Beta Testing activity in Star Wars: The Old Republic is intensifying closer we get to launch date. The latest news is that French and German gamers have been for the first time invited into testing. I am not sure if they will be able to test in their own language, as was discussed a month ago when this was initially going to happen, but I am just glad that Europeans will get to have at least a small say with the future direction of the game. Along with this wave of invites there was another wave for English speaking gamers like those in Canada, UK and USA. All of these were invites for regular game testing that is an ongoing affair. Larger in volume, yet shorter in duration are Beta Weekend tests and today we saw invites sent out to all countries that SWTOR will initially launch in. This is the second Beta Weekend test and we hope this will become a more regular happening in the 9 or 10 weekends left before the game launches. The 2nd beta weekend will last from 7th-10th October, 2011. It will end on midnight October 10th for the US testers and some time early morning on the 11th for the EU testers (because of the time zone difference). All of the invites in the aforementioned waves have now been sent out and you should have them in your mailbox. If not, check your spam folder or check your beta testing status on www.swtor.com/tester.
 
As a help for the community, Stephen Reid and the community management team have setup a permanent thread on the forums that will track all the major beta testing happenings. They will try and update that forum thread each time a beta testing invite wave is about to go out (or has just gone out) and they’ll try and keep us updated on the most important information about what’s happening with SWTOR beta testing. If you are anxiously awaiting for your chance to test The Old Republic make sure you bookmark this thread. Here’s the most important info found in that thread today, October 4th, 2011.

Invites that were sent last week (week ended September 30th)
-Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada and select European countries
-What was sent: General Game Testing invites
-Server location: East Coast USA
-Invite status: All invites in this batch are now sent
-Invites that have been sent this week

General Game Testing invites
-Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada, France and Germany
-What was sent: General Game Testing invites
-Server locations: East Coast USA (North America testers); EU servers (France/Germany testers)
-Invite status: All invites in this batch are now sent
-Beta Testing Weekend #2 invites

All invites for Beta Testing Weekend #2 have now been sent. Please check your email (including spam folders) and login to swtor.com/tester/ to see if you have been accepted for this weekend’s testing.
-Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada and all European launch countries (see list here)
-Please note – We will be re-inviting all testers from Beta Testing Weekend #1 (AKA ‘Squadron 1020’) as promised.
-What was sent: Beta Testing Weekend #2 invites (October 7th to 10th – early hours of 11th for EU)
-Server locations: East Coast USA (all testers)
-Invite status: All invites in this batch are now sent

September was not a particularly good month for beta testing of The Old Republic. There were problems with executing the planned Beta Weekends and there was considerable downtime because a new build was being prepared for testing. This caused even further delays to larger scale European testing. With only 1 and a half days left unti lthe end of September we get news that will probably make up for all the misses that happened this month. Chris Collins, the recently employed European community manager, posted on the official forums that a batch of invites has been sent out today to EU players. Here’s a snippet:

Today, we’re excited to announce that we are sending out a batch of invites! In particular, this initial batch marks the start of a series of invites to our larger European player base, who get the chance to join the Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Testing program and provide feedback during the months up until launch.

To further the excitement it seems that tomorrow we might get even more news about the upcoming beta weekends and testing in general. Everyone is hoping that his means an all out widening of the beta testing program so that a lot more people get to experience SWTOR before launch (and help splash those nasty bugs). This was hinted at in Chris’ forum post, but also, Stephen Reid tweeted the following:

We sent both NA and EU invites in the last 48 hours. More news on testing is coming tomorrow.

Considering all of the above I think tomorrow’s update will not be disappointing.

Facebook image #11

Yesterday was Star Wars day (May the Fourth be with you…) and beside the Blue Ray version of all Star Wars films being announced we had a lot of TOR related news. European version of game testing has been announced. Conference call between EA financial management and the investors has been held and SWTOR was mentioned. This also produced an official release window for the game to be moved to the second half of 2011.
Click here to read about these news items in more detail

The Old Republic is a strange beast. It has more than 1 million registered forum accounts, more than 260.000 Facebook Likes and more than 25000 registered guilds and the game hasn’t even entered closed beta stage. There’s another oddity we are now seeing. There is a scam going around offering game testing access for money. Scam, for a game that is not out yet. That must be some kind of first.

All jokes aside, I can understand being eager to play the game, but giving money for something that you are not sure even exists should be a big no-no for everyone. If you receive an offer or and email telling you you can purchase access to the game testing program, know that your credit card info can be stolen, you can receive a non-legitimate game testing account and rest assured that even if the aforementioned plights do not strike Bioware will notice the account is now being played from another IP, town, state or country and will ban you for life. Let me spell that our for you F O R    L I F E. You don’t want that, now do you?

Here’s the official word on recognizing and avoiding this scam:

It has come to our attention that there are multiple individuals and sites claiming to sell testing accounts, “beta keys,” or other offers of access to our Game Testing Program. All of these offers are false. BioWare is not issuing invites to Game Testing via any method other than those we outline here on SWTOR.com.

We must caution you that these offers are often scams designed to steal your money, credit card information, or identity. While we understand that you are eager to participate in Game Testing, your security is extremely important, and attempting to participate in these offers could put you in very real danger.

Furthermore, the sale of accounts with access to the Game Testing Program is strictly prohibited by the Game Testing Agreement. We closely monitor the activities of all accounts involved in the Game Testing Program, and are quick to notice accounts that change hands. In the event that an account in the Game Testing Program does change ownership, we immediately take action to the fullest extent possible, including permanently banning the account from the Service.

You may also encounter e-mail scams that indicate you have been invited to the Game Testing Program. If you are invited to the real Game Testing Program, you will receive an e-mail with instructions from no-reply@bioware.swtor.com. Any other e-mail address claiming to offer an invitation is likely to be a scam. If you receive an e-mail and are in doubt or are concerned about its validity, please forward your concerns to bwacommunitysupport at bioware DOT com. If you do receive a genuine testing invitation from us, you will also be able to view the invitation and testing information at www.swtor.com/tester.

If you discover a scam pretending to offer access to the Game Testing Program, please forward all relevant information to us at bwacommunitysupport AT bioware DOT com. Your security and the security of your fellow community members is important to us, and we appreciate your help.

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.