Welcome to the party...now commence with the slicing and dicing!
An update this evening on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic Web Site (and on the Facebook page) has announced a long-awaited Asia Pacific release date for the game. The Old Republic will finally be made available to customers in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore on March 1st, 2012 – a mere 16 days from today.
Much rejoicing and carousing is presumed to be under way in the above mentioned countries. Good on ya!
SWTOR.com Quote:
“BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce that Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will officially launch in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore on March 1st, 2012! Fans in these regions who purchase the game will be able to experience their very own Star Wars™ saga on regional servers. Players who have already begun their journey will also have a limited-time opportunity to migrate their characters from their current servers to Asia Pacific servers after the launch on March 1st, giving them the chance to take advantage of the decreased network latency by playing on a regional server. All players who qualify for a character transfer will be notified in early March with more details.
In the press release announcing the Asia Pacific launch date, General Manager of the BioWare Label’s MMO Business Unit and Co-Founder of BioWare Dr. Greg Zeschuk expressed appreciation for the patience of fans in the region:
Our biggest priority for The Old Republic has always been to deliver a high quality product and high quality service and we are pleased with our results in North America and Europe. We appreciate that our fans in these countries have been patient and we are excited to deliver this same great customer experience to players this March.”
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Hey, congrats Asia Pacific! By the time March 1 gets here, we should just about be done with beta testing for you!
Great News! You GO Bioware!
It’s awesome to see that they are not only doing oceanic servers but going to actually have them in Australia. Way to go EA/Bioware.
Free transfers is also a great way to support existing Aussie players as well, but it would be great to know more details about that.
According to the SWTOR Dev Tracker, they are providing server transfers for eligible players some time in March.
Not sure if they will be free, but let’s be honest, they don’t HAVE to be. Aussie players who jumped the gun and rolled toons on EU or US servers knew what they were getting in to–BW said all along they’d expand there. Asking for a free transfer is a bit like spending Commendations on an item, and then asking for a refund when a better item drops 3 months later.