Following the announcement about the game testing ongoing a lot of questions have been raised by the community and Sean Dahlberg was quick to respond. Here are a few of the more interesting facts he brought forward, while you can read the whole post in this thread on the official forums.

• If you participate in one of the testing stages you might not participate in a follow up
• Tests are focused on a certain area of the game
• Game Testing Program is all about us validating the features and design of the game
• Testing is only in North America (for) now
• We definitely plan on opening up phases of Game Testing to other countries before we launch (and not as a last minute “Open” test).
• We didn’t announce that Game Testing Began today, we announced that it is underway… subtle difference but there is one.
• Post count does not weigh any in the decision of who gets into testing

First thing, what we announced is “Game Testing”. This is currently underway and will end near the release of the game and happen in a variety of stages. We will be inviting people to different stages and just because you get invited to one stage doesn’t mean you’ll be invited back to another one. Unlike testing that many of you may have participated in with other games, we aren’t looking for people to test “everything”. Each of our tests are focused on a certain or a set of goals and areas. We want people to have clear direction on what we’d like help evaluating.

It has been officially announced – Star Wars: The Old Republic beta game testing has begun! You can join the discussion on the official announcement here and here’s the complete post:

Game Testing for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ is underway! Those selected to test will gain access to the game and be able to provide valuable feedback to help us tune particular areas of gameplay and begin the process of balancing and tweaking our content.

Game Testing is an on-going process being rolled out in several phases. These phases began with smaller, more focused tests with community members from North America, and later will expand to other territories. Users selected for the test program will be notified via email with more information on accessing the Game Testing Portal. If you’ve not been chosen yet, you may be selected in the next wave!

If you haven’t signed up already, it’s definitely not too late! If you’re not already a member of the Star Wars: The Old Republic community, click here to become one today! Be sure to check the box to indicate you are interested in becoming a tester. If you’re already a member, go to the Game Testing Portal to begin the sign up process. Note that you must be at least 18 years of age to accept the Game Tester Agreement.

Please keep in mind that there are no guarantees that you will be selected once you have completed the sign-up process. For more information about testing Star Wars: The Old Republic, take time to read the Game Testing FAQ.

We’re looking forward to your help in making Star Wars: The Old Republic a success!

Sean also added:

One thing to remember…

Being able to have the community help us test The Old Republic is very important and valuable to the development process. The Game Testing Program allows community members to give us quality feedback so we can make adjustments and have a highly effective service and entertaining experience when we do launch. Our expectation is that players of The Old Republic will follow the terms of the Game Testing Agreement and ensure that the confidential pre-release information we’re sharing with community members remains confidential.

Sean Dahlberg just reported that Star Wars: The Old Republic was voted the best Role Playing Game of this year’s E3 show. It is an award given by 31 voting publications. Sean had this to say:

This is definitely an honor and a privilege for us to be on the list and to win the award for Best Role Playing Game is amazing!

You can view the full list of winners at:

http://www.gamecriticsawards.com/winners.html

It is interesting that “Rage”, game from id Software (makers of Doom series), won the most awards, three. The concept should be similar to Borderlands with id Software amazing graphics. Looking forward to this one.

In an interview with CVG, Bioware lead designer and story writer, Daniel Erickson has said that the well publicized, fully voiced, conversation system in The Old Republic is “totally inked from Mass Effect”.

I must say that I enjoyed Mass Effect back in the day and I am really curious to see how it all works out in the MMO type game. I’ll also be revisiting Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age to try and figure what we can expect in SWTOR, but more about that later.

The interview was conducted during this year’s E3 (the ultimate source of news for all swtor sites for months to come!) and you can read some excerpts in the CVG article. Here’s the most interesting bit for me:

Mass Effect changed the world because you became the hero. You actually became the most interesting thing on screen -you got all the best lines, and to be super cool. We had to go back and rewrite everything. The story telling system is totally inked from Mass Effect.

News spotted @ Massively.

The E3 expo is being held in sunny LA and Bioware is there in full force (no pun intended) promoting 3 of their titles. Apparently a bunch of Jedis came on the stage to announce the Cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic and among the Jedi clad gentlemen were Ray Muzyka, Bioware’s CEO and one of the Lucasarts designers. Ray Announced that: “SW:TOR is the first ever, fully-voiced massively multiplayer game” and that the game will feature hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue and thousands of speaking characters. You can see the timeline of the event on Joystiq

LucasArts and BioWare™, today announced the development of Star Wars®: The Old Republic™, a story-driven massively multiplayer online PC game set in the timeframe of the Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™ franchise.

We here at SwtorLife.com, being fans of all things Star Wars (and Bioware’s KotOR series) will be following any news related to the development of the game and keep you posted with exclusive content and community opinions. Read the rest of the press release announcement after the break.
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