The latest Star Wars: The Old Republic Q&A has turned up a couple of useful additions Bioware are planning for patch 1.2, including unlockable emotes tied to the Legacy system, faster travel options for high level planets and new endgame crafting features for all professions.
One of the major annoyances for high level crafters is the fact that that top level PvE and PvP gear is superior to the best buildable items. Bioware say that this is going to be addressed in next month's update.
"We are adding endgame crafting for all professions. This includes augment crafting, the ability to crit-craft custom (orange) gear with augment slots, new endgame schematics, new color crystals, expanded and improved research and reverse engineering and much more," they say.
TOR's 1.2 update will contain four pages of patch notes devoted to crafting alone. When the patch lands we'll be able to "extract base-mods from purple items," letting players take top level base mods out of endgame gear and place them in any customisable set of orange armour. Essentially, if you don't like the look of a piece of TOR endgame gear you can use crafting skills to rip out the stat-boosting mods and plug them into a more stylish suit. Set bonuses will carry over, too.
Patch 1.2 will add extra emotes that can be unlocked using the Legacy system including a "special dance" that will allow you to bust moves in perfect sync with your companion. Bioware have previously mentioned that legacy can also be used to unlock extra race options for different classes.
The patch will also provide the option to skip the annoying orbital stations that act as interim locations between some planetary surfaces and your ship. "We'll be adding an option for players to go directly to their ships from the surface shuttles as opposed to having them run through the Orbital Station to their airlocks," say Bioware. They're also considering allowing speeders in spaceports, but that hasn't been decided yet.
The ships themselves aren't likely to change in a hurry, however. The number of carefully choreographed cutscenes tied to each vessel's interior makes it very, very difficult for Bioware to add new ships, or allow for any changes to each boat's internal design. "We will probably look at addressing this instead by providing a greater sense of ship customization at some point well in the future," they say. That'll likely mean external customisation such as decals or alternative paint jobs rather than entirely new ships.
Update 1.2 is set to arrive sometime next month. It'll also add support for multiple specs, a new Warzone and more. You can submit a question to the TOR devs ahead of next week's Q&A on the Bioware forums .
