Tag Archives: legacy system

Getting Down on the SWTOR Patch 1.2 PTR

05 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in companions, crew skills, legacy system, PTR, video

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I have been on vacation, in a land without Internet or cellphone service, known as the NorCal coast. As such I have only just now gotten a chance to hop on the SWTOR PTR and check out all the changes that await us.

But first and foremost, I  have to tell you about the above screenshot. That isn’t a hack — that is me getting to dance with Khem Val!! That’s right, you too can unlock the companion dance ability (which you will find in your abilities window, under the legacy tab, so you can pull it out to your action bars to use it.) This totally awesome ability is available for the low low cost of only attaining social level II, or purchasable with Legacy level 3.

I didn’t realize just how much fun I would have with this one. But dancing with Khemmy totally made my day.

Ahem.

There are a number of other equally awesome and amazing changes now available to us on the PTR.

Family Tree

When you open your legacy window for the first time, you’ll get to start building your family tree. That means right now is the time to start thinking about how you plan to populate it. Whom will be your family matriarch/patriarch?

I made Anexxia my family matriarch then set about thinking about where all my other characters would fit in. AS of this writing, the options available to you for each successive character are:

  • rival
  • ally
  • spouse
  • child
  • adopted child
  • sibling

As you drag each character into the family tree, over the matriarch/patriarch, you will have the opportunity to decide where they fit in. And don’t stress — you can move them around if you don’t get it quite right on first click-and-drag.

Enhanced Character Screen

The biggest addition here is the Unify Colors button. You may toggle on or off which visible clothing pieces you would like to have color coordinated to match your chestpiece. That means no more putting off equipping that new piece of gear because you don’t want to look like a clown college’s wardrobe mistress.

Additionally, your character screen now has a few character customization options available at your fingertips that used to require some poking around in the preferences menu:

  • Show Dark Side Corruption
  • Hide Head Slot

Legacy Unlocks

AS you can see, my flitting around from character to character, on different servers, means I haven’t unlocked too many of the available legacy unlocks. But as seen at the top of the post, I did unlock the all important Companion Dance. Other easily attainable unlocks are the Tech Emotes, which allow you to /datapad, /holocom, and /map whenever the feeling suits you.

Crafting Improvements

The Crafting changes we’re seeing on the PTR are going to make those crafters among us very happy, starting with the individual profession windows. You can now sort by custom. That means no more clicking on every blue recipe in your window to try to find your moddable gear! And, those custom pieces now show as orange, which gives a visual queue and makes so much more sense.

To check out the critical success of moddable pieces, I crafted 25 synthweaving items, across all 3 armor proficiencies. Of those, 5 pieces critted, resulted in an augment slot being added. For ease of ID’ing these exceptional pieces, their names have [augmented] following their name.

Other nice changes to the items is showing you if an item is not able to be researched to find a new schematic, as in this example:

Or if an item *does* have the ability to be researched for finding a new schematic, it lists its % chance, as in this example:

User Interface (UI) Changes

Last and definitely not least, players will now be able to significantly customize their user interface, using in-game functionality. To say that I’m impressed with the level of customization is an understatement. but don’t just take my word for it– take a look at this UI overview window. I consider it to be required viewing for showing you how to make the most of the UI customization options available to you in Patch 1.2.

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SWTOR Guild Summit Gives Us Plenty to Look Forward to in the Old Republic

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in official announcements, previews

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Most unfortunately for me, I was in meetings at work all day while  the SWTOR Guild Summit was in progress, without even time to check the twitter feed, except at lunch, to see what nuggets of information about the next big content patch were shared. But thanks to the many attendees who liveblogged from the event itself or while watching the livestream, I was able to get caught up pretty quickly.

