Posted by Cormeister | 1 Comment

Wild Space: Release Date(!) And Developer Interviews

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

It’s been a long time coming but we finally have an official release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic. December 20, 2011 cannot get here fast enough! To start us off on Wild Space, here are a couple of release date articles and features from a few fansites that you may have heard of before.

– Darth Hater has an article with a bunch of information about the release date. It includes an interview with Stephen Reid, highlights of the actual announcement from the BioWare doctors, and an audio/media gallery of the whole thing. I highly recommend the interview with Stephen Reid about SW:TOR’s release, Early Game access, and the ongoing beta.

– TORWars has a short phone interview with Stephen Reid that they transcribed on their website, a breakdown of the SW:TOR pricing model, and a video of the BioWare doctors making the announcement.

It’s tough to contain my personal excitement since I have been looking forward to this game for a long time (as I’m sure a lot of you have). I have been wanting to play a sci-fi MMO for some time and it looks like my wish is finally going to come true on December 20th. Congrats to BioWare on this amazing milestone!

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Posted by Lethality | 27 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Is The Release Date What You Expected?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Yesterday was aruguably the biggest day for fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic since the game was announced on October 21, 2008. Or at least since Pre-Orders began. Thirty-five months and change later, BioWare Co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk made the big announcement during the Eurogamer Expo. TOR will be released on December 20th in the US, and December 22nd in Europe.

I think I speak for most fans when I say that the announcement came as quite a surprise. Most probably felt that the announcement would come on a bigger stage, or we’d at least hear the train coming. No, this train went all stealthy on us and popped out when we least expected it! That’s hard for a train to do.

Anyway, that’s not the surprise I’m talking about. I’m talking about the date itself. We know that BioWare has been touting “Holiday 2011” pretty staunchly for some time now. But did anyone think it would literally be Christmas week? It’s an interesting choice, and we may never know why it was chosen. But I do know the server hamsters at BioWare Austin will be working overtime and enjoying their egg nog over the serene sound of fan noise in a server room.

So, does the release date meet your expectations? Did you expect it sooner? Later? I know we’re still all a little shell-shocked, but try to pull yourself together enough to cast a vote and perhaps leave a comment below!

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Posted by Lethality | 34 Comments

Star Wars: The Old Republic To Be Released 12/20/2011 Worldwide

Just a lazy Saturday morning right? Thought you were going to get up early and mow the lawn? THINK AGAIN!

BioWare Co-Founders Dr. Greg Zeschuk and Dr. Ray Muzyka at Eurogamer Expo today announced what might be the most long-awaited piece of news since… the long awaited announcement of TOR itself!

Star Wars: The Old Republic will officially release on December 20, 2011 world-wide.

Read that again. TOR is coming out this year!

Dr. Ray had this to say:

“This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release.”

They also announced the subscription plans, and as suspected it doesn’t stray too far from what we’re all used to:

• 1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
• 3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
• 6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)

No mention was made of micro-transactions or other forms of payment, for now at least.

Absent from the announcement was the start date for Early Game Access, which everyone who pre-orders will receive. Although BioWare’s David Bass was able to provide us with this important insight on the topic on Twitter:

@doctordake: Before Dec. 20 :)

Stay tuned for more on this breaking news, and incredible moment for not only the TOR community but the gaming and Star Wars community as a whole! You can read the official press release here.

[UPDATE] A new version of the Fate Of The Galaxy trailer has been released. It doesn’t appear to be any different, aside from the release date tag at the end.

[UPDATE 2] There’s now a short video of the moment that the Dr.’s made the release date announcement yesterday… thanks to Corellian Run Radio for the find!

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Posted by Lethality | 4 Comments

Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown At Goldman Sachs Investor Conference [UPDATED]

Somehow, following TOR has turned us all into rabid financial analysts, listening intently for the tiniest hints of information on conference calls that generally otherwise put you to sleep. Today was one of those calls!

Earlier during the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown hosted a Q&A session with investors. There was very little information to be had on Star Wars: The Old Republic, but what was given was definitely of interest.

Brown stated that no release date would be given until, possibly, the next Electronic Arts earning’s call which is scheduled for October 25th:

“…we haven’t given a street date yet. We won’t do so for some time, possibly at our next upcoming earnings call towards the end of October.”

Brown also left open the possibility for a slip into early 2012, sticking to the line that the game will ship only when it’s ready:

“…we did hold out a slight possibility that it could slip to our March quarter. And the factors that would cause a slip is, for example, us not being completely satisfied with the scalability testing, and wanting to tune it for several extra weeks.”

Additionally, Brown commented on the importance of a quality experience for the initial subscribers, siting that “the first people that enter the product will be key influencers. We want those key influencers to have a great experience because that will help in a viral fashion to spin up demand. ”

You can listen to the full recording of the Q&A with EA CFO Eric Brown right here.

[UPDATE] Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid posted a solid clarification to any confusion or misinterpretation that arose from comments from EA CFO Eric Brown. You can read the post in it’s entirity here (and I suggest you do!)

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Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

Release Date Tied To Beta Test Results – Frank Gibeau

Computers And Video Games recently talked to Frank Gibeau, recently appointed boss of EA Labels, where he revealed that the release date of Star Wars: The Old Republic is “definitely tied” to the feedback coming out of the ongoing Game Testing program:

“We’re driving towards a date, but the very issue you raised is why we’re not announcing a date yet because you want to make sure that these services can last a decade”

Gibeau went on to talk about how important the launch of the game is:

“We don’t want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed – we don’t want that to happen. So we need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and it’s high quality.”

We’ve heard BioWare say before that the release date will depend on the kind of feedback they’re getting from testers, and this seems to reaffirm that. So if you’re in Game Testing, work hard and give quality feedback to help get the game out that much quicker!

Head on over to CVG for the full read!

Source: ComputerAndVideoGames.com
Via: TORWars

 

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