Star Wars: The Old Republic beta test weekend goes live

The Star Wars: The Old Republic beta weekend that Eurogamer gave away 12,000 keys for has begun.

This is a closed beta, but will effectively serve as an open beta stress test owing to the amount of keys that have been given away worldwide.

"Our beta servers are now online," declared the official SWTOR Twitter account. "Have fun and may the Force be with you!"

Those with a key can play the BioWare MMO until Monday.

"Be aware that the server list and distribution you're seeing for this weekend's test are not the final numbers for launch," advised senior community manager Stephen Reid on the SWTOR forum.

"We'll have more servers in all datacenters - so more EU servers, more East and West Coast US servers. This will include all server types.

"Why aren't you seeing those for this weekend (so far)? Because a major goal for this weekend is to stress test our hardware. When we reach those goals (and we're already close) we'll look into opening up more servers as required, globally.

"As a specific note to EU English players; remember you're able to log on to any server you wish, including North American. Generally speaking gameplay performance on NA servers from Europe is still reasonable."

Three more European servers - one English, one French, one German - have just been opened.

On Twitter, Reid had additional information to share.

"If you are unable to see a server list, you probably need to re-allow SWTOR via Windows Firewall. Known issue we're fixing."

"Advance warning: I cannot answer every issue. If you have issues with the game, you should check CS Forums and/or email support@swtor.com."

Eurogamer plunged into the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta test earlier this week. We captured footage of us playing and then talked about our experience of the beta over the top. The video of this is below.