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The community team will be posting articles about it in preparation for the launch tomorrow. Given we are so close to launch though I'll take a little liberty and copy and paste a little some of the basics:
AA Points and AA XP
Alternate Advancement Points come in three varieties – Prowess, Mastery and Expertise.
Prowess represents AA points obtained through PvP. Mastery represents AA points obtained through PvE. Expertise points are awarded alongside Prowess or Mastery, at some fixed ratio. So for example, if a player Earns 4 Prowess or 4 Mastery, he will also be rewarded 1 Expertise Point. Expertise points may be spent in the AA tree as either Prowess or Mastery.
As a player does content, he will be rewarded AA XP, the variety depending on whether it's PvP or PvE content. When either the PvE or PvP AA XP bar is filled up, the player is rewarded 4 Prowess/Mastery and 1 Expertise, and the bar resets back to its empty position. This means every AA point is “worth” the same as all other AA points of the same type, so players don't have to worry about feats purchased “later” being more expensive than feats purchased “earlier.” And this goes hand-in-hand with the fact the trees themselves are not broken into tiers.
Because the AA system will functionally take the place of XP for level 80 characters (with respect to progression), players will be rewarded with AA XP for pretty much all the things that normally reward XP.
For each AA tree (General, Archetype, Class), the abilities are partitioned into PvP abilities and PvE abilities. PvP abilities may be purchased with Prowess while PvE abilities may be purchased with Mastery. Expertise points may be spent in lieu of either point type.
This flexibility allows for a pure PvPer or pure PvEr to have access to the entire tree, since he can spend his Expertise points to pick up abilities in the other area. However, since the ratio of Prowess/Mastery-to-Expertise points is 4:1, this is much less efficient than a player who does both activities, as we want to reward players for the activity that they primarily do.
AA XP may be gained both in the expansion, and in the live game. It was important to us that existing live content is continued to be supported, although because expansion content will inherently be more challenging for a player new to that content, it will reward AA XP to an appropriate degree which reflects this.
Feats and Perks
There are two types of purchase-able abilities players may obtain in the AA system. These are called Feats and Perks. The ratio of Perks to Feats is roughly a 50/50 split in all 3 trees.
Feats in the AA System are passive abilities which are “always active.” When a player purchases a feat, it is effectively treated as an innate boost to his overall character power. Some of these feats, while considered passives in the AA tree, may grant still a clickable – it just means that the player always have the option of clicking that clickable, assuming it is off cooldown.
Perks in the AA system are abilities which must be equipped on the Perk Bar in order to be active and/or clickable. Perks are deadly and dangerous abilities that become formidable tools on the battlefield. Because the Perk bar has finite space, players must make the strategic choice of which perks he wants active for any given fight.
Perks are subdivided into Major Perks and Minor Perks. Minor Perks take up one slot on the perk bar. Major Perks are extra-powerful class-specific abilities that take up 2 slots on the Perk Bar which represents just how greatly they can swing the tide of battle.
The Perk Bar
The Perk Bar is an additional GUI element where players may equip perks and make them active/clickable, so that they may be clicked or otherwise used in combat. As we want players to use this bar for strategic purposes, a player may set up a number of configuration presets that can be swapped after having been out of combat for some small amount of time. The exact amount of time will be balanced through feedback and testing, but will probably end up being somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds. As currently designed, the perk bar has 6 slots (this is subject to change based on testing).
Two of the slots on the park bar are used by general perks, two slots are used by archetype perks, and two slots are used by class perks. So, with Minor Perks a player may equip 2 general perks, 2 archetype perks, and 2 class perks and have these abilities active and/or ready to be clicked. Or, a player may equip a Major Perk (from the class tree) in place of two minor Perks from that tree.
Over Time Mechanic
The AA System will have an over-time mechanic, available online or offline. This is a straight conversion of AA points-to-time. A player will be able to select the Perk or Feat he wants to train, and as the clock ticks away AA points will trickle in to that Perk or Feat. The gain of course will be far less than what one would get by actively playing the content which generates AA. This is intended to reward subscribers but also casual gamers.
