I wanted to share this information because it was awesome ... but I couldn't for any number of 'I like to keep my job' reasons. But sombody at EA made it public ... so here's the gory details...


http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38968/The_Old_Republic_Draws_2M_Beta_Volunteers.php

2M+ invites sent
725,000+ unique players
250,000+ Peak Concurrent Users


Was a pretty crazy ride ... can't wait to see what the 20th brings us :)

If you read the other thread Raw, it's nothing like WoW. Everything feels different, and at no time did I say to myself "this is WoW just re-skinned". Was a awesome test, and can't wait till the 20th.

Stinky: Please go and find the person responsible for not launching in Australia and give them a boot up the arse for all of us. I'm sure it won't get you fired.

Also, it's the same genre as WOW - in the same way that Call of Duty is like Battlefield 3...but there are enough differences between the games for them to not be considered the same game.

+1, well said

Its kinda dodgy the spin they're putting on those numbers though, everywhere I've seen it reported has been reporting the 2 million number, when that was only the number of invites sent out, and 750,000 is the actual player count.

Still impressive though, and I'm really looking forward to this. Couldn't get the week before Christmas off work though, I wanted to have a lazy week of Old Republic playing :(

Hook us up with the Australian release date and I'll have a word to your bosses about getting you the week off stinky.

I started downloading the client from http://patchnotes.swtor.com/SWTOR_setup.exe
hopefully this is the release client

This was a reply I made in a reddit post, take it as my opinion only.

First of all, any MMO can be considered "EQ in such and such". EQ started this whole "everything isn't as good as EQ", so at least use that, instead of WoW, which is much a carbon copy of EQ as SWTOR is "a copy of WoW".

My first beta experience with SWTOR is this current open beta, and by gods has it been an amazing experience. It works for starters, there has been absolutely no bugs, besides the not being able to logout properly one, which I don't really consider a bug because I never do want to leave this world. Bioware have done extremely well for a first time MMO, and you can tell it's going to have a lasting experience, just with the sheer amount of storytelling that they have.

I have been in a lot of MMO betas, and I have to admit, this is the most well polished beta I have ever played. WoW's beta was plagued with bugs, quests wouldn't work, NPC's would disappear, looting bugs, combat bugs, just so many bugs one thought "how could this even be released", and it did get released, with bugs still intact. Everyone remembers the mining bug that went on for at least 2 months or more. Overall, this beta is beautifully polished, and hopefully from now until release, they can tweak things, fix up the framerate a bit, and then ship that baby to us.

Combat is amazing. It really makes you feel powerful and kickass, which is definitely what this game is suppose to do. I have only played a Jedi Knight to level 15, but holy crap is it awesome along the way. Force Leaping into a group of 3-5 and then proceeding to open a can of woop ass is really, really good. The combat is fun, it's engaging and the best thing is that you feel like you are strong, but you still need to be careful, and make sure you have your buffs up before hand. Everything works, everything is responsive in combat. I live in Queensland, Australia, and was getting on average 250ms. In WoW, I usually get 350-450ms, depending on the night, and you would definitely notice the lag. In SWTOR, nothing. No lag, no delays, everything went off according to when I clicked the button.

Quests are amazing. Everything is well thought out, everything is fun, everything is engaging, everything means something. I choose to tell this woman that her face is ugly, then I gain dark side points, and the quest line will change, or the dialogue will be different, or the loot outcome will be completely different. I had one quest where two Jedi's were in love, which is highly against the Jedi Code. I had to go and tell them stop what they were doing before anything bad happened. I get there, and they're all "but we love each other dude, let us be!" And so I had to decide whether to tell them to keep their hands between their sides, or tell the quest givers that the Jedi's had stopped making love, which meant lying. The best part, the two Jedi's in love gave me the option to lie by bribing me with a Lightsaber Crystal enhancement, and how could I say no?

The UI is different. It has your usual hotkey slots etc, but what is really cool to me, is that right click in combat actually fires off your slot 1 ability, which is really handy. The map gives you the data you need, and a magnifying glass which seriously helps. Everything is plain and clear, positions are shown, every bit of information needed in your journey is there. Chat UI is perfect, everything is just there and working. They will apparently be releasing MOD API after release, so if people desire to mod their UI, they can.

I played through a few personal instances, and was just using my T7 Droid Companion, who by the way is totally awesome, and I have to say, they are definitely hard. I had to make sure I was buffed with Stimpacks, normal buffs etc before jumping into a group above 3, and even with only groups of 3, I had to make sure I focused on the healers first. I can definitely see why they are hard though, they want to entice you into grouping, but then at the same time, they aren't exactly "hard" if it's just you and your companion, it's still quite do-able.

Overall, this has definitely made me purchase a copy from Amazon. I was initially very hard on the fence, from watching gameplay trailers etc, and scoffing at the terrible art direction and gameplay, but now that I've actually gotten to play it, and the beta being so awesome and so good, it's converted me. I'm not that much of a Star Wars fan, I have seen all the movies, but even then, it is still that much fun just as a space MMO, that it will draw a lot of people in. People will cry "this is a WoW clone!", but people are doing that so often now, it's lost all meaning. No MMO will kill WoW, we all know WoW is doing quite fine in that regards. But people need to stop comparing apples to oranges. It didn't borrow from WoW, it borrowed from the plethora of MMO's before WoW, and after WoW as well. If it works, why break it?

yes it's like wow. and wow is like every other mmo before it.

WoW is EQ but casual

0o you used the c word, Jim will have your nuts.