The Advanced Class System

Today BioWare opened up a new area on the official TOR website. This is not another section of the HoloNet, but a new separate area altogether; name "Game Systems". Here they'll look at various parts of how the game works and first up is the recently announced Advanced Class System.

But first they have another BioWare Blog entry, this one by Principal Lead Writer Daniel Erickson, titles "Creating Worlds". Here he talks about how they go about creating the background stories for the planets, taking Voss as an example (including some screenshots of the Voss). Here's an excerpt:

Interestingly, the Mystics have been around as long at the Old Republic has--though the culture and people who would become the Voss came much later. In the first days we wanted to bring something completely new to our class offerings and a group who looked at the Force in a fundamentally different way was intriguing. The Mystics would be grey and dangerous to the eyes of the Jedi, able to see through the lies of the Sith and beholden and interested in neither. They would enable us to explore themes of religion (every culture sees gods but interprets them differently), culture (believing themselves to be the chosen people) and politics (due to the infallibility of their visions, they are happily totalitarian). We had numerous different ideas for how they would look, be thought of by the greater galaxy and behave. For a while we had a running joke of Mystic converts standing in spaceports asking weary travelers, “Have you been to Voss?”

In a way I'm sad that the Voss Mystics didn't make it as a player class. Maybe they'll do in a future expansion or such. But as it is the story of the Voss sounds like it could be quite interesting. So far this new planet intrigues me a lot more than any of the others. Either way, the blog entry is a nice read.

Second up is the announcement of the Advanced Class System. Here's the news:

Today we are revealing a new area of the website called Game Systems. This area talks about various features from a gamer’s perspective. Our first section in this new area discusses the Advanced Class System.

The Advanced Class System grants you access to unique skills and abilities, and is designed to allow you the flexibility to customize your characters to fit your play style. For example, all Smugglers are lucky, opportunistic swindlers. But, do you want to be the kind of Smuggler that sneaks into the middle of a firefight and quickly blasts away at an opponent from point-blank range? Or do you want to be the kind that keeps to the outskirts of the battle, strategically picking your targets from a distance?

These are just some of the meaningful choices that the Advanced Class System offers you to personalize – and advance – your character in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™!

I can't wait to hear what the advanced classes for the other classes are. And in anticipation of hearing more about TOR's game systems I'm adding another label for posts dealing with that.

Finally there's another bit of information come out of the UK press event, namely a video interview with Daniel Erickson. It's been posted on various news sites, but here's the video on YouTube:


I'll add the link to the original post as well.