They are definitely not beta testing, beta happens very close to launch, and there is no way they could keep it quiet because of the numbers of people involved in a beta.

Excellent podcast! I plan on following you guys for the foreseeable future, or at least until the game comes out

Also, I'm thinking they're gonna announce the launch date of the game. Call me a sucker, but I still believe in a late spring release. This is of course making the assumption that Bioware isn't sharing a lot of what it has finished.

Listening to it now. Another great show, guys. My prediction for release date is September 27, 2011 along with the Star Wars Blu-ray. The last two times Lucasfilm has released movies for home video, they have coordinated the release dates with video games in an effort to drain our wallets dry. The original trilogy was released on September 21, 2004 with Battlefront. Episode III was released side-by-side with Battlefront 2 on November 1, 2005. Anybody else think they'll follow the same pattern with blu-ray and TOR?

Welcome to the MER community Khurtz!

As far as release dates... It has long been speculated that it will be Q2 or later of Bioware's 2012 Fiscal Year. I did some research and here is what that translates into:

Q1 of Fiscal Year 2012 is April, May and June of 2011.
Q2 of Fiscal Year 2012 is July, August, September 2011.
Q3 of Fiscal Year 2012 is October, November, December of 2011.

I think there is even some comments out on the intrawebs that confirms a Q2 FY 2012 release (or later).

- Alan

i understand. i just keep asking that question to drive home the point of "we know nothing of how many people are in testing right now." im really adiment about this too. everyone has some complaint about how testing is right now, but we dont know how far testing goes (x amount of levels or to cap), we dont know what are they testing (pvp or pve)...

i mean on some wild thought line, maybe bioware told everyone they couldnt say they were in testing and really are currently beta testing right now? i know this is really a stretch but it proves my point even more, we know nothing about testing.

This would be a very covert and interesting tactic if that were the case. Just a random side question. Does anyone know of anyone personally that is "game testing"? I know its not something that they can go into much details about but I haven't ran across anyone that claimed to be a game tester. My point is I feel like if they were "beta" testing heavily at this point they would have a lot more testers involved in the process and you would hear about it. If bioware was doing covert beta testing though that would be surprising and I would be impressed that they had been able to keep such a tight lid on it.

Brooks...it is your job from now on to limit the amount of sugar Zach eats during the show to prevent a late show off the rails meltdown.


Though a Toydarian Trooper would be awesome. Flying. Shoots the huge oversized cannon and the recoil throws him back 40 meters.

i gotta say, id have new respect for any company that did this.

i used to talk to some1 in the official forums a few months back but he left cuz he got into testing, aside from that, and the occasional boast on the forums (not as many as youd expect) i dont know any1. its weird to me that so few people even say they are in it, cuz we know there are hundreds of people right now (atleast id assume since the way testing is written on the official page). idk, i feel that this discussion is just a long assumption, sadly.

on a side note, cuz this has been bugging me like crazy for the last hour:
im lookin for help on finding where to post questions for the q and a or atleast hoping bioware looks at this question (and your thoughts on it would be cool) : we know there are romantic interests in the game and i was wondering whether we will only see relations with the opposite sex or will you be able to have at least 1 member of both sexes as a potential romantic interest?

my reasons are simply freedom related btw, im not into male on male at all, but i liked dragon age for atleast putting that in there. i feel that this game is like dragon age in the fact that "this is your character" where as in mass effect your "playing commander shepard".

I do, actually. My roomate works at .com company and one of his nerdy work buddies got into "game testing" sometime before Thanksgiving, if I remember correctly. Not much to say, but a one off connection isn't so bad, right?

This Nerdy Work Buddy also resides in Chicago, just to give you an idea that it doesn't all happen around Austin.

Great podcast as usual, fellas. Brooks, you still need to come be on our show.

Release Date: Hmmm the later it gets in the year, the worse it will be for them to announce a pushback, so every day that ticks by, I'm thinking BioWare is still going to make its Spring Quarter target date. I'm thinking June. I will say, though, if Zach is right and they aren't going to release until September, then they had BETTER not announce that release date at PAX East with no warning. Huge buzzkill. Huge. I bet there would be some booing.

Playable species: I am with Daniel Erickson when he says don't expect a weird non-humanoid playable species because the logistics and cost would be unreasonable. I am not with him when he says players are incapable of relating to anything that doesn't look like a human. Unfortunately, it was the second reason he originally gave as the driving force behind the decision, and I think that caused a lot more unrest than if he had said, "Sorry, it's impractical. Twi'leks are making us crazy and we couldn't do that to the programmers again." His recent Dev Tracker post on the subject made a lot more sense, even though it didn't have an awesome sound byte about making out with Princess Leia.