Star Wars: The Old Republic set for December launch

[Jos]

Bioware and EA today announced the release date for its new massively multiplayer game, Star Wars: The Old Republic. The launch is set to  take place just before the Christmas holidays on December 20 in the US, and two days later for gamers living in Europe.

The game is set thousands of years before the events seen in the epic film franchise, and it has already been confirmed that players will be able to customize their characters. More interestingly, those playing the game will be able to  visit some of the locations that star in the films, including Luke Skywalkers home planet, Tatooine.

"The pre-orders have been going exceptionally well. It’s the fastest selling pre-ordered game in EA’s history," Ray Muzyka, Senior VP of EA and co-founder of its BioWare label said during his presentation at the Eurogamer Expo.

The new Star Wars title is reportedly EA is most expensive game ever created, costing millions of dollars, but with pre-orders exceeding 200,000 copies in the last week it looks to become an overnight bestseller competing against other established MMO games like World of Warcraft.

BioWare founders, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk chose the Eurogamers Expo at Earls Court, London to announce its release date and provide exhibition-goers an opportunity to see more information about the game. The European Expo is the last chance for game developers to announce release of products in time for Christmas and New Year. As well as EA's announcement, other big attractions included Fifa12, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and Modern Warfare 3.

Pricing has been set at either $14.99 per month, $41.97 for 3 months ($13.99 per month), or $77.94 for six months ($12.99 per month). This places it in the same price-point as WoW, Rift and Eve.

BioWare has also invested in a new call center in preparation for the imminent launching of the game. The new site marks the first presence the company has outside of the US, and is located in County Galway, Ireland. The new facility will provide 24-hour support to those purchasing the new Star Wars title, creating 200 new jobs locally.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/45644-star-wars-the-old-republic-set-for-december-launch.html

 

[Mister_K]

Old News but Hyped!

 

[Tomorrow_Rains]

Concerned

i'm actually concerned about this

EA servers are known for being unreliable.

Well, i was going to purchase this game but i'm not giving EA 15 dollars a month for crappy support and unreliable servers.

Unless they prove me wrong.

 

[Mister_K]

Tomorrow_Rains said:
i'm actually concerned about this

EA servers are known for being unreliable.

Well, i was going to purchase this game but i'm not giving EA 15 dollars a month for crappy support and unreliable servers.

Unless they prove me wrong.

They will be running it slightly different. I don't think they want to screw up experience for players Afterall they have invested over 100 Million in this project.

 

[TomSEA]

Can't get excited about Star Wars anything. Ever since the first one came out (and yes, I was one of the millions standing in line around the block to see a midnight showing back in 1977), it's been nothing but a media frenzy for the movies and all the peripherals - toys, clothing, books, cartoons, conventions, etc.

Think I was completely burned out on Star Wars by about 1985.

 

[Lurker101]

Remember, if you want to play this game, you must forfeit your right to sue EA first.

 

[ramonsterns]

I hope this flops. Bioware and EA need a wake-up call, and I can't really see any better way to do it than having this abomination roll over and die on them. But who am I kidding, if it fails, it will probably go free to play long before they actually shut it down.

 

[Mister_K]

ramonsterns said:
I hope this flops. Bioware and EA need a wake-up call, and I can't really see any better way to do it than having this abomination roll over and die on them. But who am I kidding, if it fails, it will probably go free to play long before they actually shut it down.

Yeah and if the game flops it will do more damage to MMO industry then good, nice thinking. Give the game a try.

I hope that MW3 flops, Blizzard shuts down etc.. etc... they need a wake up call. While we at it I hope Apple bankrupts and Microsoft gets flooded with mass Viruses!

*sarcasm*

 

[Guest]

I wanted to reserve this on origin today (first time using it) but it wouldn't add the game to my cart then I tried to add BF3 to the cart and it worked well. Is the digital distribution of the game restricted to the us? I am gonna try later with a proxy just in case.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

It probably will take some time to get the kinks worked out... I played WoW for a bit about a year after it came out and wait times to get on the server were common... days when the servers were down were common... You can't prevent it either; you can't justify a ton of capacity without first seeing how well many people sign up. Hopefully their architecture is easily expanded and they can fix issues like this quickly.