Monolith offers BioWare the chance to “visualize their business at real time by collecting, analyzing and correlating data through powerful, web based dashboards.” Because it is a fault/event management system, it provides the opportunity for BioWare to really pay close attention to what’s occurring on their servers.

According to the article, BioWare chose Monolith because, “its robust feature set and ability to manage the real-time monitoring of multiple thousands of devices across several data centers in the United States and EMEA. The flexibility and scalability of the solution was a fit for BioWare’s IT requirements to support the future growth of the company’s largest electronic entertainment project ever.”

Ruben Cortez, the director of infrastructure and services at BioWare had this to say:

We are building a large game that will be supported by an expansive, complicated IT environment. When you have this complex of an environment for a business reliant on continuous connectivity, you need a monitoring solution that can manage that in real time. We are looking forward to working with Monolith’s rich feature set. It fit into our Linux environment and met all of our requirements, including specific customizations.

This is very important news. The quicker BioWare is able to analyze server information, the faster they can react to a problem. Monolith seems to be the right choice and a choice that will ensure that the servers are being watched continuously. This is definitely some exciting news and confirms the idea that BioWare is really making headway toward releasing this game.

First and foremost, we look at the fact that they are going to be showing a true demo of the game at PAX. That’s legit. I have to ask myself, “If they are showing a demo, how much do they have done?” If they show a ton of different aspects of the game, I feel firmly that the game is close to a beta testing release. Whether this is true or not, though, is entirely up to speculation hence the title of the article. So, I call release date being in the very beginning of 2010.

To back this up, we look at the fact that on Amazon.com, there is an actual game listing there. The only reason I can think of this being there is that BioWare is getting ready to start announcing things and Amazon wants to be the first one to start getting the pre-orders. More importantly, though, is the fact that Amazon had a listing of the game once before, but for whatever reason, BioWare wanted it taken off. I wonder…

Then there are people that suggest that it will be released in March. That may be a better guess because it gives four more months than what I am suggesting and more time for marketing once the game’s release date has been announced. The Amazon.com listing could still be legit, or more daring, a release date’s release date. In other words, perhaps January 1st is when the release date will be announced. Now I’m getting ahead of myself.

According to swtor-welten.de:

A reliable source in contact with Lucas Arts, has claimed that the game is planned for October 2010

This is obviously a scary idea because that means the game won’t be released for an entire extra year. Who wants to wait that long to play TOR? I sure as heck don’t. Will I be angry? Nah. A bit disappointed. Perhaps. In the end, the fundamental question we have to ask ourselves is:

What information is there to back up a potential release date? I have to stick with the Amazon.com and my own speculation. I can’t trust someone who says they claim to know someone in Lucas Arts. These people that work for companies have to keep extra quiet. They can’t release information.

We’ll have to wait and see, though. My guess is first quarter 2010. Any other guesses?