[UPDATED] High-Scale TOR Beta To Begin End Of June?

This morning on a conference call for William Blair & Company, a Chicago-based investment firm, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello made some interesting remarks in regards to the current and future Game Testing phase of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Riccitiello noted that a “high scale beta” test of The Old Republic would begin in late June, following that statement up with “the release date would be dependent on the results” of this testing phase.

Now, it’s not clear what “high-scale” means, specifically, and we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions about anything like a public beta, or anything of that sort. But at the very least, we hope it means many more Game Testing invites will be hitting our inboxes.

The conference call is still ongoing (though it covers much beyond EA) and you can listen to it here. It’s possible it will be available later as an audio recording, and we’ll link to it then if that’s the case.

Stay tuned as we work to find our more about this breaking news for The Old Republic!

[UPDATE] We checked with BioWare, and no further comment is available at this time, other than testing is “ongoing.”

[UPDATE #2] The full transcript of the call is now available. A very sloppy transcript.

[UPDATE #3] BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid made a post on the official forums regarding John Riccitiello’s comments from earlier this morning:

Take a deep breath, everyone…

Game Testing is currently ongoing for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t news – it’s been ongoing for quite a while. At different points in the process, we have invited a number of people to test. Some of those people tested for short periods, some for longer periods.

We’ve recently transitioned into longer-term and larger-scale testing. We have more people testing the game now than ever before. We are allowing them to play for longer than ever before. We’re also continuing to invite people to test, so if you haven’t signed up for testing yet – now is a good time.

We will be allowing more and more people to test The Old Republic before launch, and that means occasionally we’ll spike in our invite numbers. It doesn’t mean everyone who’s signed up for testing is going to be invited in one block.

What we’re doing now, essentially, is similar to a ‘Closed Beta’ for other MMORPGs, but we call it Game Testing. It’s invite-only, and it’s limited in size. That gives us the most ‘bang for our buck’ in terms of getting meaningful, actionable feedback. However, we’re still ramping up, we’re getting more people in… and we’re still aiming to launch in 2011.