Episode 123: Shae Vizla Moving Day!

This week on the show – things may seem quiet in the game right now, but we’re about to go on information overload as Broadsword gets ready to host a live stream for Game Update 7.4.1.

If you want to play on the new Shae Vizla you have to create a brand new character and start the game from scratch. Well, that’s all about change. Broadsword is opening up transfers.

And finally, If you’ve ever struggled to find all of those datacrons, lore objects, and other secrets that are hiding in the galaxy, I want to tell you about a cool map project created by SWTORISTA and a player named Zahk.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:57 7.4.1 Livestream and Shae Vizla Transfers
• 9:59 Specialty Servers?
• 12:22 SWTORISTA's Map Guide
• 15:26 Wrap-Up and Outro

Transcript

Episode 123 of the State of the Old Republic Podcast was originally recorded on February 13th – 2024.

 It’s the State of the Old Republic Podcast. 

This week on the show – things may seem quiet in the game right now, but we’re about to go on information overload as Broadsword gets ready to host a livestream for Game Update 7.4.1.

 If you want to play on the new Shae Vizla you have to create a brand new character and start the game from scratch. Well that’s all about change. Broadsword is opening up transfers. I’ll have the details for you ahead.

 And finally, If you’ve ever struggled to find all of those datacrons, lore objects, and other secrets that are hiding in the galaxy, I want to tell you about a cool map project created by SWTORISTA and a player named Zahk. 

And with that, it’s time to make the jump to lightspeed "and cue the moron".

 Welcome to Episode 123 of the State of The Old Republic Podcast, I’m your host Ted, and as you heard in the opening, I have a great show lined up for you today.

If you’ve logged into the game recently you may have noticed that the Activity Window seems like it’s taking up less space than it normally does.

That’s because there’s not a lot happening right now in the Old Republic. There’s no Galactic Season, there’s no PvP season, and the Life Day celebrations have come and gone.

Even Kessens Landing and the Chains in the Dark story are starting to slip into the realm of same-old, same-old.

Yes, we’ve hit a bit of a lull with the game, but Broadsword is getting ready to fill that void with Game Update 7.4.1.

Mark your calendars, folks, because on February 14th – Which depending on when you’re listening to this might be later today, or maybe yesterday -

Broadsword is going to show us a little love as they shower us with details on Game Update 7.4.1.

We know very little about what’s coming in this update, other than Galactic Seasons 6. Back in December in his 12th anniversary message, Keith Kanneg wrote,

With our next release in 7.4.1, we are doing something pretty cool in Galactic Seasons 6. The story and primary reward of the season will take you back to a location that you haven’t been to in quite some time, and it has quite a view.

I have no idea where that is, other than it’s a location that exists in the game today. I wouldn’t be surprised if the primary reward of this season is a Stronghold, but honestly, I have no clue.

Hopefully, everyone can tune into the Livestream. It will be on SWTOR’s Twitch Channel on February 14th at 1 PM Central Time, which is 7 PM UTC.

 The Livestreams are fun, and they usually have a code for a new deco or something. And there is a tendency to put the update on the PTS – That’s the Public Test Server, within a few days to a week of the livestream. Hopefully, they’ll continue that trend this time as well.

One other thing that’s happening with the launch of Game Update 7.4.1 is Broadsword is opening up character transfers to the Shae Vizla server.

Here’s how this is going to work.

For the first 30 days after the transfers open, players who have an active subscription, and who have been an active Subscriber since January 2, 2024, will be able to transfer up to 16 characters for free.

For the first 90 days after transfers open, all Subscribers will receive a 50% discount – that’s a cost of 500 Cartel Coins - on transfers to Shae Vizla.

In other words, if you don’t meet the criteria for the free transfers, you’ll have to pay to transfer a character, but at half the price.

Now, if you’re a non-subscriber you too can pay to transfer a character to Shae Vizla, however, you’ll have to pay the full transfer rate, which is 1000 Cartel Coins.

Now there are some other restrictions as well and these apply to anyone looking to transfer a character to Shae Vizla.

First, your characters must be level 20 or higher. And second, there is a credit cap of 15 million credits per character.

So, free transfers, up to 16 characters and 15 million credits per (that’s a total of 90 million if you do all 16). That’s a pretty good deal.

