Ok, first let me start by saying like many other followers I’m stocked that we have a release date at long last.
But could SWTOR have picked a more awkward date to release a MMO ?
Also the way it was announced was very strange indeed, with no sign that the formidable train was entering the station.
In a completely unexpected turn of events, Bioware and Lucas Arts announced today at Eurogamer EXPO that Star Wars: The Old Republic will launch on December 20th in the USA and on December 22nd for European customers. The announcement was first made by BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk during their keynote address at the Expo. The official news can be found over on this page. I would like to say that after more than 2 years of following news about this game and writing about it for more than a year this is the most exciting piece of information we have had. In my name and I guess everyone’s here at SWTOR Life there is one thing I would like to say:
Here’s a snippet from the official announcement:
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.
Each copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic will come with 30 days of subscription time, after which you have the option to continue playing with one of the following monthly subscription fees:
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)
It seems that this trailer is actually the PAX East 2011 trailer. The only difference is the inclusion of the release date at the end of the trailer. The updated trailer was uploaded to Youtube at the time this article was posted and that got me confused as if it is a trailer following up the release date announcement. I knew that the trailer looked familiar, but I did not do my research before posting this article due to all the excitement about the release date announcement. I apologize to everyone for any inconvenience caused.
Along with the announcement of the Release date (which is Dec. 20. 2011.) there is a new SWTOR trailer available proudly displaying the release date at the end. it is combined of footage we’ve mostly seen in other trailers, nevertheless it is exciting. Enjoy Fate of the Galaxy trailer below.
Every time the CFO of Electronic Arts, Mr. Eric Brown, has one of his financial conferences with the investors community managers at Bioware get a headache. This is because Mr. Brown always talks about the hottest topic on the block, and that is release date and beta details. This was the case yesterday as well. As you all know the release window (for now) is Holiday 2011. The running joke in the community is that we would at least like to know of a date when they will tell us what the release date will be (release date of a release date – is that a dateception?). In that regard Eric Brown said:
In terms of timing, again, 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.
Click here to read the rest of statements as well as Stephen Reid’s reactions
photo of SWTOR booth 914 at PaxPrime 2011 courtesy of @rockjaw
If you are a current follower of the game Star Wars The Old Republic MMO currently in development by Bioware, then you already know about them bringing the SWTOR love to PaxPrime 2011 in Seattle Washington, August 26th through the 28th. If not then read on because you need to know this info!
I am not sure how this skipped everyone’s radar, but this last Friday update, entitled “The Old Republic at Comic-Con“, said that there will be some sort of announcements at the show. Here’s the exact quote:
This year is looking to be another big year for the event and both BioWare and LucasArts will be there to make some announcements about Star Wars™: The Old Republic™
It might be that people have grown tired of catching every little glimpse of what might possibly turn into big news, but I am still a sucker for hype and I will take this bait with open arms and share a few of my thoughts on what these announcements might be.
read more of my SWTOR geek out
There has been a metaphor running around SWTOR forums and official twitter accounts for quite some time now. I am not sure what is the earliest mention of this metaphor, but looking at the developer tracker I would say that this is the initial post:
I’ve said before that an announcement as big as release date will be so big, it’ll come thundering towards us and we’ll all hear it long before it arrives. That train’s coming… but so far, I’d just say we’ve laid down some early track.
Train speeding down the tracks making “Choo Choo” noises is what represents the announcement of the SWTOR Release date and its eventual release. Metaphor turned SWTOR meme has only been amplified by Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager, with him using it extensively. It has come to that point where Mr. Reid received a gift, a train conductor’s hat, to be worn when the Day comes, as described in the following tweets:
Rockjaw:
Someone sent me a hat. I won’t tell you what it is, because knowing you lot, you’ll freak out. But person who sent it? It’s here. Link (July 1. 2011.)
Rockjaw:
Disclaimers: Hat does not imply anything. It is merely a hat. No train is coming (yet). Do not panic. Do not adjust your set. Link (July 1. 2011.)
Rockjaw:
The hat in question was bought FOR me, not by me, and I said I would wear it (in a photo) when The Day Comes. (And it hasn’t yet.) Link (July 1. 2011.)
At0mXII:
@Rockjaw So when we do see a tweet that says “Choo Choo!” and has a pic of you in the hat we should THEN get excited? 🙂 Link (July 1. 2011.)
Rockjaw:
Re: previous tweet – yes, something like that. Link (July 1. 2011.)
In line with all this I have decided to alter SWTOR Life website by adding a train countdown. Our train is Imperial Hover Train racing towards the finish line that has “release date” written on it. I have made it so that the train moves closer to the finish line as each day passes. It will move only a couple of pixels per day, but in a week or so the movement should be much more apparent. I have chosen the finish line to be reached on December 31. 2011., because in line with all we know from official sources the game should be out this year and that is the last day of this year. Once we find out what is the exact release date I will modify the finish line and the train’s relative position to it in line with new information. If you think I should add something more to it (like actual number of days left or something) please leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do. I always wanted to put a countdown to release date somewhere on the site and I believe that using the train meme metaphor is a perfect way to accomplish this. All that is left is to watch that train move, painstakingly slow, each day.
