BioWare has been busy. The 1.2 update to Star Wars: The Old Republic, scheduled to go live sometime in early April, will contain quite a bit of content, from a new player verus player Warzone and player versus environment dungeons to guild features and class rebalancing significant enough to refund all skill tree points. Game Director at BioWare James Ohlen provided plenty of detail about what is changing and why.

"We want to give our players their money's worth," said Ohlen. "They're paying fifteen dollars a month, so we have the whole team essentially devoted to pumping out new content and new systems on regular occasions. They've been crunching even past launch. We've had a lot longer [quality assurance] soak time this time. We want to make sure there's no bugs, such as the one that occurred in Ilum for our [patch 1.1]. We don't want that to happen again, we want the positives to be focused on."



Two dungeon areas will be introduced in 1.2, a new Operation, called Explosive Conflict, and a new Flashpoint, called Lost Island, which is linked to the Kaon Under Siege dungeon added in content patch 1.1. The Explosive Conflict Operation will be set on the planet of Denova, and will feature fights against large monsters and mechanical walkers. Ohlen didn't want to give away too many details about how the fights will actually work, but did hint that the experience will be much different from the end game content seen so far. "It's got more of a wartime feel, which is what Denova is all about. You have heavy war machines, you have a camp that you're invading." In the Operation your goal is to assault an arms factory, an especially dangerous mission due to the volatile baradium strewn all over the area, which will blow up if you're not careful.

If you've been playing the game since launch in late 2011, those Legacy levels will finally be good for something after 1.2. Specifically, they'll let you set up a family tree, where you can arrange your characters and earn bonuses. Getting to level 50 will unlock that character's race for all classes you create thereafter, bypassing the regular class and race restrictions. "If you were to play a character to level 50 with all the races, you could create any class of any race," said Ohlen. "We know that not many people are going to do that because it's kind of crazy, so we also gave the option for players to purchase some of the unlocks." Ohlen said the race purchases will be made only with in-game currency.

Other Legacy unlocks will not be available until you've leveled a class to 50, however. Such is the case with unlocking new skills. Do you wish your Bounty Hunter could shoot Force lightning? After 1.2, if you relate the Bounty Hunter to a level 50 Inquisitor, it'll be possible, though with some significant limitations.

A Bounty Hunter won't suddenly turn into a Force-wielding super user. Every class has a heroic moment ability which requires the presence of a companion to activate. Only by using these heroic moment abilities will you be able to access the cross-class Legacy abilities. That essentially means you can only use the abilities out in the questing world; they're locked out when you're in a full group or in a PvP Warzone. "It's a balancing mechanism. We wanted to make the abilities powerful and useful but we know that some players are going to eventually have all seven others on one character. We had to be cognizant of that when we were creating them so we don't give the player seven super-powerful abilities he can use in rapid succession."

In the future, it may be possible for players to fuse their Legacy systems and marry others, but that's far from final. At least for 1.2, only your characters can be slotted in the Legacy family trees.

Over the next months it seems as though the focus of player versus player combat is going to be adjusted quite a bit, as BioWare is on the verge of changing the reward structure. Soon there will no longer be any daily or weekly quests to visit Ilum, the end-game open PvP area. Ilum will still exist as a destination for those interested in open PvP, but it won't be a place to earn commendations for end game PvP armor. "We're keeping Ilum as-is. But I think almost all of our problems that occur in open world PvP are because of the fact that the rewards there, the behavior was less about having fun in that area and more about exploiting to get the rewards faster. We know there is a big contingent of players who are fans of open world PvP and we have a lot of experience, especially on the Mythic team, of working on it. We're going to have more announcements on what we're following up with to give those fans what they're looking for." After 1.2, all end game rewards will be handed out through Warzone participation, which includes Huttball, Void Star, Alderaan Civil War and, after update 1.2, Novare Coast.

