The Friday update from Bioware this week features a rather interesting run-down on the SWTOR codex. It’s a common game feature and in the case of SWTOR Lead Designer Damion Schubert states its purpose is “to not only elaborate on the settings you fight in and the creatures you kill, but also to plant seeds of knowledge relating to key personages and concepts from your class story and long-lost lore meant to give more feedback at large”.

In the update Schubert goes on to describe how the codex will provide information ‘for free’ but that there’ll be a whole much more that needs to be learnt – it seems like a pretty good approach to me as an achievement junkie. Which leads to the next part of the update that interested me the most: exploring SWTOR.

As we discussed in our last podcast, datacrons are the reward for exploring the less well trodden paths of SWTOR. Find a datacron and you get a permanent stats increase. It’s a mini-game that’s going to appeal to people like me who like the more sedate aspects of MMOs (yes, I’m a WoW fishing addict and proud of it). It’s a superior approach in my opinion in that exploration is being rewarded with something substantive.

There’s already some rumblings however about how it puts some people at a disadvantage. I find it hard to be sympathetic on that one as the only people ‘disadvantaged’ will be the hardcore end content players not wanting to spend time exploring. Will those of us exploring be likely to be handing those people their heads on a platter in PvP? I somehow think not. So for mine, kudos to Bioware for a well thought out approach.