Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager for Star Wars: The Old Republic, held a "Ask Me Anything" via Reddit where he answered fans questions about the newly released MMORPG from BioWare. During the session, he attempted to answer as many fan questions as possible – or at least the ones he had answers to and was allowed to answer.
When asked to "shed some light on neutral gear" and the status of it making it's way into the game, Reid confirmed that "It's not 'dead'".
Reid explained, "As I understand it neutral gear was harder to implement than first thought, and was unfortunately moved out of the launch window. It's not 'dead', and James Ohlen brings it up as something he's a fan of quite often, so.. chances are pretty good it'll make it in someday."
Unfortunately, that means no estimated date and odds are it won't be any time soon. The word "someday" is quite scary – probably meaning it's not anywhere near close. Hopefully the complexity of implementing something like neutral gear won't fear the devs from working on it asap, and maybe it's something James Ohlen can pressure them to work on sooner rather than later.
I, for one, would love to enjoy playing and reacting to the story as true to my own personality as possible. But as of right now, doing so could land me in the neutral area of the light/dark side and that means I'd be handicapped with certain armor. Right now, it may not seem like a big deal, but it could be a pretty big disadvantage come end-game if you end up neutral.
BioWare released the first of many weekly patches for Star Wars: The Old Republic yesterday. That patch aimed at fixing several high-priority bugs. Details can be found here.
