Hands-on with The Old Republic's Legacy system

The Legacy system has been hailed as a major feature of The Old Republic since before the game's launch, it was the highlight of the TOR Guild summit last week, and now we've finally gotten to play with it ourselves.

The Legacy system has been hailed as a major feature of The Old Republic since before the game's launch, it was the highlight of the TOR Guild summit last week, and now we've finally gotten to play with it ourselves. Here's a quick run-down of what we learned about how it works and the amazing things it lets you do.

Disclaimer: We played with an early build of the Legacy system. Everything here—and particularly the cost of unlocks—is likely to change before release.

As you probably know by now, the premise of the Legacy system is that as you complete major milestones on your characters in The Old Republic, you'll unlock new skills, emotes, or stat boosts that are made available to all of your characters on that same server. You'll also be able to purchase most of these perks with in-game money if you're not up for rolling multiple characters.

1. BioWare had given a few shaky examples of what relationships we'd be able to give when creating our mini-family of alts. In the build we played, the exact options we had for defining our characters' relationships were spouse, ally, child, adopted child, or parent. We're still waiting for them to follow Facebook's status and include an "it's complicated" option--you know Luke would've utilized that one.

2. Completing Act Two (around level 40) on any class will unlock a class-specific emote that corresponds with your root class. (i.e., Snipers and Operatives unlock a "/agent" emote.)

3. Completing Act Three (at max-level) as an Empire class unlocks the following abilities for everyone in your legacy: Flamethrower (Bounty Hunter), Lightning Storm (Sith Inquisitor), Force Choke (Sith Warrior), Orbital Strike (Imperial Agent). For Republic classes: Project (Jedi Consular), Force Sweep (Jedi Knight), Sticky Grenade (Republic Trooper), Dirty Kick (Smuggler). If you can collect all of these, you will ascend to god-status—at least in the eyes of Coconut Monkey and his PCG staff minions.

4. Maxing out affection with all five companion types will net each of your characters a total of +50 boost to their Presence stat, a 5-minute reduction on the cooldown for the super-powerful Heroic Moment ability, and a 1-minute addition to the duration of the buff that Heroic Moment gives you.

5. To purchase a race, which unlocks it for all class types without having to level a character of that race to 50 first, will cost you 1.5 million credits for each race. In addition, you must be legacy level 8 to buy it.

6. All the unlocks for increasing your social rank are emotes. The best emote is /doublelasers (costs 150k and requires level 15 Legacy). The weirdest is /weld (costs 50k and requires level 12 Legacy).

7. There are a total of 4 unarmed abilities able to be unlocked by hitting high Valor ranks through PvP. These will be perfect for brawling in cantinas to show that loud-mouthed Rodian who's boss, but doesn't look like a full replacement for weapon skills. Each skill can alternatively be purchased for 10-25k each, and require a Legacy level between 5-15, depending on the specific skill.