Our fearless Reid leader is standing by. I think Mr. Reid will be quite busy this holiday season.
Well TORWarriors, the long-awaited day is upon us. Tonight, Star Wars: The Old Republic is officially launching! In preparation for this huge event, Stephen Reid has been tweeting away, keeping us in the know.
One of his most recent tweets points us to an official launch reminder post on swtor.com. The post details server downtimes, the addition of new servers, as well as server selection tips for new players. No matter what, the servers are coming down soon. Use your downtime wisely folks, because your future downtime will likely be TOR related. So, play with your kids, wrap those Christmas gifts, eat food, take a shower etc. Basically, all the things you’ve been neglecting since early access began. Personally, my CE will arrive shortly, so I know what I’ll be doing while I wait for the servers to come back online.
Below is the official post, and of course, let us know what you’ll be doing until the servers come back up, and TOR is officially a go. See you in TOR!
Tonight at 12:01AM EST we are officially launching Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.
This is a huge moment for everyone – both the fans and those who created the game. Thanks for being part of the experience so far, and we look forward to running the best game service we can for years to come.
Tonight, we are bringing the servers down for maintenance as we prepare for launch, as previously mentioned. Both the game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline from 6PM CST (4PM PST/7PM EST/12AM GMT/1AM CET) to 11PM CST (8PM PST/12AM EST/5AM GMT/6AM CET).
As well as bringing the existing game servers back online, from 11PM CST onwards we’ll be bringing up a large number of new servers, spread across all three of our server locations (US West Coast, US East Coast and Europe). As always, every server is open and available to anyone playing – just select your preferred location (US / Europe) from the tab at the bottom of the server select screen.
Even with these additional servers we are expecting queues on the most popular servers, and these queues are likely to persist for a while yet. We are monitoring them closely and raising population caps where necessary, however this is a careful process that is ongoing. Our servers do not have unlimited populations and we want every server to have a healthy population during and after launch.
If you are joining the game for the first time during this launch period, or if you are looking for a lower population server to play on, now is the best time to create a character on a new server. We would strongly advise anyone joining the game to not attempt to create a new character on a server that is listed as ‘Full’, unless you are comfortable with the potential for queues to enter the server.
Finally, don’t forget that after tonight’s downtime, you are entering a ‘grace period’ in which you will need to enter your final product registration code (AKA ‘game code’) from your copy of the game (or your email from Origin), along with your preferred payment method, to activate your 30 days of game time. You can redeem your game code here.
As another reminder, we’ll be taking down the game servers and SWTOR.com at the end of that ‘grace period’ at 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET), the early hours of December 22nd. When the servers come back up at that time, you will need a product registration code redeemed on your account to continue playing. To ensure you can continue to play, make sure you redeem your code as soon as possible.
We’re getting ready for launch – we hope you are too. We look forward to seeing you online!
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You know what? I’m going to take this opportunity to spend some time with my family, I already had the chance to play so now others can attempt to get some time too. The next few days I’ll just watch the mayhem from afar.
Tonight Iwill be wrapping presents and coming up with new leftover surprise dinner. Then early to bed. After last week I need sleep.
ah kay. so wth does “grace period” mean to BW? because this quote from SR:
“Finally, don’t forget that after tonight’s downtime, you are entering a ‘grace period’ in which you will need to enter your final product registration code (AKA ‘game code’) from your copy of the game (or your email from Origin), along with your preferred payment method, to activate your 30 days of game time. You can redeem your game code here.”
to my understanding implies a lack of understanding concerning what a grace period should entail. how the heck are we supposed to redeem product registration codes when we don’t have a physical copy (or our retailer didn’t give us our codes) in our hands? isn’t the entire purpose of a grace period to allow people to keep playing while they wait on their game (at least as long as the grace period lasts)?
please, someone explain to me that what SR wrote is the product of a seriously sleep-deprived person and there’s nothing to worry about.
What the grace period means is that after the servers come back up everyone has 48 hours to input the code from their SWTOR copy/email and set up a subscription method or else when the servers go back down after 48 hours you will be unable to log into the game. The grace period exists to allow those who still have not received their codes/physical copy 2 extra days after release that they can still play, attempting to prevent any loss of service.
I think it should also be mentioned though that your characters will NOT BE DELETED. Bioware has made no reference to characters being wiped if you do not put a code in, you simply will not be able to log in, and once you put said code in you will be able to access the game like normal.
So aparrently, I have to pay 15 bucks before I can play (setup a subscription) before I can play, when I thought I was going to get 30 days before I had to do that? Now I might not be able to play untill the 1st of January, when I get paid. This seems like a pretty punk move.
Never played an MMO before eh? This is standard practice for oh, at least 11 years. Quit whining or go do it on the official forums.
You get 30 days of play time with your purchase. You won’t be billed until that initial 30 days is up.
Yea, havent tried yet but if what darkjedi said is true, thats gonna be really unfair!
Yes bout Vapour, we have to enter a “Prefered Payment” credit card number, whos to say they dont try to charge up front, i would like to test it, but SWTOR is down atm, heh…
They definitely won’t charge you until the 30 days is up. Every subscription MMO I’ve played has made you enter CC info up front.
It is the same as any other game subscription. You get the 30 days but you have to have a preferred payment method to take over after the 30 days….it almost seems as if no has even played an mmo before O.o
It was great…..I got home from work… told my wife, “Honey…I’m going to spend some time with you and our son tonight. Watch something christmasy on TV… perhaps rent a movie… because I care, honey”
She smiled…ready to shower me with a grateful and surprised hug…
Then my 5 year old proclaims, “Yeah the servers are down til tomorrow!”
Dang kid! See if I let him go on any more space missions for me! (Well ok he DOES wrack up the exp and commendations for me)
That is golden, hahaha.
Seems weird to me that the Sentinel class dosent get any of these abilities swtor credits at http://www.swtorcreditus.com/. Sentinels back in the KOTR games were a balance of meele and force users. Seems to me that one of these spells would help the Sentinel in closing the gap after being knocked back stunned, broken stun and re snared stunned again. Also fits into the fact that they are supposed to be acrobatic and fast.