A small portion of joy was handed out to Oceanic SWTOR players overnight, with the announcement that game testing invites have gone out to selected Australian and New Zealand players.
More specifically, it’s a time-limited test of the Californian data centre which will be the main point Oceanic players access the game. The direct info from Allison Berryman:
This test is a small, limited-time test including testers from New Zealand and Australia. Data from this test will be used to inform decisions about the launch of the game in Oceanic regions. We currently have no updates regarding the launch of the game in these or other territories, but will provide information as it becomes available.
So for those invited, enjoy! If you haven’t got an invite then you won’t at this stage as all invites for this specific test have been sent.
Here’s a prediction though: testers will be at least happy and possibly pleased with the ping times i.e. they’ll probably be incredibly similar to say World of Warcraft where ping times of under 300ms are the norm usually. If that ends up being the case then we have a very playable game (PvP’ers need not flame me with diatribes of how 300ms = death in PvP).
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Overjoyed to report I got the invite email this morning and am at this moment downloading the client. A surprising but very welcome development!
I would say you can probably expect a solid ping of 250ms from Melbourne. Just saying……
And that is to East Coast servers, not west coast.
Wicked news! Didn’t get in.. but at least BioWare are obviously thinking ’bout us! 😀
Of course, it’s worth mentioning that a fair number of Oceanic gamers have been in beta for some time, particularly since guild testing started. ie; Oceanic members of US guilds that got into guild testing, went along for the ride, too. So this isn’t the first group of Aussies to be testing the game by a long shot.
That’s absolutely right, which is why we covered that separately over the weekend and on the podcast 😉
Yep just got the invite to the limited test, have my address listed as Australia.
Hopefully this means they are rethinking the Oceanic launch and we might actually be included officially in December. Plus they probably realize half of us have ordered through Amazon and other places already so there really isn’t much point trying to keep us out.
yeah well you guys are lucky i didnt get a invite girlfreind is happy about it though lol
Received my invite this morning, was very surprised after being told ‘No, you Aussies aren’t getting this at Launch.’
Happy though, 300~ms ping is negligible and is more than suitable for a good gaming experience. See you all online!
Can someone confirm the ping speeds?
My post above may or may not be confirmation that may or may not be based on personal experience.
i payed during the testing weekend, my latency was a solid 175 – 190ms the whole time – from melbourne south east suburbs with bigpond ADSL 2+
i was in the beta weekend, from melbourne south east suburbs, i was getitng a latency of 175 – 190ms, never really went any higher so it exceeded my expectations