OotiniCast Episode 41

Posted on by August 30, 2012
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Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss our impressions of the now-concluded Grand Acquisitions Race. Also included is our third hard mode guide for the level 50 in a hurry, covering Directive 7.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Hru!

The following picture shows why the artist in question was suing George Lucas. Given this apparently pre-dates Star Wars: A New Hope, it would seem he may have had some justification!

4. The Holofeed
  • Patch 1.3.6 was deployed during the regular scheduled maintenance on Tuesday.
  • BioWare are considering adding rewards for those with a legacy level above 25.
  • In the future, the schematics for high-end items will only be obtainable via reverse engineering, rather than as schematic drops in operations.
  • It seems that an update to the Group Finder that returns players to the starting point upon completion of a Flashpoint is coming in the “near future”. Better than saying it’ll be in some future update!
5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy) and @thehatfield (Hatfield), and an email from Jason Incles.

6. Sarlacc Digest

We continue our series that provides hints and tips for the player who wants to get their daily Group Finder hard mode done in a hurry. This week we discuss Directive 7, a hard mode Flashpoint available to both factions.

Next week, another shared Flashpoint: The Battle of Ilum.

7. 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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 40

Posted on by August 16, 2012
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Chill, Teo and Hyp go over the latest news, including the announcement of when we can include the next operation, and our experiences with the second world event, the Grand Acquisitions Race! We also have the second hard mode guide for the level 50 in a hurry, covering Maelstrom Prison.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. Trivia question

What rocker, famous both as a solo artist and band member, who became famous in the 1960s and is still performing today, sued Lucas because of something he had on his stage and one of his tour movie posters that he felt looked too close to a Star Wars race? Most people who see the movie assume that Star Wars came first, presumably because ‘Star Wars’ was released before the tour movie.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed
  • Patch 1.3.5a was deployed during an short unscheduled maintenance on Thursday.
  • The second world event, the Grand Acquisitions Race, is now live! It will continue until Tuesday 2am CDT. Pictured below is the Lobelot pet, which can be purchased using the event currency, or looted from the Smuggler’s Crates located all over Nar Shaddaa.

  • If you want to use a guide to help find some of the items in particularly obscure locations, we recommend Dulfy’s.
  • SWTOR had its own short segment during the EA press conference preceding GamesCon, featuring Matthew Bromberg (BioWare Austin’s General Manager). You can watch it on YouTube (clip will start with the SWTOR presentation).
  • The rumour that Dr Greg Zeschuk, one of the founders of BioWare, had left was unfounded; the truth was that after handing the reins of BioWare Austin to its new General Manager in May, Matthew Bromberg, he returned to BioWare Edmonton. His role as GM of BioWare Austin was always intended to be temporary, as his family had remained in Canada.
  • The last weekly Q&A is on the subject of the free-to-play change coming in November.
  • Speeders will be enabled while doing The Esseles Republic-only Flashpoint, to bring it into parity with the Black Talon, the equivalent Flashpoint on the Empire side.
  • Nightmare mode for Explosive Conflict is still coming! Our speculation is that’ll arrive along with the new operation, Terror from Beyond, in September.
  • Whatever incredible changes are coming to the space game are still on track! No ETA, but they’re still working on them. In the short term, we will have new level 50 space missions to keep us busy.
  • As of now, the Group Finder remains broken—in that you don’t get your 5 Black Hole Commendations upon completion—for pre-made groups of 4.
  • The cost to extract mods is going to be reduced… sometime soon.
  • For all you raid leaders out there, a readycheck feature is coming!
5. Force Feedback
  • We discuss tweets from @SithLordKorv, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @ForceChuckle, @BigDamn_Heroes (Dan), @IRBountyHunter (Arron Thornton), @terrencemyers, @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @Dimbo56 and @Rrubb.
  • Daryl emails in to provide a detailed overview of what is sold in Turbine’s DDO’s in-game cash shop, giving some insight into the kind of items that BioWare might put in its own store when SWTOR goes free-to-play in November.
  • In a comment on episode 39, Steve lets us know that passing bound mods between one’s alts is not possible if using bind-on-equip orange gear, but can be done with bind-to-legacy items.
6. Force Feedback

We continue our series that provides hints and tips for the player who wants to get their daily Group Finder hard mode done in a hurry. This week we venture into another Republic-only Flashpoint, Maelstrom Prison.

