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

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After discussing some SWTOR news, we dive into Redna’s second theorycrafting discussion, this time covering how to balance the defensive stats utilised by the three tanking ACs.

1. Introduction

Hyp shares a couple of memorable pictures of his characters:

Teo discovered that the PTS Character Copy has been updated to support having more than 12 characters on a server:

2. Trivia Question

The original trilogy boasts some great old-time actors, including Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing among them.  Using IMDB, answer the following two questions:

1. What actor with a speaking role of the original trilogy has the earliest acting credit?
2. What actor with a speaking role of the original trilogy has the most acting credits?

I hope I’ve done enough research to properly identify the correct answers, but will of course check on any new answers that come in. 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

• In general Star Wars news, it was confirmed that J. J. Abrams will direct Star Wars: Episode VII.
• The Electronic Arts Q3 2013 Earnings Conference Call was held on Wednesday afternoon. While the slides and financial statements released did not mention SWTOR, the game was addressed in the prepared comments made by Blake Jorgensen, EA’s CFO:

Extra content and free-to-play contributed $185 million, up 50% led by FIFA and Madden Ultimate Team and Star Wars: The Old Republic. These revenues relate to businesses on PC or consoles, where consumers pay for additional digital content—including virtual characters, map packs and micro-transactions associated with browser based games or MMOs—like Star Wars. As a reminder, on November 15 we launched our free-to-play option for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Very early indications have been positive and we are pleased with the initial results but it is too early to know how successful this will be in the long term.
…
Subscriptions, advertising, and other digital revenue contributed $79 million, growing 18% over the same period last year. The current year includes a full quarter of Star Wars subscriptions, but it was offset by a decline in other licensing digital revenue.

• Patch 1.6.3a was released on Friday morning, that resolved the newly-introduced bug that was preventing Taral V from being completed.
• A player prompted BioWare to update the Patch 1.6.3 patch notes to include the fact that it fixed the bug which left the glow from a companion’s lightsaber after that companion was dismissed.
• BioWare confirmed that purchasing account-wide cargo bays and inventory slots will be immediately applied to all existing and new characters, ignoring any level restriction imposed if purchasing them with credits.
• Many players have discovered that they did not receive their monthly grant of Cartel Coins. BioWare acknowledges that the issue is being investigated, and all affected players should receive their Cartel Coins towards the end of next week (6-8 February).
• Across several posts (1, 2, 3), BioWare attempted to clarify how the “daily” missions for the heroic (50+) space missions work. The intention appears to be that a new mission (one of six) will become available on each day of the week (except Monday) at 6am CST, but won’t be retained in a character’s mission log when the next day’s mission becomes available. The current schedule is as follows:
  • Tuesday—Far Cradle Strike (Imp)/Regnant Station (Rep)
  • Wednesday—Kabal Station Defense (Imp)/Ardis Outpost Fortification (Rep)
  • Thursday—Kanz Minefield (Imp)/New Covar Ice Field (Rep)
  • Friday—Duma Strike (Imp)/Baros Ambush (Rep)
  • Saturday—Lorta Escort (Imp)/Hypori Escort (Rep)
  • Sunday—Cha Raaba Assault (Imp)/Thanium Disruption (Rep)
  • Sunday—Operation Foe Smasher (Imp) Operation Clean Sweep (Rep)
• Damion Schubert gave some insight into the amount of effort required to add non-human playable species.

4. Force Feedback

Chong’s second article Metal Gear: The Old Republic is now available, revealing why so many of the voices heard in SWTOR are familiar to MGS fans.

For pet collectors, Dulfy’s SWTOR pets guide is exactly what you need!

We discuss tweets from @ThePiousPunk, @JediKrackr, @EmpireDivider (Chong), @rbleamon, @DarthKenji, @GregCarter78, @terrencemyers, @masterbearjedi, @Voyak, @weihanthekidsun, @Evarwyn, @JaeOnasi, @RadioParagon and @Telenroidswtor (Telenroid), a comment on episode 62 from Deavante, and Facebook comments from Eli Ejb and Mark E.

Voyak found us the breadcrumb mission that starts the chain that takes players through the Boarding Party and The Foundry Flashpoints, picked up from the R2 unit as shown on the map (located at 4577, 4692) and screenshot he provided:

The discussion started by Chill was based on his worn out keyboard:

We’d like to shout out to Telenroid’s guild “Blasters and Lightsabers”, who are Republic-side on the west coast PvP server, The Bastion. They’re always open to more fun, friendly members on the server. Anyone in the guild can invite. They’re in the process of filling out extra raid groups, finding it hardest to find healers so far though. They’ve got Explosive Conflict hard mode on farm, and are gearing up to knock out Terror From Beyond (so far just 1 boss in).

