SWTOR limiting In-Game access at launch

EA is going to restrict pre-orders to 500,000, and will only guarantee the first 50,000 get immediate access to the online game.

So Star Wars:  The Old Republic is now limiting the number of people who can access the actual game at launch.  This seems like a cheap ploy for EA to get more pre orders. Wow there are going to be a lot people crying at release, "WAAAAAH I paid for this game and I can't play, FU EA!!!!!".  I'm not too impressed they are using this technique to get more pre-orders, sadly it will work.

An EA rep told Game Informer, that when they reach their cap they will quickly work to expand the game's server capabilities and allow new players in. But the representative didn't know if that would take hours, weeks or months.

Really?  This massive of a company pushing out one of the biggest hyped MMO's in recent history doesn't know it's server's capabilities?  C'mon, this is just total BS marketing crap.  I'm starting to get more negative about this game, I guess my first instnct that EA is involved is right, they can take anything, even Star Wars and ruin it.

Original Article: http://ingame.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/22/7441863-cant-wait-for-star-wars-the-old-republic-better-move-jedi-fast

"The wait is over, Pre-order now available" for SWTOR

I love waking up to SWTOR Email!! Received this in my inbox this morning !

More information here: PRE ORDER STAR WARS THE OLD REPUBLIC

They had me at "early access", going to pre-order now!

Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) shutting down for good in December 2011

Star Wars The Old Republic MMO is already making it's presence felt with it's release date looming late this year Sony Online Entertainment has announced it's shutting down SWG for good.

This is due to the lisencing complications of having two Star Wars themed MMO's running at the same time. SWG has been around for 8 years now, it had it's big decline when it changed it's PvP system and saw it's population start to diminish greatly. They've had to resort to merging the servers due to not enough players, but of course they put a positive spin on that somehow:

"Populations have stayed pretty steady for a long time now. In fact, we recently merged a bunch of servers to help the prime-time population," said John Smedley of Sony Online Entertainment.

"The decision to shut down SWG is first and foremost a business decision mutually agreed upon between SOE and LucasArts."

"There's another Star Wars MMO entering the market, and I think it's going to be terrific," he said. "It's going to fill a large hole, and we're certainly happy to see Star Wars players be taken care of and get into a game that's going to be great." Smedley said.

They are pretty confident that these current subscribers will move to SWTOR as Sony seems to think this will be a suitable replacement. Which I tend to agree with, if the current player has chosen to stay this long it's because they truly love the Star Wars theme and will continue to play even though all of their hard work to level up characters becomes worthless.

Let's hope Sony can redeem itself with SWTOR, they really need to after the Playstation hack and now shutting down SWG and being forced as playing SWTOR as a replacement.

MMOs that I've played that have faltered off, will SWTOR make the same mistakes?

I remember my first days of playing MMORPGs, I was thirteen years old and there was basically one choice out there at the time for an online game other than MUDs, The Realm Online by Sierra.  This was a turn based 2d game, but it was an amazing experience and I’ve been hooked on MMOs ever since.  The Realm lacked the impressive graphics as in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it more than made up for it in an impressive Player vs Player combat system and awesome community.  Console games just couldn’t keep my interest anymore after experiencing the competitiveness of playing with others around the country and world that MMOs offered.  

I played The Realm in version 2.x up to 3.x.  It made a crucial mistake and changed it’s combat system and alienated a lot of the player base.  I remember feeling betrayed, spending all this time leveling up to 1000 only to be let down by the new combat system that basically made every fight a stalemate and just not as fun.  To this day I still miss that community, it still exists as the longest running MMO to date.  It’s tempting to fire up a new account to see how things have changed; I wish I could remember my old logins & passwords.

After a quick stint in Ultima Online I started to play Dark Age of Camelot with some friends I had made from The Realm.  At first I wasn’t interested in DAOC, but I soon found a character I liked, the nightshade, and ran with it.  I ended up playing this game for several years leveling up all kinds of classes on every realm.  DAOC offers a very interesting 3 realm system (Midgard, Albion, Hibernia), that made for awesome PvP.  It had all open world PvP, no instanced garbage like WoW.  It’s end game was so great for a while, but Mythic just as Sierra did and made an expansion called Trials of Atlantis that changed the way PvP was played and made it a lot of extra grind at the end to be able to compete.

After DAOC I’ve yet to get into an MMO as I feel they all end up making some patch that ruins the game that you’ve come accustomed to for the first year or two you’ve played it (e.g. Star Wars Galaxies).  Will SWTOR make these same mistakes?  Will it even be fun in the beginning, not just fun because it’s something new and shiny, but contains substance and playability?  Hurry up open beta, we all want these questions answered.