Coming up next week, a Flashpoint shared by both factions: Directive 7.

7. 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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 39

Posted on by August 10, 2012
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Hyp joins Chill and Teo to discuss the latest news, including the sudden flurry of activity on the official forums. Our discussion this week is the first of our hard mode guides for the level 50 in a hurry, covering Taral V.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. Trivia question

Congratulations to the winner, Gary Foster!

4. The Holofeed
  • Patch 1.3.5 was deployed during an extended (6 hour) maintenance on Tuesday.
  • Unfortunately the patch introduced at least two issues, one preventing the third encounter in the Explosive Conflict op from being completed, the other affecting pre-made groups using the Group Finder, occasionally preventing anyone from receiving their 5 Black Hole Commendations.
  • Every character on a destination server should have received their reward for transferring (or for being on the destination server to start with!). Make sure to check your mail on all your toons! Note that the box containing the rewards requires at least level 20 to open—pre-20 toons received the box, they just have to bank it until they hit level 20.


  • SWTOR will be at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany. The convention runs from Thursday 16th August through to Sunday 19th. There will also be some SWTOR news during the EA Press Conference being held before the convention kicks off on Tuesday 14th August.
  • Joveth Gonzalez, SWTOR’s community manager, provides an update on the (once again) revamped community team. He confirms that James Ohlen and Daniel Erickson, who’ve been very quiet of late, are indeed still working on SWTOR.
  • Allison Berryman indicates that an effort is being made to improve the tone of the official forums, reducing the tolerance of negativity and uncivil behaviour.
  • Hall Hood, Lead Writer for SWTOR, was interviewed on episode 43 of Bombad Radio (Facebook, iTunes), the official podcast for TGC (The Gungan Council), a Star Wars RP forum community. Well worth listening to!
  • Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities was characterised by GamesIndustry International as being “incorrigibly positive” about the future success of SWTOR now that it’s embraced the free-to-play model.
5. Force Feedback
  • Hru emails us to ask about whether it’ll be possible to earn Cartel Coins in-game, in addition to purchasing them in bundles for real money and subscribers receiving them as a monthly stipend. He also speculates that the travel restrictions placed on free players may include requiring that speeder piloting be unlocked with Cartel Coins.
6. Force Feedback

In this first of our series that provides hints and tips for the player who wants to get their daily Group Finder hard mode done in a hurry, we discuss Taral V.

Assuming the format is deemed acceptable by our listeners, we’ll be covering Maelstrom Prison next week!

7. 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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 38

Posted on by August 2, 2012
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Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss all we know about SWTOR’s upcoming conversion to free-to-play, coming in November.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. Trivia question

We’re extending last week’s challenge, with an extra hint: one word which may make this a lot more solvable! This is a ‘who am I’ question—I will describe someone, and you say who I am. I am in two Star Wars movies. I play a leader of some kind in one movie, and that leader’s underling in the other. I am uncredited for both roles. My character dies onscreen both times. Who am I? (If you don’t know the name of the actor, naming both roles will suffice.)

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed
5. Sarlacc Digest


SWTOR is going free-to-play in November. You can find out more at www.swtor.com/free. BioWare have also provided a FAQ and a chart comparing subscription versus free-to-play features.

A press release announcing the change was provided just prior to the Electronic Arts Q1 2013 Earnings Conference Call.

Jeff Hickman, the new Executive Producer for SWTOR (previously Executive Producer – Live Services, apparently replacing Rich Vogel) provided a blog post, Announcing a Free-to-Play Option. Jeff and the recently appointed General Manager for the BioWare Austin studio, Matthew Bromberg, were also interviewed by MMORPG.com (Star Wars: The Old Republic Interviews: Free to Play This Fall).

