Do you want to help BioWare test out new and upcoming content? Do you want to be one of the first people to see what is in store for the SWTOR world? Well now you have your chance.

BioWare is looking to expand its testing and is looking for experienced players in Austin, Texas to help them test upcoming game content. This includes new Flashpoints, PvP Warzones, and end game Operations. Players will be expected to dedicate at least one weekend an month to testing new content. As an added bonus, this is a fully paid position. That’s right, you can get paid for testing new SWTOR content! If you are interested then fill out and submit this survey.

Don’t live in Austin and still want to help out? Well you are in luck. BioWare is also looking to get teams of players from various guilds to help them test the new content we will be seeing in the 1.2 game update. This includes the new Warzone, Flashpoint, and Operation that will be included with the patch. Guilds will need to put together a group consisting of anywhere between 8 and 20 players that will be willing to put their live games aside for a while to test new content on the Public Test Server. You can read all the details and requirements in this blog post. Space is limited, so if you are interested get those applications in soon!

After the initial announcement of the start of beta weekends at PAX Prime there were still many unanswered questions that remained. Stephen Reid, Senior community manager, tweeted some of the final answers just now. Here’s a summary of the most important information pertaining to the first SWTOR beta weekend:
 

• Most likely, all of the invites for the first beta testing weekend have already been sent out. If you haven’t received an email yet or it is not in your spam folder you will not get in this weekend. (source)
• No EU testers have been invited for the first beta testing weekend (however a huge batch of beta testers from Europe will be invited in the next few days to regular Game Testing)
• NDA is still in effect so people should not talk about the game impressions in public
• The First Beta weekend starts on Friday, September 2nd
• As it stands now, people that were invited for the first beta weekend will not partake in subsequent beta weekends
• Invited players are being picked at random from those that applied for testing at swotr.com
• Pre-Order status has no effect on your chance to be invited to the beta testing weekend

 
I hope this helps answer some of your questions.
 

I knew a couple of guys that were part of a game development team. The game was made by a small team of dedicated enthusiasts and most of them were programmers at heart. It was a strategy game set in space, not unlike Homeworld (if any of you still remember that great game). They slaved at it for 3 years for a small wage hoping to make it big once the game is released. They even got a worldwide publisher, which meant they had a sellable product. When the game came out many tried playing it but found it unnecessarily complex at times and hard even when it didn’t need to be. It had a small following of dedicated fans but it never made it big because it asked too much of players to be widely accepted.
 
The problem with that game was that the programmers made a game for themselves. There was a lot of math involved and complex systems that would make an analytic mind very happy. The problem is that gamers are not analytic machines. They are gamers of various personalities and mindsets and if you are a game maker you better make sure you are pleasing a larger variety of people than just programmers, unless, of course, you were making the game for three years just to play it yourself.
 
What brings games closer to gamers is game testing. Involvement of gamers into the game making process introduces another set of minds, other than that of game designers themselves. This brings fresh perspectives and usually changes the game significantly. We saw a glimpse of this process during Q&A sessions at San Diego Comic Con this year. We found out that some systems designed long ago by game designers have been changed based on game testers’ input. There were even some changes so significant (in terms of time needed to develop the system again) that I was rather surprised they decided to do this so late in the game.
Click here to read how game testing influenced SWTOR and if it’s a good thing

With Pax now behind us, how did BioWare deliver ?

Well, they gave us exactly  what they said they would (not everything we wanted as fans). What they told us before Pax, they had the goods there. They had the early levels on the Sith classes, and what seemed to be a very respectable mid lvl instance. A great deal of interviews have come in, and I’m sure many more are on the way.

In respect to the game play, most every comment is positive, and from the footage we have seen, the instance does look like a highly engaging, and a somewhat challenging, fun packed run.

The only downside I would call out, is that of queues, that none could of foreseen. A 7 hour wait after 10 minutesof Pax opening, I’m sure you could have had four times the amount of games running, and demand would still outweigh the supply.

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It has been reported earlier today that beta testing sign ups have started on the official TOR site. The moment this became public knowledge the internet went ablaze. Everyone and their mother tried signing up (yours truly included). There is a scanning application at the end of the sign up process that tests your computer and this was the most common point of failure. Everything went down after that. As more people started hearing the news, the official site was hit by a gazillion excited fans wishing to try their luck. Be patient. The sign up will last for many more months to come and I don’t think your chances to participate will be higher if you are among the first million to sign up. Once the initial rush passes be sure to

Use this link to sign up for Star Wars: The Old Republic beta testing

Update:

The Old Republic community members using either Hotmail or Yahoo email providers may not be receiving transactional emails at this time. This includes validation and password recovery emails. We are looking into the situation and will update you when we can.

The team is still working on various solutions for the looping issue that some users are experiencing. Your patience is appreciated while we are working on this. And remember, the order in which an individual signs up has no bearing on who gets chosen for testing.

Update 2:
Things have been working as intended for weeks now.

Click here for the official article.