Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Located in the mountains of Alderaan, this stately manor has been home to many of Alderaan’s aristocratic class. Enjoy the life of luxury with your guests in the mansion’s great hall and rooms, or take in the fantastic views overlooking the valleys, snowing mountains, and hidden lakes. Nestled among the mountains of Alderaan, the noble estate stronghold features an isolated snowy castle perched among lakes and some of Alderaan’s highest peaks. Apart from the opulent luxury of owning an aristocratic palace, the stronghold’s unique rooms include an ornate stained-glass window, a throne room, a waterfall, a beautiful balcony, a training area in Alderaanian ruins, an optional unlockable Killik cave, and even a few secrets and achievements to discover.

How to Get the Alderaan Stronghold

There are no requirements to getting the Alderaan Stronghold except having enough credits on hand to purchase it. The initial unlock is 4 million credits, and you can unlock it in the Stronghold and Crew Skills section of the fleet.

Personal Stronghold Costs and Unlocks

Room Credit Cost or Cartel Coins Visitors Decorations
Initial Unlock 4 million 1,900 CC 20 450
Throne Room 2 million 900 CC + 5 + 100
Balcony Overlook 900k 600 CC + 2 + 30
Killik Grounds 1.5 million 700 CC + 8 + 30
Guest Chambers 900k 600 CC + 3 + 50
Drawing Room 900k 600 CC + 3 + 50
Study 900k 600 CC + 3 + 50
Mountain Retreat 2.5 million 1,200 CC + 10 + 75
Western Lodging 2 million 900 CC + 8 + 100
Northern Lodging 2 million 900 CC + 8 + 100
Total 17.6 million 8,900 CC 70 People 1,035 Decos

Guild Stronghold Costs and Unlocks

Room Credit Cost Visitors Decorations
Initial Unlock 20 million 20 450
Throne Room 4 million + 5 + 100
Balcony Overlook 2.5 million + 2 + 30
Killik Grounds 3.5 million + 8 + 30
Guest Chambers 2.5 million + 3 + 50
Drawing Room 2.5 million + 3 + 50
Study 2.5 million + 3 + 50
Mountain Retreat 5 million + 10 + 75
Western Lodging 4 million + 8 + 100
Northern Lodging 4 million + 8 + 100
Total 50.5 million 70 People 1,035 Decos

If you need to de-activate your Alderaan stronghold for your guild so you can choose a different stronghold instead, it will cost a whopping 20 million Credits to re-activate it. You get to keep all the other rooms you unlocked for free, though your decorations will be reset. For the Guild version of this stronghold, you will need to make sure you are on your character who is the Guild Leader for your guild.

Map

Rooms

Initial Unlock

The initial unlock, which includes the outdoor grounds and the main section of the castle, costs 4 million credits. Unlocking the entire stronghold will cost about 18 million credits in total.

Outdoor Grounds

This is the initial unlock area, the Outdoor Grounds.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

The outdoor grounds are a huge open space, and it even has four different hooks for starships. If you don’t want to put four starships there, you can always, of course, change them to the different layouts. You can see there’s a river, and there’s a lot of place to explore. Not everywhere has hooks, but there is enough hooks to keep you busy for quite a while.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Estate Stairs

As you come up the walkway, you’ll notice the main entrance. The main entrance stairs has a lot of hooks in this area, so if you want to absolutely deck out the front entrance to your stronghold, you will absolutely be able to. You’ll also notice some of these snowy features of the stronghold are really nice. There are icicles, there’s snow falling from the sky, and in general, you’ll have a beautiful vista of snowy mountains pretty much anywhere you go in the stronghold. And there are multiple sections, not just the castle itself. If you want to put a lot of companions or you want to put personnel, or maybe you just want to fill the entire entrance area with crystals, you should be fine to do that. You can also replay the cutscene – the introduction to the stronghold, as well as set this as your load-in point for the stronghold. Whenever you load in, you can load in right in front of the castle as opposed to out on the grounds where you normally start off – use the terminal to the side of the door to set your load-in point.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

This is the actual castle itself. There isn’t a lot of information when you first unlock the stronghold about who this palace belongs to. You can really decide your own story for this one, but you may be able to discover a little more about its history while exploring some of its secrets.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Estate Grande Hall

The Grande Hall of the estate is so beautiful and has a large stained glass window. This is such a wonderful addition to the stronghold and very unique. We don’t have anything quite like it in the game. The glass window shows off the beauty of Alderaan, and my favorite part is how it’s reflected down onto the ground of this room.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Waterfall

