The AIE Podcast #315 – Sema Predicts the Future of SWTOR: It’s Turtles All The Way Down

On this episode of The AIE Podcast…

    Mkallah: We have your community updates
    Mewkow: Noob is on FIRE!
    Tetsemi: Our free company is prime company
    Mkallah: Reasonable Reasons are redacted
    Mewkow: And, we have Sema and Max who are here to talk about AIE in SWTOR

All that and more coming up right now…

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AIE News
Welcome to episode #315 of the the podcast celebrating you, the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Tetsemi: To my left is Mkallah: – (Hey guys, there is lemon lime basil shortbread in the guild kitchen ). And to my right is Mewkow: (catch phrase here). This week we are joined by special guests Sema and Max who is here to talk to us about AIE in SWTOR Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into SWTOR shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news…

Streaming and guild podcast news
Working Class Nerds – Episode 38: The State of Star Wars with Sith Talk’s Sam
https://www.buzzsprout.com/143519/986315

Nick and Marcus are joined by Sith Talk host Sam to discuss and analyze how Star Wars got so big, where it is now, and where it could be going.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 281: Member The Dread Masters?
http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-281-member-the-dread-masters/

This week, in addition to hot takes on the dev tracker, @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-281 open up the archives and start a mini-series talking about the Dread Masters

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 282: Dread Masters From Ec To Tfb
http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-282-dread-masters-from-ec-to-tfb/
This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-282 continue our walk through Dread Master lore and cover the story elements of EV, KP, EC, and TFB.

Imperium Ludi
Just a reminder, we’re still going strong with #Anthem and would love to see more people active in it. If you are playing, make sure the check out the #Anthem channel in AIE Discord and ping Durus to add your Origin ID to the list of people playing so you can get the Alliance bonuses.

Mandatory Fun Nights
Where the fun is mandatory but the attendance is not.
A couple of games have moved days so make sure you double check when each game is running MFN.

Monday – GW2 9:30 pm Eastern
Tuesday – SWTOR 9 pm Eastern
Wednesday – FFXIV 10 pm Eastern
Friday – ESO 9 pm Eastern

Saturday – Noob Raid (WoW) 11 pm Eastern
Sunday – STO 8:30 pm Eastern

WoW
A bit of a brag about Noob Raid. We are now 8/8 on Uldir Normal. Our first time ever seeing Ghuun and we killed him on the 1st pull (which was an accidental pull). We then followed that up by going 3/9 in BD’A Normal.

1. This month’s Community Event: Trial of Style – March 20-24
2. Next month’s Community Event: “April” Fools Rush In – Gusty – Whole month of April

ESO
The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood celebration event started on March 7th and rungs until Monday March 18th 10am est. The event gives double reward drops for World and Delve Boss kills, increased rewards for completing Heists and Sacraments, and 1 event ticket for each Sacrament and Heist completed each day per account.

In guild related news, MFN is still Friday night at 9pm est.

FFXIV
General items: The Free Company attendance is way up. Many folks are taking advantage of the Amazon Prime deal which gets you a free copy of the Starter Edition which also comes with 30 days of game time. The Starter Edition is the vanilla version of the game, taking players up thru level 50 and associated 2.x patches. Many of these players have been sticking around, and have jobs in various levels. Now is a great time to start your adventure in Eorzea with AIE. The Twitch Prime deal lasts thru May 3rd, but we’d love to see you in the game today!

But what about those that do not have Twitch Prime? Or maybe your desktop or laptop may need a refresh so most of your modern gaming is done on the PS4? (sorry, no xbox1 or switch version yet) Well, there is a free trial that you can download that will let you play the game up to level 35. You can not join a Free Company with this type of account, but you will be able to join a cross world linkshell, which is FFXIV speak for a chat channel that spans over multiple servers. You will be able to talk with AIE folk there, as well as talk with people in the AIE community that may have characters on other servers. Of course, you can always talk to us in Discord as well.
As many of the people who are taking advantage of the Amazon Prime key are hitting 50, the ending 8-player dungeons do have some brutal queue times. Do yourself a favor and ask in Free Company Chat or Discord for people to jump in the queue with you. We can take a 45 min-1h queue to 15 seconds, and we want to help you.

