• Pre-Order Rise of the Hutt Cartel Expansion Today

    This morning, visitors to the Star Wars: The Old Republic Official Website found a new addition to the swtor.com/buy page, most notably, a pre-order section for the new expansion -- Rise of the Hutt Cartel. The page reveals details regarding price, content, and how to pre-order. For those that do not care to visit it themselves, here is what you need to know.

    • Coming in Spring 2013
    • Subscribers can buy the expansion for 50% off the regular price off $19.99 making it $9.99.
    • Preordering entitles you to Five days of Early Access if pre-ordered by January 7, 2013 11:59PM CT / 5:59AM GMT
    • Increased level cap by five levels to a total of 55 which include new story based missions
    • Includes story on the Hutt Cartel and the new planet Makeb

    Included on the page is a new FAQ about the new expansion. In it, there is a pretty lengthy description of what players can expect.

    BioWare

    Face off against a frightening new enemy on the brand new planet of Makeb as you battle the nefarious Hutt Cartel and its massive new creatures and weapons of destruction. The Hutt Cartel has emerged from the shadows to challenge the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire for control, unleashing never-before-seen Droids and monstrous battle stations to serve as powerful weapons of destruction. As a player, you will be forced to take a side as you earn new weapons, armor, abilities and more.

    To pre-order the new expansion, head over to the announcement page.

  • 48-Hour Grace Period for Early Game Access Players

    BioWare just posted an announcement concerning the on-then-off-again grace period for Star Wars: The Old Republic early game access players. Coming directly from BioWare co-founders Dr. Greg Zeschuk and Dr. Ray Muzyka, BioWare will be allowing those in early game access up to 48 hours to redeem their product registration code for their physical and digital copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

    You can read the full DevTrack post past the jump.

  • Early Access Launch Coverage

    With today’s start of Early Access, Darth Hater will go all out with a spree of content for Star Wars: The Old Republic fans. Starting bright and early at 6AM Central, live stream coverage of the beginning of Early Access will commence. In order to support our live stream coverage in the coming week, we now have a dedicated page which users can access via the top navigation bar or by going to darthhater.com/live.

    On top of the live stream coverage, we will report any undocumented changes from the last build. There will also be plenty of content coming out throughout the day and week from guides to video to editorial pieces and more. Make sure to keep an eye out for recent changes to our database, as we will add to it throughout the week. We would also like to remind our viewers of our contest and to post content to the database for your chance to win some swanky Logitech process. With your help in this products, we can make our database a place for the community to call home. As we approach launch, content will come out at lightspeed but do not fear, a round up post of all of the guides and post release content will keep everything in one place for the convenience of readers.

    With that, we invite you to join us in this rush to launch, it is sure to be a fun one.

    UPDATE: Official server list along with their status is now online.

    UPDATE 2: The fifth and final wave of invites for today has been sent out as of 2:30PM ET. Note that it could take some time before the email actually arrives so the best way to see if you've gotten in is by launching the client and checking if the Play button is enabled.

    UPDATE 3: Stephen Reid took to the Official Forums with a post highlighting the status and goals of the Early Access program. 

    UPDATE 4: The database has been updated with the latest information, including a complete list of Flashpoints and Operations, updated missions, and the Talent Calculator tooltips now reflect correct values.

    UPDATE 5: All Early Access invite waves have been sent for both Tuesday and Wednesday. Invites for Early Acces on Thursday will begin bright and early at 8AM CST.

    UPDATE 6: Waves are now completed for Thursday's invites. Wave now includes redeemed pre-order codes up to December 7th preorders from reports of users. A server/site maintenance is set for Friday at  2AM CST (8AM GMT/9AM CET).

