - Level 3 (110%, level 50): training cost is unknown, speeders are 55,000C
- The pending quests button!
- Faster to dismiss/resummon your companion if they need lots of healing

7. Outro

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 5

teo — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:31:29 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by returning guest Hypknotoad, and newcomer Neth. The main topic of discussion is our experiences in Early Game Access, which kicked off this week.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

3. Trivia question

Last week’s Star Wars terms: coffee is “caf”, tobacco is “tabac”, handcuffs are “binders”, flashlights (or torches) are “glowsticks”
This week’s challenge: The tauntauns and the AT-AT walkers from Empire were among the world’s first and last full examples of what special effects technique?

4. Force Feedback

Tweets from @Rrubb, @Aprillian, @bytorsnowdog, @Wolveshead, @Wingthequick, @toliman, @StiffishCracker, @Rippthedeceiver, @wingthequick, @ozfin, @Draezoth
We highly recommend Jason Taylor’s twitter feed (@JT_HoloNet) to keep up with SWTOR news, as well as his articles and the other great content over at Corellian Run Radio
Snowy emailed to ask whether it was possible to have hybrid specs, as used to be possible in pre-Cataclysm WoW

5. The Holofeed

The official forums return, looking remarkably similar, aside from having all existing posts expunged
A physical authenticator is now available for purchase, along with a free iOS mobile authenticator
The BioWare doctors grace us with 48 hours during which we can keep playing after launch before we need to have entered our product registration code
Standard editions (physical or digital) can now be upgraded to the digital deluxe version, allowing you to join your friends in the exclusive VIP lounge on the Imperial/Republic Fleets
You can do check whether you’re likely to be stuck in a queue when you log in after work via the new server status page
You can find our guild, Robes on Head, on the Space Slug server (Republic side). Use “/cjoin robes” to join the robes chat channel and ask for an invite, or send a tell to Teo if he’s online.
The unofficial oceanic servers: The Swiftsure (PvP), Harbinger (PvE), Jekk’Jekk Tarr (PvE)

6. The Sarlacc Digest

We talk about our experiences in Early Game Access, and provide a few tips for those getting into the game

7. Outro

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 4

teo — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 09:13:25 +0000

This week, Chill and Teo are joined by Oni and Zooe. The theme of this episode is to help prepare you for Early Game Access, which is only a few days away, starting on 13 December.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Oni and Zooe describe their experience testing SWTOR, and reveal what they plan to play when Early Game Access begins

3. Trivia question

Last week’s Star Wars terms: an elevator is a “turbolift”, a toilet is a “refresher” or “fresher”, and a clock is a “chrono”
For this week, give the Star Wars terms for the following things: coffee, tabacco, handcuffs, flashlight/torch

4. The Holofeed

Achievements are confirmed to be in at launch, though seems they’ll mainly be for substantial, non-trivial milestones
The official forums are being wiped this weekend, with entirely new (and empty) forums appearing next week; you will require to have pre-ordered to post until launch, after which you’ll need an active subscription
The option to match your armor’s colour to that of your chestpiece is definitely out for launch, but something even more awesome will eventually replace it a few months out
Early Game Access will start on 13 Dec, 7 days before launch, a couple of days earlier than we’d previously been expecting

5. Force Feedback

Check out @Toliman‘s incredible mosaics built using SWTOR screenshots, the latest zoomable version here
Tweets from @VassiliOFP85, @Buggerwow, @toliman, @Rrubb, @grimrok, @Lexx_Sylveste, @DasDec, @lealaturkey, @StiffishCracker, @Rippthedeceiver, @wingthequick, @ozfin, @Draezoth
@Rrubb recommends the Sith Assassin Darkness/Jedi Shadow Kinetic Combat Tank Compendium for those who want to learn how to tank as a Jedi Shadow or Sith Assassin

