The official site of Star Wars The Old Republic provides a few updates for us this Friday including aa new developer blog and an advanced class system. LucasArts kindly provided the following previews with links...





Announcing the Advanced Class System!

"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?!"



Developer Blog: Creating Worlds

"Principal Lead Writer Daniel Erickson talks about creating the world of Voss in STAR WARS: The Old Republic!"

Excerpt below:

"Welcome to the amazing job of creating worlds. Above are some of the notes I made before discussing Voss with our gifted concept artists and our ambitious world designers. These talented folks enable us to communicate in ideas, themes and feelings as much as in size, directions and numbers. This is the secret of creating real worlds instead of simply play spaces. Most Players will never notice, for instance, that on Korriban statues of non-Sith are always in supplication, literally supporting the Empire on their worn backs. Few people will stop and trace the path of Jedi resettlement of the wilderness on Tython, try to understand exactly where which war stopped in Balmorra or make sense of the twisted politics that have left some parts of Coruscant abandoned and in misery while others bounced back shortly after the invasion. They will, however, hopefully feel the layers of planning and vision that went into the worlds and because of that, subconsciously believe in the reality of the galaxy they are traveling through."



And in release date news, JoyStiq reports on the possibility of Star Wars: The Old Republic being released after March 31, 2011 based on a conference call by EA CEO John Riccitiello. Click here for the full report. (via EUC)