If you live in a region not getting SWTOR on launch, then you might be wondering what’s going to happen for you. When will you get to play? Can you pre-order from the US and play anyway? Will there be restrictions? How bad will lag be? What about avoiding spoiler content until you get the game?
Oh yes, EA/Bioware opened a whole new can of worms with this one and there are a lot of opinions about it and whether or not they made the right choice. Games.on.net had a few things to say about this news and some launch predictions of their own.
“What a dog’s breakfast. EA, one of the largest publishers in the world, is sitting on an MMO that, in their own words, has broken their all time pre-order records. Meanwhile, Blizzard lounges in their gilded tower, confidently unworried but surely casting a furtive glance in EA’s direction. After all, Star Wars is no small fry IP and BioWare is known for producing top-notch RPG content.”
Their article also touches on the WoW-killer references being made about SWTOR, “Blizzard must be laughing into their truffle soup at the fact that EA isn’t confident enough to launch the game worldwide.”
Good points. Many have said why would a game with such an enormous budget and expected popularity lack the means for a world-wide release at launch? BioWare has said it’s because they want to give the best performance possible at launch. But will there be consequences to such a choice?
Games.on.net says:
“Another consequence (of more concern to them than to us) is that a large number of physical copies from an ostensibly limited launch pool will be denied US, Canadian and EU players, as they sail instead across fair seas to Australia and the broader Oceanic region. Whether or not this will greatly affect the launch experience can only be guessed at.
Australian players will, due to the tyranny of distance, be half a day out of whack with prime US gaming time. For many other MMOs, this often results in us playing during low population and/or server maintenance times. We can’t imagine that US players will be too happy with an influx of overseas players and their concordant lag. Aussies who aren’t night owls or don’t have strong international social ties will likely need to band together on foreign servers. This presents another problem for when the game eventually launches here. Will you continue with your invested characters or abandon them to restart on (hopefully) closer servers and with a brand new launch audience?”
You can read the full write-up on their website. If you live in one of these areas that is not getting the pre-release or initial launch release of TOR, tell us what you think. Do you agree with these launch predictions? Do you think BioWare made a mistake or was this the right move?