If you were looking to make Shae Vizla your main server, and you had the characters to move, this would give you a pretty good start.

So, let’s get into what happens when you transfer a character to a new server, and why you might want to do it.

When you transfer a character to a new server, if the character’s name is taken, you will have to rename it, and you won’t be play with that character until you do.

One way to find out if your character’s name is taken is to create a new character on the server you’re transferring to and try to give them your character’s name. If it works, you can hang onto that character and then delete it when you’re ready to transfer.

On the flip-side, if you’re transferring a character whose name you don’t like, this is a way to get a free name change for your character.

Your loadouts will transfer with your character, as will your equipped gear, items in your inventory, and items in your Personal Cargo Hold.

Outfits you created in the Outfitter, do not transfer. You’ll have to recreate those on your server. If you have an outfit that you’re particularly fond of, make sure you have the armor pieces, and weapons, and anything else you need to recreate it.

If you put a dye module in the slot in the outfitter and not on a specific piece of armor, you will lose it. Check your outfits before making the jump.

You’re in-game mail, and GTN listings will not transfer with your character. So, make sure those are all clear.

Legacy currency will not transfer – think Tech. Fragments, Conquest Commendations, and the like.

Items in your Legacy Cargo Hold will not transfer. Items in your Materials Storage will not transfer. If you need crafting materials, you’ll need to pull them out of storage and put them into your personal inventory or personal cargo hold.

Items in your Item Stash (you know, the things you get from opening Cartel Packs) will not transfer.

Bottom line here - if there are items you want to take with you, make sure they’re in your personal inventory or personal cargo hold.

So, what about Legacy, Achievements, and Stongholds? Well, there’s a lot of good to be had here with transfers.

And I think for a lot of people, this will be the main reason to transfer over some characters.

When you transfer a character to a new server, your entire Legacy comes with you. This means all legacy unlocks and achievements.

If you already have a legacy on the server, the Legacies will merge. And they will merge in your favor. To put it in simple terms – highest legacy wins.

All of those global legacy unlocks – you know a GTN on your starship, the companion unlocks that grant stats and class buffs. The Dark and Light abilities. Species unlocks, and customizations. Datacrons. All of that conveys when you transfer.

Achievements are transferred as well. Let’s say on server you’re transferring from you’ve that Galactic Conqueror title that you get from Conquest? You’ll now have that achievement on the new server.

What about Strongholds and Decorations? Well, again, pretty much good news here. Any strongholds that were available to you on the old server, will now be available on the new server. But here’s the deal.

If you purchased the stronghold with Cartel Coins, you can get it for free on the new server. If you purchased it any other way, you would need to re-purchase that stronghold. The good news is any rooms that you had previously unlocked will be unlocked when you re-purchase the stronghold.

Now as far as strongholds from Galactic Seasons goes, I’m not 100% how that works. I don’t recall if there is a credit price, or if you must re-purchase the deed using Seasonal Tokens. 

It should be noted that when you do purchase a stronghold, it will be empty, and you will have to redecorate it. That said, all of the decorations that you had on the other server will transfer with you. And there is some magic merging that goes on if you have unlocked the same decoration on bother servers, which in the past has led to you being able to go over the cap for a decoration. I don’t know if that’s still the case.

And finally, because you can transfer up to 16 characters for free, you might find yourself transferring characters from multiple servers. And that’s when the streams get crossed, and all hell breaks loose. And you end up with multiple versions of a stronghold (at least you used to), and who knows what other wonky-ness ensues.

Transferring a character to a new server is more than just moving them to a new home. If you have strong legacy on the origin server, you can really boost your quality of life and gameplay experience for all characters on the new server. It’s definitely something to consider even if you don’t plan on making Shae Vizla your main server.

So, there you have it. Livestream for Game Update 7.4.1 coming on February 14th, and transfers to Shae Vizla coming when 7.4.1 goes live.

The Shae Vizla server was launched as a legitimate server. The purpose was to expand the game to a whole new region of players. But I think a lot of players set up shop there looking for what they hoped was a challenging experience.

 No money, no legacy, no perks of any kind. Crew Skills all at level one. As I described in the last episode – It’s about a fresh a start you’ll find in this game.

 The launching of the Shae Vizla server was also the first step in moving all the servers to the cloud. And I feel like the door is now opened for using this technology for more than just launching additional retail servers.