6. Force Feedback
  • We discuss tweets from @tshapedvisor, @Dimbo56, @IRBountyHunter, @ForceChuckle and @IzaakTheMad.
  • @toliman (Joli) suggests the program described in this forum post that makes use of a RAMDisk to boost SWTOR performance.
  • @JediAio recommends a forum post describing what endgame items can be reverse engineered.
  • Hru emails in with some hints on the best place to farm Ice Scrabbler Livers.
7. 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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 37

Posted on by July 26, 2012
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After covering the latest patch and a couple of Q&As, Chill, Teo and Hyp discuss operations, going over interviews with Jesse Sky, Lead Operations and Flashpoints Designer.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: This is a ‘who am I’ question—I will describe someone, and you say who I am. I am in two Star Wars movies. I play a leader of some kind in one movie, and that leader’s underling in the other. I am uncredited for both roles. My character dies both times. Who am I? (If you don’t know the name of the actor, naming both roles will suffice.)

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed
5. Force Feedback
  • We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56 and @BytorSnowdog (Snowy).
  • Snowy passed on some funny Star Wars-related pics, reproduced below for your amusement:



  • Snowy also suggests that Teo should create a toon called Inara to do the selling on his ship. As our guildmate Aio will be doing the selling (as he already owns the ship droid). we’ll pass on the suggestion to him.

  • Hru emails us with a question about where to get the mod and enhancement mods (purple 22s). He also has some great advice about how crafting can help gearing up for endgame.
  • Ken Kitzman left a comment on our previous episode, suggesting the following rank names for our guild, Ootini Knights:
    • Jabber
    • Brown Robes
    • Scavenger
    • SaleJawa
    • Ringleader
6. Sarlacc Digest

We talk operations, examining answers from BioWare’s Jesse Sky (Lead Flashpoints and Operations designer) in an interview (“Operations, the Sky’s the limit”) conducted by the Methodical guild on The Bastion (US West PvP server).

Jesse also appeared on the Star Wars: The Old Republic Official Podcast Episode II, along with George Smith, a Senior Designer from Jesse’s team. They provide yet more information about operation design, and what to expect in the future.

7. 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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 36

Posted on by July 20, 2012
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Chill, Teo and Hyp go over what little news there is, before diving into the main topic: how to gear up at level 50 in the brave new world of Game Update 1.3, along with some tips on using the Group Finder. We also provide some etiquette recommendations for responsible grouping.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. The Holofeed
  • Patch 1.3.3 was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance.
  • Rich Vogel leaves BioWare ahead of a second round of layoffs. EA BioWare subsequently released a statement about the layoffs.
  • EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello, says that they’re looking into “different models to bring more users into [SWTOR]”, though he didn’t actually say it’s going free-to-play.
  • BioWare confirms that no characters will be lost (i.e., deleted) when the automatic transfers from origin to destination servers happens “later this summer”.
  • BioWare was at San Diego Comic-Con, though the information revealed was fairly light. The one big reveal was the trailer for HK-51! The trailer can also be seen on YouTube.

4. Force Feedback
  • We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @Dimbo56, @IRBountyHunter, @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), and @D_Willoughby (DeWayne Willoughby).
  • @YojeVawree (Yoje Vawree) retweeted @psynister’s reference to the following that appeared on Reddit:

5. Sarlacc Digest

We start with a summary of how to gear up a new level 50. The following two guides from the ever-productive Dulfy provide more specific details:

Then we discuss the Group Finder, hitting the main points in a BioWare post by Toni Phillips (A Guide to Group Finder Part 2), which follows up from James Ohlen’s original pre-1.3 post.

Finally, we give our personal tips on group etiquette, particularly as it pertains to SWTOR.

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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 35

Posted on by July 13, 2012
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This week, Chill and Teo are joined by Hyp to go over the latest news. We also respond to listener feedback, discussing possible extensions to the space game, and whether we really need add-ons after all.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: There are three rock-solid canonical lightsaber colors from the original trilogy: blue and green for good guys, red for bad guys. But let’s break this down: Luke Skywalker originally had a blue lightsaber, which was his father’s. Then his father cut off his hand. Not a good day for Luke; he lost his hand, his lightsaber, and his dreams that his father was merely dead and not the second worst person in the galaxy, all literally at a single stroke. It’s worth noting that his mentor Obi-Wan also had a blue lightsaber. So the question is: why, in Return of the Jedi, does Luke have a green lightsaber?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed
  • Patch 1.3.2 was deployed during an extended (6 hour) maintenance on Tuesday.
  • The unlimited (up to level 15) SWTOR free trial has begun!
  • It was revealed that the Kurtob Alliance Speeder, a picture of which was revealed on Facebook last week, is the account-wide mount that is the reward for referring someone to SWTOR who subsequently buys the game and subscribes.

