Star Wars The Old Republic Slated for Autumn 2012 in Australia With Local Servers

Post by darkjedi @ 09:41am 21/12/11 | 34 Comments

With all of the excitement around Star Wars: The Old Republic going on following it's official launch overseas yesterday, one question still remained: When would Australia (and New Zealand) get their turn? Bioware have been very coy on the topic and have avoided giving any sort of comment or commitment around when we can expect to see an official local release.

That is until today.

Posted on the official Old Republic forums earlier this morning, Bioware have confirmed that they're aiming for a "Spring 2012" launch of ToR in Australia and New Zealand (so Autumn 2012: March, April or May on this side of Earth). It's a 3 month wait, but still brings positive news for those who didn't want to risk buying from an online CD Key site or importing a boxed retail copy from the likes of Amazon.

The only consolation (and possible reason for the delay) is that the same post also confirms that there will be some manner of local servers for Australian and New Zealand.

We can confirm that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be launching in Australia and New Zealand in the spring of 2012.

Right now we are targeting March 1st, but that could change as our number one priority is making sure that customers have a great service to play on.

For those of you who may have already imported the game, we will be investigating solutions to allow you to continue to play on a local server once they come online in March.

Whether this means servers actually physically located in Australia is open to interpretation, but our fingers are certainly crossed.

Promoted/Edited forum item

Update: While we wait, here's a new eight minute video of the developers telling us how good their game is. Watch it embedded below or click here for the direct HD video page.

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Latest Comments

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TicMan
Posted 09:44am 21/12/11

Link broken DJ.

Pretty exciting news if the local servers ring true, fingers crossed server transfer are allowed.

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darkjedi
Posted 09:47am 21/12/11

Link Typwn fixed. Cheers Tic!

And agreed there. I never played Warhammer beyond beta so I can't comment about how the local servers worked out for that, but I suspect ToR will be a lot larger than WH ended up being - Which is positive from a realm population perspective, but might suck for those wanting to play with friends on American Realms. I just hope that they're not going to stonewall us after launch and prevent those on the AU/NZ version from playing on/with people on the US ones.

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darkjedi
Posted 09:55am 21/12/11

Just in case the original quote left any question around local servers, the Bioware CMs clarified it a little further along in the thread:

We are planning on actual servers located in the area. The final location is being locked down, but when we say 'local' we don't mean 'in the US but with a label'.

Hell. yes.

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Zapo
Posted 09:55am 21/12/11

I like this. I especially like this part

For those of you who may have already imported the game, we will be investigating solutions to allow you to continue to play on a local server once they come online in March.

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deadlyf
Posted 10:22am 21/12/11

I like it how it's a southern hemisphere based announcement but they still call it a Spring release.

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Hogfather
Posted 10:27am 21/12/11

I f*****g knew it.

I told you Zapo.

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Eorl
Posted 10:41am 21/12/11

Holy crap. If they get local servers, I will cream my pants and send my children's souls to them.

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TDC
Posted 10:54am 21/12/11

If they get these local servers right and the pings dramatically improve then I will probably buy it!

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BladeRunner
Posted 10:54am 21/12/11

Don't see how local servers would be viable.....like with most MMOs. Never the less, its still good news but I always get under 300 ping....so there is not much of a problem.

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darkjedi
Posted 10:58am 21/12/11

I like it how it's a southern hemisphere based announcement but they still call it a Spring release.

They confirmed it was meant to be Q1/2 later in the post (march 1st was thrown around a couple of times too). Seems that sometimes Americans forget that the seasons do change in the southern hemisphere :)

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Grundar
Posted 11:04am 21/12/11

Hopefully they will release a collectors edition for this market with this announcement, couldn't justify going to semi-dodgy websites to get access to the Northern Hemisphere release, blowing it on a CE and then having it be essentially useless. Loved the original iteration of SWG so I've been burning for a good Star Wars MMO for a long time.

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Eorl
Posted 11:11am 21/12/11

Don't see how local servers would be viable.....like with most MMOs. Never the less, its still good news but I always get under 300 ping....so there is not much of a problem.

How are they not viable? There is a good amount of players here wanting to play from Australia, as you can tell by just how many people went out of their way to get a cd key or import from Amazon. Swiftsure always has a queue, and if we get local servers, it will be dramatically different with a 20-50ms ping instead of 250-300ms ping.

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HurricaneJim
Posted 11:39am 21/12/11

How are they not viable? There is a good amount of players here wanting to play from Australia, as you can tell by just how many people went out of their way to get a cd key or import from Amazon. Swiftsure always has a queue, and if we get local servers, it will be dramatically different with a 20-50ms ping instead of 250-300ms ping.

It's not an FPS, latency is quite negligible. Quibbling over 1/4 of a second when skills take time to cast and have cooldowns.

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Zapo
Posted 11:45am 21/12/11

The main benefit here, other than the ping time, which isn't critical is around the maintenance. You would hope we wouldnt' suffer scheduled downtime during prime time hours etc.

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Hogfather
Posted 11:50am 21/12/11

It's not an FPS, latency is quite negligible. Quibbling over 1/4 of a second when skills take time to cast and have cooldowns.

Nah you're missing the whole story here.

For PVE in a normal skills rotation I guess that's right-ish, although there are a bunch of events where sub-second timing really counts (Heigen dance anyone?). Every single time you die because you almost made it out of range of an AE etc, that's the speed of light f*****g you in the arse and telling you to like it.

In PVP a 300ms round trip for interrupt timing is f*****g killer when your enemy has a 50ms connection. Have also heard people from the US complain that MMOs feel sluggish when played from AU for s*** like vendor transactions etc. Looking forward to seeing how the other half lives with MMOs!

