CVG recently spoke with EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau who told them that the release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic hinges on the reaction players give to the beta, which opens up to many more players starting this Friday.
It is definitely tied to the beta test feedback that’s ongoing and so far, so good. We feel good about the date that we’re heading towards but you’re right, you could have a Crazy Ivan show up in the September/October beta test and be like, ‘wow, I’ve got to fix that’
You’ve got to have a great launch and as more and more user feedback comes in we make those polishing decisions on what we’re going to get right and nail
We don’t want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed – we don’t want that to happen. So we need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and it’s high quality.
Not earth shattering news, EA obviously does’t want the blogosphere erupting about servers being down or hour long login queues on the first few days of launch, so they are preparing as they should be. With beta starting this Friday and running until October, I’m going to put my money on a November launch date.
Beta is not *starting* this friday. WEEKEND beta for some load testing is starting.
Beta has been going on for over a year now.
August 31st, 2011 at 2:31 pmQuote
Yes, you’re correct. I meant it was opening up for many more players with the start of the Sept beta weekends, which begin this Friday.
August 31st, 2011 at 2:46 pmQuote
I agree with you Mike, i pre-ordered the game a couple months ago, and i am shooting for a Nov. launch, but if the beta goes wrong then we should all expect a Q1 2012 launch (which would not please me, but what would we do about it), both BioWare and EA are afraid of releasing a solid launch date for fear of other MMO’s launching patches or updates on the same day, i believe we will see a launch date announced mere weeks before the game is released.
August 31st, 2011 at 3:13 pmQuote
I disagree Travis. As important is it would be for Bioware and EA to fix all bugs before the official release,I believe that making the release date in time for the holiday season is also important to the companies. I expect a mid November to early December launch. I hope for earlier though!
August 31st, 2011 at 3:49 pmQuote
IF they need to push the release on it fine that way the game is as best as possible
August 31st, 2011 at 4:50 pmQuote