The Shadowbringers pre-order bonus items, the little baby Gremlin and the Aetheryte Earrings, an item that scales with you, modifies its stats for your job, and provides a 30% boost in XP gained while level 70 and below are available now for preorders.

Quick tip for pre-orders. To get the bonus do the following. Get the code from your retailer, SE Store will have the code from their store, Amazon will email you a code. Take the code and follow the web link in the email or store page. This will take you to the pre-order bonus page. Pick your platform and then enter the code you were given. This will output a code that you can put into the mog station to get your pre-order bonuses.

DC redistribution is happening soon! Goblin, AIE’s server, will be moved to the new Crystal data center. At this time, AIE will be riding the Goblin wave and remaining on the server as it is migrated over to Goblin. When the redistribution happens, there will be free transfer provided with relaxed item and Gil limits. If you have other characters elsewhere, transferring to Goblin may be an option for you.

Fun nights are still Wednesday. Other options (nights and times) are being considered, but let us know in Discord on your suggestions! However, we do have a sizeable crew on every night! You don’t need to wait for a fun night to have fun with AIE! Talk in FC chat, join voice and dive into your adventures together

The Seasonal event, Little Ladies’ Day, will be wrapping up on March 13th. Don’t forget to get your change to get the seasonal items, such as the Flower Crown and the housing items Festive Chirashi-zushi (your guess is as good as mine), Festive Sushi Balls, and Magicked Prism Daisies before they go up on the Mog Station.

The final pre-expansion fan fest will be held on March 23-24 over in Japan (A little under 2 weeks away!) What will be announced? What weird costume will Yoshi-P come out as? Will we get the full trailer for the expansion? Will the time zone difference mess with our sleep schedules? We’ll find out then!

Also a reminder, the Twitch Prime deal is for PC only. Not Mac, not Steam, not PS4.

STO
Guild news: STO continues to run a MFN on Sunday night at 8:30PM Eastern. Characters level 10(Lieutenant Commander) and up are welcomed.

Game news front, on April 11th, they will be shutting down the Foundry system. The Foundry was a tool used for players to create content for the game.

LOTRO
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?671702-LOTRO-Post-Downtime-Events-Sales-Bonuses-and-FAQ-3-9-19

The Skirmish Event has been extended until March 18th at 3:00 AM Eastern (-4 GMT)

Legendary Story XP has been reduced from 60% of normal to 80% of normal through Wednesday, March 13th.

Last week’s LOTRO Store sale has expired. This week’s planned LOTRO Store sale is now live, and will be extended to last for the regular sales duration. Meanwhile, next week’s sales will begin on Thursday as normal.

The current sale:

Make Your Piece of Middle-earth Shine!
Get 30% off:
Select Housing Decorations
Select Housing Sets
Housing Property Writs
Select Cloaks

Additionally, Bombur’s Bounty is now available through March 17th.

Finally, we wanted to let you know that we are working to put together a package of things to say thank you for being patient with us as we’ve worked through various data center-related issues in recent days. NOTE: None of the following Coupon Codes, LOTRO Points, or VIP time extensions have yet been granted or made. We will provide more information in the coming days, probably early next week.

All players will receive:

A Coupon Code for a free Appreciation Box containing: 5 100% XP Boosts, 5 Enhanced XP Supply, 5 Tomes of Defence, 2000 Figments of Splendour, 3 Rapid Crafting Boosts, and an assortment of seasonal dyes. (1/Account). Expiration end of April.

Additionally, VIP players will receive:

A VIP subscription time extension.
250 LOTRO Points automatically granted to their account if they have logged in during the previous 30 days.

