More Open Beta Spots for Star Wars: The Old Republic During This Weekend

[sam]

Video game developer BioWare has announced that the beta testing phase for its upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will be kicking off again this weekend, with the number of players invited to take part in the testing increased.

The company is not saying exactly how many players will take part in the weekend testing phase, which runs from October 6 to October 10, but all those who are invited should have an e-mail message in their inbox.

Those who have not received one can also check their status by logging in to the official website of the game in order to see whether the game client for Star Wars: The Old Republic is available for download.

BioWare has also announced that it will be launching more beta test weekends in the coming months, inviting more and more players in order to test the network infrastructure for the MMO.

The official launch date for Star Wars: The Old Republic is being launched just a few days before Christmas both in North America and in Europe.

The big, ambitious MMO project has been delayed a few times and a lot of analysts expected it to be pushed back to 2012 but BioWare and Electronic Arts have respected their promise of launching during 2011.

The game will launch with a subscription business model, although some are speculating that this will be dropped after a number of months.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is the latest MMO which will be seen as a direct competitor to the World of Warcraft behemoth that was created by Blizzard.

Electronic Arts has already said that it does not need a huge number of subscribers in order for the game to break even.

The Old Republic will rely heavily on the story side of the MMO genre, with fully voiced NPCs and with a lot of choices for the players to make as they experience the game world and progress through the story.

[sam]

Weekend Reading: Can The Old Republic Succeed at 14.99?

After a very long wait, which included rumors about further delays, the developers at the Austin studio of BioWare and the executives at publisher Electronic Arts have announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be launched this year, on December 20 in the United States and two days later in Europe.


This is good news for gamers who have long waited to see how BioWare could push past their great Knights of the Old Republic titles and for Star Wars fans who are looking forward to create a character and live a piece of the history of their favorite franchise.

Alongside the launch date announcement Electronic Arts also talked about the business model and the pricing for The Old Republic, offering gamers three initial options:

- 14.99 dollars/12.99 Euro/8.99 British Pounds for one month of play;
- 41.97 dollars/35.97 Euro/25.17 Pounds for three months, payable in one charge;
- 77.94 dollars/65.94 Euro/46.14 Pounds for six months.

Those who pick up the game will also get one month of play time with it.

Clearly Electronic Arts believes that subscription based MMOs have a future and is willing to bet more than 100 million dollars reportedly spent on The Old Republic on this.

The only question is: how many months can Star Wars: The Old Republic expect to keep these prices going?

I believe that the hype and the Star Wars license will give The Old Republic quite a bit of an initial following and the game might march quickly to over 1 million players but it's unlikely that many of these will be willing to pay the prices mentioned above for more than 3 to 6 months.

So expect to see Electronic Arts keep subscription rates up until the middle of 2012, cut them a little at that points and make the game free to play or something closely resembling that by the end of next year, signaling that the subscription model is all but dead (the exception being World of Warcraft).