Star Wars: The Old Republic early access info detailed

Users who pre-ordered Star Wars: The Old Republic will have early access to the game, based on when you redeem your pre-order code.

Explaining the process, BioWare community manager Stephen Reid wrote on the official Star Wars forum to say:

“Everyone who pre-orders Star Wars: The Old Republic and redeems their pre-order code will get Early Game Access. 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.

“However, when you actually gain admittance to Early Game Access will be determined in a first-come, first-served manner dependent on when you redeemed your pre-order code.”

BioWare will be doing this as part of the process of slowly introducing the population to the servers.

“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. 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.”

No date has been announced for when the select users will be granted early access to the game. The MMO launches for real on December 22.