Bioware clarifies Early Game Access for SWTOR

Bioware community manager Stephen Reid has taken to the official forums to clarify how Early Game Access will work for those who pre-ordered Star Wars: The Old Republic.

According to Reid's post, nothing has changed at Bioware headquarters regarding the Early Access since pre-orders were announced in July; however, he still felt the need to clear things up a bit.

"Everyone who pre-orders Star Wars: The Old Republic and redeems their pre-order code will get Early Game Access," he said. "Those who do this will be able to download the game client and play the game ahead of the release date.

"While we aren't ready to talk about the exact timing of when Early Game Access starts (that depends on a number of factors including Game Testing and pre-order numbers), we'll announce that before the start date. Our planning accounts for allowing people to download the client before the Early Game Access start date, too."

Reid goes on to state that when players will gain admittance to Early Game Access will be determined on a first-come, first-served basis depending on when said person registered their pre-order code.

"While we understand all of you want to be in Early Game Access on Day One, part of the point of a head start program like this one is to allow us to gradually ramp up the population of our servers so that on launch day, the general play experience is as pleasant as possible," he said. "While we're going to be allowing a lot of people into Early Game Access at regular intervals, we cannot allow everyone who pre-orders in at once. That would defeat the point of a gradual head start.

"The next obvious question is: 'I pre-ordered on Day X, when do I get access?' While we cannot answer that for everyone, I will say (as I did in July) that those who pre-ordered early will be getting Early Game Access, well, earliest. At this point we still have pre-orders available and therefore, anyone who pre-orders will still gain Early Game Access, but as they're redeeming their code later, they'll get Early Game Access later. As I've said before the difference between 'early' and 'later' should be a matter of days, not weeks."

Hopefully this cleared things up a bit for some, and didn't totally discourage others.

SWTOR is out in December.