There’s also a really beautiful little waterfall area. This little lake actually has a bunch of fish swimming around in it that you can’t see very well unless you’re very close up. And this is all part of that initial 4 million credit unlock. It’s a huge area.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Secret Cave

My first instinct was to obviously walk right through the waterfall and see if there’s anything behind it, and luckily the developers thought very similarly. There is a secret hidden waterfall room, and this area is actually part of a hidden secret that you may be able to discover while exploring and unlocking your stronghold. And there are some hooks inside, not a ton, but just enough that you can hide a few of your most secret treasures or create a tiny grotto hideaway for your characters.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Throne Room

When first unlocking this stronghold, I thought the Grande Hall was the throne room, but this is an actual throne room. It costs 2 million credits or 900 cartel coins. And it’s a neat little area off on its own so you can have a more private, restricted throne-room if you want.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

You can always just throw a throne in that main room if that’s what you prefer – this is just the dedicated room for it. But this room, I think, could work well for a lot of things. So this throne room has a lot of area for banners on the sides of the hallways here if you want to show off your favorite sigil. And it comes with this kind of dais area where you can walk up onto. It’s got some nice scenery, and I really like the scene in the background. Sadly, you cannot go out in that area, as far as I can tell.

But when decorating this room, a cool little addition they decide you could choose your own throne. So when you unlock this stronghold, you’re actually given this is the initial altar on throne that you can earn through crafting, and it’s this noble throne facade they actually give you when you unlock the stronghold. You get it for free, so if that’s what you want to use instead, you can totally use that. Or you can use a Dread Palace throne, or you can use maybe sit on this guy’s lap or this awesome throne of the Sith Emperor. And there is a lot of other different Thrones available in the game too. You could always use one of these speeders as well if that’s what you wanted to do – for looks.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Balcony Overlook

Beside the throne room, there is another room. This other room is called the Balcony Overlook. It also costs 900,000 credits or 600 cartel coins. And it is only accessible through that hallway. Once again, lots of places for decos in the hallway itself, just not on the stairs.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

This is a really, really nice balcony. I really like this room. I was so excited that you could get a better view of that hidden lake and waterfall kind of area that you can see outside this room. You can see it on the left here – that’s the throne room. And there’s a really nice view. So this could make a really beautiful resting place for your character with some nice chairs and stuff out here if you wanted. It could be a really good high-altitude place for like a Jedi meeting, kind of like in the Jedi Consular’s story. There’s something similar atop a mountain.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Killik Grounds

Now that we’ve taken a look at the main castle, let’s look at the last area available in the Alderaan Noble Estates stronghold. This is kind of a hidden secret fun little area. So if you don’t want to use spoilers and you want to unlock this area on your own, you might want to exit this guide now. This is very close to where you loaded up, a few little stone steps that you can get to.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

There’s some detonation devices nearby, which for 1.5 million credits, unlocks the Killik Caves. As soon as you decide to expand it, KABLAM!, you’ve got a beautiful Killik Cave showing up right here. So let’s go check out the cave itself.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

The cave itself has some very neat little features available, and one thing I really liked and was worried about is that I didn’t want my Killik caves to ruin the view of my beautiful castle. As far as I can tell, they’re quite a bit to the side for the most part. You can’t see them when entering the main castle, are kind of hidden, I guess you could say. There’s not a bunch of Killiks roaming around your beautiful estate. So the Killik hives themselves are actually quite nice, and you’ll notice as we’re walking inside, there aren’t any actual Killik. DThere is a lot of hooks available while you’re looking around. It’s got this beautiful kind of purple luminescent glow that’s going on from both the Killik eggs as well as from some type of fireflies or phosphorescent objects floating in the air. It’s not a huge cave compared to some of the caves that are available on Alderaan for quest lines, but there is quite a bit of space if you want to decorate or explore. A really cool area for role-playing.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

At the back of the caves, there is something kind of interesting. It looks like you can’t go any further, as far as I can tell. You reached a true dead end, and it says there is a hidden item here that you can see once you’ve unlocked the cave. Note I, as far as I can tell, you can only activate this item if it’s your own stronghold. You cannot do it as a guest in someone else’s stronghold. So you can use this item to scan for things in this stronghold. It’s similar to the Macrobinoculars for those of you who have unlocked those. But you do not need any special type of quests leading up to this. You just need to find and click the secret item if you want to add Killik or cave.

