The long-running Star Wars MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic has officially launched local servers for the Asia Pacific region, 12 years after its initial launch in 2011.
A press release from publisher EA announced that the server, called Shae Vizla, will come online on 17 November 2023 at 6:00am AEDT for paid subscribers, and 18 November 2023 at 6:00am AEDT for all players.
The Shae Vizla server will be located in Sydney, Australia.
Read: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Is Still Legendary, 20 Years Later
Unfortunately for existing Old Republic players in South East Asia and Oceania, EA stated that “no transfers [will be] available at launch”, though it’s unclear whether this will be a consideration for the future. The server will support levelling boosts, however, to get new characters up to speed more quickly.
In an FAQ document published by EA, the company states that it intends to “open transfers at a later time,” and that “timing is dependent upon our overall status review of the server at that time.”
Local servers for MMO and MMORPG players located in Southeast Asia and Oceania have long been a sticking point, with few high-profile games establishing them when new games are released. The relatively small size of the player base in the region is usually cited as the reason, especially compared to geological centres like North America and Europe.
Players in the Asia-Pacific region instead usually have to deal with high latency when playing, which results in a perceptible lag to their actions.
Although it’s taken 12 years for The Old Republic to establish local servers for the region, it’s not uncommon. Rival MMO Final Fantasy XIV only established Oceanic servers at the beginning of 2022, after originally being released in 2013.
In a blog post executive producer on Star Wars: The Old Republic, Keith Kanneg, said the new server was only made possible with “recent technological upgrades.” Kanneg said that migrating game servers to the cloud and updating the game client to 64-bit were among the factors that paved the way.
“As we continue to modernise our infrastructure, [this enables] us to open up new areas, improve performance, and make it easier to deliver new content and manage the overall game,” he said.
Star Wars: The Old Republic was originally developed and maintained by BioWare (Dragon Age, Mass Effect) before being handed over to Broadsword Online Games (previously Mythic Entertainment [Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online]).
It was generally praised at launch for its strong storytelling elements and production values, and the game continues to enjoy positive reception 12 years on. It currently supports both a free-to-play and optional subscription model.
You can play Star Wars: The Old Republic on PC via Steam.
