SWTOR launches: now it’s our turn

It’s hard to believe it’s more than three years since Star Wars: The Old Republic was officially announced to be in development. For those who’ve been following progress since that time (we’ve been covering SWTOR since June 2009), it’s been both a long wait and a fascinating journey seeing how things have evolved to now. It all comes to a head at 4.01pm AEDT / 6.01pm NZDT when SWTOR launches after a short shutdown (already underway) at the end of early game access.

It’s obviously a big milestone for Bioware / EA, but it’s also a significant one for players outside the initial launch territories of the US and parts of Europe. Once the game is officially underway, the countdown starts for an official local launch.It may still be months away (my total guess is March or April 2012), but on the assumption that the game does launch worldwide, it’s an event drawing closer.

At TOROZ we get emails most days from people stating local retailers are claiming a first quarter of 2012 launch, but most of that is probably just conjecture, although it’s hard to envisage why other launch territories wouldn’t follow more than a few months after the US/Europe launch.

For those who’ve ordered their copies from overseas and actually received them, don’t forget to have your account fully set up by the end of the 48-hour grace period. For the rest, be as patient as you can be and try to remember that in a few months all the difficulties in ordering and accessing the game should be a distant memory.

Over to you: will you be doing anything special for launch?

UPDATE: local launch for Australia and New Zealand has now been announced.