Nov 18, 2011

Posted by in News | 39 Comments

Legacy System Officially Announced!

[UPDATE] Here’s the Legacy Unlock screen courtesy of @Asros!

Legacy Unlock

Legacy Unlock

 

Legacy Surname

Legacy Surname

Legacy Title

Legacy Title

Legacy Bar and XP

Legacy Bar and XP

What a day. Im exhausted from the TORnado that’s happening! But not too exhausted to talk about this!

James Ohlen, in what has to be the ultimate forum lurk of all time, has officially announced the long-suspected Legacy system!

Hey Everyone,

This build has our first iteration of the Legacy System! At its core the Legacy system is about allowing players to create a family tree of characters. Family is pretty important to the Star Wars universe, with the Skywalker family having one of the most interesting dynamics in movie history. This version is just the foundational components that we will use to build upon in the future. Here are the features of this iteration:

      • Once your character has completed their Chapter 1 storyline, they will be able to choose a Legacy Last Name. This Legacy Last Name must be unique and is shared across all characters, on all servers – so choose carefully!
      • Once you have unlocked your Legacy, 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 yourLegacy Level.

We already have plans for how we will expand the functionality of the Legacy System in one of our major post-ship patches. This will include being able to shape your Legacy’s family tree, and give you a reward for all those Legacy Levels. 

We look forward to reading your feedback on the Legacy System!

–James

[UPDATE] Damion Schubert offered some more clarity on the forums:

You can choose to do one of the following:
– Display your legacy name as your last name (“Raiel Firewalker”)
– Display your legacy name below your name 

Raiel
The Firewalker Legacy

– or choose to hide it altogether. This choice can differ per character.

It seems to play very much into BioWare’s plan of betting on the leveling game, encouraging people to roll characters. It seems you gain Legacy XP when you do this. My personal jury is still out on this one, but…

If you’re interested in talking about the Legacy system or anything else from the Fan Site Summit, stop by the Ask A Jedi Cantina tonight, Friday November 18th at 9:00PM EST. We’ll be holding a live Q&A, and while we may not be able to answer everything, we’ll give it a whirl!

Legacy System


  1. Can anyone come up with a decent last name to go with Chronium, Mightpyro, and Cobralalala?

  2. ScytheNoire says:

    Yet more encouragement from BioWare to have people reroll new characters and play through all the classes storylines.

    This makes me think that they will be slower to roll out new content, relying a lot on players playing all classes to keep busy.

    • I don’t think this will be the case at all. However, that would be horrible news if that were true.

    • that sure is tricky of them, maybe they could do something like gating the content that they release with, maybe make 40 people run the same dungeon 40 times to get some blood after completing a quest line that takes you to every zone in the game several times and requires you to track down a wandering npc. or better yet make it so you have to kill the bosses that require a resistance gear to defeat so you can get loot of them that give you that resist. or maybe make everyone on the server collect arbitrary mats and turn them in the thousands then defeat the hardest mobs in the game to open some content…

  3. Lady Republic says:

    …..Wow! That’s one heck of a reveal.

    So in practice, in some ways this operates like a personal guild of sorts? Except one you can’t bail on if you make a putz of yourself. *egrin*

  4. How will a family tree work if there is no baby making? ;)

    Will the system essentially just be a collection of characters with the same last name? What about characters of different species? I love the idea of a common surname, but I don’t understand what it’s supposed to do besides that! Help!

    • It’s all the characters you make on one server that will be put into a family tree/character tree. There was a update saying that you don’t have to have a surname it can also be treated like a guild name on a separate line.

      The Legacy system is basically explaining how you will be able to unlock the new class/race combinations even though they don’t say it in the post.

  5. I am not thrilled by this annoucement. As an RPer, I don’t want all my characters to be the same ‘family’.

    WTH Bioware?

    • You can keep it hidden so it does not look like they are in the same family.

      • A hell of a lot of good that does. All that means is that you’re not stuck with one surname for ALL of your characters on a server to use.

        This is absolute garbage for different players wanting to, say, have their characters be related. Or for spouses playing the game together who wanted to have the same last name.

        The option to ignore it doesn’t solve the problems inherit with the system as it stands. It does exactly what it says, ignores them.

  6. Yeah, it is a bad implementation of a potentially great idea….

    Same last names across all characters? dumb.

    Same last name unique to all servers? dumber

  7. Make sure you voice your feedback on the forums. Afterall, this is only the first implementation, they’ll be looking for and expecting feedback.

  8. Huh, I like it.

    Has there been any further details on this? It was mentioned above that species are unlocked through this? How does that work? And are there any other benefits?

    Also, how does it work with multiple species, like Sith and Human, in the same family?

