Jul 21, 2011

Posted by in News | 21 Comments

Beta Test Weekends In September – Holiday Launch

Electronic Arts issued a press release today celebrating the beginning of the pre-order program for Star Wars: The Old Republic. But there were several other interesting tidbits in there.

First, was the announcement of Beta Test Weekends beginning in September:

As anticipation grows, BioWare also proudly announced today that Star Wars: The Old Republic will open “Beta Test Weekends” starting this September. These weekend play sessions will be open to selected players worldwide and create an opportunity for fans to get a sneak peek of the epic stories, worlds, quests, battles and characters in the game.

Next, BioWare Co-Founder Dr. Ray Muzyka made the following statement looking forward to launching for the holiday season:

“We are targeting Star Wars: The Old Republic to be one of the biggest launches of holiday 2011,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Group General Manager and Co-Founder, BioWare and Senior Vice President, Electronic Arts.

This should give fans of The Old Republic a little more to look forward to, and a more solid release window.

Click here to read the entire release. We’ll have more information as it develops…

Thanks to @jfollm for the tip!

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  1. Father11 says:

    Holiday release…Hopefully a good month or two before the holiday. A late december release would be disapointin.

  2. Chronium says:

    The release window is not a surprise to me because that’s what I figured since E3.

    Also Woot and noo towards beta weekends I hate beta weekends they’re so stupid.

  3. So I wonder which definition of holiday, EA/bioware is taking. Is it when the first x-mas gnomes start to show up in store windows (september) or is it in that one glorious week between Christmas and new years eve? I hope it is not the latter, because I’m always at christmas lunches getting drunk in that week.

  4. when I ‘ordered’ from amazon it says it will arrive around Jan 8th. (I am one cheap poodoo farmer when it comes to paying shipping).

    • Digital distribution is the future my friend!

    • Two things I would say to keep in mind:

      1. That is using the placeholder release date of Jan 1 on Amazon, so don’t put too much stock in that.

      2. Once an actual release date is announced, Amazon will likely offer free same day delivery on the game. They have been doing this lately, and TOR is too high profile a game for them to ignore. It’s not guaranteed, but I would be might surprised if I end up waiting for my CE (I ordered through amazon too).

  5. Father11 says:

    What exactly is the differens between standard beta (like they are doing now) and beta weekends?

    • Emeka Uwazurike says:

      Beta weekends will let a group play just for the weekend and then take it away from you. Right now people are in testing and since they don’t have a set in stone amount of testing time, they don’t know when their last day of testing will be.

    • Father11 says:

      Thank you. So simply put, from september, every weekend bioware will invite more people to the beta, but only for that one weekend. And next weekend someone else will be the lucky few??

      Dont know if its a good thing or not. If I got to play in september for 2 days, and then had to wait 3 months to play again…sounds like torture to me… Not that I want accept any beta invite that comes my way :)

  6. Found another bit of information you may want to add. This was sent to people who pre-ordered from game.co.uk

    Terms & Conditions: UK ONLY. Limited Offer while stocks last. Customers who have already preordered this product will also receive an early game access code. The first batch of early access game codes will be emailed to customers on Thursday 4th August 2011 for all previous preorders up until Wednesday 3rd August 11.59pm. The second batch of codes will be emailed to customers on Thursday 29th September 2011 for all preorders between 4/08/11 12.01pm to 28/09/11 11.59pm. The Third batch of codes will be emailed to customers on Thursday 28th October 2011 for all preorders between 29/09/11 12.01pm to 27/10/11 11.59pm.

    I don’t know how legit this is due to not having a copy of the actual email, but it seems interesting. Probably a fake due to the fact that people could get up to 3 months of the game subscription free and just paying $5 to $20 for the pre-order. However, this could also be a way for them to do open beta and make money off it. Who knows?!

    • Also, just because you have a code, doesn’t mean you can already play. They could send out codes early, but the actual access might not start until a later date. No way to know for sure just how it will all play out, until Bioware gives us more info.

    • Chronium says:

      isn’t that talking about the head start program codes and how they plan to release them?

  7. Wonderful news :) I call dibs on December, assuming their plan goes as hoped. But that’s a great sign. The fact that they’re stating (vaguely) December works for me. And the news on beta is great stuff. It’s feeling more real…

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