First and foremost, I’m excited that today’s maintenance brings with it our next patch, which brings with it, those super top secret and awesome color crystals we heard about last week. I KNEW hoarding all those credits would eventually come in handy…other mentions of note:

  • Friends of Star Wars Free Trial
    Starting today, and only for a few weeks it looks like, SWTOR players can invite three (3) of their friends to take part in a 7-day trial of the game. During this trial period, invited players can explore each of the four Origin Worlds.
  • Server Group Finder Coming in Patch 1.3
    This is one of those much debated issues, and I’m glad with where they landed on this. The group finder feature will be introduced in the 1.3 game update, and will be limited to your server.  This makes me incredibly happy. Yes, expanding a group finder to a larger server pool would mean potentially shorter queue times, but having played WoW with both server-only and wider population looking for group tools, I can emphatically say I preferred the ability to get to know folks on my own server (and the inherent accountability for behavior) that went along with the server-only looking for group.
  • Ability to kick AFKers from Warzones
    That’s right, a Vote to kick system will be added in patch 1.2, allowing folks to kick out inactive players (you know, those people who stand in the corner for Huttball.) Will be interesting to see what they come up with to prevent abuse of kicking people who aren’t actually inactive (kick able to be cancelled by moving character?)
  • Ability to do 8-man Warzone premades, with groups able to persist between matches
  •  Lots of Legacy Unlocks!
    • Level to 50 with a species and you unlock all class variations of that species across both factions (i.e. yes, you can play a Sith Pureblood Bounty Hunter.)
    • Completing Chapters in your class story unlocking abilities across your characters. Example of unlocking Force Choke on all your characters after completing Chapter 3 on your Sith Warrior.
    • Social ranks will unlock some abilities too, such as ability to dance with your companion or new emotes
    • Jetpacks for Bounty Hunter, other classes receive rocket boots for a short duration sprint type ability.
    • Sprint moved to level 1. I am buying this for every alt. EVERY alt!
    • Mailboxes and the Galactic Trade Network on ships, so you need never return to the fleet again.
    • When character transfers come, the higher of the two legacies will take priorities, which means you won’t lose out on your high level legacy by transferring to a new server.
    • Ship droids will sell a voice restraining-bolt for certain mouthy ship droids.
    •  All these unlocks and rewards are retroactive, i.e. when the patch hits, your existing characters will automatically have access to all of this. you won’t miss out by having already leveled to 50.
  • Guild Banks coming in 1.2, with up to seven tabs available. Future patches to include a Guild calendar and some sort of “guild advertising” to help guilds recruit new members.
  • More vanity pets confirmed for 1.2, but we already knew that, didn’t we? 🙂

For full coverage of the event, head over to Darth Hater.

The SWTOR Legacy System and You

19 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in legacy system

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What is the Legacy System?

The Legacy System is a sort of server-wide achievement and activities tracking system for your characters. Currently a work in progress, the SWTOR Devs have recently released some details on how they plan to evolve the system. Some highlights:

  • ability to identify the family relationships between your characters on any given server. (i.e. you can make your characters the sons, daughters, brothers, cousins, friends of your main character.)
  • points will eventually unlock abilities, perks and “bind on Legacy” items.
  • legacy perks will range from attacks to the ability to customize your next character’s in-game experience.
  • an example of the game experience customization is spending legacy points to buy a speeder bike at a much earlier level than your first character, thus allowing you to traverse the world more quickly (a perk I would definitely splash out on.)

After you complete the first Chapter of your class story, you will be alerted that you have an opportunity to choose your Legacy Surname. Choose carefully and consult spell-check or Wookieepedia before hitting enter on that name– it will stay with you across all your characters on that server and can not be changed (though it can be hidden if you discover you’ve made a mistake.)

When Do I get My Legacy Bar?

As soon as you have access to your Legacy surname, a second tracking bar will appear below your experience bar. That is the bar that will show you your legacy progress.

What Gives me Legacy Points?

Pretty much any activity that has you out and about in the world exploring and killing mobs will award you with legacy points. You will start to notice that every time you are awarded with XP for a new codec discovery, completing a quest or killing a mob that you will receive a small amount of Legacy experience as well. As you start rolling alts, everything they do from the moment they are rolled onward will grant you legacy points after you have unlocked the Legacy on your primary character. This includes alts of the opposite faction but rolled on the same server as your first legacy character.

Thoughts on Your Legacy Name

When you roll new alts, you will want their names to work well with your Legacy name, provided you plan to show it. That’s why you may want to skip the comedy legacy name or one that works only with your main, and think a little more broadly about what you plan to do within your SWTOR family of characters. Are you *really* going to want all of your characters running around with that other MMORPG reference as a Surname? In a year ? Two years? I pose the same question to all the folks who have rolled characters using the Game of Thrones universe as their naming platform. Similarly, I’ve seen a number of folks running around with a surname that is exactly the same as their primary character’s name. I can see that working for your alts, but I have to say, especially with jokey names, it looks a little off to see a toon running around the Imperial fleet with their first name repeated.

