If you have IGN Prime you'll also get an invite.

I applied, but the invite came on the same day as Skyrim.

Sorry Bioware, should have been quicker.

Bioware send me one through my account:

"You've been invited to the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta.

Your beta key is : 59UP-YPUP-KZEP-NXSW

To be invited into the upcoming test you must redeem the code by 11:59pm on Friday, November 18th, 2011 at:
http://www.swtor.com/redeembetacode/

Once the test date is set you will receive an email from the SWTOR team with instructions on how to start participating in the beta."

I don't know if anyone can use this, but feel free to try.

Edit: Please post if the key has been redeemed, so others know.

I got a key, and was initially interested. Then I remembered the whole EA/origin thing and decided 'f them' and let it slide.

I've followed their handling of WAR and have 0 faith in the company as a whole to handle a MMO properly, not because I don't understand that they had their focus on TOR all along regardless of WAR, but because it's obvious that they'll drop support for a MMO in a heartbeat if it doesn't prove to have initial success.

Nothing happened at all in WAR that warranted a monthly sub, it's like 3 years of subscription fees just vanished into thin air, because it certainly never went back into WAR. There's free MMO's with a few developers that get more development than that game did.

What's WAR? (I don't play MMO, so I don't get all the acronyms)

If I remember correctly, Mythic is responsible for WAR while BioWare develops SWTOR.

Used that thing up. Thanks, mate.

Warhammer Online/Warhammer Age of Reckoning.


Somewhat true, and I'm not directly laying the blame on Bioware, although Mythic has been under their care for a while now: My comment is more about being part of EA, being a single MMO under a publisher that handles countless games, they've already proven with WAR that if a game/MMO turns out to be less than well received, they'll simply drop it to the wayside like it never happened. It's painfully obvious that they simply shut the inflow of investment/reinvestment into WAR and shut it down almost completely very shortly after release.
3 Years with a single zone expansion, bug-fix/balance patches that often broke more than they fixed, and an endless pulling of features (scenario's/forts) only to bring them back later as if it were new content. And not a single real expansion. For the high profile MMO that WAR was and the sub fee it demands monthly, this is pretty abysmal.

I think they have given up on WAR. I was really optimistic and pre-ordered it but it turned out to be rather average MMO.
Personally I'm waiting for W40K.

I think you're getting crossed information, that sounds like the plan for early access for preorder customers, not the stress test beta. If anything it'd be counterproductive for a stress test to have a staggered launch
If thats a moral objection then fair enough, if you don't want to install it then don't worry, you don't need the origin client even if you BUY the game on origin, the game is completely seperate from itIt is if you're pretty sure you're getting the game, they're saying that this is close enough to the final build that you should be able to just update it to the full version

Marketing stunt... 'nuff said.

Marketing stunt or stress test? If the servers fail now they can say "well it was a test, the real game doesn't release for a month." If it works they have an idea of how much load they can handle. There is a reason beyond marketing to have as many people as you can test something before you officially release it.

There is, but given how these always go, and the fact that MMO servers always melt down on release week regardless of stress tests, I'm going with marketing stunt.

They already know what server capacity they need for this particular title anyway, it has a massive number of pre-orders.

Unless they wanted to test how a staggered launch would go.
I wasn't getting the game originally and just wanted to try it out, but I found it entertaining enough that I decided to preorder it. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll be paying the sub 12 months a year just to play, which seems to be the automatic assumption a lot of folks make when it comes to MMOs.