Update no.2: I wanted to make one final update to this news so everything is as clarified as it can be. Here is the full transcript of the SWTOR related part of John Riccitiello’s speech (thanks to swtor.com user Gumstumdar):
From: 20:09
“We’re very confident in the title umm but we did give a range of potential ship dates. It depends really on the beta that we’re now in. We’re in mid-scale beta now, we’ve got a high scale beta at the end of June umm and umm only the foolish assume they know the outcome of beta in terms of uh umm you know whether it’s a six week hit or not. Uhm we intend to make sure that this is a very successful launch and while we’re very very confident umm the reason for range in guidance is to bracket around the possibilities is what we’ve done.”
Stop: 20:40
Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager at Bioware, had a few things to say about this (you can read his full post on the subject bellow). Game Testing is on-going and they recently started a more long-term, longer-lasting version of it. It is highly likely that the six week comment was in relation to what happens when the game comes out and not how long the beta will last before the game is shipped. In a later post Stephen also said that “European Testing has not fully started yet.”. What all this basically means is that yes, beta is getting bigger and it is changing its shape, which is great news because things seem to be moving towards release. The fact that this is now know publicly changes nothing really, but it is good to hear.
During some investor conference (it is called 31st Annual Growth Stock Conference and it was streamed at this URL) that is happening as I write this (8:30 PDT), John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts just announced that SWTOR High Scale Beta will start by the end of June. It was also said that ship date will depend on the beta. If high scale beta goes well there might be NO MORE DELAY before release. This puts possible SWTOR release much closer than most of the more optimistic predictions. I would like to thank the ladies at Corellian Run Radio for spotting this first and the official forum speculation thread on release date that broke the news. We are still waiting for official confirmation or denial of this news. We hope to get it soon and we’ll keep you posted on the developments.
I have one thing to say to their marketing department if this turns out to be true. You should have said this at E3!
Now I am off to dance naked in the grass from pure joy of knowing things are about to get real, real fast!
Update: Stephen Reid, our beloved Community Manager, just made a post on the forums regarding this news. Here’s the complete post. I am not commenting at all on this, better let everyone form their own opinions.
Take a deep breath, everyone…
Game Testing is currently ongoing for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t news – it’s been ongoing for quite a while. At different points in the process, we have invited a number of people to test. Some of those people tested for short periods, some for longer periods.
We’ve recently transitioned into longer-term and larger-scale testing. We have more people testing the game now than ever before. We are allowing them to play for longer than ever before. We’re also continuing to invite people to test, so if you haven’t signed up for testing yet – now is a good time.
We will be allowing more and more people to test The Old Republic before launch, and that means occasionally we’ll spike in our invite numbers. It doesn’t mean everyone who’s signed up for testing is going to be invited in one block.
What we’re doing now, essentially, is similar to a ‘Closed Beta’ for other MMORPGs, but we call it Game Testing. It’s invite-only, and it’s limited in size. That gives us the most ‘bang for our buck’ in terms of getting meaningful, actionable feedback. However, we’re still ramping up, we’re getting more people in… and we’re still aiming to launch in 2011.
It’s Friday once again and while we all wait to see what kind of information is given out on golden platters of awesomeness, i bring to you another post from the bowels of the Swtor forums. This week I jump on ship to tackle one of the bigger questions that EVERYONE is dying to know, the release date and the possible outcomes of what that might be. You can find one of the many official forum posts located here if you wish to choose through everyone’s thoughts, dreams and hopes of when it might be.
DISCLAIMER: Everything said in this article is the personal opinion of its author and does not represent any official information from Bioware. This is a speculative article and please treat it as such.
Lets jump right in on what I think. For me, I see the release coming in a September time-frame. Why? Well, I look at it like this. E3 happens in June and I expect some good information regarding aspects of the game to come out. I do not expect the release date to be given but I do think that a time frame for more beta invites to start happening to come up. The amount of time they stay in these beta phases will also play into realizing when the game really does launch.
Click here to continue reading about the logic behind September release speculation
You need months of different flavors of beta testing before making a product generally available
Several major gaming news outlets have reported that EA’s CFO Eric Brown hinted during today’s Lazard Capital Markets Technology and Media Conference that Star Wars the Old Republic will not be releasing before July 1. Here’s the transcription of what he said that made people conclude this:
So we said it’s going to launch sometime in calendar, but not within Fiscal 11 … So that basically pens down between, you know, April 1st and December 31st of this calendar year.
…
It’s also reasonable to infer that it’s not in our Q1 guidance. We gave Q1 Fiscal 11, Fiscal 12 non-gap revenue guidance, minus 39 minus 44 cents and I think it’s not unreasonable to infer that it’s not included in that 90 day period.
Darth Hater has a full transcript of all the things said at the conference pertaining to the Old Republic and you can read it here.
The more important things to note are:
News was also reported by Massively and vg247 and it seems that TOR Legends were the first to report the story.
Although this should not come as a surprise to anyone we can’t think of a better comment to this than point you to this website here. Feel free to push the button several times.