  • It would appear that server mergers are coming “later this summer”. It was explained in a blog post (Character Transfer, Server Populations, and You (Part II)) that all servers that were designated as origins (such as our own former home, Space Slug) are now locked to new players, and sometime this summer any toons remaining on those servers will be automatically transferred to their associated destination server. After that, presumably the origin servers will be shut down.
  • For every character on the destination servers (those who transferred there or natives), BioWare is giving each character a Gannifar mini-pet and 25 Black Hole Commendations. So get those characters slots filled to take full advantage of the largess!

  • In an interview with GamesIndustry International, James Ohlen gives some insight into the game’s early development, including its use of the NWN (Neverwinter Nights) toolkit for initial prototyping. He also mentions the “megaserver” tech that is on its way.
  • We go over some questions from the latest Community Q&A: July 6th, 2012.
5. Force Feedback
  • @ForceChuckle referred us to the article EVE Evolved: Four things MMOs can learn from EVE from Massively; a couple of things there that could improve SWTOR.
  • Thanks to Belthallusii of The Sith Dynasty guild on the Nightmare Lands server, and to our guildmate Mags, for their most generous donations!
  • Belthallusii wrote in with some speculation about the upcoming expansion of SWTOR’s space game, which gave us the opportunity to once again discuss just what they could be dreaming of.
  • Bill D commented that it’d be better to provide better in-game visualisation of aggro levels and fight mechanics, rather than opening the field for add-on developers to provide their own solutions.
  • Saj commented about the Group Finder issue where you need to click the [Update Roles] button for a change in your role to take effect.
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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 34

Posted on by July 6, 2012
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In this week’s show, Chill and Teo are joined by Oni and Hyp to talk about our adventures with the Group Finder, speculate about the next world event, and chew over the two latest Q&As.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel
3. Trivia question

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Voyak!

4. The Holofeed
  • Following Game Update 1.3’s deployment last week, there were two unscheduled maintenances required to fix some initial issues, patches 1.3.0a on Thursday morning and 1.3.0b on Friday. During Tuesday’s regular maintenance, patch 1.3.1 was deployed.
  • BioWare clarified that the “Legacy of Crafting” character perk, each tier of which indicates that it “Increases the chance of an augmented result while crafting by 1%”, also applies to the chance to crit when crafting non-wearable items (e.g., stims made by BioChem).
  • On Tuesday morning, the following teaser image was posted on SWTOR’s Facebook page:

    A couple of days after we recorded, the full picture was shown:

    This is apparently a Kurtob Alliance Speeder, which will be available sometime soon.
  • Thanks to some data-mining of Game Update 1.3 done while it was on the PTS, we have a suggestion that the next world event will be the “Grand Acquisitions Race”.
  • Additional character transfer options were made available to players on the European RP-PvP servers; in addition to the original same-language PvP server, they can now transfer to the same-language RP-PvE server instead. For those on the sole US west coast RP-PvP server Ajunta Pall, whose initial option was the east coast RP-PvP server, they now have the option of transferring to the west coast PvP or RP-PvE servers.
  • We catch up on the last couple of community Q&As, from 22 June and 29 June.
5. Force Feedback
  • We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle and @TShapedVisor.
  • Griseus of the Tempest guild on The Bastion emailed in to ask whether you could double up on set bonuses by putting Armoring mods from the Campaign gear (which includes the set bonus) into Tionese/Columni/Rakata shells (which also have the set bonus). He also asked about whether we’d been experiencing any lag spikes in operations; his own raid team had been having problems with this in Explosive Conflict.
  • The mighty Chong emailed in to ask whether it would be possible for one member of the guild to purchase Legacy Repair Astromech Unit for their ship, and then to let others onto their ship to purchase the sensor units that provide efficiency/critical bonuses for one’s ship droid when crafting. The Legacy Repair Astromech Unit costs 1,000,000 credits to unlock; each sensor units costs 100,000 credits, and is bind-to-legacy. The following are available:
    Engineering Droid Sensor +5 Scavenging Efficiency +5 Cybertech Critical
    Exploration Droid Sensor +5 Archaeology Efficiency +5 Synthweaving Critical
    Hunter Droid Sensor +10 Investigation Efficiency + 2 Armstech Critical
    Scout Droid Sensor +10 Artificing Efficiency +2 Treasure Hunting Critical
    Medical Droid Sensor +10 Biochem Efficiency +2 Diplomacy Critical
    Security Droid Sensor +10 Armormech Efficiency +2 Underworld Trading Critical