There’s also the guild KRATH, on the Empire side of the Ebon Hawk server. They’re all about light roleplaying, warzones and community. If you’re interested, contact “Hydras”. You can find them on Twitter via @krathcult.

Our guildmate Kuze emailed in the following sceenshot of the UI he uses for healing our raid group:

 

He also provided the following showing that not all the water in SWTOR is ankle deep!

Finally, Kuze also showed that the class buffs do not affect a character’s main stat any more than it does Power:

5. Sarlacc Digest

Redna led our discussion this week, in which we covered the stats affecting damage mitigation and avoidance. The following are the graphs and table that Redna talks to:

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and 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 and Radio Paragon.

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We discuss patch 1.6.3 and the current news, including some insightful revelations about the Cartel Market from Damion Schubert.

1. Introduction

Hyp received the awesome helmet from Karagga at the end of our run through nightmare-mode Karagga’s Palace:

Meanwhile, on the Imperial side his levelling group toon (who we know fondly as “Baldy”) isn’t looking quite so dapper:

2. The Holofeed

• Patch 1.6.3 was deployed during a 5 hour maintenance on Tuesday. For the second week in a row, the maintenance was 3 hours later than usual (starting at 5am CST rather than 2am). This is certainly a better time for Australians, putting the maintenance much later in our evening rather than at prime time!
• The new items that were added to the Cartel Market have been documented by the ever-productive Dulfy. This includes the new speeder, the Czerka CR-17 Incendia, which costs 1800 Cartel Coins. Note that this adaptive speeder is per-character, and has greater knockoff protection than is granted by Speeder Piloting III.
• A fix was included for Taral V, that requires that the final boss (General Eldikar) be defeated, thus eliminating the exploit that allowed him to be skipped. Unfortunately, it seems that this fix has caused Taral V to be unfinishable under any circumstances, though hopefully that’ll be fixed in the patch being deployed on Friday morning.
• Alert players noticed that a new “PTS Character Copy” option has been added to our “My Account” page on SWTOR.com:
• We were subsequently told that while the option is functional, it will have no effect until the PTS is again active. The intention is for it to be working for when Game Update 1.7 is deployed onto the PTS.
• It was announced that anyone who pre-orders the expansion “Rise of the Hutt Cartel” will receive two in-game items and a title. Those who pre-ordered before January 7th will also get 5 days of early access.
• A short video (Rise of the Hutt Cartel: First Look Video) was released (also on YouTube), showing in-game footage from the expansion.
• It appears there was never any intention to provide scalable gear for low-level characters who have access to HK-51. The gear that he comes with was not locked to level 50 on the PTS, hence why it was able to be used by pre-50 characters; adding the level 50 restriction when Game Update 1.5 launched made it work the way it was intended. So hang onto the gear for when you reach level 50!
• Damion Schubert provides some clear and honest answers to player questions about the Cartel Market (post 1, post 2).
• Cory Kolek, a UI programmer working on SWTOR, announced a new feature coming in (it sounds like) Game Update 1.7, where the buffs and debuffs on all target frames will be scalable. Unfortunately, more sophisticated features (such as differentiating ones own buffs/debuffs from those of other players, and sharing key bindings between characters) are on the list but with no ETA.
• Dulfy’s High res gallery of SWTOR speeders and mounts and SWTOR Endgame Color Crystals guide are now up-to-date. Well worth checking out!

3. Force Feedback

We’d like to welcome our new writer Grav, whose published his debut article “I can stop whenever I want!” about Cartel Market addiction. More good stuff from him to come!

We discuss tweets from @masterbearjedi (Raz), @ForceChuckle, @tshapedvisor, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @voyak, @Telenroidswtor, @revlo1983 (Rev. Nick Logan) and @vrodcruiser.

Chong (@EmpireDivider) provided a screenshot showing how to see the capture of a cube in Ancient Hypergate:

He also sent us the scoreboard from a warzone dominated (15/16) by Agents and Inquisitors:

Drew emailed in to ask whether we knew of any guilds that offer support for grouping on the long journey to level 50. Please email us if you know of a guild that might suit Drew, I’ll we’ll pass it on to him.

Eli Ejb asked us via Facebook about a issue that some players have been encountering when attempting to purchase Cartel Coins. We found some good information in the Cartel Coins FAQ, including the surprising revelation that there’s apparently a cap on how many Cartel Coins you can purchase in a given day.

In the words of its author (Terg Turgedson, @TheTurg), he provides a “fair and balanced take on SWTOR” in his blog post “The Real Agenda Behind Star Wars: The Old Republic”.