Secret Alderaan Stronghold Achievement Guide – The Thranta Also Rises

Alderaan Stronghold

If you want to add killiks to your cave, you can right-click the glowing blue stalagmite at the beginning of the cave. This allows you to set the numbers of killiks in the cave – though it resets on switching characters or logging out.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

In addition to the secret Killik macrobinoculars achievement quest that we found hidden deep in the Killik Caves, there’s an additional secret Killik quest. This involves going to the actual planet of Alderaan instead of the stronghold. Its achievements can be found in the Strongholds section. You’ll go to Alderaan and find some special Killik materials that will allow you to craft your own Killik mounds outside of the Killik hives.

Drawing Room

There’s also three tiny rooms off the Grande Hall. This is the drawing room, costs 900,000 credits or six hundred cartel coins. So it’s just a very simple side room. It’s called the drawing room. You can put whatever you want in there, though.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Guest Chambers

These three rooms are going to be exactly the same. This one’s called the guest chambers, it’s the south east room. Same price, 900,000 credits, same kind of shape. Just need to decide what you want to put in there. It doesn’t have to be a guest chamber if you don’t want it to be. Tons of hooks in there too.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Study

The last small room off the Grande Hall, this is the study, 900,000 credits, same thing, same shape. I think this might be slightly different shape, but you can decide whatever you want to put in there.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Mountain Retreat

So here’s the next area. This is called the mountain retreat. It costs 2.5 million credits, or 1,200 cartel coins, and its an elevator off of the Grande Hall.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

This is such a cool, really large area. If you’ve been waiting for a mountain chalet, your mountain retreat, but you didn’t want a whole castle, this is for you. You still have to buy that initial unlock so you can get upstairs to this area. But this is the area that you’re going to want to use if you feel that you didn’t want the whole castle. You can still have a beautiful Alderaan retreat. If you choose this area to be your main area, you can actually set it to be the point that you load into so you can kind of skip the castle entirely and load in just in this nice little chalet area.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Up here is a nice little training area that comes for free with that specific unlock. It’s kind of nice. It has operations training dummy and then two normal dummies beside it so you can kind of pretend that you have ads beside the boss while you’re training. And it also has the healing dummy in the back. These don’t need to be activated. They’re just kind of sitting there hidden. There’s lots of hooks out here too.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Northern Lodging

Let’s go check out the two rooms that are the last two unlocks in this area. There’s the first, which is the Northern Lodging. It costs 2 million credits or 900 cartel coins. So inside, it’s just kind of a little maze of hallways until you get to the actual room. An interesting thing is that these two hallways are actually connected, these two lodgings. You can choose to unlock just one or the other, and they both cost 2 million or 900 cartel coins, and you can get to them from the other rooms. They’re kind of interconnected buildings. So let’s check out the first building’s main actual room.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

It’s a very, very beautiful view, I think. A very nice room. I really love the window. There’s icicles hanging from the ceiling, snow falling from the sky, just a really, really pretty room, to be honest. I would have no qualms about just unlocking this area and not worrying about the rest of the stronghold. If you’re looking for something a little smaller, it’s not quite the apartment people have been asking for, but it is a really good alternative for a small, manageable kind of stronghold, I think.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Western Lodging

Both rooms are the same price. It has the Western one has a weird little entry room, which is nice, has lots of hooks, and there’s a little window with icicles again. And this is the second room. It’s very similar but has a much more secluded view, which I thought was kind of cool. It doesn’t have too wide an expansive view, and this one might be better for those of you who want, who still want the beauty of Alderaan outside but want a little privacy. No one’s likely gonna be walking around outside their hut. And you might feel a little less agoraphobic in here.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Taxi

The Taxi point unlocks once you have unlocked the Mountain Retreat and brings you to the area up the elevator and back to the main grounds.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

If you log off while on the speeder, when you log back in your character cant move – use the exit area button to unfreeze your character, when you return it will be fixed.

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

Alderaan Stronghold

And that covers the entire Alderaan stronghold available in Star Wars: The Old Republic. As I mentioned at the beginning, the initial unlock for the stronghold costs 4 million credits. But if you’re looking for something a lot smaller, the Korriban and Yavin strongholds only cost 5,000 credits to start off, and unlocking those in their entirety costs a lot less than Alderaan’s 18 million price tag.

Hooks by Room

This represents the total number of hooks available when you unlock a room. There are more hooks available than you can place decorations on.

NOTE: You can transform most of the hook options into different arrangements, changing the number of each hook type available in a room.