Novare Coast will be a capture point setup similar to Alderaan Civil War, featuring turrets your team needs to capture and hold in order to secure victory. BioWare has been listening to player feedback since launch and is aware some end game PvP Warzone participants are tired of getting thrown into Huttball most of the time, and, aside from adding Novare Coast, will be taking additional steps to lower the frequency of Huttball matches.

No, you won't be able select specifically which Warzone to join after 1.2 goes live. Instead, Void Star will be changed so that Republic can fight Republic and Empire can fight Empire, a team format shared by Huttball and Novare Coast. "That means that Void Star will fire more often when you're on a server where it's a faction imbalance…There's going to be less of a Huttball bias. We plan to move Alderaan into that group as well, but it won't be ready for 1.2. We're very conscious of the fact that we have servers with a faction imbalance and we have to deal with that."



A ranking system is being implemented into PvP Warzones to improve matchmaking and let you compare your performance to others. "We can avoid matches where you're going up against a team of players who have a win-loss ratio that' s much higher than yours. We're going to continue to expand up on the PvP ranking in future updates as well. This one we're kind of calling the pre-season, because it's just the beginning of our ranking system. We intend to add to it significantly."

There's certainly a lot of attention given to the end game at BioWare right now, which makes sense given the number of the population at the level cap. "We have a lot of players at level fifty. I can't give exact numbers, but we have more players at level fifty than most MMOs have subscribers. Our first group of players who started when we first launched, they were very much our hardest core players. They went through the leveling content really fast. Other players have been going through the leveling content a little bit slower. I get reports every week on the player population distribution from levels one to fifty and it's a pretty good spread."

A new tier of armor will be made available in 1.2 for both PvP and PvE end game sets, and the crafting system will be enhanced as well. "We drive the artists bonkers with the amount of items they have to create. It looks really good." It'll be a higher tier than is currently available at the vendors. End game crafting is also receiving some attention, as BioWare will add in more level 50 options for those who didn't pick up Biochem as a crew skill. "We wanted to make it so Biochem wasn't the only viable elder game crafting skill. We've done a lot of changes there that'll make the crafting system a lot stronger."

Class changes in 1.2 include new abilities for the Warrior and the Knight, a nerf for the Bounty Hunter, and more. Every class will receive changes, and all skill tree points refunded so you can look over the trees again before deciding how to rebuild your class. "Some players will be excited, some might not. That's always the case when there's tweaks to classes."

Other frequently requested features, such as Guild Banks and a moddable user interface will be included in 1.2 as well. "You have to purchase the ability to use Guild Banks in the first place. Then that gives you one shelf. To purchase extra shelves, that costs extra credits. As you purchase more shelves they become more expensive." Settings will be available to control guild members' access to the bank's shelves, and higher-ups will be able to track who is removing what and when. "In terms of all of our features, it was probably one of the most expensive features we built because it involves a lot of underlying code because you're sharing items between multiple characters."

There's still a lot of discussion within BioWare about what to do with guilds next, including the possible inclusion of guild capital ships. "We want to put in some guild features, like the aforementioned capital ships, that players have never seen before in an MMO." Ohlen wasn't able provide more detail about how capital ships might work.

For the interface, it sounds as though nearly every element of it will be modifiable in some way. "You're going to be able to take a lot of the [graphical user interface] elements and move them around onscreen and place them where you want to place them. You're also going to be able to change the size. If you're so used to the World of Warcraft interface that you want to move everything so it's identical to that, you can do that."

Many less dramatic changes will be implemented as well. BioWare has been busy tracking down numerous bugs and smoothing out the leveling process, and in 1.2 will be implementing a better search functionality in the Galactic Trade Network, The Old Republic's auction house. Unfortunately the ability to bid on items still won't be included, but Ohlen promised searching will be a lot easier.

Specifics about class changes and crafting will be revealed in the coming weeks. Are you still playing The Old Republic? Do you like the sound of update 1.2 so far?