    It is also worth noting that you can now increase affection with your ship droid, to make them more useful when crafting for you, by giving them gifts:

    • Loves: Cultural Artifacts
    • Favourite: Technology
    • Likes: Republic Memorabilia (C2-N2) or Imperial Memorabilia (2V-R8)
  • Ape2man left a comment for episode 33, where he asked whether we thought that further transfers would be needed given the current occasional queues, especially when new subscribers are taken into consideration.
6. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) 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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 33

Posted on by June 29, 2012
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In this week’s episode, we go over what’s been added in Game Update 1.3, giving our impression of the changes. The panel includes Agi, Hyp and Oni, as well as your hosts Chill and Teo.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel

Teo used this guide to help maximise the affection gain with Qyzen when running the Esseles on his Jedi Sage.

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: How was Star Wars used in real life by certain official members of Britain to thumb their nose at a foreign emissary they didn’t like?

HINT: The Imperial March figures very strongly in the answer.

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed
  • The three European RP-PvP servers (English, French and German) have been granted free character transfers to the single PvP destination server of the same language. BioWare explained this was what they deemed to be the best compromise, choosing a destination that offered the same (PvP) rule set, even without the RP designation.
  • Game Update 1.3 (release notes) was announced last Friday, and deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance. While scheduled for the normal 4 hours, the servers were actually down for closer to 8 hours.
  • James Ohlen (SWTOR’s game director) penned a Welcome to Game Update 1.3: Allies post.
  • Damion Schubert provided A Guide to Group Finder a couple of weeks ago, prior to Game Update 1.3’s release. We are now very much enjoying it! SWTOR developer Antonia Phillips gave some more detail about the Group Finder, including letting us know that sometime in the future we will be shuttled back to our starting point upon completion. At the moment, when you’re done, you leave the instance normally.
  • David Hunt (System Designer) authored Crew Skills and Items in Game Update 1.3, giving an overview of the final state of the itemisation changes, as well as going into detail about adding augment slots.
  • William Wallace (Senior Game Designer) wrote Legacy Perks in Game Update 1.3, explaining about the per-character legacy perks that have been introduced. A useful summary of what’s available is provided by the endlessly productive Dulfy in her post Patch 1.3 Legacy Character Perks.
5. Force Feedback
  • We discuss tweets from @lesman72 (Les of the Saltedslug legacy), @voyak, @sterlinglee38 (Sterling), @Rippthedeceiver (Ripp), @tshapedvisor, @Dimbo56 (Dimbo) and @ForceChuckle.
  • Thanks to @voyak for adding us to the Dead Men Walking gaming community’s list of unofficial SWTOR podcasts. He also provided the solution to the issue Chill encountered where copying his 8th character.
  • If you’re interested in some Trooper SWTOR-based fan fiction, check out Dimbo’s blog, Dimbo the Trooper.
  • We very much appreciate the generous donation from @ForceChuckle. Thank you, mate!
  • Doc Ropata raised the excellent issue of being unable to easily identify the numbering of mods, and the somewhat odd numbering scheme.
  • Grim emailed in with his impression of free-to-play in LOTRO, giving some more insight into how it could be implemented in SWTOR.
6. Outro

Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja), Hyp (@Hypknotoad) and Agi (@Agitarsi) 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! Subscribe to us on iTunes, and watch for us in your Bind on Equip feed.