Room Floor Large Floor Medium Floor Medium Narrow Floor Small Wall Large Wall Medium Wall Small Floor Covering Ceiling Large Centerpiece Starship
Initial Purchase 50 269 47 713 89 10 185 14 1 17 4
Killik Grounds 4 33 4 49 7 1 1
Drawing Room 4 4 47 8 20 3 1
Throne Room 8 8 14 118 33 9 47 9 2
Balcony Overlook 1 12 4 31 8 6 1
Study 4 4 47 8 20 3 1
Guest Chamber 4 4 47 8 20 3 1
Mountain Retreat 27 130 37 346 63 24 35 1 10 2
Northern Lodging 7 8 23 113 28 12 116 11 1
Western Lodging 7 8 20 114 28 2 31 9 2 1
Total 116 468 161 1,625 280 57 481 52 9 40 6

Black & Floorplans

Developer Interview

The Alderaan Noble Estate Part 1: Formation

It’s no secret that the Alderaan Stronghold has been a highly requested addition, so the team was very happy to bring this to fruition with Game Update 6.1, ‘Pinnacles of Power,’ which went live earlier this month. To celebrate the release, we present a two-part conversation about the Alderaan Stronghold’s creation. A future interview will discuss the Stronghold’s functionality and design, but let’s get things started with our first interview, where we sit down with Mark Taylor and Emily Henderson to talk about the fundamental formation of the Stronghold!

Since this is our first time doing an interview with both of you, let’s do a quick introduction. Who are you, and what do you do on the SWTOR team?

Mark: I’m Mark Taylor, one of the Game Designers on the team. My role on the team includes Stronghold setup and creation of Stronghold Decorations, along with a variety of Cartel Market tasks such as Collections setup and more.

Emily: My name is Emily Henderson, I am an Environment Artist on SWTOR. I’ve been with this team for about a year. It’s my job to take the designers’ rough layouts of a level and build that into a beautiful player space, often referencing concept art and the player narrative. This involves building and placing assets from a library, as well as painting and forming terrain. Other than world building, I also work to make sure that our levels are within our performance budget for the best player experience on any computer.

Out of all the settings to pick from for the next Stronghold, what drew the team to Alderaan?

Mark: Alderaan was easily one of the most requested Strongholds from the community, so it made sense for it to be the next Stronghold we released. We were all excited to see a Stronghold that could combine all the different environments that makes Alderaan unique, as well as having the regal feel to it. Personally, I was excited about the imploding mountainside to unlock the Killik Caves area and how it turned out.

What was the process like for building this Stronghold from the ground up?

Mark: It started off as a side project for me last spring, something I’d work on when I had free time. Just working out the initial layout and trying to balance what looked good versus what was best for gameplay. As designers, we want to cram in as much fun content as we can; but Strongholds are a bit different in that we need to make them interesting, but still leave things “empty” for the player to customize themselves. For example, the valley area in front of the palace is really just a big, empty field. In a normal gameplay area, we’d be able to fill it in with trees, rocks, and maybe buildings to break things up. But in a Stronghold, these would just block player’s decorations. The compromise was using a river running through the field, as it doesn’t block the view of any decorations the player might place down while breaking up the monotony of an empty green field.

Eventually things progressed to a point where we looked it over as a team, and it was officially scheduled to be worked on. That’s when Ben, Skott, Emily, and the rest of the team came on to finish up. Some of our best ideas came up from random conversations, like “what if this mountain blew up?” or “a stained-glass window would look great here”.

Emily: Mark had a pretty good starting base for the stronghold so working from that was pretty easy. Beginning with that base I polished up the rock base for a more realistic landscape and natural structure. I then painted and sculpted the terrain with respective foliage to fill out the space. Building up the vistas at all viewpoints was the next mission and required careful placement of landscapes that felt real and logical. New ideas came in and were built upon constantly until we had something we thought the players would really enjoy. Two examples of this would be the balcony behind the throne room and the cave behind the waterfall. Both were suggested through tester feedback and prior forum discussion. We built upon these ideas until we had something that worked.

With the unique landscape of Alderaan, were there any challenges in balancing the different environments?

Emily: There are always challenges with giving the player the feel of a limitless landscape while actually limiting the landscape. We overcame this by opening vistas to long expanses of land and views of other mountain tops as well as giving the player large areas to run around and discover.

To wrap things up, what were each of your favorite parts or aspects of this Stronghold?

Mark: I love mountain views, so the different vistas are by far my favorite parts. I feel like the views are such a big part of Alderaan and it all turned out just as great as I’d hoped!

