Early access to Old Republic outlined

BioWare has explained how gamers will be able to play Star Wars: The Old Republic before its release date.

Anyone who pre-orders the upcoming PC online RPG will be able to redeem an ‘Early Game Access’ code online to download and play it ahead of its December 22nd launch in the UK.

When you actually gain admittance to Early Game Access, this will be determined in a first-come, first-served manner dependent on when you redeemed your pre-order code,” explained BioWare’s senior community manager Stephen Reid.

While we aren’t ready to talk about the exact timing of when Early Game Access starts, as that depends on a number of factors including testing and pre-order numbers, we’ll announce that before the start date.”

Reid went on to add that developer BioWare and publisher EA will take a staggered approach to letting players into the servers.

Part of the point of a head start program like this is to allow us to gradually ramp up the population of our servers so that on launch day, the general play experience is as pleasant as possible.

While we’re going to be allowing a lot of people into Early Game Access at regular intervals, we cannot allow everyone who pre-orders in at once. That would defeat the point of a gradual head start.”

BioWare announced the long-awaited release date of Star Wars: The Old Republic at the 2011 Eurogamer Expo last weekend. It will arrive in the US on December 20th and in Europe on December 22nd.

There will be a boxed version of the game as well as a downloadable version exclusive to EA’s new Origin platform.