Star Wars: The Old Republic release date tied to beta feedback

Electronic Arts has revealed that the release date for its anticipated MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic is "definitely tied" to data the company receives from ongoing beta testing.

"We're driving toward a date," EA's Frank Gibeau said in a recent interview. "But the very issue you raised is why we're not announcing a date yet because you want to make sure that these services can last a decade."

"We don't want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed--we don't want that to happen," Gibeau told CVG, referencing technical issues that occurred when Blizzard launched World of Warcraft in 2004.

A "great launch" is essential, Gibeau says, noting that decisions on where to focus game polish comes from the feedback provided by testers.

"The other thing is, the technology of standing these things up and then getting all the server farms to work together, talk to one another, store character records... it's extraordinarily complex and so we want a very stable experience."

Gibeau says that EA is "totally focused" on quality, "so whatever the beta test tells us is what will be the determining variable on when we will hit."