Star Wars Old Republic Beta invites

SolvableKnave

Methionine wrote: »

Apparently weekend beta invites have started going out in the US as of yesterday for this weekend. It'll be a different bunch of invitees for each weekend. Do not know what the story is with EU testing, have read a rumour that a wave of full beta EU invites is going out soon, which will be testing against US servers.

For EU invites, the word is soon. From the info that the EU guy up in Galway has given, it's looking like a November release. They will eventually allow us to test on EU servers, but it kinda looks like the infrastructure just isn't ready at the moment, which is why we are testing on the US side.

seanbmc

Itching to try this game out, doubt I'll get an invite though.

TheDoc

Many a source confirming that there is due to be EU beta invites sent out today in a batch, keep an eye on those inboxes.

GHOST MGG2

nothing yet:-(

GarethBah

TheDoc wrote: »

Many a source confirming that there is due to be EU beta invites sent out today in a batch, keep an eye on those inboxes.

Stephen Reid said this on twitter, he said fingers crossed because people who got into the weekend beta are having problems downloading the client, but if the invites go out today good luck to all of you lets hope bioware gives us Irish some love

ZeitgeistGlee

Apparently there's been an issue with the EU beta (quelle surprise) and it might be a while before few see any beta invites sent out. Crossing my fingers I see something.

Raphael

Got my beta invite this morning, for that hugely hyped EA/Bioware MMO.

Yep, my Wrath of Heroes beta invite.

ZeitgeistGlee

You're an evil man Raph. (No beta invite for me yet )

ZeitgeistGlee

Supposedly EU beta invites are going out this morning (US time), so perhaps by 4pm or so lady luck might smile on some of us.

Raphael

...Great, now I'll be refreshing my inbox all day. Goodbye productivity.

ZeitgeistGlee

Based on watercooler it'll be later this evening, if not tonight that invites actually start going out so you might as well leave the F5 button alone for now.

Raphael

Everytime my phone has told me I have gotten an email today I have excitedly checked. It has not been a TOR beta invite. This is going to give me a coronary.

Ravage1616

Raphael wrote: »

Everytime my phone has told me I have gotten an email today I have excitedly checked. It has not been a TOR beta invite. This is going to give me a coronary.

Tell me about it! Just going to stop checking it and hope for the best!!

GHOST MGG2

my refresh button just died

ZeitgeistGlee

Originally Posted by ChrisCollins
As promised, we have an update on the batch of Game Testing invites being sent to players in the EU.

After a lengthy discussion here at the BioWare offices, the decision has been made to postpone the proposed Game Testing invites for EU players for a number of reasons.

Firstly, there’s a new build of the game on the horizon. This is a major build, meaning there will be character wipes and a new client to download. As you may be aware, the current client download is around 27GB in size. If we were to invite players en masse today, those players would have to download the entirety of the client to access the game. There’s every chance that later this week, the service will go offline and this new version will be rolled out, meaning everyone currently in Testing will have to not only download the entire client again (another 27GB download), but will also have their characters erased and have to start afresh. This is a relatively large amount to download in such a short space of time and not an experience we want new testers to be exposed to.

Secondly, this new build will bring about the first localised versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which means those of you that speak French and German will have the chance to play the game in those languages, for the first time ever. We’re extremely excited to be able to offer this to our players and as such, we’re keen to get a lot of feedback from European testers in particular.

For those of you that may have missed the messages we put out on the subject already, last week saw a number of issues arise with key systems that prevented us from sending out invites to EU players. Had everything gone to plan, we would have been able to offer two weeks of testing time to new users. However, given the issues that arose, this was physically not possible.

So while we understand that this news may not be what a lot of you wanted to hear today, we hope that you’ll understand our position. Given the news of this new build, it’s now more important than ever that we invite European players into the Game Testing environments, so you have my word that this batch of invites will happen, it may just mean you just have to wait a little longer.

It’s also important to remember this is just the beginning. In the future, we’ll be inviting more and more testers to the EU Game Testing environments as well as future Game Testing weekends. So even if you’re not invited to this next round of testing, there will still be plenty of chances to get involved.

As ever, as soon as I get any firm news around the matter, I’ll make sure to update everyone.

