In the news, we talk about Game Update 2.8.2, the Manaan lore article along with confirmation that part 2 of Forged Alliances will take place there, and Friday’s Galactic Strongholds livestream. The discussion this week is Chill talking through his experience of spending a day visiting the BioWare Austin studio.

1. Introduction

You can see Teo being interviewed by Jacob (@deltiasgaming) on YouTube.

Having met the inestimable Simon (@RPGbeatsRL) in real life, Teo can only reiterate his recommendation that you follow him on Twitter, and subscribe to his awesome general gaming Flash Point podcast that he co-hosts with David (@theOceanicGamer).

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winner, Tex McShootEmUp! Thanks to Swtorista and Mariarchi for entering.

Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win an M8-R3 code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.

3. Holofeed

Game Update 2.8.2 was deployed during maintenance on Tuesday.

The Gree event is back for a week, concluding next Tuesday (29 July). In the week prior to Game Update 2.9 (12-19 August), Bounty Contract Week will be on. That leaves a two week gap in which the hints are getting heavier than ever that the Rakghoul Plague will once again resurface.

There is currently a bug that causes the character selection screen to display the last played character from a different perspective, with the camera further back providing a full-body view and plenty of the background. Given that a number of players have expressed their preference for this alternative view, the developers may consider making it a permanent change.

Electronic Arts announced their Q1 FY15 results in their quarterly earnings call.

A blog post was published detailing what happened to Manaan since the events of KOTOR, leading up to the present day in SWTOR. We recommend the latest episode of Flash Point to hear ODS-1 present additional information about Manaan.

Charles Boyd gives a summary of SWTOR’s story content in 2014, including confirmation that part 2 of the three-part Forged Alliances story arc will take place on Manaan, and will occur in Game Update 2.9. The conclusion of Forged Alliances will set the stage for the next “major story” expansion.

Eric Musco (Community Manager) clarified that the limit of four player Galactic Strongholds is entirely due to not knowing the effect of having more than four Strongholds per player once they are made available. Given there are only four being released with Game Update 2.9, the limit is thus effectively meaningless, though may be enforced if performance issues are found with five or more Strongholds once they are added.

In Friday’s live stream, Chill decorates the Kaas City Apartment on Dromund Kaas. He is joined by Jack Woods (Producer) and Eric Musco. The archived Twitch stream is available (part 1 and part 2).

4. Community

The third episode of the Galactic Gamers Coalition podcast is now available.

Congratulations to JD (@GTeeg) for 52 episodes of the Unnamed SWTOR Podcast!

5. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets, emails and comments from Jared (@SkipJerk), Chaz Lobo (@Strongshocker), Morriah, Justin, Moff Chong (@EmpireDivider), Mikhael Lombard (@hadrian9), Capo Nerd (@CapoMarmaglia) and Zodiac Netherstorm (@ZNetherstorm).

Please consider adding your vote to the SWTOR sub-reddit poll on which chat channel should be associated with our player Galactic Strongholds.

Capo Nerd of the Italian SWTOR community referred us to this SWTOR machinima video. Check out his channel for more!

Moff Chong was at the same end-of-beta dance party mentioned by Hillary in episode 154.

Darklighter wishes he could own this awesome life-sized Darth Malgus statue located near his place of employment:

6. Sarlacc Digest

Chill talks us through his visit to BioWare’s Austin Studio. You can hear his interview with all four members of the Community Team in episode 154.

The gallery below shows photos taken by Chill as he toured the studio. Please note that the images are quite large, and may take some time to load.

7. Outro

Thanks to Spencer (@Da_Dirty_Spoons) and Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) 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. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher and Spreaker. We record the show live every Wednesday at 4:30pm Pacific, goto ootinicast.com/live to find out how to join in!