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

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In the news we discuss Patch 3.1a, patch notes for Game Update 3.1.1 which is coming next week, the Choose Your Path promotion and the cancellation of Operation Victory. We then close with a farewell, as Redna ends his two year stint on OotiniCast.

1. Introduction

Contact details for Redna can be found on our About page, and will be updated with new details about his secret project as they become available.

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Maerioñ! Thanks to Tuukka, YoungOnes, Dephine, Ray’Der, Akimal and JB for entering.

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Tuesday for a chance to win a Taunfawn or M8-R3 droid code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

• Patch 3.1a was deployed on Tuesday 4 March, primarily to address issues with the Coratanni encounter in The Ravagers operation.
• Preliminary patch notes were provided for Game Update 3.1.1, which will be deployed on Tuesday 10 March.
• Game Update 3.1.2 is now on the PTS, with class changes focusing on Shadows/Assassins, Sages/Sorcerers and Mercenaries/Commandos.
• The Choose Your Path promotion is in full swing, including Black-Purple Striated Color Crystals for those subscribed as of 29 March. Former subscribers can get 7 days of Subscriber Access for free via this link. You can also purchase the new Story Pack for $US39.99 (40% off) from either swtor.com or Amazon (OotiniCast affiliate link).
• If you encounter players behaving badly in Ranked PvP, Eric Musco advises that you contact him directly via PM on the official forums. BioWare will be reporting every 3-4 weeks about actions taken against such players during the current season.
• The eSports Operation Victory tournament has been cancelled. Eric Musco subsequently answered some questions about the decision.
• Disney XD will be airing LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales later this year.

4. Community

Thanks to Chris for his donation!

5. Force Feedback

You can see the tribute video created by Freedious for Chill’s John Travolta impersonation here.

JB and Jeremy recreate an iconic scene from Titanic on their guild’s flagship:

6. Outro

On the show this week were Chill (@BrandonLStarr, twitch.tv/chillswtor), Teo (@jasonetheridge), Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) and Simon (@RPGBeatsRL).

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. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher and Spreaker. We record the show live every Wednesday at 4:30pm Pacific, goto ootinicast.com/live to find out how to join in!

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Plenty of news this week, including SWTOR’s step into eSports with Operation Victory, Patch 3.0.0a, Game Update 3.1.1, and much more. We then discuss feedback from last week’s Sarlacc Digest which considered whether Hard Mode Flashpoints are too hard.

1. Introduction

Chill has had his signed GSF poster that he received at our Ootini Cantina professionally framed:

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Sechari! Thanks to Flox, Cole/Vescent and MisterBlackJack for entering.

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win a Taunfawn or M8-R3 droid code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

• The Relics of the Gree event is back! It will finish on Tuesday 3 March (6am CST, noon GMT/11pm AEDT). Both Dulfy and TORCommunity have guides available. The Gold Scalene armor will be available on the Cartel Market after the event ends (from Tuesday 3 March).
• While it’s not currently planned to bring back the Chevin Event (also known as the Grand Acquisition Race), renewed interest in it has been noted.
• ESL is hosting Operation Victory, a tournament in which participants attempt to complete The Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice Operations in the fastest time, in 8-man Story Mode. Patch 3.0.0a will be deployed on Tuesday 3 March to fix some issues with Cortanni in The Ravagers, including the bug where she attacks her own escape pod. Full rule specifications will be posted ahead of the competition’s start, with a one-week qualifying heat beginning next Tuesday.
• Game Update 3.1.1 will be deployed on 10 March. It will (probably) include the following:
  • MK-2 pieces instead of MK-1 in loot tables for 16-man SoR Operations, as was originally intended in Game Update 3.1
  • Jedi Shadows (Darkness) and Sith Assassins (Kinetic Combat) will get the promised 100% extra Force regeneration from Double-Bladed Saber Tactics/Lightning Reflexes via Rapid Recovery/Lightning Recovery.
  • Achievements from the Hard Mode Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi Flashpoints will not reset on logout.
  • Some fixes for old PvE and current PvP set bonuses.
  • The mission “The Enemy Within” will complete by clearing the Temple of Sacrifice if the Operation (versus solo) option was chosen.
• A bug which prevents Sith Sorcerers (Lightning) and Jedi Sages (Telekinetics) from being interrupted is being worked on, but is not yet scheduled to be deployed.
• While there remains some possibility that 12x XP will some day return, implementing it as a Legacy perk isn’t planned at this time.
• The Community Cantina that was to be held in conjunction with PAX East in Boston has been cancelled with just under two weeks notice. The new information that was to be delivered at the Cantina will instead be presented during a livestream roughly a week after when the Cantina would have been (somewhere around Friday 13 March).
• Mark Hamill will join Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Jeremy Bulloch and Peter Mayhew from the original Star Wars trilogy at this year’s Star Wars Celebration (16-19 April at the Anaheim Convention Center).
• While no toys from Star Wars: The Force Awakens were on show at the New York Toy Fair, there was a new Lego TIE Fighter being displayed.