Also, a hearty greeting to the newest member of the SWTOR podcast community, the “Rule of Two Cast”. Best of luck to Virage and Kenzan in their podcasting adventure.

4. Outro

Next week’s Sarlacc Digest will be our second theorycrafting discussion, with Redna discussing defensive stats. We will be live-streaming the recording of the show, with details available on ootinicast.com/live.

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and 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 and Radio Paragon.

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We go over the latest SWTOR news, including the first details to emerge about the upcoming Game Update 1.7 “Return of the Gree”. In our discussion, Redna takes us through the stats affecting damage and healing, including recommendations on how to best balance them on your characters.

1. Introduction

How the Security Key app looks on Hyp’s new Samsung Galaxy Note II:

2. Trivia Question

Han Solo is famous for many things, not the least of which is his own name: Solo immediately points out to the audience that the character tends to be a loner, who will undergo an internal struggle before he might join the Rebellion.

But Solo is hardly the only example of names having something to do with the character. Name as many as you can, within the following guidelines:

1. They should appear in at least one of the six movies; and
2. This is for proper names of individuals only, not generic ones like Sand People or one-time insults like “fuzzball.”

The one with the most such named characters by next Wednesday will win a Taun Fawn code courtesy of BioWare.

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

• Game Update 1.6.2a was deployed during maintenance on Tuesday, which was scheduled to start 3 hours later than usual.
• BioWare published Game Update 1.7: Return of the Gree is coming soon!, providing a preview of the next game update coming roughly between the end of January and mid-February. More details can be found on Game Update 1.7’s main page.
• They also published Cartel Market Update: January 10th, 2013, showing what was added (and what will soon be leaving) the Cartel Market.
• Joveth finally revealed how they’ll be solving the issue introduced with the Phantom and Spymaster gear.
• BioWare acknowledge that the server population problems afflicting the three Oceanic servers remain, and are soliciting feedback from the community for what should be done based on the current state of things.
• If you haven’t seen it already, Chong’s article A Plague of Hate is well worth reading!

4. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Voyak, @AHlaenxna (Vis), @vayne_verso, @MikeG_75, @ChazLobo, @tshapedvisor, @rbleamon, @bytorsnowdog, @Rrubb, @AspisVodox and @JediKrackr.

Here is the ship that @EmpireDivider (Chong) saw on Empire-side Balmorra:

There is a new instalment of Dimbo the Trooper available, well worth reading!

@Galdarion refers us to his Gunslinger/Sniper Advanced Class Guide and his Tactical Strike column at Corellian Run Radio.

5. Sarlacc Digest

Redna led our discussion this week, in which we covered the stats affecting damage, specifically one’s primary stat (Strength, Willpower, Cunning or Aim), Critical Rating, Surge Rating, and Power. The following are the graphs that Redna talks to:

6. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and 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 and Radio Paragon.

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We discuss patch 1.6.2 and Jeff Hickman’s state of the game. Looks like lots to come in 2013 for SWTOR!

1. Introduction

The image from the official site that caught Hyp’s attention:

2. The Holofeed

• Patch 1.6.2 was deployed during a long (8 hour) maintenance on Tuesday morning.
• Dulfy has provided a breakdown of the new Cartel Market additions, including the contents of the Skip Tracer Cartel Pack.
• This includes changes to the purchasable Spymaster and Phantom outfits. Joveth clarified what had happened. Damion Schubert posted about why the change was made, acknowledged that not everyone was happy, and promised that the issue would be remedied soon. He also dropped a very heavy hint that colour dye for armour is coming!
• Character slots are now purchasable for 600 Cartel Coins. Up to 10 may be purchased. Each adds a character slot to all servers. Thus for subscribers, who have 12 character slots by default, they can increase this to 22 character slots per server by purchasing the maximum 10 character slots.
• Preferred status players now have access to 6 character slots (account-wide and presumably per-server). It’s unclear whether purchasing character slots adds one extra character slot per server, or to the account-wide total.
• Joveth provided an explanation for why the credit reward from the Heroic Space Missions was significantly reduced.
• The icon for the button used to lock our action bars was unintentionally changed to be a filled triangle whether locked or unlocked (instead of the changeable padlock icon). You can still tell whether your action bars are locked by hovering over the button and reading the tooltip.
• Jeff Hickman published his second SWTOR State of the Game blog post.

3. Force Feedback

Thanks to Radio Paragon for including us in their line-up!

We discuss tweets from @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Voyak, @Dimbo56, @AHlaenxna (Vis), @vayne_verso, @terencemyers, @michaeloranje, @MikeG_75, @ForceChuckle, @BillLentz and @masterbearjedi (Raz).

