A thread popped up on the SWTOR forum that suggested that Beta was going to start, albeit a tiny one, June 25 and was going to last until June 27. In this thread, it’s suggested that only about 100-200 people are going to be accepted at this time to do some beta work and that it is going to be an incredibly short beta. What this looks like to me is a beta of the beta. Not quite an alpha, but not quite a full on beta.

The problem is, these are all rumors. There’s no way to confirm that this is actually happening and therefore, the TOR community is getting all antsy. One of the things that people were hoping would pop up at E3 2010 was beta announcement. I knew they wouldn’t announce it, but coming off such a successful E3, it makes me wonder if perhaps they were just waiting until right after E3 to launch. Perhaps they wanted to get a few more people who hadn’t heard of the game yet to sign up to become a tester. Maybe get a few MMO regulars that were hesitant about TOR to come check it out.

Sean, the community manager, says that they have no information to release about beta. Yet, soon after posting that, he also had this to say in the thread:

The Game Testing Agreement that was agreed upon (when signing up for game testing) states:

PERMITTED DISCLOSURES
1. The fact that there is a Game Program.
2. The fact that you are a member of the Game Program.

Outside of that, it is a violation of the agreement to do anything more such as posting images or screen captures of anything related to Game Testing that is private and confidential and not already publicly revealed by The Old Republic team.

Personally, I don’t know how to feel about that. Part of me really thinks that he is warning anyone who is participating in the conversation that might be a part of the beta this weekend to remember the rules. The other part of me thinks he is just confirming that if someone is in beta, they can say they’re in beta. It’s dicey.

Thanks to the great people over at AskAJedi.com, they made me aware of a tweet that was sent out by Paul Marino, the lead cinematic designer. It states that:

Playtesting The Old Republic this morning. Good start to the day.

Does that suggest anything? It suggests that there is some sort of testing going on. And, with the rumors flying around, it seems almost too convenient. I can say that I’ve not received an invite to do beta and since I’ve not received it, nor have I seen any true confirmation of a beta, I can’t say for certain that it’s going on. What I can say is that it probably is going on. They’ll invite a small group to test out a small area with very small class choices. They’ll probably test some PvP and they’ll see how a beta does in regard to the servers. And then, they’ll start to expand and more people will get invites.

If you got an invite, please post here and let us know. I’d love to have some legitimate confirmation about beta actually happening.