• A 15 meter tall snow sculpture showing Darth Vader and several Storm Troopers was on display at the Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan.

4. Community

Exile (@TORFashion), who was interviewed by Chill in episode 143, announced some extensive additions to TOR Fashion.

Mae (@MaeBeeBuzz) and XamXam (@Rach_Games) feature in the inaugural episode in TORCommunity’s Live From The Voidstar video series.

5. Force Feedback

Aaree assesses the performance of Sentinels and Marauders in Ranked PvP as shown on our Leaderboards page as being true to type:

6. Outro

On the show this week were Chill (@BrandonLStarr, twitch.tv/chillswtor), Teo (@jasonetheridge), Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) and Chong (@EmpireDivider).

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. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher and Spreaker. We record the show live every Wednesday at 4:30pm Pacific, goto ootinicast.com/live to find out how to join in!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In the news this week, we cover the Choose Your Path trailer, Courtney Woods’ new role as a writer at BioWare, and more. We then discuss whether Hard Mode Flashpoints and Story Mode Operations are too hard.

1. Introduction

Chill is listening to the Star Wars radio adaptation. He will say more about it next week!

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Scott Thomas!

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win a Taunfawn or M8-R3 droid code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

• The Relics of the Gree event returns next Tuesday 24 February (6am CST, noon GMT/11pm AEDT), finishing a week later on Tuesday 3 March.
• Courtney Woods is now a writer at BioWare, and has thus left the Community Team. The latest example of her work is the story One Night in the Dealer’s Den. Eric Musco (Community Manager) assures us that they will be advertising to fill her position soon.
• Apparently the bottom tier (Tier 3) for Ranked PvP Season 4 will have a floor rating after all.
• The PTS will Game Update 3.1.1 has been closed. The last build included the new “Mount Flourish” keybind.
• The new Choose Your Path gameplay trailer has been released. It shows mostly footage from the Sith Warrior class story, though does include what appears to be a new scene featuring a player character rescuing Theron Shan.

• The site StarWars.ea.com is a place for Star Wars fans to find out more about Star Wars games in development at EA.
• A new arcade game unit, called a Star Wars: Battle Pod, may be appearing in an arcade near you!
• A set of digital trading cards reveals the names of the characters seen in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser trailer.
• Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, had some inspirational words to say (PDF) about the quality of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its two sequels, as well as the standalone movies.

4. Community

Congratulations to the Bad Feeling Podcast on achieving their one year anniversary show!

Also congratulations to Madmar (@Swtorfamily) for two years of his #swtorfamily. You can listen to Chill’s interview with Madmar in episode 132.

5. Force Feedback

Chong is really enjoying the new Toilet decoration. In his words, “Boss’Chong vs The Number Two”.

When Chong is not coming up with tawdry bathroom humour, he is doing Science! He has performed two experiments comparing the returns from gathering from the Slicing nodes on Yavin 4 without and with a companion, to determine if their mission crit chance affects Slicing node returns.

6. Sarlacc Digest

Inspired by a SWTOR sub-Reddit thread asking why players were unhappy with the difficulty of Hard Mode Flashpoints, we discuss their relative difficulty, along with that of Story and Hard Mode Operations.

7. Outro

On the show this week were Chill (@BrandonLStarr, twitch.tv/chillswtor), Teo (@jasonetheridge) and Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4).

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. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher and Spreaker. We record the show live every Wednesday at 4:30pm Pacific, goto ootinicast.com/live to find out how to join in!