More on EU testing

A post on Twitter by @RockJaw points to this forum post about EU testing:

Some of you may have seen Stephen's update on Twitter with regards to the EU invites. Further to this, due to a number of issues with key systems, it may be early next week before we send the next batch out.

The systems in question are necessary to get players in-game once you've received the invites, so we need to make sure these issues are resolved before inviting more testers.

Again, as Stephen mentioned - there is still a chance the invites could go out today, but as it stands, early next week is looking more and more likely. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause, including any broken F5 keys, or Birthdays that we may miss.

This was posted Friday, so I guess this means the wave of EU Game Testing invites may be out early the coming week, which is not so bad anyway. Of course they are not likely to be in the order of 100 thousand, so very many EU folks who are signed up will not get in. Personally, I am far more hoping for a slot in the Beta Testing Weekends, although we have no word yet as to when EU folks will get invites for that.

MMORPG.com has interviewed James Ohlen and Gabe Amantangelo and posted it online. There is much talk of PvP, interesting if you are into that sort of thing, and some nuggets about replayability via alting. Sith and Republic characters have totally different quests, but reroll on the same faction and things will be familiar:

However if you decide to play a Bounty Hunter and then play a Sith Warrior, your origin worlds will be completely different, and then once you get to the capital world the content sort of “blends” together. Your class content is going to be completely different, but the smaller side quests will be shared by all.

I guess this will be ok or sucky depending on how much the class quest actually takes up of your total questing. They go on to say you can skip zones or quests, so you can minimize repeating content. But this won't work for your 5th alt.

No one has pressed Bioware about grouping up with two different classes either. There was some talk that you would have to travel to a different planet than your starter one to group with a friend who has a different class, in the lower levels. But maybe at higher levels our class quests all take place on the same planets, and so we can group up, doing one person's quests then the others. I guess in this respect, having non-class quests actually helps, as everyone in the same zone is usually on the same set of quests, and grouping becomes easy.

Beta testing weekends info

Stephen Reid has posted more information about the SWTOR beta testing weekends, starting today, on twitter. Unfortunately it was confirmed that the NDA will stay, so testers won't be shouting about it, or sadly posting any new information online.

SWTOR-Life has compiled the twitter responses, into a handy beta weekend info post. EU folks such as myself are not in the invites, and they are picking from random out of those who signed up on Swtor.com. Reid did say a lot of invites will be going out to EU folks "soon" for regular game testing, so there is still hope. Otherwise maybe the next weekend invites will include Europe. Save us from waiting until Holiday 2011, Stephen. You are our only hope!

The MMO Report ft The Old Republic

The MMO Report has made a PAX special, featuring The Old Republic at 7 minutes 25 seconds in.

They talk about hutt ball, operation eternity vault, open world PvP and beta.

Beta testing weekends start... this weekend!

The most exciting news from PAX Prime was that the Beta Testing weekends start this weekend, September 2nd. Darth Hater has the notes from the developer presentation where they announced it, and Massively is where I spotted the news first.

Now there is some discussion over whether this is US only, or US and EU, or world wide. From what @RockJaw has said, the beta testing weekends are a weekend pass with time to download before the servers open. Now the US will get in first, with the EU following "soon" which I hope to mean the weekend of September 9th.

The beta test weekend is just that, only the weekend, so you'll need to carve out some serious free time if you get chosen, with potentially only 3 days to play. I mean test. Yeah test.

I am also not sure if those testing will be under NDA, or whether the internets is about to let rip with a massive flood of TOR screenshots, impressions and videos. One can only hope so.

Even under NDA so you can't tell anyone anything, the chance to "test" for even an evening is too good to pass up, so I (along with everyone else) will be keenly watching my inbox. Then not nothing about anything.