Star Wars: The Old Republic launching Dec. 20, starts at $15 per month

by Richard Mitchell on Sep 24th 2011 8:55AM

After many galactic ages, Electronic Arts has finally announced a release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it's not too far, far away. The long-awaited MMO will officially launch later this year on December 20 in North America and on December 22 in Europe.

In addition to the release date, the game's pricing structure has also been revealed. The subscription options should look very familiar to World of Warcraft vets. After the free month that comes with the game, plans start at $15 for a single month, $42 for three months or $78 for six months. Oh, and if you want early access, there's still time to pre-order, of course.

Thankfully, there's also still time to come up with an excuse for skipping out on your family's holiday plans.

[Thanks to everyone that sent this in!]

Source: SWTOR.com

Tags: bioware, electrocution, mmo, pc, Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic, The-Old-Republic

Reader Comments (94)

Well, there goes my free time. And 2 days after my birthday at that!

@Startingline13 ArmlessOctopus Dude. It's two days after MY birthday!

@Startingline13 ArmlessOctopus
I was just thinking how it was 2 days before my birthday when i was reading the article.

Hey Joystiq, can you take this occasion to fix your description on the top right of every TOR article? For years it's said the factions are the Galactic EMPIRE and the Sith Empire when it should be the Galactic REPUBLIC and the Sith Empire. Every time I made a comment mentioning the needed correction it's been ignored. I figure with this high-profile news(and being one of the first commentors) you might notice.

And yeah, December 20th release date, yay. :) Just in time for Christmas.

@RogueJedi86

Oh and while we're dating the sidebar info, the rating for the game has been shown in all the most recent TOR video as being rated T for Teen. So you can add to the sidebar that it's T-rated, comes out December 20th, and has the Galactic Republic(and not Galactic Empire, not for another 3500 years). And I guess the MSRP should show the retail prices that have been announced.

@RogueJedi86

And without an edit button, I'll add more bit of info you should revise. EA is the publisher of TOR, not LucasArts. LucasArts is merely a producer on this game. :) Maybe change so it says the publisher is EA/LucasArts.

@RogueJedi86 actually, EA is Distributer while LucasArts is Publisher.

@RogueJedi86

Hrm, you seem very... passionate on this subject.

@YourColourTV

EA and Lucasarts "updated" the publishing agreement in November of last year. EA handles all development, distribution, and publishing duties now. Lucasarts is going to serve as a sort of advisor for marketing and game story.

http://www.ea.com/news/ea-and-lucasarts-enter-into-new-

"EA and Lucasfilm Ltd, announced today an updated global publishing agreement for the highly anticipated massively multiplayer online videogame Star Wars: The Old Republic. With this new agreement, certain publishing, marketing and distribution responsibilities previously designated to LucasArts will shift to EA, so that all publishing, marketing and distribution responsibilities can be centralized for efficiency. Lucasfilm will continue serving as a key partner, collaborating on design and marketing, and as a licensor of the property. "

If I remember correctly, Lucasarts also just laid off a ton of people.

@Starbuck2907

http://www.ea.com/news/ea-and-lucasarts-enter-into-new-agreement

oops. the end of my link didn't paste. here is the full link.

@Starbuck2907 Not entirely surprising they did this, LucasArts keeps gutting their studio. I don't think there's any real clear vision at Skywalker Ranch as to what they want of LucasArts which is sad as they used to be quite the good developer. I miss my Maniac Mansion.

@commonperson

It's more of LucasArts not having the operating budget for the millions of dollars that has been spent on SWTOR voice acting.

@freaparn

Passion leads to the Dark Side.

Isn't the first month free?

@Slomoshun yes, they said the game comes with 30 days free

@StormChaser91
TY, I just woke up and I'm intirerly too tired to move the muscles to look this up.

@Slomoshun
entirely*..see, told you I was tired

@Slomoshun
GET A DAMN EDIT FUNCTION JOYSTIQ FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@Slomoshun That's how they get ya!

@Slomoshun

Yes, it is.

I hate to do it, but I'm going to quote Stewie and say "He's real! He's really, really real!"

Merry Christmas, indeed!!

I'm so happy that this comes out after I have played the 80 million other games that come out this year. Good timing. No more life for me.

Christmas... bah humbug!

@jynxycat

Who is that in your avatar?

So, it's finally coming out. Let's hope it'll live up to the hype.

Eurogamer expo getting more worthwhile to visit each year!

