They want a ”gradual head start” to ensure a solid experience, which includes early access. Getting in depends on ”when you redeemed your pre-order code.”
”Everyone who pre-orders Star Wars: The Old Republic and redeems their pre-order code will get Early Game Access. Those who do this will be able to download the game client and play the game ahead of the release date,” clarified BioWare’s Stephen Reid.
”While we aren’t ready to talk about the exact timing of when Early Game Access starts (that depends on a number of factors including Game Testing and pre-order numbers), we’ll announce that before the start date. Our planning accounts for allowing people to download the client before the Early Game Access start date, too.”
Those who jumped at pre-orders when they first began will be among the real early birds into the Star Wars MMO. ”However, when you actually gain admittance to Early Game Access will be determined in a first-come, first-served manner dependent on when you redeemed your pre-order code,” they continued.
Even early access is a ‘controlled’ ramp up of users: ”While we understand all of you want to be in Early Game Access on Day One, part of the point of a head start program like this one 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,” added Reid.
Sorry but BioWare has no chart to reference for when exactly people will get in depending on their date of pre-order. ”The next obvious question is “I pre-ordered on Day X, when do I get access?” While we cannot answer that for everyone, I will say (as I did in July) that those who pre-ordered early will be getting Early Game Access, well, earliest.”
”At this point we still have pre-orders available and therefore, anyone who pre-orders will still gain Early Game Access, but as they’re redeeming their code later, they’ll get Early Game Access later. As I’ve said before the difference between ‘early’ and ‘later’ should be a matter of days, not weeks.”
Star Wars: The Old Republic releases on PC December 20th in the US, 22nd in EU.