Naming Resources

Hands down, the best place to get ideas for your SWTOR characters’ names is Wookieepedia. You can browse through the pages and see hundreds, perhaps even thousands of great first and last names you can tweak and make your own. Other good places to research names:

Naming Restrictions

Contrary to what you might think from some of the names you see running around or trolling general chat, SWTOR does actually have a naming policy, as found in the Terms of Service. As of this writing, they include:

  1. You may not use any names that violate the General Rules. This includes the use of names that are hateful, defamatory, racist, ethnically offensive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, or any other language that is offensive in nature.
  2. You may not use names that are harassing or defamatory to other players or employees of EA, BioWare or LucasArts, e.g. EASUX, Timsretarded, and Biowaresux.
  3. You may not use names of any EA, BioWare, or LucasArts employee or service related to Star Wars: The Old Republic.
  4. You may not use names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials or products, e.g. Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper.
  5. You may not use names from popular culture or media, e.g. Lady Gaga or George Lucas.
  6. You may not use names that are religiously or historically significant, e.g. Jesus, Winston Churchill.
  7. You may not use proper names of areas within Star Wars for character names. Guild names, however, MAY use the proper names of specific areas to help promote role-playing and realm pride, e.g. Defenders of Tython or Protectors of Hutta.
  8. You may not use proper names of non-player characters within Star Wars: The Old Republic, e.g. Darth Malgus, Satele Shan, Yoda, Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.
  9. You may not use names containing titles or ranks within them, e.g. General Supertrooper, Captain Tim, Darth Timmy, Knight Wakey.
  10. You may not use names that refer to drugs or that are drug related.
  11. You may not use names that contain an inappropriate phrase, sentence or any fragment of a sentence or Leet speak, e.g. uberhaxer, xxspeederxx, lolface, rofl, Noobwhacker, TimmyF**k, kock, fuk.
  12. You may not use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules, e.g. Hamsolo, Yooda, DorthVader.
  13. You may not use gibberish names when creating character, e.g. ajsdu, rifndsw, qweszs.

It appears that as with many other MMOs, enforcing the name policy is done both within the character creation interface (for obvious items such as popular character’s names), and enforced through other players reporting your name. The latter is most likely to happen when someone has an offensive name. Penalties for villating the naming rules can include being assigned a new name, being asked to rename your character or, in extreme cases, account closure.

I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more about the Legacy System, as the Devs get closer to rolling out these updates and more in a future patch.

UPDATE 4/12/12 With Patch 1.2 going live today, there are now a number of legacy unlocks available to you. See a few in my PTR post, and there will be a new post on Legacy incoming from me soon.

SWTOR NDA Lifted: Avalanche of BETA Information Incoming!

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in BETA, official announcements

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Earlier this week, when the big BETA stress test weekend was confirmed as being November 25-28, A number of folks cross the twittersphere started hypothesizing that would also entail the NDA being lifted. But I don’t think any of us expected it to happen so soon. But it did — Friday, the SWTOR NDA was lifted, and thus started an avalanche of Star Wars: the Old Republic news across the blogosphere.

I’m still poking around amongst all the fansites that were part of the #SWTOUR earlier this month, and checking out the newly populated DB and WIKI sites, so for now, here are the highlights from the official information released over the past 48 hours:

  • Spoiler forum launched.
    This news caused me to bust out in a big grin because avoiding unwanted spoilers has been a hard task over the past few years. Between general chat spammers oversharing, twitter folks casually spilling the beans, or the developers tossing up a fountain that puts a cinematic you wanted to save all up in your screen, it’s been a real struggle to keep from getting TMI about content I have yet to finish. Although this won’t take care of it in other venues, I love that they are creating this subdivision for their official forums.
  • Legacy System announced.
    Not only will you be able to choose a last name for your character, that name will be used across all your characters on a server, uniting them under a familial name. Per the official forums “any and all characters on that server will now contribute to that player’s Legacy Experience Points. Much like normal experience points, when you reach certain Legacy thresholds, you will increase your Legacy Level.” These legacy points will at a later date translate to rewards or achievements of some sort, thus giving you the ability to have bragging rights for goals accomplished all of your characters, versus having an altaholics achievements tax.