SWTOR, 2nd Beta Weekend Nullified

**Dr. Doom** · 09-09-2011

As the title says, the 2nd SWTOR Beta Weekend has been cancelled/nullified, whichever you prefer to call it. Rockjaw, the alias for Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager for SWTOR, laid some heavy news on the community forum announcing that there was not going to be a Beta Weekend this weekend. Rockjaw has shattered the hopes and dreams of the anxious millions! Those of you who were hoping for a beta key this weekend, that is now out of the question as well. During the announcement they also said future Beta Weekends are simply not guaranteed. I'm sure they went a head and said "not guaranteed" because it takes some weight off developments shoulders and doesn't let the fans get their hopes up. Here is the announcement made to the public:

Hello all,
There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we’re not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.
Further to that, as Chris Collins explained in another thread, we are about to roll out a major new build for The Old Republic That build won’t be ready for this weekend. Just as we did not feel it was a good decision to ask potential EU testers to download our client only to have to download it again, the same applies for this weekend.
That does not mean, however, that as soon as our new build is available we’ll be rolling out a Beta Testing Weekend immediately. As with any new build of the game, we need to get feedback from internal testing and our ongoing Game Testing program before rolling it out to a massive audience. That process takes a while, and that time varies depending on how testing goes.
We rolled out this previous weekend as a relatively small scale event; from now we will do bigger and bigger events, but that doesn’t mean it happens every weekend. When we do resume, we’ll be inviting many more people in.
While many of you are excited and anxious to know what’s happening regarding Testing Weekends, I want to point out that a lot of posts on the subject with a lack of corresponding posts from us does not mean that we’re not listening, or not aware of your interest. It shows your interest in the topic, which is understandably high, but we will not always be able to react instantaneously.
In the past couple of days we’ve been preparing a comprehensive FAQ regarding Game Testing Weekends as a whole, along with some details about the weekend that just happened. We’ll post that tomorrow – in all languages, as we know the subject is of interest to everyone.

Apparently there is a new major build being added to the game, and requires a new patch or installer, something along those lines. Supposedly what all testers currently have is an obsolete build of the game, so there's going to be a new release. The community was promised Beta Weekends every weekend when SWTOR had their presence at PAX.

At this point in time, our user "Mighty Bear" might be onto something, concluding that SWTOR may be hurting itself. This is an article that can be added to one of those reasons. There has been speculation as to the release date being pushed back because of this. The EU testing is also being held up for whatever reason, meaning a further release date for them as well. Stephen Reid said there weren't going to be any Beta Weekends until further notice, ouch.

I understand development of a game is very important, but pulling the communities strings like puppets isn't one way to handle a situation. There will definitely be some major rumors after everyone hears about this and complains on the forums, trying to speculate on things they have no power over. This was just a quick article to keep people up to date that are interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic, thanks for reading!

**Confucius** · 09-09-2011

Like someone on swtor forums said, bioware knows we are starwars addicts and not going anywhere and at this point they are toturing us for their sick pleasure.