If you’ve already been dropping some Christmas hints to friends and family about Star Wars: The Old Republic, and were starting to worry the damn thing wasn’t going to release on time and you’d be stuck with seventeen pairs of Darth Vader socks, you can relax. Bioware has announced the game will be releasing on December 20th, 22nd in Europe, less than a week before the sales-generating holiday.
With all the people attempting to login come Christmas Day however, you may want to save the 25th for the family and set aside your lightsaber till Boxing Day, although Bioware has said they’re doing everything they can to ensure a smooth launch.
If you have been dropping hints, you may want to get a bit more of a commitment of the grandparents before the day, as Bioware have also announced their pricing structure for the game. Each copy of the game comes with a free month of play (how kind of them), but after that you’re looking at a subscription fee of $14.99/£8.99/€12.99 per month.
For any of you familiar with hacking hordes of woodland creatures to death, you’ll recognize this as an identical pricing structure to World of Warcraft. And I do mean identical – even if you want to buy three or six months at a time, the prices are exactly the same – $41.97/£25.17/€35.97 or $77.94/£46.14/€65.94 respectively. I suppose why not follow Activision’s lead; it seems to be working out alright for them.
The question is, does your wallet have room for both subscriptions? Looks like maybe some of you are going to have to make Sophie’s Choice.