Premium players who have logged in during the previous 30 days will receive:

250 LOTRO Points

EVE
AIEU’s Super Capital Fleet grows with the addition of Reasonable Reasons 3, an Avatar Class Titan, bringing the total number of corporation super capitals to .

We are also building capital ships, at the request of members at reasonable prices.

War is on the horizon, come back and fulfil your bloodlust, our Non Invasion Pact with Test Alliance ends on the 22nd of March.

For current AIEU members, all personnel must be registered in AIEU Seat, Blades of Grass Seat, Winter Coalition Seat, and Winter Coalition services by March 15th. Purge to follow.

Lanc has a Eve Meetup in LA in like 24 hours.

And with that, let’s get back to Sema and Max and find out what’s going on in SWTOR.

GAME NEWS
New Planet and Daily Area – Ossus

Ossus is home to the ruins of a truly ancient Jedi Temple and is currently the site of a power struggle between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire. It is not a welcoming planet and is covered in rocky hills and sand (it gets everywhere). Even so, the Jedi who chose this place to lay low have been successful with carving out a life, mainly through some innovative farming methods. Old characters reappear and interesting new ones emerge in the introductory story to the area. There is a lair boss here, daily missions, two new tier gears, new rep to grind, two world bosses, two new datacrons, and new companions.

End of PvP Season 10

PvP Season 10 ended and Season 11 pre-season began. Top 96 rewards were distributed. Normal Season 10 rewards will go out when Season 11 begins, which will be RSN.

Double XP Week was Feb 19 – Feb 26. Much command points and many levelings were to be had!

New Guild Features

Bioware has added guild leveling and guild perks to the game. The perks last for a period of weeks and are purchased by the guild. The perks you can purchase depend on which parts of the guild flagship you have opened. Perks come in a wide variety and include things like increased gathering and crafting efficiency, increased experience gain, increased reputation gain, increased mounted speed, increased gains in Warzones (pvp), increased drop rates in Operations, increased stats in certain situations, and many more versions of all those and some that I’m sure I’ve left out.

All Conquest activity by guild members contributes to guild leveling and we are leveling nicely on both the Imperial side and the Republic side. Each time a guild levels, it receives Guild Commendations which can then be used to purchase guild perks.

There are some new voices on the SWTOR Official Forums these days including a new member of the Community Team – Dan Steed and Mike Bradley, who is a Live Producer. Mike has been paying attention to PvP threads.

Guild News

MFN continues to alternate weekly. If you are ever curious about which week is which, it’ll always be posted in the GMOTD.
February MEGA (Monthly Guild Activity.. what does the E stand for again?) was a datacron crawl, including the two new ones on Ossus. March MEGA will be some good ol’ Pub side PvP using the new private warzone feature.

Star Wars Celebration
Chicago, April 11-15
SWTOR Cantina on April 13th (don’t need SWC tickets to attend)
AIE Meetup on the 12th at the Marriott Residence Downtown

CLOSE
And that’s our show for tonight. While the chatroom begins suggesting show titles, we want to thank Sema and Max for joining us.

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at podcast@aie-guild.org. You can also follow us on Twitter. The show is at @aiepodcast. Mew is at @themewkow. Mkallah is at @cyberwaif,and Tetsemi is at @ivorytiger. We record live with video every other Sunday at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. You can join the chatroom and play along with us on our website at https://aie-guild.org/podcast-live-stream/ and our Discord server for chat at https://bit.ly/AIEPodcastDiscord . Our theme was composed by the amazing Andrew Allen, follow him at @keyswithsoul! or visit his website http://keyswithsoul.com !

And now it’s time to play all of the great AIE member segment we received this week, including…

Overly Dramatic News – @HuntsTheWind

Next time, we’ll be talking to someone about some game! So until then, AIE…

– This is Tetsemi
– This is Mkallah
– This is Mewkow

And this has been… The AIE Podcast.