Star Wars: The Old Republic ‘Allies’ Update 1.3 revealed

BioWare has revealed the initial plans for Star Wars: The Old Republic's game update 1.3, dubbed "Allies".  Looking to expand upon the changes made in the Legacy update 1.2, Allies includes many fan requested features like an automated group finder, character transfers,

Group finder will provide an interface that will allow you to form a group made up of all of the types of characters you'll need to successfuly complete a Flashpoint.

The 1.3 update will also grant players the ability to transfer from server to server.  This will hopefully address the "light" or "standard" population density that many servers are seeing.

"The important thing is that players can play with their friends and with the type and size of community they enjoy," BioWare's Daniel Erickson said in an interview with IGN about Update 1.3.

Game Update 1.3 will also add on to the recently introduced Legacy system. The Allies update will introduce something called "Legacy Perks" which will allow you to customize how you play your characters.

"Game Update 1.3 is about enabling each new character to be an expression of play style as well as a new story. If you really like warzones, the Legacy system offers perks that give you experience bonuses for doing just that," Erickson explained. "If you're a hardcore PvPer, this makes it much less necessary for you to do that other content you don't like so much in order to advance your character."

Adaptive Gear will also be introduced.  This will cause each piece of social gear to scale to the armor needs of the wearer.

"That means a heavy armor Sith Warrior can finally wear that slave outfit into a high level raid. In that same spirits of letting players wear what they want, the second big change is Augment Tables. Now any outfit in the game above green rarity can have an augment slot added to it via an Augment Table and a crafter-created kit."

Players will also be able to augment almost any item in Star Wars: The Old Republic with Augment tables, hopefully making crafting more worth it.

"These augment slots were previously only available as a result of 'crafting crits'.  This is significant for crafters because it allows the itemization team to finally fully balance the game so that crafted gear is deeply tied to, and balanced firmly against, the gear you can get from other sources, including operations rewards.  The fact that crafters are the primary source for augments also gives them a new crafted good that will suddenly be high in demand," Erickson explained.

He added: "As for moving forward, we're pretty firmly committed to keeping our crafting system viable and competitive.  Players will find that almost every patch that introduces gear with power upgrades will also introduce ways for crafters to remain competitive and useful to the economy.  As for larger improvements — let's just say we have big plans."

Game update 1.3 is described as primarily a "features update", adding new functionality and quality of life systems to the game.  Erickson told fans to expect a return to big content with update 1.4.

"We do not currently have a release date for 1.3 we want to share but it’s on a much shorter development cycle than 1.2 was," Erickson concluded.

[IGN]