Emily: My favorite part of the stronghold is the secret cave behind the waterfall, because there should always be secret caves behind waterfalls. It was super fun to create and explore. I also really enjoyed making the balcony overlook and vista behind the throne room. Sometimes interiors can get claustrophobic and repetitive, so having that overlook really gives the player room to breathe. Plus, it’s a super sweet spot for an outdoor jacuzzi.

Thank you for your time, Mark and Emily! Later next week we’ll release the second part of this two-part interview where we talk to two other members of the team, Skott Bechara and Ben Brzowski. Stay tuned!

The Alderaan Noble Estate Part 2: Functionality

Welcome to the second part of our two-part interview discussing the Alderaan Noble Estate Stronghold, recently released with Game Update 6.1, ‘Pinnacles of Power’! Following last week’s interview featuring Mark and Emily, today we follow up with two other members of our team: Skott Bechara and Ben Brzowski. They’ll touch on what it was like taking the stage, built by Mark, Emily, and other members of the team, and transforming it into a fully fleshed out Stronghold.

Since this is the first time either of you have done an interview like this, let’s do a quick introduction. Who are you, and what do you do on the SWTOR team?

Skott: I’m Skott Bechara, and I’m a Narrative Systems Designer—on SWTOR, that primarily translates to world and quest design.

Ben: Hello! I’m Ben Brzowski, and I’m a World Designer with the team. I’ll be working alongside familiar faces like Dave Shramek and newer faces like Skott here to bring Star Wars worlds to life in SWTOR.

When you two started working on the Stronghold, what aspects did you take charge of?

Skott: I was primarily responsible for decoration hook layouts, the Killik cave functionality, and design troubleshooting. It was important to me that Alderaan gave players some unusual options for decorations in terms of placement and density. Beyond placing hook layouts, I made sure the rooms were versatile and had satisfying options for decorations, adjusted spawners, and balanced hooks available with decoration caps for performance.

Ben: My earliest tasks with the Stronghold were the area setup basics, essentially making sure everything functions as you would expect for an area in our game. This included elements like being able to travel to it, making sure it was mapped properly, making sure rooms were accessible, and more. That transitioned into designing for things like decoration hooks and overall area ambiance (little things that make a place feel more alive).

With the last Stronghold, Rishi, there was a secret achievement involving a certain little turtle, is there anything like that on Alderaan?

Ben: As far as secret achievements go, I’d just like to say [REDACTED].

Is there anything else that makes this Stronghold unique?

Skott: Though the Killik cave is novel and a unique feature of a Stronghold, I think what sets Alderaan apart from the other Strongholds is the number of options available to players to create the things they feel reflect their characters’ personalities. Strongholds are a fun way to tell your own story by way of the environments players can create, so flexibility was key—even to the point of allowing the placement of decorations that might intersect with the Stronghold’s innate geometry. We didn’t want to worry about making sure every decoration could fit in every spot, especially if that meant players could create something special and unique.

To wrap things up, what were each of your favorite parts or aspects of this Stronghold?

Skott: As a roleplayer, a peaceful, solitary, mountainside fortress is exactly the kind of thing my Force-sensitive characters need to catch a break and refocus. I like that the Stronghold can range from imposing and powerful to serene and picturesque. I think the environment team did an incredible job, and I personally love seeing the screenshots roll in.

Ben: I think one of my favorite parts of working with the Alderaan Stronghold specifically is getting to work in the setting. I personally love the highlands and alpine forests we see in Alderaan. Getting to work with Skott and go through the gamut of our process of brainstorming ideas for the space, and then figuring out what we could accomplish from that vision was a great time. I also really enjoyed getting to work on something our players have been really wishing for. Other than that, I definitely loved [REDACTED].

Thank you for your time Skott and Ben! If you haven’t purchased your Alderaan Noble Estate yet, visit the Fleet to buy it now!

Before the end of my first year with BioWare, I was given the opportunity to realize one of the most requested player housing locations in the history of the game – Alderaan. Together with artists and engineers, a relatively small sub-team of developers took on this project to bring this opportunity to life.

​Additional from Ben’s website: In the Alderaan Stronghold (the in-game name for customizable player housing), called the Noble Estate, players are able to use “hooks” to move and place earned or bought cosmetic items to decorate their housing as they see fit. Together with the other world designer I was working with, we made sure the Alderaan Stronghold had the most hooks available to players in a single Stronghold. What we didn’t anticipate, however, was the need to balance the total number of available hooks against the performance-gated decoration limits for the area. What followed was one of the healthiest player-dev communications I have experience in my career. With our close relationship to the community and the ability to test our changes via Public Test Server (PTS), we were able to tune and adjust to give players the best balance we could.