The time that we have all been waiting for is upon us. In a presentation in London, Doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will release to the world in December. Specifically, North America will see it on December 20th and the European territories will see it two days later on December 22nd.

Along with the information about the release date, which in and of itself is exciting, we also got some input on what the pricing would be. As I have been saying all along, it is a monthly subscription rate rather than microtransactions. That doesn’t mean that microtransactions aren’t a possibility, but at the present, their subscription rates are as follows:

• 1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
• 3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
• 6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)

Those are the prices that I believe we all anticipated and I think are the right ones for BioWare. It’s right on par with World of Warcraft and will enable BioWare to get the money it needs to continue offering the game. Here is what the two had to say about the release in their presentation:

“This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release.”

For those that pre-ordered the game, they’ll be able to get it sooner. However, how much sooner is not known because it wasn’t revealed. Any time sooner than December 20th (which feels so far away despite it being less than 4 months) is better.

BioWare released an updated trailer that really isn’t all that different from a previous trailer except this time, it has the release date added to the end of it.

This game is going to be great and now, after so many years of waiting, we finally have a definitive release date. And it’s exactly where they’ve been saying it’d be all this time. By the end of 2011 and in this fiscal year. BioWare, EA and LucasArts, thank you for getting this game to us!