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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?

1. 65-year-old General Starkiller?
2. A 14-year-old princess with two brothers?
3. A fat humanoid pirate?
4. A slimy, green alien with no nose and large gills?
5. 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.

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.