BioWare has plans to add neutral armor in Star Wars: The Old Republic

In December, BioWare's Community Manager Stephen Reid reminded fans that the idea of neutral gear in Star Wars: The Old Republic "is not dead".

"As I understand it, neutral gear was harder to implement than first thought, and was unfortunately moved out of the launch window," Reid said at the time.  "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."

Today, Ohlen shed some light on the status of neutral armor in SWTOR.

“We have a system for people who want to stay more in the middle… but that’s something coming up in a later release," he revealed to PC Gamer.

“It’ll let you play a “Gray Jedi”. Basically you don’t need to go to the extreme to get rewarded. You can have a different playstyle. We like to call it the “Gray Jedi” playstyle. That’s coming in a future piece of content. ”

Currently, there is no neutral end-game armor for players in SWTOR, practically forcing players to choose to play 100% dark side or 100% light side.  Of course, you could go middle-of-the-road, which was my original plan until I found out I'd be shafted at end-game.  Ohlen made it clear that it was never their intention to force players to choose one or the other.

“We don’t want to force people. We were careful about the rewards for Light Side and Dark Side as well. We don’t want to make them too impactful on the endgame because it would mean players wouldn’t be allowed to join an Operation unless they were absolutely Light Side and or Dark Side. However, once we get to the next stage of our light side/dark side system, you’ll see the rewards. Light Side, Dark Side and the grey items will all get more powerful.”

Ohlen didn't say when they would plan on implementing the neutral armor, but hopefully the "future" is sooner rather than later.