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Welcome to the epic epicness that is episode #126 of the TORWars podcast. This is our first week back from all the goodness that the holidays brought and let me tell you, we are super glad to be back and doing the podcast. We hope that you had a wonderful holiday and that your New Years has proven to be positive so far.
One of the winners of our T-Shirt contest, Ben Coombs’ interpretation of the TORWars podcast hosts as evil Imperial baddies. Nicely done, Ben!
Being fully rested, we are now back into the groove of things and back on our game. Brian’s had his rest and enjoyed his time playing with LEGO’s, Jeff is still nursing his New Years hangover by continuing to booze it up (because why waste a good hangover right?) and I myself have had the pleasure to do absolutely nothing for two weeks (a rarity, I assure you).
But alas, we have lots to discuss. So, why bore you with meaningless words? Allow me to give you the show notes for your reading pleasure:
Intro:
TORWars Guild is growing strong! To join, fill out a quick and easy application at TORWars.enjin.com!
News:
- ● Jeff Hickman’s Second State Of The Game blog post:
- ● Topic #1: Elder Game Content – What is our intent for keeping level 50’s occupied? Answer: Overall, we’re aiming to introduce a more diverse array of activities – more stuff to do with your Companion, more challenges to tackle with groups, and more reasons for guilds to recruit. We’ll also be improving our itemization, introducing new incentives to revisit existing areas, and a lot of other exciting things that will be revealed as we move through the upcoming year.
- ● Topic #2: World PvP – What happened to making Ilum better? What is going on with Open World PvP? Answer: We have not forgotten Ilum! I think you will see (fairly soon) the answer to this question in the game itself – something big is coming to the Western Ice Shelf, but it’s quite a departure from what was there before. As for pure Open World PvP…well, that’s a more difficult proposition. We are dedicated to providing excellent PvP experiences to our players, but we intend to focus our energy on PvP Seasons and new Warzones. We will be experimenting with a different approach to Open World PvP, something that encourages organic PvP in contested areas in a new and interesting way, but do not look for massive new Open World PvP this year (outside of what I mentioned above). It is still on our design wall, but is taking a back seat to other forms of PvP.
- ● Topic #3: Character Copy to Public Test Server (PTS) – What is taking so long? Answer: As of the writing of this letter, we are in focused, internal testing on character copies for PTS. You should expect to see this come within the first part of this year. It will provide free character copies to PTS at any time (with possible restrictions dependent upon our testing needs at any given time). This will also lay the foundation for our new live character transfer system that will be coming later this year.
- ● Topic #4: Same Gender Romance: Any news on this front would be great. – Answer: First of all, I want to apologize that this is taking so long to get in the game. I realize that we promised SGR to you guys and that many of you believed that this would be with a companion character. Unfortunately, this will take a lot more work than we realized at the time and it (like some other pieces of content we talked about earlier in the year) has been delayed as we focused on the changes required to take the game Free-to-Play. As we have said in the past, allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of. Secondly, I want to reveal today that we are adding SGR with some NPCs on Makeb and do intend on pursuing more SGR options in the future. More details to come!
- ● Community Cantina Stops in London and France
We’re happy to announce that the next two stops in the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Community Cantina Tour will be happening on Friday, February 1st in Paris and Saturday, February 2nd in London.
This is your chance to join the European Star Wars™: The Old Republic community for a development team Q&A (featuring Executive Producer Jeff Hickman) as well as complimentary drinks*, food, and giveaways. Every attendee will be receiving a highly coveted Tauntaun Fawn code and a code for a rare item from the Cartel Market.
Additionally, you are invited to join us before the events at the Louvre and the London Film Museum to check out the Star Wars exhibits!** The community team will be outside the museums with a sign so that fans may tour together as a group.
Shout Outs:
- ● Make us Laugh Contest – First Three Winners Announced!
- ● Enjin.com – Thanks for the Guild/Mumble hosting for the TORWars guild!
- ● SWTOR Spy
- ● Corellian Run Radio
- ● TORWars.enjin.com – Shadowlands – Imperial Side
And there you have it people, the first TORWars podcast of the new year. We hope you enjoyed it but hould you have any comments, suggestions or questions, please let us know in the comments section below. Thanks and cheers!
TORWars Podcast #151: Aren't You the Pretty Kitty?
I really hope you guys are right about the guild features and the new legacy stuff
Not bad predictions. If you’re right you look like a genius. If you’re wrong, you look like a Mayan.
To be fair to the Mayans, they didn’t predict the end of the world. They just died out before they could update their calendar. Its idiots in the present day that misinterpreted it to mean the apocalypse.
That being said, we are all idiots so id bet our predictions are wrong
…. Sith should not be so frightfully Cheery!!!! its rather disturbing!
great pic
Just wanna say that i think Brian talk the most, to much, Jeff and Deidre should step in more.Also we dont need every dev quote read for us on the show by brian until the point he starts to pass out.We who have been following this game and podcast years before the game came out we read the dev tracker ourself everyday.(When there is actually something in it)Other then then as always the show is fun and the best swtor podcast there is.
While im sorry, as usual, that you find issues with how we put the show together, i can assure you not all of our listeners consume every bit of information out of BioWare. It is our job to put the entire story out there for all of our listeners, not just the few who read every dev post or every news piece.
It seems like there are episodes where brian is silent for like half the show. They all keep things pretty well balanced.
Also as to the dev posts: I never read those things and I am sure alot of people don’t as well. So if the torwars cast is going to comment on the dev post and they don’t read it first and just launch into a discussion “assuming” everyone has read it literally a majority of the listeners will be like “wtf are they talking about”.
Wild Jedi, you are a wild man
I’m starting to think that a lot of the SWTOR team actually does not play the game.
You guys touched on the idea in this podcast, and others, about the hype they create for things and then come to find out it’s just meh. I’m also starting to notice it’s not just the hype for new features/additions, but many things in the game that players ask for and continued to be either unaddressed or pushed under the rug.
They need to stop implementing new things and optimize what they already have. They keep pushing out new new new, without implementing quality of life and smoothing over frustrating bugs.
So, if the SWTOR team are actually fans and play the game, i don’t understand how they themselves can’t be at a point of frustration and be content with what is currently the game.
I have a question for you guys. Today Damien Schubert hinted at a new customization option for gear, and said it was something he hinted at recently. My question is do you guys think this means armor dyes?
Yep. Exactly that. He has hinted at a dye system in an interview with Dulfy and in other interviews in the past. Jeff Hickman also eluded to that in our latest interview with him. Im guessing it is more than a certainty at this point!
Comment about 127 but its not on the site yet:
People are loosing interest in cartel packs because they used to buy them for the chance of getting Revan robes which sold for millions of credits and people wanted thrones. Now the robes are worth 40k and there are loads of them. Hopefully people will just stop buying these stupid packs completely and the demand will drop so low Bioware will stop selling them altogether and just directly sell us the items we actually want.
I don’t know, everyone having at item also makes it kind of less appealing to me too.
If you played wow do you remember the sparkle pony? I actually thought this mount was really cool, so I got online and bought it and then logged in.
PONIES EVERYWHERE.
Made it stupid to have and then everyone dubbed them the “sparkle ponies”.
Imagine if they let people buy the thrones this way. I wouldn’t want one because EVERYONE would have one.
Vein I know for letting other people affect my enjoyment of an item, but I like rare things.
I have an article that should go up today/tomorrow talking exactly about this topic and i believe we will discuss it in episode 129.
Man, that drawing was awesome