Great article on the SWTOR developer blog last lines of dialogue completed for SWTOR.

Excerpt from Star Wars The Old Republic writer Ian Ryan:

"Writing is complete on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. The last lines of dialogue are off for recording and translation; only pickups and polish remain. But at BioWare, a writer's job doesn't stop at the written word. I'm Ian Ryan, a Writer on The Old Republic, and I'm going to show you some of the many ways a BioWare writer continues to shape our game’s stories long after the writing is finished.

There are no less than seventeen planets in The Old Republic. Each one was conceptualized with a rich story, built by our talented world designers then lovingly brought to life by our art team. However as the game's final pieces fall into place, some areas don't perfectly reflect the stories that take place within them: a field is peaceful when it should be battle-scarred, or a residential district lacks the feel of a neighborhood.

As writers, we know the stories and the worlds they play out in. Armed with that knowledge, we set out to provide feedback on each planet’s art as it relates to story. While other teams continue working hard to finish The Old Republic, the writers log in to play the game. A tough life, but someone has to do it. We begin our art passes, giving notes and suggestions to highlight the mood, function and story content of particular areas. For instance, if a luxurious cantina was built in the middle of a devastated warzone (not that we’ve seen that so far...) the writers would ensure that got changed."

               (Source)

You have to love seeing the new artwork and hearing the writers are done writing the final dialogue.  This is that period where not many updates are being released and you know a lot of is being written and tested, but we just have to try and be patient and wait for the new updates.

"But at BioWare, every designer is a storyteller. Writers begin the process with words, only our jobs don't stop there. We know the universe, we know the stories and with that knowledge we help the rest of the team create a cohesive whole out of millions of different parts. In a galaxy as rich and massive as the one in Star Wars: The Old Republic, that task is as colossal as it is rewarding."

I hope they create a great storyline that translate into a playable end game.  Hurry up and open beta already the MMO mob is growing restless!

Bone up on your Star Wars Knowledge before the release of SWTOR

If you want to be a pro role player in SWTOR you're gonna need to study

Maybe this will help :

The Star Wars universe, much like our own, is constantly expanding. In the ten years since the publication of the Star Wars Encyclopedia, a lot has happened in that galaxy far, far away: four new feature films, a host of official original novels, comics, video games, and more. Now, thirty years of information on all things Star Wars–ranging from science and technology to history and geography, culture and biography to ecology and cosmology–has been supplemented with an entire decade’s worth of all-new material. Abundantly illustrated with full-color artwork and photos, and now in a new three-volume edition to accommodate its wealth of detailed entries, the Star Wars Encyclopedia encompasses the full measure of George Lucas’s creation.

Here’s just a sampling of what’s inside:
• character portraits of both the renowned (Luke Skywalker, Queen Amidala, Darth Vader) and the obscure (Tnun Bdu, Tycho Celchu, Bib Fortuna)
• the natives and customs of planets as diverse as Tatooine and Hoth, Dagobah and Kashyyyk
• the rituals, secrets, and traditions of Jedi Knights and Sith Lords
• a timeline of major events in Star Wars history, from the Clone Wars and the inception of the Empire to the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker and the invasion of the monstrous Yuuzhan Vong

Scrupulously researched and written by leading authorities Stephen J. Sansweet, Pablo Hidalgo, Bob Vitas, and Daniel Wallace, this landmark work is the must-have centerpiece of every Star Wars library.

EA CEO Announced High Scale Beta for SWTOR coming at the end of June 2011

BioWare's Stephen Reid had this to say:

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.

(Source)

High end beta testing?  Does this mean stress tests to see what the servers can handle?  Does this mean they'll be testing class balance for end game PvP (yeah right).  It'd be nice for these betas to focus on the end game and making the game balance before release.

There seems to be a trend with MMO's that they don't learn from the history of past failed games.  They always make the same mistakes.  Too much instanced PvP and PvE and not enough open world content. The end game always seems to be lacking and your only choice is re-roll more characters in the hopes they'll have the end game fixed by the time you level up your newbie character.

It would be nice to play a game that I know the time invested to make it to the top level will be worth it and not a huge disappointment after spending all those hours leveling up and gearing out.

So most likely these betas will just be a test for them to see if they can pack those millions of new subs on release date to maximize the profits for the first few months before people start to lose interest and luster of a fresh new MMO wears off.