Exclusive Legacy System Interview

Family legacies are an integral part of the Star Wars experience, and that tradition will factor into character progression in The Old Republic as well. We recently sat down with Director of Production for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Dallas Dickinson, to learn more about the Legacy System, and what it adds to the game.

Swtorhub: For our readers who may not already be familiar with the Legacy system and how it factors into The Old Republic, could you give us an overview of what it entails and how players will be introduced to it in-game?

Dallas Dickinson: The basics of it are fairly simple and we’ve mentioned before that we will be augmenting the system as we go forward. At launch, it is simply a system that you unlock at a higher level to give you a different form of experience, and it allows you to unlock a surname that you create for your ongoing legacy. Star Wars is all about these family legacies; the Skywalker family legacy, or the Organa family legacy. All of those are really integral to a great Star Wars experience, and so the system is our nod to that.

But it’s also a great way to incentivize players to play again with new characters, level their alts up and associate them with a legacy. Then as I’ve said we’re going to unlock some other features in future publishes.

Swtorhub: It almost sounds like the MMO equivalent to a New Game Plus found more and more commonly in single-player games over the past few years.

Dallas: Exactly. And that’s really what it is. It’s a way of essentially linking your characters and then offering some really cool bonuses for having played up to the higher levels on really any of your characters. That will be shared progress across the legacy.

Swtorhub: Is the system intended to provide players another form of advancement even after reaching the experience level cap for their chosen class?

Dallas: That’s exactly it. We know there are players who are going to run to the end of the game. So we want to make sure that – at launch – we’re allowing you to accrue that legacy experience and continue accruing it even when you get to the endgame. Then you will have another incentive to associate with future characters.

Swtorhub: Will advancement with the legacy system essentially mirror the other progression systems for characters in-game? For example, will you be able to track progress via an XP bar or gain new levels and ranks for your legacy?

Dallas: We’ll get into more detail as we get into the advancement features, but it is exactly that sort of thing. It’s another sort of advancement bar, and as you achieve certain tiers in it you’re going to unlock abilities and other fun stuff.

You won't be able to use names like Skywalker for your characters, but something tells me that won't stop people from trying.

Swtorhub: Say I’ve got two max level characters linked to the same legacy – will the advancement for both characters be an additive thing, or will all characters associated with that legacy share a universal progress bar?

Dallas: It will be shared, but it is also within one server. So you can have a character off on a PvP server and that won’t be associated with a character you have on some completely different PvE server. But within the same server environment it will be shared between characters on the same account.

The whole point of the system is to make sure that they’re linked and that you can be progressing your legacy regardless of which one you’re playing.

Swtorhub: Say you advance a legacy with a max level character and later on decide to delete that character from your account. Will you lose any progress made at that point, or will your other characters associated with that legacy inherit the progress you’ve made up to that point?

Dallas: I’m going to give you the safe answer because I don’t know the final mechanic, which is: don’t delete characters. I mean, you could run up against a point where you’ve filled up your allotment on one particular server, but you still won’t want to delete characters.

Swtorhub: Are there any direct tie-ins with the PvP systems in The Old Republic and the legacy system? Or are those being handled as two wholly separate forms of advancement within the game?

Dallas: Currently they’re wholly separate. They’re designed for different styles of play, so we want to make sure that people who are focused on PvP are advancing within PvP, while Legacy is much more about replayability of the core game. So we want to make sure that we don’t push the two together where it doesn’t make sense to.

Swtorhub: In that sense, would you liken Legacy to another system like the Social Points system that has its own unique set of perks and rewards, that’s progressed by specific gameplay behaviors rather than factoring in all overarching activities you can do with your character?

Dallas: Correct. I mean, it really is orthogonal to other advancement systems. It is its own system, and is very much based on you being a veteran player, you’ve gotten near to the end of the game, and you want to experience that part of the Star Wars fantasy that includes creating your own Skywalker legacy. Not that you can have the last name Skywalker in the game, but let’s just pretend that you could! This allows you to fulfill that and actually gives you a pretty cool bonus for doing so.

Swtorhub: Are there any plans to allow players from two separate accounts to share a surname? For example, say two roleplayers wanted to explore the concept of conducting an in-game wedding, and allowing their virtual offspring on either account share a legacy as a result.

Dallas: So can two players have spousal relationships? Not at this time. It’s something we’ve certainly discussed, but it’s not part of the current design.

Be sure to check back later this week for the second part of our exclusive interview that takes a closer look at PvP in The Old Republic.