Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree yesterday as folks started receiving the above email prompting them to download the Star Wars: the Old Republic client to be ready for early access. Unfortunately a lot of folks were confused about the email’s content, interpreting the announcement that early access now starts on December 13 as meaning they were now confirmed for December 13 early access.
But close reading of this email, and follow-up comments online from SWTOR staff notes that you will be receiving an email invitation on the day that early access is available to you. The email we all received yesterday is just to prompt you to be ready “to play when your Early Game Access invitation arrives.”
Before you start shaking your pitchforks in Bioware’s general direction, stop and give this some consideration: much like with the BETA stress test, they are looking to have smooth onboarding experiences for all the pre-ordered players. By adjusting the flow of early access invitations on a daily basis, they can moderate the flow of new players into the game, and hopefully minimize queues and server downtime. Yes, we’re all salivating and ready for this game to come out already, but can you imagine how upset everyone would be if we all got early game access on the 13th and had day long login queues, servers with unplayable lag, and crashed the forums?
For more details around Early Game Access, check out www.swtor.com/early-access
As folks were digesting Early Game Access starting two days earlier than expected, we were also hit with a number of updates around the transition from Early Game Access to launch:
- No grace period. Once the early access closes 10 p.m. ET on 12/19, you may not play the game again until you have your game code in hand and enter it into your profile on swtor.com.
- Earlier European release. EU folks can pick up SWTOR in their local retailers starting on 12/15. Quite a change from them initially getting SWTOR a few days post North American launch!
- Origin orders also earlier than expected. Digital orders for #SWTOR from http://Origin.com will be emailed Game Codes starting December 16, 2011.
Personally, I ordered the regular old SWTOR pre-order, with game day delivery from Amazon. I hope that unlike my Wrath of the Lich King pre-order, the SWTOR box will arrive before 8 p.m. on launch day. *crosses fingers* If I’d known that Origin orders would be able to validate their accounts early, I would have definitely gone that route. I’ll definitely keep that in mind for future game expansions, should I again decide to not pony up the cash for the CE.
TL&DR: In less than a week, you and/or your friends are going to start playing Star Wars the Old Republic!
Inquisitor's Roadhouse 
I’m kinda glad then that after cancelling the CE pre-orders I went with Origin for my digital delux.
I think we went with Best Buy for Fyn’s CE. She can’t stand missing out on a pet, so we’ll see how long I get to play before she does.
It will be interesting to see where the 3 of us shake out between amount of time for early access through to when we have launch code in hand. I am crossing my fingers things go smoothly for the physical copies! And I will definitely consider purchasing any subsequent expansions from Origin. Unless the CE involves a pet I absolutely must have… 🙂
I’ve worked in ops for a decade and am glad to see this rollout is going to be managed this way. Imagine if everyone got the game the same day and put the disk in at the same time you have a charlie foxtrot on your hands (*cough*mw3elite*cough*).
I think we’ll still have queues, but I think this process will diminish the possibility of servers being crushed.
The staggered access will be nice from both a login/queue and a leveling aspect too. It sucks when you hit a leveling area at the same time as everyone else and watch the screen slideshow past you. Of course, the way they instanced the origin worlds worked really well too, but since you can’t do that throughout the game, ensuring you’ll slowly but surely build your way up to the initial max population would seem to be the best thing to do for the players, even though folks who don’t get in to Early Access on the 13th, or have a gap between early access end and obtaining their physical copy are all going to be unhappy on some level. But it makes sense to me from an operational, big picture perspective.
I actually curse/praised Stephen Reid on twitter about the earlier early access. By moving it up to the 13th it is like Bioware doesn’t want me to do anything to prep for the holidays. But the longer Early access is it will help alleviate a lot of the launch issues you see in mmos, and hopefully a good launch means a good game.