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OotiniCast Episode 32

Posted on by June 22, 2012
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Hyp joins Chill and Teo to discuss the aftermath of the character transfers, and revel in being on a heavily-populated server at last! We also talk about the latest BioWare hints that SWTOR may one day go free-to-play.

1. Introduction
2. Question to the panel

We discuss our experiences in transferring from Space Slug to The Harbinger. Hyp expressed his sadness at leaving our old server through art:


All SWTOR servers have now been allocated in this first (and possibly final) round of free character transfers. You can see how things ended up in this chart (click on the image to see the full-sized version):


During the discussion, we mention that after your characters are transferred to their destination server, your legacy name has to be chosen again. You can choose any name, either the one you had on your old server (if available) or a new one. However, until you do so, your legacy unlocks will not be accessible. So don’t hold off choosing a new legacy name! After you do enter your legacy name, you’ll have to log out; the next time you log in to any character, all your legacy unlocks will be available.

3. Trivia question

This week’s challenge: How was Star Wars used in real life by certain official members of Britain to thumb their nose at a foreign emissary they didn’t like?

If you are interested in being entered in the random drawing for a Tauntaun Fawn code, please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com.

4. The Holofeed
  • Patch 1.2.7b was deployed during Tuesday’s regular maintenance. It appears to be server-side only, as it simply lowers the number of characters to allow in a given instance of each faction’s Fleet (we believe from 300 down to 250).
  • We go through most of the questions from the Community Q&A: June 15th, 2012.
5. Force Feedback
  • We discuss tweets from @IzaakTheMad (Izzy), @RippTheDeceiver (Ripp), @Dimbo, @thehatfield (Hatfield), @weihanthekidsun (Weihan Sun), @IRBountyHunter, @JT_HoloNet (Jason Taylor), @lesman72 (Les), @sterlinglee38 (Sterling) and @Rrubb (Rub). A common theme was commiserating about the departure from our former home, the mighty Space Slug server!
  • Sizzlor emailed in to ask us about the usefulness of Courting gifts when trying to increase your companions’ affection. In answering his question, we reference Dulfy’s most excellent Companion Gifts and Crafting bonuses for 1.2 guide.
  • Grim tells us that his computer has struggled to run SWTOR reliably since the move to the Harbinger. We’re working with Grim to help diagnose what’s going wrong, to hopefully get him back into the game!
  • Ripp tested the theory that if you delete all your toons on a server, your legacy there is preserved. After deleting all his characters, he created a new toon, and confirmed that it retained the legacy XP and unlocks that had been attained with the deleted (or transferred) characters.
6. The Sarlacc Digest

BioWare have announced that they will be offering a free trial that allows players to get to level 15 before there is any need to pay for the game or subscribe. We anticipate that this will be delivered as part of Game Update 1.3.

Lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi, in an interview that will be published in issue 124 of games™ magazine (to be released on 5 July), said the following in an excerpt that was subsequently removed from the magazine’s site:

“The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well,” he says. “Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations. So we are looking at free-to-play but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on.”

Adding fuel to the free-to-play fire, EA’s Frank Gibeau (President of EA Labels, the division which includes the BioWare “Label”), in an interview with GamesIndustry International, also left the door wide open for a free-to-play conversion at some point. The sense from the interview was that this wouldn’t be any time soon; instead, they are going to see how the free trial goes as an initial foray into the free-to-play space.
Finally, James Ohlen (SWTOR’s Game Director) said in an interview with PC Gamer that:

“I think it [free-to-play] can work for different games. It really depends on how you go with your game. Games that have been built to be free-to-play from the start definitely work out. Now, there have been games that weren’t free to play from the start and transferred over to becoming free to play that have worked as well. But it’s definitely not something that’s super easy to do.”

Our conclusion is that they’re actively thinking about going free-to-play, but at best it’s in the conceptual stage. Converting a subscription-based MMO is a non-trivial exercise, and it would probably takes many months of development effort to achieve. If it happens at all, we don’t think it will be this year!

7. Outro

Thanks to Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

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