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.

The first thing that crossed my mind when I read the announcement about beta testing was: “I’d give my car to be in this!”. I started reading through the testing announcement thread and noticed I wasn’t the only one willing to give up something to be a part of the beta.

Yes I know, it is hard work and not just fun, but anticipation among us fans is so high that we’re borderline mad atm. It’s like holding a juicy steak just out of reach of a pack of wolves.

I’ve started a poll on the official forums with the same question. Visit here and tell me, would you give up a body part to participate?

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.

Me neither … but people at Darth Hater certainly do. The whole staff attended E3 this year and have been able to summarize their impressions in one 5 pages long article. This is so far the most concise gathering of interesting, hands on, information available on the whole internet. They got to play for a few hours and through several levels and were able to each play a different class. This gives us the chance to read their impressions on UI, flow of combat for each of the classes (5 total), AI, graphics and art style and much more. I especially was interested in how they felt about the Dialogue System since that is the biggest venture out of the MMORPG standards we are used to. You can see them being kind of careful in their comments on the dialogue system, but overall with positive opinions. I guess it is going to be one of those love it or hate it things.
Make sure you don’t miss this article.

While I’m on the subject of community news, there is a new podcast in the swtor universe (like we don’t have enough of those 😛 ). I liked it though because we have two girl gamers discussing the game instead of your regular geeky male Star Wars fans (don’t look at me). Corellian Run podcast Episode 1 has hit the interwebz. Good luck with the podcast girls.

James Ohlen, lead designer in Bioware, talked to IncGamers and gave us some food for speculation (I swear, they have fed our speculations so much I will miss it once the game goes live) concerning endgame content. The full interview is expected later on this week but it is interesting to read what he had to say on the subject:

I know some people are worried, for example, about the elder game [and are asking] ‘what happens in the elder game, what happens when you get to the highest level?’ We do have a plan for that and we will be revealing it in the future.
…
Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re ignoring that. We have a lot of hardcore MMO players who have like five level 80 WoW characters, so it’s not like we don’t have the knowledge of what we need to do in terms of the elder game and other aspects of our game.

Five level 80 WoW characters , pfffftt, n00bs.

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.

As part of their regular Friday update swtor.com released a video of the gameplay showcasing a group of 4 facing some early level group content. All 4 Republic classes are
present and we can see different roles they have within a group. It is not too far off the MMORPG standard. I like how the tank is actually ranged (Trooper carries a massive laser cannon thing) while smuggler’s ability to help just a bit with healing stands out from a “rogue” like role.

Another thing to notice would certainly be how the quest is fully voiced and the group respond mechanics. It seems that when a group initiates a voiced quest each of them picks a response an than the game does a silent roll and picks one of the responses. Social points everyone’s been mentioning and that none seem to know what they are for probably have some role in this whole matter.

You can view the video bellow or on the official site. I also recommend you visit Darth Hater because they did a great dissection of the video here.

Mythic Entertainment is a developer and publisher of a well publicized, but somewhat lackluster MMO based on a well loved and known world of Warhammer (no pun intended – I know the chicken and egg story in this one and I am allowed to make fun of it!). They were lately mentioned in the news since they took over the European operation of Warhammer Online from an outsourced company GOA. They are also owned by EA (used to be EA Mythic at one point). What does this have to do wih SWTOR?

Bioware, developer of SWTOR is also part of EA and they seem to have “NOM NOM”-ed Mythic so it is from now on known as Bioware Mythic (notice whose name is first here!). There was some talk a while back about the two studios becoming a part of the same MMO/RPG department within EA, but this was never confirmed. I guess that now they are not separate entities anymore. I hope swtor benefits from all the experience Mythic is bringing to the table and also that they leave all the bad stuff in some dusty corner in the old office.