Star Wars: The Old Republic Legacy System Interview

The editors at Ten Ton Hammer bring us a brief interview with BioWare Austin's Dallas Dickinson that focuses entirely on the legacy system they've introduced in Star Wars: The Old Republic. In case you're unfamiliar with what it is, exactly, the first two questions serve as an introduction:
Swtorhub: For our readers who may not already be familiar with the Legacy system and how it factors into The Old Republic, could you give us an overview of what it entails and how players will be introduced to it in-game?

Dallas Dickinson: The basics of it are fairly simple and we've mentioned before that we will be augmenting the system as we go forward. At launch, it is simply a system that you unlock at a higher level to give you a different form of experience, and it allows you to unlock a surname that you create for your ongoing legacy. Star Wars is all about these family legacies; the Skywalker family legacy, or the Organa family legacy. All of those are really integral to a great Star Wars experience, and so the system is our nod to that.

But it's also a great way to incentivize players to play again with new characters, level their alts up and associate them with a legacy. Then as I've said we're going to unlock some other features in future publishes.

Swtorhub: It almost sounds like the MMO equivalent to a New Game Plus found more and more commonly in single-player games over the past few years.

Dallas: Exactly. And that's really what it is. It's a way of essentially linking your characters and then offering some really cool bonuses for having played up to the higher levels on really any of your characters. That will be shared progress across the legacy.