About time, took long enough aye. Makes me want to jump up and have a Gemini c group on this. Dec 20 is still kind of far off, guess we'll see hope it's wortht he hype.

F*cking $15...

I'll wait for the FTP version in a couple of years.

@toastybuffoon - couple of years
+ six months

This'll be free to play before next Christmas, at the absolute latest. WoW is the last bastion of the subscription model and I think if Blizzard could figure out a way to retrofit WoW to work with F2P, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Im waiting on Rift to go F2P so I can go back to that one.

@Equal Opportunity Dork out of curiosity by what metric are you judging this? Are you in beta or are you simply basing this on your vague impressions based on videos? Blizzard is hemoraging subscribers, people are just fed up. With TOR you've got a garunteed rabid fan base that will at least give you 1million subs. I'm not garunteeing this will not happen, but the reality is this game is in the best place to maintain that and unless you can provide solid data anything you are satying in this vein regarding "going free to play" is just conjecture and "bah humbuging" let us have our happy day.

@toastybuffoon
years? you give it too much credit.

@commonperson

It's really difficult to say where TOR will go. I mean, it's Star Wars.

Then again, look at SWG.

However, look at SWG. Even after SOE did everything they could think of to crap on whatever appeal that game had, it will end its eight year life due to licensing issues rather than a lack of funds, and without ever having gone F2P.

If there's a property that can defy reason at every turn, it's Star Wars. Will that be enough to recoup the supposed multi-hundred-million dollar production cost? Probably.

I was hoping they would try some of the successful alternatives to the 15 buck a month racket...

I mean, it's not like they don't have a GAZILLION people lining up for this game... even simply altering it to 10 dollars a month would have done a ton to boost morale....

@sonofman I was hoping the discount for 3 and 6 month subscription would be a bit bigger, something like $36 and $60 respectively.

@sonofman

They have to rack in as much cash in the first 6 months as possible. That should be long enough for people to realize they're paying for a game they've already played a hundred times before and move on, leaving only hardcore Star Wars fans and brand new MMO players. Good crowd...

@2late2die

There's still hope they'll run sales to $10/month for a 3 month sub.

@sonofman

Versus what? Honestly would rather have a flat rate vs having to spend hundreds on microtransactions to remain competitive as some F2Ps force on you. Not that I'm ever going to waste time on a MMO again, but...

You guys forgot to point out the $60 initial price. And before someone jumps with "that's obvious", as a PC game it very well could've been (and maybe should've been) $50.

@2late2die Honestly, it doesn't really bother me anymore. The current buy-in for a new player in WoW is over 100$ just to get to the part of the game that's actually good.

The Star Wars zombie virus shows no sign of letting up.

Someone needs to go back in time and sterilise George Lucas's great grandfather.

@Dick Socrates
You do your name great justice, Dick.

Nope.

I'll hold off on this knowing the fact that this will turn to Free to Play at some point and I won't be one of the over hyped fanboy's who wont buy a 60 dollar copy of a WoW knock off like every other MMO.....

@LEGIONSINGULARGETHUNIT

Surely you're not so stupid that you don't realize that WoW is a knockoff of the games that came before it. You're just trolling right? You don't really think "ZOMG, WoW's an original idea!!!"

@Arcaria No yeah that's exactly what I'm saying every MMO is WoW mmhmm... not that it introduced new idea's into the MMO genre that people still utilize today.... yeah yup

Also you said "trolling" so your comment has now been made completely irrelevant....

@LEGIONSINGULARGETHUNIT

Wow! You're kind of an idiot and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you don't win by arguing with one. Have a good day sir.

@LEGIONSINGULARGETHUNIT WoW was EQ for dummies. However, everything I have heard is that TOR is WoW In Space, which does not excite me at all. I want something NEW in the MMO space, which is why I am looking forward to watching my grandkids finally get to play Guild Wars 2.

@Equal Opportunity Dork
SWTOR is more like KOTOR with MMO elements. People who say that every new MMO is a WoW clone don't know what their talking about. I guess EQ2 somehow managed to be a WoW clone before WoW was even released...
As someone who's played nearly every MMO out there (possibly including a few months of SWTOR, although I wouldn't be allowed to say if I had because of the NDA, so let's say I haven't), SWTOR "looks" more like it will feel like a Bioware game with a lot more people.

Ehhn, I'm not that excited. And I'm sorry, maybe I haven't been following the game...but that had better not be Darth Malak. I know they didn't resurrect one of Star Wars' last great villains to use in a goddamn MMO.

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