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Khel
Posted 12:05pm 21/12/11

This is good news, but yeah, personally I'm not really that fussed about local servers either.

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BladeRunner
Posted 12:05pm 21/12/11

Most Devs/Publishers don't think its worth putting local server here for us, We all know what there is always a strong aussie presence for big releases and TOR is no different. WOW never had any local servers even though every man and his dog was playing it. It would be great and I am sure its viable, Its strange that TOR wants to break the mold....then again this is Star Wars.....Glo Sticks, Blaster Rifles, Inter-species romance and Droids....Who wouldn't want to play it.

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glynd
Posted 12:08pm 21/12/11

It's not an FPS, latency is quite negligible. Quibbling over 1/4 of a second when skills take time to cast and have cooldowns.

While it's quite easy to adjust your play style and what not in an mmo, fact is it's a far better gaming experience. I'd rather press the buttons when I need to rather than predict when to use certain actions.

each to their own. I'm happy to play on an american based server but i'll be stoked if I can play on a local server.

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Eorl
Posted 12:12pm 21/12/11

The main benefit here, other than the ping time, which isn't critical is around the maintenance. You would hope we wouldnt' suffer scheduled downtime during prime time hours etc.

They would still have to do it at the same time. I understand people don't like their play times being interrupted, but if they did server maintenances for different server regions at different times, people will just bottleneck them, causing more issues.

And I know this isn't a FPS, but latency does mean a lot in a MMO, as your combat is determined by how efficiently the server responds to your key presses. And as Hoggy said, it's not just combat, but also vendoring and really just anything.

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 12:12pm 21/12/11

Local servers is a selling point, it is a move designed to undermine WOW and pull players to across. First impressions are saying the SWTOR is very polished and certainly a contender to WOW players. Anything they can do to pull players from WOW will be done.

The other good thing about local servers is it gives a concrete Aussie server, no ambiguous choice as to which server is the 'Australian' one.

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Khel
Posted 12:13pm 21/12/11

For me it all comes down to the community, I don't really want to play on a server with a great ping if its going to be sparsely populated and almost empty late at night. So I guess I'll be waiting to see how it pans out

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ZeeDoktor
Posted 01:24pm 21/12/11

"I like it how it's a southern hemisphere based announcement but they still call it a Spring release."

Haha. When I was reading the first paragraph of the article I saw spring and was like "O_O We seriously have to wait THAT long?!? O_O", but then I saw "'aiming for March 1st" and proceeded to facepalm.

All things they've stated on the outside looks like good news to me. I hope I can get my imported copy to run on local servers if they are established.

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Morbz
Posted 02:05pm 21/12/11

wow this game is looking good and may be worth the sub!

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ViscoS
Posted 02:30pm 21/12/11

Going to need to jump servers when they open ours.

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ravn0s
Posted 02:58pm 21/12/11

hmm not sure if i would jump servers.

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dazzalus
Posted 03:14pm 21/12/11

I play on The Jekk'Jekk Tarr (Empire) and Krath (Republic) and about 9.30-10.30pm (Perth Time) it gets very quite. Admittedly I solo most of the time (and you can very easily once you get companion) but there are some harder quests you need a group for. Maybe now the game is released there might be more on at night (didnt get on last night as I was drinking :-) )

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Fuzzy
Posted 03:51pm 21/12/11

It's a suprise they are still planning a physical lauch of the game here.

I'm assuming us Aussies that are playing, thinking of playing, or are still downloading the client (Friggin Internet cap) will have purchased online?

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TiT
Posted 04:00pm 21/12/11

well im thinking about getting it, but wondering if there is demo or something before spending the cash as never played MMO before

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deadlyf
Posted 04:48pm 21/12/11

They would still have to do it at the same time. I understand people don't like their play times being interrupted, but if they did server maintenances for different server regions at different times, people will just bottleneck them, causing more issues.

Huh, how so? Maintenance is meant to be during the quite gaming period in the US, I doubt many if any would bother going to another server during that time. There's also no guarantee that a US copy will grant access to Australian servers much like a US copy of WoW doesn't allow you to play on EU servers.

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Obes
Posted 05:10pm 21/12/11

This is bad news in a round a bout sort of way.

Because of the huge delay, and because most Aussie that want to play it will be playing it already. Thus when it launches it will have a client base consisting solely of people who shop at EBGames. It will be a dismal failure that is then used by MMOs of the future to justify why Aussie servers are not financially sensible.

It is in the long term interests of Australian gamers that they instead launch it here soon as part of the US cluster.

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Nerfy
Posted 05:26pm 21/12/11

I'm really happy with it actually, gives me a reason to hold off on this enormous distraction for ages, and should have the game a lot more stable by the time that I pick it up.

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Khel
Posted 05:31pm 21/12/11

should have the game a lot more stable by the time that I pick it up.

Its already stable

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Trauma
Posted 05:36pm 21/12/11

I personally would not take that wording as them having local servers. I'll believe it when the state clearly that they will have servers physically located in Aus.

This is bad news in a round a bout sort of way.

Because of the huge delay, and because most Aussie that want to play it will be playing it already. Thus when it launches it will have a client base consisting solely of people who shop at EBGames. It will be a dismal failure that is then used by MMOs of the future to justify why Aussie servers are not financially sensible.

It is in the long term interests of Australian gamers that they instead launch it here soon as part of the US cluster.

Good point, hope they don't have true local servers now.

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WirlWind
Posted 03:08am 22/12/11

Trauma, they may not have said in bright neon letters that the servers will be in Australia, but they said it in a way that no-one could mistake it for anything else.

As the dev said, the servers will be located here, they won't be re-branded US servers.

And as they're discussing in the context of Australia / NZ, it's very reasonable to take it as they're saying 'local' as in 'within the australian / NZ region'

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