    UPDATE 7: Waves started going out again Friday morning inviting even more players to the game. Along with the new invite waves, six new servers are now online:

    • East Coast PvE - The Constant
    • East Coast PvE - Krayiss Obelisk
    • East Coast PvE - Kathol Rift
    • West Coast PvE - Wall of Light
    • West Coast PvE - Darth Sion
    • West Coast PvE - Kaiburr crystal

  • Curse Interview with James Ohlen

    In the midst of the excitement of early access beginning tomorrow, Curse had an opportunity to speak with James Ohlen, Creative Director for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Among the topics discussed are queue times during early access, the launch events around the world, some of the high priority items for post-launch enhancements to the game and a teaser about improvements to the space game.

    Video embed is after the jump. 

  • SWTOR Early Access Starts December 13

    BioWare's Courtney Woods has just announced on the official forums that the game is now available for pre-load to anyone who has redeemed their pre-order code. Check out the Dev Tracker quote below, or visit the official site for the full announcement. Stephen Reid also clarified the announcement on Twitter, and notified the community that the Early Access section of the Preorder FAQ had changed.

    In addition to moving the start of Early Access up to December 13th, the FAQ notes that there will be no "grace period" for preorder purchases; when Early Access ends (just before launch at 12:01 AM EST on 12/20), the servers will go down for a short time, and when they come back up all players will be required to enter a Product Registration Code in order to continue playing. Check out the FAQ for more details, and look for quotes from Stephen Reid after the jump.

    UPDATE: You can now preload the game if you pre-ordered by visiting the SWTOR official website and following the instructions listed in this post.

  • Thanksgiving Beta Game Client Will Patch to Release Client

    Stephen Reid confirmed via Twitter that the Star Wars: The Old Republic testers from the Thanksgiving Beta Weekend will be able to be patch their game client for Early Game Access and Release. As such, players should keep their game installation in tact on their computers. For players who tested the game prior to November 25th, however, Mr. Reid recommends a clean installation of the game client.

    Read on for the direct quotes from Stephen Reid.

  • SWTOR Available for Pre-Order Now



    At approximately 10pm PT, several sites including MMORPG.com, WoWWiki.com, WoWHead.com, etc. all sported new ads for Star Wars: The Old Republic pre-orders. Each ad had the same identifierand lead to a dead page on SWTOR.com. Pre-orders became available shortly after midnight via the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website and various retailers.

    Pre-Order Options:

    • Star Wars: The Old Republic Collector's Edition ($149.99) - Pre-Order Exclusive: Early Game access, Color Stone (virtual item), 30 Days Game Time included Limited Collector's Edition Includes: Exclusive Gentle Giant Darth Malgus statue, Game disks collectible metal case, The Journal of Master Gnost-Dural as annotated by Satele Shan, The Old Republic galaxy map, Custom Security Authentication Key, Music of Star Wars: The Old Republic CD, High-quality Collector's Edition box.
      Includes 7 Additional Digital Items: Flare Gun, Training Droid, HoloDancer, HoloCam, STAP, Exclusive Mouse Droid, Exclusive Collector's Edition Store

    • Star Wars: The Old Republic Digital Deluxe Edition ($79.99) - Pre-Order Exclusive: Early Game access, Color Stone (virtual item), 30 Days Game Time included. Includes 5 Additional Digital Items: Flare Gun, Training Droid, HoloDancer, HoloCam, STAP.

    • Star Wars: The Old Republic Standard Edition (Digital & Physical) ($59.99) - Pre-Order Exclusive: Early Game access, Color Stone (virtual item), 30 Days Game Time included.


    Minimum System Requirements:

    • OS - Windows XP, Vista/7

    • CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2.0GHz or better

    • RAM - Windows XP: 1.5GB Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB PCs using a built-in graphical chipset, 2GB RAM recommended.

    • Video - ATI X1800 or better* nVidia 7800 or better* Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better*

    • DVD-ROM - 8x or better *Minimum of 256MB of on-board RAM and Shader 3.0 or better support.


    Make sure to take a look at the FAQ. Official DevTracker post follows the jump.

    Update: Electronic Arts detailed "Beta Test Weekends" in a press release.