I think back to the Dark vs. Light event from 2016. And I can’t help but wonder if the server technology of today existed back then, if they wouldn’t have run that event on a separate server, whose sole purpose was to support the event. And when the event ended, they would have just shut it down.

If you recall, the Dark vs. Light event required players to create brand new characters, which was problematic for people who had reached their character cap.

I know people moaned and groaned about the event while it was going on, but I sense that people look back on it with more fondness than hatred. I think there would be genuine excitement to see it return.

I don’t think Broadsword will run that event again, but there’s definitely an opportunity here to use this technology to set up events and run versions of the game with different rulesets from the live game on a one-time, or perhaps seasonal basis.

It could be Dark vs. Light, or it could be anything that Broadsword can imagine. I know a lot of people feel like leveling is too easy. Perhaps a version of the game, where when you die, you’re done and have to start over. Let’s see how far people can get, and let’s give you rewards for progress.

Other games have similar things, and I now feel like Broadsword has put themselves in a position to not just expand the game, but to branch it off in some crazy directions. 

I mentioned at the top of the show that Star Wars: The Old Republic is in a bit of a lull. But just because there is no Galactic or PvP Season, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do, and it doesn’t mean you have to double-down on doing Conquest – which is where I’ve been spending my time these last three weeks.

There are all sorts of achievements, places to explore, monsters to kills, and treasures to find.

Well, thanks to a massive labor of love by SWTORISTA and another player named Zakh, we now have a tool to help us go exploring.

SWTORISTA and Zakh created an interactive SWOTR Secret Maps guide, which you can find on SWTORISTA.com.

I’m a big fan of finding the Codex items. I’ll admit I enjoy running into them by chance and discovering them on my own. But having played this game for 12 years, it’s time I got them all. And this tool is fabulous for that. And more.

In addition to codex items, there are exploration points, datacrons, beasts for the beastmaster achievements. It’s really incredible. This what SWTORISTA wrote about the project on her site.

The information, plot points and screenshots for these interactive maps were almost all created by player Zahk, who has been dutifully trekking across the galaxy from planet-to-planet for almost a year…[TD1] 

These interactive SWTOR planet maps are an incredible labor of love, built on the idea that there are players out there who really enjoy exploring everything that the game has to share, from the lore discovered through codex entries to the sense of world-building you can find when trekking through the planets’ forests, deserts, and underworlds.

It started with an idea of making maps to show off the secrets in the game, and soon expanded into fifty-eight guides, so players could more easily find the information about over 109 Beastmaster achievements, 219 named champions, and 143 hidden lore objects, along with the closest taxis, quick travel points, or heroic shuttles to get to them.

The 265 exploration quests marked on the map are hand-checked from player Exarch’s quest list. This project was started in March 2023, and was finally completed in December 2023, so it was worked on fairly continuously for ten months and has somewhere around 530 screenshots!

The map images are from in-game, but the tool that allows you to zoom in and out and click map points is a website plugin, with over 800 lines of customized code, so you can do things like filter by category, resize the list on the left, and have the icons get bigger and fade out as you zoom in. Each of the 58 guides also has special code to show a unique map with just that planet’s achievements on it, which means there are actually 75 interactive maps across the site.

Not only did they have to run around the entire game capturing screenshots, but they also had to know where to go to get those screenshots without the use of the very tool they built to do just that.

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to SWTORISTA and Zahk you are now free to move about the Galaxy.

And speaking of moving about the galaxy. I’m about to get on a plane myself. I will try to do an episode to cover the livestream in a week or so, but it might need to wait until early March. We’ll see.

But for now, that’s the state of the Old Republic for today. Let me cut in the sub-light engines and queue the music and congratulate you on surviving another 1/2 hour listening to Episode 123 of The State of the Old Republic Podcast. 

I’m your host Ted and I thank you for tuning in.

You can find this podcast on Buzzsprout, and iTunes, wherever else you find your podcasts.

You can also listen to the show directly from the show site which is sotorpodcast.com, and there is an RSS feed where you can subscribe to the podcast directly.

If you have a question for the show, you can e-mail me at sotorpodcast@gmail.com.

Thank you so much for listening, and - Until next time, remember the Sith Code - Cake is a lie.