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Early Game Access begins 7am Tue 13 Dec EST (noon GMT, Tue 11pm AEDT)
Players will be brought in daily, based on when you registered your pre-order code
An email will be sent on the day you’re getting in; no prior warning!
Origin will email game codes for Digital Deluxe Edition and digital standard editions starting 16 Dec (will take up to 48 hours to get them all out)
Origin will ship physical boxes starting 16 Dec, hoping to arrive by 20 Dec
BioWare is working with other US and Canadian retailers to ensure that they have boxes for their customers by 20 Dec
In the EU, the physical boxes go on sale on 15 Dec
To continue playing after launch, you must enter a game code and have registered a payment method or entered a code from a game time card
BioWare have confirmed there’s no grace period–your account is frozen from launch, up until you enter a game code
Early Game Access ends 10pm Mon 19 Dec EST (Tue 5am GMT, Tue 4pm AEDT), two hours before launch
Subscription costs are $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99) for 1 month, $13.99/month for 3 months ($41.97/£25.17/€35.97) and $12.99/month for 6 months ($77.94/£46.14/€65.94)
You will be automatically directed to the server on which the guild you registered with (if any) has been allocated
All guild members will be advised of their server’s name on Monday 12 Dec
We gave an overview of the classes and their Advanced Classes; we’ll be going indepth in future episodes
Plenty of handy tips for configuring your UI; for a comprehensive guide in addition to what we suggested, see SWTOR Life’s guides (part 1 and part 2)
Make sure you log out in a cantina or your starship to build up rest XP while offline
Remember that you can send your companions on missions and get them crafting while you’re doing other things (e.g., in a party doing a Flashpoint)
You get a 35% out-of-combat speed boost at level 14, riding skill for 90% speeders at level 25 (costs ~45C) and riding skill for 100% speeders at level 40 (costs ~210C)
To create a guild, you need four players in a party and 5000C
Moddable items
- The base stats on moddable items will scale with the level of the mod in a specific slot
- Moddable items are orange (contrast with green, blue, purple)
- Mods can be reused by removing them, but this costs credits to do
- You can add and remove mods anywhere by right-clicking on the moddable item

7. Outro

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 3

teo — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 10:22:57 +0000

Chill and Teo are joined by Skove and Sylveste, our favourite paladin tank, to discuss the fourth and not-so-final Beta Testing Weekend.

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

Given what you experienced in the Beta Testing Weekend, what class will you level first when the game goes live?

3. Trivia question

Give the Star Wars terms for the following things: elevator, toilet, clock

4. The Holofeed

One more smaller-scale Beta Testing Weekend happening now
The weekend testing and all general game testing concludes midnight Sunday 4 December CST
Do not deinstall your client from the Beta Testing Weekend! It will be patchable to the live client for Early Game Access

5. Force Feedback

Tweets from @Buggerwow, @TheManbone, @cypher_x, @stucaluck, @bytorsnowdog
Email 1 from Snowy:

“Just a quick question about companions. I know that a jawa is one companion but a quick rundown of available companions would be good to know.”(You’ll find a complete list of all classes and their companions here—avoid if you want who turns out to be your companions to be a surprise!)
“Are there any guild perks like wow? Benefits to being in a guild other than playing with people you enjoy hanging out with?”

Email 2 from Wingy:

“In regards to your companion, can you equip them with gear / weapons like you can with yourself?”
“Have any hosts watched the whole six Star Wars movies in expectation of the game in the last few months? ”
“How beneficial do you think it is for players to go through these movies before playing the game?”
“I love the trivia question, but i am keen to know more. Are you planning to or can you do a lore segment?”

Voicemail from Rubb
Email 3 from Bugger:

Overviews of the Sith Inquisitor, Jedi Consular, Trooper and Smuggler
His (negative) experience on the Pulsipher server, and much more positive experience on Whitebeam Run and the Mother Vima servers

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Beta Testing Weekend impressions and information

Initially on east coast Whitebeam Run server on Friday, most moved to the west coast server The Mother Vima
The toons we leveled over the weekend
General experience and tips running Flashpoints
Specific experiences with Black Talon and the Hammer
Bugs (including the map bug and the dreaded orange pixel!)

