Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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.

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.