With a triumphant wrapup to their beta testing program, Bioware wound down SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) until (early) release. Dozens of players gathered in the casinos to party, socialize, and just vent/cheer as per the party announcement below:
Although the devs didn't show up on Leviathan where I was personally raising hell in the last few hours of the game the crowd was electric and letting loose.
In true gamer geekdom fashion I stripped off my clothing and sold them to buy Jukebox tokens to get a rocking toon on the Cantina jukebox going for the crowd to dance to. I figured out that I can dance with my lightsabre (glowing yellow and black after inserting the pre-order crystal in it) and instructed the crowd to get naked and "whip out their weapons". It only took a bit for a sea of lightsabers to appear.
Seeing my half naked Sith Sorceror in tighty whities makes me wonder why no manly loincloth or at least Sith badged boxers LOL!
The one hour notice appeared and the noooooooooo and awwwwwwwwww comments were flying!
One user named Supafly keep yelling racial epitaphs but we just shrugged him off in order to not spoil the mood! The crowd kept getting larger and larger as we invited the other 2 DK instances to come to DK1!
A brief hiccup followed by a screen freeze and the game booted me out. Frantically trying to get back in to enjoy the festivities, I could not log back on my character. Oh no....either my character was ditching me like a nerdy wallflower for the party or the game still thought I was logged in.
Logging out and back in again soon brought a remedy to this situation and my half naked Sith Sorc appeared in the character selection screen.
The feverish pace continued and the thirty minute warning appeared.
The crowd starting thinning out a bit as a few people said their goodbyes and praised Bioware. As usual there were a few naysayers in the crowd who had negative game comments. We wrote them off to non-force sensitive fanboys of other MMOs who knew the writing was on the wall and SWTOR was here to stay to set the standard for MMOs. No amount of gimmicks or Panda love would bother us Sith party animals!
My ancient video card (soon to be replaced....welcome to donations LOL) was keeping up with the festivities and the last patch made the game smoother even for my antique 1650x. The connections was showing 44ms and even with all this partying it was only 10-15ms slower than my usual ping response.
More people signed off and echoed the desire to make SWTOR the best online Star Wars gaming environment ever. Comparisons to SWG had stopped after months of testing and fans applauded the efforts and creativity of Bioware in this MMO.
The 15 minute warning appeared and people were becoming more dismayed at the fact that their new world would be unavailable until Early Access/Release.
Knowing they would have an absence from their newly found colleagues hilarious comments ensued.
Billy Mays jokes were very popular. Luckily with the unwanted negative fanboys gone they also took with them the Chuck Norris and Your Mama comments.
The party died with a blip at 103AM EST. At least the SWTOR splash screen appeared with the familiar blue spinning graphic. Thats better than any Soprano blackout screen anyday. I felt the pain of thousands of Sith as if they all cried out at once. Being Sith I embraced this pain and it's passion. :-)
Attempting to log back in worked but as expected (yet sadly) all the servers showed OFFLINE status.
The public beta test is now complete and the lucky ones will get into Early Access on the first day. Having a hiccup with my reseller I did not receive a code till later than most and hope to have at least a few days of play time before the floodgate opens. (Note: Bioware please feel free to put me in the first day.)
Throughout the entire beta the Bioware staff (both forum mods and support staff) were receptive, prompt, caring, and extremely professional. Responses to support e-mails were returned fast as the programming on the protocol droids that run the support department is top notch.
Bioware has a hit on their hands here and I foresee many years of gaming enjoyment for fans both young and old in this pre-movie Star Wars universe. For the Empire!!!
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