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The news this week is dominated by the class representative responses for Sorcerers and Vanguards, and the subsequent fallout. We also discuss the results from a SWTOR player survey, giving our own responses as we go.

1. Introduction

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Pevarmel!

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

We are still looking for segment names! Feel free to add your own ideas to our forums threads for what is currently known as the Tip of the week and Community Corner.

3. Holofeed

• The Emergency Medical Table, that is shown in the Collections UI to be a super rare item from both the Contractor’s and Freelancer’s Bounty Packs, is not in either pack.
• Game Update 2.4: The Dread War is now described on the official site. They’ve also added an interview with Baron Deathmark, in which he reveals the origin of warzone arenas!
• The PTS has continued to be updated, and now includes the planet Oricon, shown by this video by Gaddock Teeg of the Unnamed SWTOR Podcast. The new reputations coming with the daily area on Oricon are The Dread Executioners (Empire) and Strike Team Oricon (Republic), with the same gear offered to both factions (overviewed by Dulfy).
• The most recent Community Cantina was held in Cologne, Germany to coincide with Gamescom. Dulfy’s coverage has all the images available that were provided on the thumbdrive to attendees, along with a summary of the Q&A. The event was attended by our guildmate Jim (@tehknuck), who (as promised) did come in-game afterwards, very happy from the experience (and also very drunk!). He was able to get a greeting from Eric Musco, Community Manager.
• The issue with PvP queues getting stuck is back, though workarounds have been identified.
• The Cartel Bazaar will be getting a cargo hold, hopefully in Game Update 2.3.3 (which should be around 17 September). Note that Amber’s response to the forum thread on this topic is priceless.
• The second set of responses to class representative questions were provided for Sorcerers and Vanguards. The community reaction was “troubled” (to put it very, very mildly). After reiterating the purpose of the class representative program, it was acknowledged that some unfortunate timing meant that the concerns went unanswered for too long, and that they will be addressed. More care will also be taken in the tone of responses! Solutions to some of the Vanguard issues have already been provided.

4. Community

Kuze’s latest video showing how to get the datacrons on Nar Shaddaa is now available. You can find his other guides in Kuze’s Korner.

The Ootini Templars, led by Kal and Ham, do operations on Thursday and Friday night, Australia east coast time.

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

Chong and Adam Schumpert are organising an arena team, which they’re calling the Green Lantern Corps!

Adam is an accomplished artist; you can see his portfolio on CG Hub. He has done an amazing job at reproducing the Green Lantern look in SWTOR:

Adam was also kind enough to create an original image for us, which may hopefully make its way onto OotiniCast merchandise. David (@KairiahMedens) recommended PARSEC, a new SWTOR combat log parser. We tried it, and can highly recommend it!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Swtorfamily (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @bigfatpj (PJ), @GregCarter78, @AckaanTalgala (Akaan Darasuum), @FerrousTerran, @joseph_foran, @Casmas_, @GTeeg (Gaddock Teeg), @Tordenelgen, @masterbearjedi (Raz), @TheThoss, emails from Spero, Pliiskin and Drew, and a comment from The Malgadar.

In fixing his issue with texture atlasing, Drew set the following in Catalyst Control Center:

Anti Aliasing mode and Samples: Application Settings
Filter: Standard
Anti Aliasing Method: Multi Sampling
Morphological filtering: Off
Anisotropic Filtering Mode and Level: App settings
Texture filtering quality: Performance
Surface Format Optimization: On
Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always off
Open GL buffering: On
Tessellation: Everything set to App control

PJ’s Varactyl perched atop a crashed starship on Tatooine:

If you having trouble with updating your client to work with the PTS, these forum posts (1, 2) may help. Both refer players to the PTS Patching Troubleshooting thread.

6. Sarlacc Digest

We discuss the SWTOR Player Survey, as summarised in this Reddit post. You can find the survey and see the latest data in detail here.

7. 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.

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 Radio4Gamers.