European (EU) beta invites hit a bit of a snag last week for Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) and it looks like our neighbors in Europe might have to wait a little while longer to get their shot at the SWTOR beta.

In an update to the official SWTOR forums, EU Community Manager Chris Collins stated that BioWare has decided to postpone the proposed beta invites for EU players. There are a few reasons given for the decision. Collins explained that a new client is on the way later this week and will bring a character wipe and the need to download the entire client again, which he estimates to be around 27GB. Given the speed of some past beta client downloads that would probably put some players finishing just in time for the new update.

Firstly, there’s a new build of the game on the horizon. This is a major build, meaning there will be character wipes and a new client to download. As you may be aware, the current client download is around 27GB in size. If we were to invite players en masse today, those players would have to download the entirety of the client to access the game. There’s every chance that later this week, the service will go offline and this new version will be rolled out, meaning everyone currently in Testing will have to not only download the entire client again (another 27GB download), but will also have their characters erased and have to start afresh. This is a relatively large amount to download in such a short space of time and not an experience we want new testers to be exposed to.

Collins also stated that the new build will include the first localized versions for the game in French and German languages.

Secondly, this new build will bring about the first localised versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which means those of you that speak French and German will have the chance to play the game in those languages, for the first time ever. We’re extremely excited to be able to offer this to our players and as such, we’re keen to get a lot of feedback from European testers in particular.

While this is bad news for EU players that were looking forward to joining the Star Wars galaxy this week, Collins does offer some good news.

It’s also important to remember this is just the beginning. In the future, we’ll be inviting more and more testers to the EU Game Testing environments as well as future Game Testing weekends. So even if you’re not invited to this next round of testing, there will still be plenty of chances to get involved.

Source: SWTOR Forums