According to a press release posted this morning, The Old Republic will “open Beta Test Weekends” starting this September. These weekend play sessions will be open to selected players worldwide and create an opportunity for fans to get a sneak peak of the epic stories, worlds, quests, battles and characters in the game.”

While I don’t know if I am personally interested in doing beta—I’d have to be hush hush about content and that’s hard being a fan site owner—I do hope that those that are given the job to do it do it with the best of intentions.

Coming along with the announcement of these beta weekends was a hint at when the game was going to be released and it seems that I was right to post what the voice actor said.

“We are targeting Star Wars: The Old Republic to be one of the biggest launches of holiday 2011,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Group General Manager and Co-Founder, BioWare and Senior Vice President, Electronic Arts.

To me, that sounds like Christmas might be the release date. Obviously, I might be wrong, but he did say holiday 2011, right?

Regardless, if you haven’t already, go get your pre-order all set up. And, maybe you’ll be one of the lucky few who get to start beta testing the game. Finally, after so many years of waiting, Star Wars: The Old Republic is coming to a store near you.

The question most of us are probably asking as we sit in front of our computers, mind rolling with possibilities about what The Old Republic could give to usand Fan Friday making us go mad, is when the heck is the game going to be released. When can we expect to play the game and, furthermore, when can I finally be the all powerful Jedi who goes to war against all Sith? Yes…I want to be a Jedi.

All of that aside, of course, let’s try and figure out when the game is going to be released. I obviously want it to be released because I want to play it and because after a while, will I be able to speculate over what else could be in the game on this lovely blog? Yeah, I probably could. I can always speculate. To get the talk that the game won’t be released until 2011 out of the way, that’s wrong. It’s impossible and you’d be foolish to truly believe that. Here’s why:

First and foremost, in October, 2007, good old GameSpot posted an article about their interview about EA’s recent purchase of BioWare. In the article, it is stated that BioWare’s secret MMO is already playable. The BioWare employees in the interview said, “we were playing it last week.” So, by reading that, I do the math and go, “Okay, that was October 2007. It’s February 2009…” That leads me to believe that two years from that date, the game could be ready to be released.

We move on to the next conversation. A MMO typically takes about five years to create. For instance, WoW took five years. But, the thing that is completely different from WoW and The Old Republic is that BioWare used an already created engine. So, their developers could go in and just make the game rather than having to spend so much time working on the actual engines. That saved time. When we look at how long the game has been in development, 2010 would be five years. However, since the engine was already done, could we slice a year off?

My final point is a little thing posted by Amazon. The actual game on Amazon.com saying, “pre-order for the 2009 release.” The game was taken off there that very same day, but the only way they could put that up is if they had information about the release date. If they have an idea on when the game is coming, they are going to want to prepare for it and have the page ready to go. That’s how all good businesses run.

Do I think the game is going to be released in 2009? I would like to think so. However, if we are going strictly on the five year period, I am going to wager that the game will come out at the very end of 2009 (holidays anyone) or in the first quarter of 2010. Anything later than that and it might become a bit redundant in waiting for them.

What do you think, though? When do you think the game is going to be released?