7. Outro

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 2

teo — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:50:27 +0000

In our second episode, Chill and Teo are joined once again by Hypknotoad and Skove. After briefly covering the latest SWTOR news–dominated by the imminent fourth and last Beta Testing Weekend–we spend the rest of the show answering listener questions. It’s clear there’s a lot of eager and curious people wanting to know more about this game!

1. Introduction

2. Question to the panel

What are your plans for this big beta test weekend?

3. Trivia question

What are the hyperspace coordinates for Coruscant?

4. The Holofeed

Last Beta Testing Weekend over Thanksgiving

Wave 1 starts Friday 10am CST (Sat 2am AEST, Fri 4pm GMT, Fri 8am PST)
Wave 2 starts Saturday 10am CST (Sun 2am AEST, Sat 4pm GMT, Sat 8am PST)
Finishes midnight on Monday CST (Tue 4pm AEST, Tue 6am GMT, Mon 10pm PST)
Going to create Robes on Head guild on a test server, we’ll announce which one when we know what’s available; all welcome!

James Ohlen reveals the Legacy System
Pre-Launch Guild Program nearing end of last phase

Phase 3: Deployment ends Friday midnight 2 December CST
If you’d like to join us in our guild Robes on Head (PvE, west coast), log into your SWTOR.com account and nagivate to our guild page and click the [Apply to this guild] button

5. Force Feedback

Email 1 from Bugger:

“I’m curious if there will be player and/or guild housing in SWTOR.I’d never really been interested in player housing until LOTRO and now it’s a driving factor in the direction I take my characters when questing.”

Email 2 from Wemb:

“If the quests put you into a cutscene, how does that work on a pvp server?
Doesn’t it make you a bit vulnerable for attack?”
“In a Flashpoint, who makes the choice on how you respond to dialogue?”
“Also in a Flashpoint, if one or two companions are used to cover empty
player spots, how do you choose whose companion/s are used?”

Email 3 from Wingy:

“Even though i heard it on the podcast i am still unsure how to go about buying the game.
I have looked at www.swtor.com and clicked on pre-order.
I really want to get the digital deluxe edition.
Is anyone buying the collectors edition?
I cant click on the button cause im at work, but how much will it cost to buy the game (AUS $) ?
Also how does that postal thing work?
Whats the payment methods?
Are all copies coming from America and being shipped out?
So there will be no Aussie retailer selling them?“
“Does that mean we will get a slower/lag response when playing the game due to servers being in America?”
“How many planets are there?”
“How many [characters] can you have going at one time (alts)?”

6. The Sarlacc Digest

Should there be flying mounts in SWTOR?

7. Outro

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

OotiniCast Episode 1

teo — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 06:05:11 +0000

In our inaugural episode, your hosts Chill and Teo are joined by Hypknotoad and Skove. We spend most of the episode describing SWTOR from the point of view of a current player of WoW, as well as briefly covering some news (last Beta Testing Weekend, Early Game Access, no grace period for entering game codes, and Outlaw’s Den).

1. Introduction

2. Questions to the panel

What other MMOs have you tried?
If you have a computer that plays WoW, will it also be able to play SWTOR? What if you play on a Mac?
In what basic ways is SWTOR like WoW? What are some of the big differences?
How do Companions work?
How does crafting work, in general?
Is there an Auction House/Bank/Hearthstone/Flight Path equivalent?
Is it known when we get mounts?

3. Force Feedback

4. The Holofeed

Fourth and last Beta Testing Weekend
How Early Game Access will work
No grace period to enter game codes after launch?
Outlaw’s Den

5. The Sarlacc Digest

6. This week’s trivia question:

Before they were Ewoks, Lucas was going to use a different race in the Battle of Endor. This race has appeared elsewhere in the Star Wars movies. What race, and why the change?

7. Outro

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. Watch for us on the Bind on Equip feed and as an iTunes subscription.