  9. OneCharacter says:

    This is a very interesting and unique way for the introduction to surnames. I love how it is tied into the story and you can basically create a familiy. Brilliant!

    I’m sure that the option to not use a Legacy Last Name as well as an option to use a different name for different characters might exist for people who prefer such.

    My only concern however, (and we don’t know the finer details so this may not be the case) is that there seems to be a pretty heavy emphasis on creating new characters. On there surface there is nothing wrong with that; the story is rich and it deserves to be experienced from all sides. But, as someone who doesn’t plan to make many (if any at all) alt characters, I hope that I will not be gimping myself on any of the features because I choose to play only one character.

    Of course, the Legacy System may be ENTIRELY based on rerolling and whatever benefits you gain from it are for leveling purposes and alt characters. In that case, it won’t affect me and that’s prefectly OK. Just so long as I do not feel obligated to make new characters if I want to progress my main character further.

    • Hopefully rewards will be based on what you suggest here. Kind of like Heirloom gear in WoW.

      I hold my judgement until I see it in action, but if all my characters will have the same last name, that’s not cool (even if you can hide it). I don’t RP with other people, but I do plan on creating a nice story and personality for all of my characters, just for myself. The more that’s forced on me, the less interested I am in doing so.

  10. So…what’s the point of the legacy system? What do legacy levels do for you?

  11. To be honest, this sounds absolutely amazing!

    True to Bioware’s commitment to storytelling.
    True to their commitment to support multiple playstyles (rolling alts is absolutely a playstyle and usually ignored in other games).
    True to their commitment to creating a real Star Wars experience. The saga of 6 films is specifically about a family and what happens between a father and son in the Skywalker legacy. Extending that into this game is an amazing concept.

    I really don’t get the hate already. I love the hell outta this idea!

    • Well I’m sure it’s cool if you plan to make all your characters human or the same species no matter what… for others… not so much. So I wouldn’t exactly call this a triumph for storytelling as it really hamstrings the variety of stories that can be told through this without it becoming ridiculous.

      • I plan on making a Sith Pureblood Sith Warrior as my main. My next character will be either a BH or Agent, neither of which can go Pureblood and will likely be a Chiss.

        I don’t really care about weird bloodlines or species with this system. It means i can Roleplay an extended, epic family scenario if i want to. Or just have fun with each character if I prefer that. It creates the possibility of stories that go well beyond what would otherwise be possible.

        Just use some imagination. Perhaps your Twi’lek SI was a slave belonging to your Pureblood SW and was branded with a family name. Then the Chiss Agent who you saved adopted your family name out of loyalty, though he keeps his true name for other purposes. Finally, the human BH performed so many grand deeds in the name of the Sith, that you made him an honorary member of your family.

        I came up with that in 15 seconds of sitting here. For people who want story and roleplaying, there’s always a way. Just use some imagination.

  12. So how are they going to explain my Zabrak, Twi’lek, Chiss, and Mirialan all being related? I do hope they at least have the decency to rename it to “character tree” and leave the surnames something that is per character.

  13. Kryssprollz says:

    Simple : Legacy = House like, say, House Atreides from Dune: your characters can be of the Atreides bloodline, retainers of the family, slaves of the family, people affiliated with it (Duncan Idao, Gurney Alleck), formers family members or employees who have turned their back on the house and went to the other faction…

  14. They had such a response on the official forum announce that they had to close the thread at over 100 pages, in less than 24hrs. And I have to agree with the majority of folks responding. I like the idea of having some type of server legacy system, but surnames is not a very logical way of doing it. It just doesn’t make sense that no matter your race, you have the same “legacy last name”. There are better ways to do this, and I’m quite suprised Bioware didn’t realize this, perhaps the community response will make them take another look at it. First thing I’ve seen so far since my beta play, that I absolutely do not like.

  15. Chances are I won’t display this at all.. why the hell would all of my characters be related? That’s just stupid. The system itself however, sounds very interesting.

  16. I think I’ll like the legacy system well enough, as well as the idea that all your characters are in a kind of extended out of character family. In that sense, displaying “The Skywalker Legacy” beneath my character’s name works.

    Why they need to force me to use that as the surname for all my characters, if I choose to display a surname at all, I don’t know. Rather looks like a clumsy implementation to have surnames available at launch. If they unlink the surname from this system it’ll be just dandy.

  17. I’m excited about the legacy system, as it will finally give that sense of continuity across all your alts, and reward you for what you achieve across your account versus making you feel penalized for playing more than 1 character.

  18. Hmmm… I like it actually =)

    It will tie my chars together and it will make it easier to recognize people you like on different alts without needing to whisper that you have a new toon that you play with. Thumbs up from me at least!

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