Star Wars: The Old Republic Server Transfers Coming This Summer, New Species In The Works

In the latest question-and-answer session with the Star Wars: The Old Republic community, BioWare promised some big additions to the MMORPG. For starters, they plan to roll out server transfers in a few months.

"We will be rolling out our Character Transfer Service in early summer," said Dallas Dickinson, senior producer of live services. "First we’ll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers, but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice. We know everyone has more questions about character transfer, and we’ll reveal more details closer to the launch date."

The population of any MMO inevitably becomes a bit lopsided so the free transfers will probably one way that BioWare tries to correct it. They'll most likely allow players on the most crowded servers to transfer to the lower population servers for no charge. If nothing else, it will help off-set the reverse traffic: the players on desolate servers paying to move their characters to more active homes.

I'm wondering how transfers will interact with the Legacy system. The Legacy system is a way for players to tie all of their characters on a single server together. By earning experience on any of these characters, you unlock new perks for all of them. Will you have to transfer your entire Legacy "family"? If you're only transferring one character, will that affect the Legacy level of the other characters left behind?

Old Republic's next major update will be 1.3. No release window was provided for the update, but it sounds like the wait between 1.2 and 1.3 will be shorter than the wait between 1.1 and 1.2.

"Game Update 1.3 is being kept a bit leaner to get the Group Finder and the next stage of Legacy in the game as fast as possible," said lead game designer Daniel Erickson. "After that we’ll be returning to some bigger updates and we’re hoping [dual character specialization] makes it for the next one."

Erickson also hinted at more long-term plans. They have "big" changes in mind for the Achievements system. Furthermore, they plan to add new playable species to the game.

"Can’t comment on what species you might see, but you can expect the roster of playable species to expand... this year."