With the 7.1 PTS coming online for R-4, keen eyed players may have noticed that all of the Legacy of the Sith gearing currencies have been renamed, but why?

On the 7.1 PTS, we may not have a fully playable R-4 raid or Manaan Daily area yet as Bioware is hard at work creating and building the update, but what we do have is all new names for the level 80 gear currencies.

The first question is … why?

It seems as if all of the currencies, for lack of a better term have had their lore item names removed in favor for a far more direct naming convention.

• Medals of Commendation have been renamed Conquest Commendations.
• Thrysian Product Accelerant has been renamed WZ-1 Accelerant
• Hazardous Matter Catalyst has been renamed OP-1 Catalyst
• Aquatic Resource Matrix has been renamed Daily Resource Matrix
• Decurion Isotope Stabilizer has been renamed FP-1 Stabilizer

This new naming system when looked from at a glance probably makes a lot more sense accessability wise to those not as well versed in playing SWTOR as the hardcore players.
Changing MoC to “Conquest Commendations” is a lot easier for a newer player to pick up where and how they’re meant to get them without needing to highlight or open the item window. A lot of players will claim this is probably “dumbing the game down” because “all you had to do” was mouse over and read the information box, but we all know a lot of players don’t even know that they can do that in the first place.

What really interests me about this new naming convention is the implication, or rather potential futureproofing of such a naming system.

PvP, Flashpoint and Raid currencies all have something worth noting, a ‘-1’ next to their names.

Historically in SWTOR, anytime something is denoted with a – it usually means that there will be future tiers to follow. Infact for most of the games lifespan gearing itself has been denoted with MK-1/2/3 etc to indicate better iterations of the same item.
We also know that given Bioware’s own original 10th Anniversary Blogpost by Keith Kanneg that you can read here. There is (or was) a design intent to make gear more accessible as newer gear tiers release over the course of Legacy of the Sith. The Manaan Daily Area was also originally intended to release alongside 7.0 in December, so it’s no surprise that its name “Aquatic Resource Matrix” is being changed as perhaps it was meant to be available mainly through the Manaan Daily Quests with other areas being tertiary for farming, which was unable to happen.

If I had to give my best guess, I would say that as we progress through 7.0 not only may we see new gear currencies such as OP-2 Catalyst or WZ-2 Accelerant being given as drops for future content, but we may even see a way to convert or upgrade currencies from one to the other in the future.

For now at least hopefully the new naming conventions will alleviate some of the issues that some players may be experiencing with currency or content confusion.