Chong wonders whether the tank dancer is new:

Matt (roguish98) emailed us about whether our expectations for endgame content should be eased to allow for more of SWTOR’s most excellent story content.

Daryl (also known as Wolfgangamadeus, Hansgruber, Fritzdourdan, Karlurban of the Thirteenth Legion guild on the Ebon Hawk) provides some advice regarding the Commando’s Assault spec.

We respond to Facebook comments from Greg C and William C, and a comment on episode 61 from Michael Sawyer.

4. Outro

Next week’s Sarlacc Digest will be a discussion about stats, probably the first in a series. Redna will start with the key offensive stats. We will be live-streaming the recording of the show, with more details available early next week on ootinicast.com/live.

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and 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.

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Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp and Red to reminisce about SWTOR’s first year. We also discuss a few things that we’d like to see added to the game in the coming months.

1. Introduction

2. The Holofeed

• BioWare released the Free-to-play Preview Episode 3 trailer (also on YouTube).
• TORWars published an interview with SWTOR’s Executive Producer, Jeff Hickman.
• You have until 2 January 2013 to submit first anniversary celebration screenshots to BioWare.

3. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @Bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @ForceChuckle, @StoleTarts (Megan), @EmpireDivider (Chong), @Voyak, @Dimbo56, @AHlaenxna (Vis), @hamb0ne10, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon) and @MikeG_75.

An old friend of ours, @Lexx_Sylveste, sent us the following image:

4. Sarlacc Digest

The following events from SWTOR’s first year was derived from Dulfy’s Half year of SWTOR, a timeline of major events, along with our own show notes that documented the news as it happened.

• Dec 13: Early access begins
• Dec 20: Launch
  • operations: Eternity Vault (5) and Karagga’s Palace (3)
• Jan 3: 215 operation SWTOR servers (124 in US and 91 in Europe)
• Jan 18: Patch 1.1 “Rise of the Rakghouls” [launch + 4 weeks]
  • operations: adds 2 more bosses to Karagga’s Palace (5)
  • Flashpoint: Kaon Under Siege
  • level 50s get their own PvP bracket (separate from levels 10-49)
• Feb 2: EA earnings call (over 2 million in SWTOR sales, and currently 1.7 million active subscribers.)
• Mar 1: Australian servers opened (without server transfers)
• Mar 5: Guild Summit
• Apr 12: Patch 1.2 “Legacy” [12 weeks since 1.1, 16 weeks from launch]
  • legacy system
  • operation: Explosive Conflict (4)
  • Flashpoint: Lost Island
  • warzone: Novarre Coast
  • new daily area: The Black Hole on Corellia
  • guild banks
  • interface editor
  • Sprint at level 1
  • combat log
  • Ilum “decommissioned” by removing dailies/weeklies
• Apr 15: Live event: Rakghoul Plague Outbreak
• Apr 18: Transfers to the Oceanic servers
• Apr 22: Free 30 days of game time
• Apr 24: Daniel Erickson: sub numbers not dropped, but peak concurrent users down
• May 7: EA earnings call (1.3 million subscribers)
• May 22: Layoffs
• Jun 4: During E3 2012, announced Makeb, new operation (Terror from Beyond), new warzone (Ancient Hypergate), new species (Cathar), new companion (HK-51)
• Jun 12: First server transfers (moved from Space Slug to The Harbinger, old servers left open)
• Jun 26: Patch 1.3 “Allies” [10 weeks since 1.2, 26 weeks from launch]
  • group finder
  • character-specific legacy perks
  • Alderaan updated to allow same-faction matches (previously just Hutt Ball)
  • augment kits
  • ranked warzones (pulled from 1.2, now here, pre-season)
  • single neutral GTN
• Jul 10: Mergers coming “later this summer”, origin servers locked to new characters
• Jul 10: Free trial to level 15, rewards Kurtob Alliance Speeder
• Jul 18: More layoffs
• Jul 31: EA earnings call, announcement of SWTOR going free-to-play in November
• Aug 14: Grand Acquisitions Race
• Sep 17: Server consolidation, 12 characters per server
• Sep 26: Patch 1.4 “Terror from Beyond” [13 weeks since 1.3, 39 weeks from launch, 6 weeks after Grand Acquisitions Race]
  • operation: Terror from Beyond (5)
  • group finder gains “previous location” feature
  • delayed binding of BoP gear from flashpoints/operations
• Oct 30: Disney acquires Star Wars
• Nov 15: Patch 1.5 “HK-51 Activated” [7 weeks since 1.4]
• Dec 11: Patch 1.6 “Ancient Hypergate” [3.5 weeks since 1.5]

5. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and 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.