A Farewell to the OotiniCast

According to the OotiniCast website, they posted their first episode on November 19, 2011, almost thirteen and a half years ago. I myself didn't find out about them until about two years later, with the first mention of them on the blog dating back to February 2014 and a post called "Some Podcast Recommendations". It's funny to me that even back then, more than eleven years ago, I described OotiniCast as "one of those SWTOR podcasts that have seemingly been around forever".

However, even "seemingly forever" eventually comes to an end, and I was slightly dismayed when I found out on Bluesky last week that they were going to record their very last episode this past Tuesday. I very rarely caught them live, as time zones meant that their recording time usually started around midnight in the UK, but as we're currently in the strange twilight zone of the US having changed to daylight savings while Europe hasn't done so yet, this particular show started an hour earlier for me than usual and I was able to stay up to tune in. It was a good and wholesome time, even if cried right along with Chill at the end when he wrapped things up, explained what was going to happen next and thanked everyone for their contributions over the years.

I'm not going to pretend that I was OotiniCast's number one loyal fan who listened to every single episode, because I didn't. I think I used to listen to them more frequently in the early days compared to later on, but even so my engagement was always a bit on and off from what I remember. It's not that the show wasn't interesting enough, but it never tried to promote itself as hard as other fan sites. They talked about the news, but they weren't your number one news source about SWTOR, and while their tip of the week could be insightful and useful, they weren't exactly aiming to teach you how to play the game either (a bit like me on the blog really). I reckon this was both a blessing and a curse.

I think it was clearly a blessing in so far as I don't think the show would've been able to keep going for as long as it did if it had tried to be something other than a couple of friends chatting about the game and inviting the community to join in. I watched so many other podcasts come and go over the years, and they often managed to entice me with catchy episode titles or in-depth discussions about specific topics - but two dozen episodes later they'd run out of interesting subjects to talk about at length, quickly followed by them burning out and/or losing interest.

I do however think that the more meandering nature of the podcast was a bit of a curse in the sense that it made it a lot harder to promote it in a way that grabbed people's attention. In the early days, they would at least have detailed show notes on the site that would give you a glimpse of what to expect from each episode, but at some point that was replaced by a simple copy and paste with just a bit of information about the show in general, including a link to their guild website which had stopped working years ago. I imagine that with every new episode announcement simply being summed up as some variation of "here's a new episode in which we talk about stuff", it became a lot harder to draw in new listeners.

That said, I feel like OotiniCast's influence on the community over the years should not be understated. I think due to its sheer longevity, pretty much anyone looking up anything about SWTOR online would stumble across it eventually. While most episodes were just the hosts chatting, over the years they also included interviews with devs, voice actors and other content creators, and I think you'll struggle to find people who've been involved in SWTOR fan spaces who haven't been touched by and/or involved with the OotiniCast at some point. (Checking my email, I found that I myself sent them some suggestions for questions for an interview with Charles Boyd back in 2020.)

I remember crying over nine years ago when Chill shared the story of his wife's death (which was absolutely heartbreaking), but there were also many more happy moments. OotiniCast was where I first heard about the notion of levelling from one to cap purely via GSF for example (yes, there was a time when you could queue for GSF at level one).

In recent years, Chill would always tell stories about wacky projects he'd start, such as farming Coruscant heroics on every single alt for Alliance crates, levelling without a companion, or levelling his newest alt named and dressed up based on another IP and the strange shenanigans they would get up to. In the last episode he talked about how he'd created a trooper called Zapp Brannigan (based on the character from Futurama), how he made him make all the worst choices, and how he was going to turn Yuun into his version of Kif. I always thought that was funny and fascinating, because it's not how I'd play myself but sounds really fun in its own way.

Chill didn't go into much detail about why they decided to end the show beyond mentioning changes in his real life and that he just didn't want to keep going with it. Considering that he was there from the beginning (unlike his co-hosts, who seemed to change every few years), I think he definitely earned the right to just go "I think I've done this for long enough; I want to do something else now." I appreciate that he did draw a clear line to end the show instead of letting it simply fade into oblivion, with updates just stopping with no further notice.

That said, I've got to admit I've been kind of surprised by how hard the news hit me, considering that I wasn't someone who listened to every single episode. I think it's because OotiniCast is the one SWTOR fan site I could think of that was actually older than mine and was still receiving regular updates. I feel kind of like when you've been employed somewhere for a while and find out that the last guy who's been there longer than you is leaving. Suddenly you're the most senior person in the room, and there's no longer anyone left who can reminisce with you about "the good old days". I mean, does anyone reading this in 2025 even remember Darth Hater, TORWars or TOROCast? I kind of feel like I'll be entering my "old lady yelling at clouds" era soon.

All that said, I salute Chill and the rest of the hosts for their dedication over the years (putting out more than 500 episodes of a single podcast over so many years is amazing) and I hope they can continue enjoying the game even without podcasting about it. Your contributions will be missed.