14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts has once again confessed that it hopes to release Star Wars: The Old Republic this year, despite keeping gamers in the dark concerning a concrete launch date for the new online role playing game.
Star Wars: The Old Republic has been in development at BioWare for quite some time, and already excitement for it is reaching critical mass. The studio, together with Electronic Arts and LucasArts, have been promoting the title through videos as well as with the closed beta stage currently available to North American users and coming soon for Europeans.
Even so, many fans are beginning to run out of patience, so Electronic Arts' Chief Financial Officer, Eric Brown, has talked with GamaSutra about the potential release date for The Old Republic and how the company still can't say for sure when it's going to be ready to deploy it.
"We have a date set internally [for the fourt quarter of 2011], with a lot of assumptions around it," he said. "We're not done until we're done. ... We're not going to know with enough certainty to publicly announce a release date, until later this month or sometime in October," he concluded.
While many gamers are hoping to play Star Wars: The Old Republic by Christmas, EA is cautious about the release, and even factored in a delay into 2012 for the MMORPG into its financial strategy, so don't get your hopes too high just yet.
BioWare is hard at work ironing out the last issues with the full game, while a new versions of its beta stage is going to be deployed in Europe soon.
Until the online game's finally released, however, Star Wars fans are going to need to be patient. What's more, those outside Europe or North America are going to have to wait a longer time, as EA confirmed that it will be limiting the initial release to keep its servers from crashing or slowing down.