If it seemed like everyone and their dog got in on last weekend's Star Wars: The Old Republic beta event, well, they did. BioWare invited tens of thousands of Star Wars fans to the TOR
testing party, and probably a few Star Trek fans and the blue glowy
spirits of dearly departed Jedi Knights as well. The mass invites are
designed to strain the servers prior to the game's December 15th launch
date, and BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk says this is just the beginning.

"One crazy number is we had over a million hours of testing over the
weekend. It was a huge test, and there are even bigger ones coming. The
key thing is for us to take those learnings, apply them and make the
service really stable. We're happy with the game," Zeschuk told Eurogamer.

Zeschuk and his BioWare cohorts aren't exactly raising pinkies to lips
like an overconfident supervillain, though. "Everyone's cautiously
optimistic. We're all very paranoid," Zeschuk said, before going on to
explain how BioWare will carefully control TOR's launch availability to ensure a smooth experience.