****ed over again, why am I not even in the least bit surprised. :rolleyes:

GHOST MGG2

balls..i nearly swallowed my contacts when i read that..typical:-(

ZeitgeistGlee

I just wish they'd told us this Friday (because there's no way this is something which only materialised this morning) instead of getting the EU community's hopes up that we'd actually get a chance to beta when promised.

Honestly I wouldn't care if I had to download two clients in the space of a week, that's why I got a ridiculously fast, high download limit broadband package in the first place.

Kiith

27gb download for a beta? Good luck with that...

Raphael

I imagine it was bureacracy - friday to yesterday afternoon was taken up by meetings and arguments over whether they should or not. That or the technical issue took longer to fix. I can understand the call they made, even though I'd have rathered they went the other way. Hopefully the new version drops this week or early next week.

ZeitgeistGlee

I don't know Raph, you're probably right but after all the debacles BioWare has had with non-NA communications I'm just not prepared to take them at their word any more.

SolvableKnave

SR:
Hello all,

There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we're not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.

Further to that, as Chris Collins explained in another thread, we are about to roll out a major new build for The Old Republic. That build won't be ready for this weekend. Just as we did not feel it was a good decision to ask potential EU testers to download our client only to have to download it again, the same applies for this weekend.

That does not mean, however, that as soon as our new build is available we'll be rolling out a Beta Testing Weekend immediately. As with any new build of the game, we need to get feedback from internal testing and our ongoing Game Testing program before rolling it out to a massive audience. That process takes a while, and that time varies depending on how testing goes.

We rolled out this previous weekend as a relatively small scale event; from now we will do bigger and bigger events, but that doesn't mean it happens every weekend. When we do resume, we'll be inviting many more people in.

While many of you are excited and anxious to know what's happening regarding Testing Weekends, I want to point out that a lot of posts on the subject with a lack of corresponding posts from us does not mean that we're not listening, or not aware of your interest. It shows your interest in the topic, which is understandably high, but we will not always be able to react instantaneously.

In the past couple of days we've been preparing a comprehensive FAQ regarding Game Testing Weekends as a whole, along with some details about the weekend that just happened. We'll post that tomorrow - in all languages, as we know the subject is of interest to everyone.

Raphael

Was expecting to see that after the EU announcement.

ZeitgeistGlee

Indeed, had they gone ahead with the NA beta weekend, it would have completely undermined their claim that the new client was the source of the EU betas delay.

Raphael

TBH, what occured to me during the week as the real reason they didn;t want to do it with the old client, is that:
A) Many of the bugs in it will be already addressed in new build, so they don't want a slew of reports on stuff they know about and
They won't be able to fix anything reported on until the build after anyways, so there's no real gain out of that week of beta.

Just seem like more likely reasons than "We want to deliver a quality experience"

Also, the fact that they're only just putting out a localised version now, and the tone in that post about beta weekends makes me pretty worried about release date...

ZeitgeistGlee

Yeah, I don't really mind waiting for the new client, my main problem has always been that BioWare has been so slow to reveal anything and usually it comes as a result for 1,000+ reply threads or Twitter as opposed to a single "Community Update" sticky. If indeed as you say they want to roll out the new client before any more testing because they've caught the majority of bugs present and want the next round of testing to find what they missed then that makes perfect sense and should be stated.

As I said over in the CE thread, GAME flat out told me to not expect the game before 2012.

Greylor

If this doesn't come out by the end of the year, there will be a riot.

ZeitgeistGlee

Greylor wrote: »

If this doesn't come out by the end of the year, there will be a riot.

I'd agree except for the fact BioWare have said that they haven't completely ruled out a 2012 release, it's simply aimed to be released for Holiday 2011. As things stand with beta however, and the quality of the updates we've received for the last two or three weeks, I think a lot of people are reconsidering just how unlikely 2012 is.

For their own sake, I really hope BioWare do open up to the community early if there is to be a delay, the game has already been pushed back twice and a third one, especially one which pushes it into the next calender year could make TOR look a lot less appetising to some. All I can say is if we do get it in January, I'd better be able to see my face reflected by the level of polish.

deconduo

Got in, downloading now

27GB is going to take a while.

Raphael

I'm disinclined to believe you, sir.

deconduo

Raphael wrote: »

I'm disinclined to believe you, sir.

My best friend works with Bioware in Galway so he got me in.