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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:

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.

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.