At long last, the heavily demanded PvP changes are coming to The Old Republic. 

It's almost an unreal amount of content here, but I'll cap off the biggest stuff. Starting with the 1.2 Legacy patch, PvP will be in Pre-Season, giving Bioware time to collect data on it. Ranked will be enabled for players at level fifty. Warzone reward systems will be improved, and it will always place importance on your team's score instead of your personal score. AFK players can be vote kicked. PVP stats will be tracked, such as kills, medals, solo and group ranked wins and losses, and the like. Additionally, a new warzone will be added - Novare Coast, a domination map with three points. 

For big fans of PVP, this is great news, bringing a lot of highly requested changes, and it's just the first of many planned. More behind the link!

If you have a friend into TOR and you wanted to give it a shot, it looks like you got your chance - instead of waiting for a free weekend, get him to invite you, as he now has quite a few spares. The original number of free invites allowed were three, and instead that number has been increased to twenty five. So, yeah, you can definitely get a few friends to play. 

Uh, wow, this is something I really didn't expect to see in The Old Republic - legacies.

You know how the Skywalkers had an entire family, including Mara Jade and all of their kids? That's something Bioware thought would be cool to implement into this game, so they did. You can now link your characters across a single server, which opens up new options and abilities. That is so cool.

See the video after the jump.

If you missed it the first time, don't worry - there's more where that came from! This weekend is another free shot at the Bioware MMO. 

Unfortunately, the account you have to sign up for has to be brand new, meaning no temporary play of your cancelled account, or your free trial from last time. But all the same, more free The Old Republic, between the 22nd and the 25th! Get ready to sign up this Friday.

More patch details for The Old Republic, dealing with the changes to crafting and researching!

Lots of great stuff in this patch, most notably the highly-requested ability to make your weapons (in other words, your lightsaber) any color you want, disconnected to the stats the crystals have. Aside from some more perks added to armor and weapon crafting, more was added to reverse engineering to give more results and make it act more consistent. There's also several tweaks to slicing, making it so slicers have a much higher demand for their products and making them more valuable.

The full breakdown is behind the link. 1.2 is looking to be a pretty excellent update to the game so far!  

New developer blog for The Old Republic! Instead of patch notes or game balance, we get more of what we love in Bioware's MMO - story elements, as told by one of the writers, Charles Boyd. Minor spoilers if you want to go into the new content blind.

Three new areas have been opened to all players, and the first is on Corellia - the Black Hole. But instead of being sucked into a vacuum from which your body is stretched and hung in perpetual timespace limbo for decades, you must work to claim the area for your faction for its valuable hypermatter, crucial starship fuel. But in your way is a corrupt Corellian councilor, who seeks to manipulate both sides for his own gain.

The second is the Lost Island Flashpoint, on Kaon, where a rakghoul plague has broken out. But the creator has learned how to spread it to any other species - or planet - and you are tasked with hunting him down. The third and final new area is on the planet Denova, with Operation: Explosive Assault. Its name is indicative of the content, as an explosive material is being contested. Mercenaries and Imperials have combined forces to work with - strangely - the Republic and the Empire. But what's going on behind the scenes? There's more to this than it seems.

No word yet on when 1.2 drops, but with the sheer volume of content they're adding - including interface changes, most notably - this is a big update to everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.

If you haven't already jumped into the Galaxy Far Far Away, now looks like a good time to give it a shot if you're not occupied this weekend. TOR is going free for four days only, March 15th to March 19th. 

Obviously, you have to be able to buy TOR normally to take this offer, and when your time is up, you have to buy a subscription. You also can't use the trial to get an expired subscription up and running. But this is a great time for people who like MMOs and Star Wars but have yet to give the game a shot. Like me for example! 

Keep the website bookmarked, because the offer goes live in two days. 

We've got a lot of screenshots to share today on SWTOR's highly anticipated Patch 1.2. BioWare has made it clear that 1.2 will probaby be their biggest update yet, and so far the evidence is not lying. Some of the key subjects covered in last week's SWTOR Summit are shown off in the following screenshots, so if you want to take a look at all of them, you can get started right here.

Alternatively, we've also separated them into their various subjects:

• Legacy Rewards (abilities, items, features).
• Denova (a new operation).
• User Interface Changes.
• Guild Bank Features.
• Lost Island (a new flashpoint).
• Explosive Conflict (a new warzone).
• Corellia (an additional daily quest hub).

I'm probably most excited about those jetpacks, although it remains to be seen what sort of legacy powers Bounty Hunters will gain access to in 1.2. 

Check out Part I of our Smooth Operations Guide here!

It's been almost a month since I published Part I of my Smooth Operations guide to getting into Star Wars: The Old Republic's endgame content, so I apologize for the delay. That said, there weren't too many changes that affected endgame SWTOR over the past month with three exceptions: a small nerf to Biochem (which was entirely expected), a very nice bonus for SWTOR pre-orderers, and one sad nerf for fans of the flashpoint Siege of Kaon.

So without further ado, let's get into the guide!

Some slightly disappointing news for endgame players hoping for March's 1.2 content injection, as they will have to wait until April for BioWare's big SWTOR update. Titled "Legacy," this update will bring in some new legacy-based additions in the form of legacy-based abilities, cross-faction species, and a mailbox / GTN terminal for your ship.

Additionally, BioWare is introducing a new flashpoint, operation, and warzone in 1.2. The operation, called "Explosive Conflict," will have players going to a new planet, Denova, while the new warzone, Novare Coast, will pit teams against each other for control of mortars to bomb their opponent's bases. Like Huttball, Novare Coast will allow same faction vs. faction gameplay, so now Empire players will have a little less Huttball to look forward to.

Also announced today (and arriving in the inbox of many SWTOR players) was the commencement of the SWTOR "Friends Trial." Now players will be able to invite up to three friends to play SWTOR for a free 7-day trial of the game. The experience is, however, limited to each of the four origin worlds and the opening storylines.