The official page for Star Wars: The Old Republic has been updated with a new blog post by Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Systems Designer. In his post, Zoeller talks about the Advanced Class System and the complexities in designing it well. Zoeller then goes on to give some concrete examples of the design process for the Smuggler class as it moves into either the Gunslinger or Scoundrel Advanced Class.

As you know, a core feature of Star Wars: The Old Republic is that we are shipping the game with eight classes - each with an epic story, full voiceover, quests and cinematics. This creates a very unique game experience for each of them, something never done in an MMO before.

Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that we had the flexibility to support several play-styles within each of these eight classes. So we built Advanced Classes into the game from the ground up to provide us with the ability to create and support different gameplay and roles inside each class.

Read more the full blog post here.