You’ve probably seen something somewhere about the Star Wars: The Old Republic collector’s edition in the last day or so. But today it became official. You can pre-order SWTOR.
Twitter again becomes my first source of new information. First Osama bin Laden and now the SWTOR pre-order.
You can follow the link to the pre-order page to see your options.
In the usual fashion, one of the things they are touting along with the pre-order is early game access, though while Amazon.com is listing the ship date as December 31st, 2011 (which really means “we have no real date yet”) you have to wonder when “early” will really be.
There are three tiers of pre-order at the moment, standard ($60 at Amazon.com), digital deluxe edition ($80 only via EA’s new online store Origin), and the collector’s edition ($150 at Amazon.com… and they are marked as ‘sold out’ at Origin). (Syp breaks out the various pre-order goodies here.)
While the price (and size/value of the accompanying statuette) has been a key item of discussion in regards to the collector’s edition, one item in the package caught my eye.
The key item for me
Hey look, another VASCO Digipass Go 6 authenticator, just like the one Blizzard sells.
Stock Blizzard Authenticator Footage
And, well, just like the ones Square Enix sold for Final Fantasy XI (but stopped?) and gave out as part of the collector’s edition for Final Fantasy XIV.
Looks familiar
And like Sony Online Entertainment announced at Fan Faire would be available for EverQuest II.
SOE Authenticator
And we have heard that CCP is also on board with the authenticator to implement two factor authentication for EVE Online at some point in the future.
So, cheers, account security is becoming a regular part of MMOs these days… or at least part of traditional, subscription, large budget MMOs in any case.
And since I know I will be playing Star Wars: The Old Republic… it is just a given unless there is some huge… really huge… problem with the game… I want an authenticator.
But there is no way I am spending $150 on a collector’s edition box. Take out the statuette and knock $50 off the price and EA would probably have me. But $150 is just too much for me.
So I am waiting for EA to tell me how to get one. It is something that is important to me after the many account hacking experiences I have witnessed in World of Warcraft. If they were smart, they would just stick one in every box. It is an up front cost, but prevention is less expensive than staffing up for hacked accounts later. Blizzard will attest to that I am sure.
Is an authenticator important to you?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
I like the Rift approach where I can download an authenticator application to my Android device; prefer that option to a physical authenticator.
I am not yet at the point that I consider it essential to have, but then I do not usually play any of the big budget high profile MMO titles. If I would have done that more often, then it probably would be a key feature.
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@Sente – I think most of these companies… well, Blizz and SOE at least… offer the smart phone version of the authenticator, and I suspect EA will as well. (I’m surprised Trion hasn’t offered the physical authenticator yet.)
However, for those of us who have phones which are “developmentally challenged,” the physical authenticator is fine.
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I would love to have one on my phone, but I have a BlackBerry. No dice.
Since I’m a digital edition kind of gal, I’m also very much looking forward to how I can get my hands on an authenticator.
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I don’t know what the intention is with their pricing in Euro. That must be a new high on the rip off scale. Are they really selling the Collectors Edition for 1 USD = 1 EUR? O.O
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I admit, I’m less keen on having an authenticator now. Blizzard made some changes and now only requires the authenticator value when you log in from a different system/location.
Spiffy.
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December 31st is a possible date but if so it’s really evil. The toy industry quite often times it’s major product releases for just after Christmas (Cabbage Patch dolls being the example I read about in a psychology textbook).
What happens is this:
Dad: what do you want for Christmas, son?
Kid: SWTOR
Dad; buys or tries to buy SWTOR and either can’t get it or realises that getting it means his kid will have nothing to play with on Christmas Day. So he buys another toy before Christmas then buys the hyped product just after. Double money for the toy industry.
Doing this for SWTOR’s launch would be a really jerk move even by the standards of MMO marketing departments.
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@Stabs – I am not sure I can see that really working. And I remember the Cabbage Patch Kids Christmas crunch, but the dolls were merely in very short supply (they had been available for a couple of years before they hit it big) so I am not sure what you psych book was referring to. I had a couple of friends in retail who made money reselling a few of the dolls to desperate parents. Anyway, that is my memory of things. YMMV vary from the version of reality in my brain.
But retail sales tend to demonstrate the opposite is true, that unless there is a true shortage (e.g Wii in 2006, Cabbage Patch Dolls in 1984), your sales suffer if you miss the window to stuff the retail channel before Christmas.
The December 31st date sounds like Amazon’s reaction to EA saying “it will be 2011.” Amazon’s system requires a specific date, but they have no problem updating it later. Duke Nukem Forever, for example, had a couple such updates.
Anyway, I suppose we’ll see when they announce a ship date. But as a comparable product, I would bet that if Blizzard doesn’t announce a November release date for Diablo III at BlizzCon (or before) then it will slip into at least February of next year.
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I wonder just how quiet it will be in the MMOs I play when this train finally rolls. And for how long.
I also wonder how we’re supposed to get the SoE authenticator in the U.K.
Also I wonder whether you can run the smartphone authenticator apps on tablets, and if so can you run them on tablets with a Windows OS? And if you can, then could you not authenticate your login from the computer you were logging in on?
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I’m certain they’ll have a way to get an authenticator without buying the CE, and I don’t see anything else in there I can’t live without. At $150, I’m definitely going to pass.
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@Aufero – Indeed, I cannot imagine that they won’t offer authenticators at some point. I just recall them being on back order for ages with Blizzard, while Square Enix offered them for a while then seemed to stop stocking them.
I’d like to have one on day one, though not so badly that I would fork over $150. As somebody noted elsewhere, you can just bet that the gold farmers have their eyes on SWTOR, a fresh new domain to infest.
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I’ve never been hacked. I use a unique secure password (long, and including capitalisation, punctuation, numbers, and symbols), never login on strange computers, or over unsecured networks, never share my login, never do anything dodgy with my accounts, use a minority web browser and email client on a minority platform (or if I must browse the web in Windows, I avoid IE and strange websites), run in a standard user account (i.e. with limited access system files and apps, not an admin account) on all my machines, and if a visitor must use my computer, I log them into a Guest account that limits access and saves nothing locally.
So while I can understand why many less clued in users get hacked over and over without an authenticator, it’s never happened to me. And if it ever does it will mean somehow my system has been compromised, and using an authenticator to protect my MMO account won’t matter a damn if all my other far more precious private and financial info and logins are being stolen.
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Oh, and I left out applying updates ASAP – doh! People who don’t update Windows in a timely manner are largely responsible for the massive number of zombie PCs out there.
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I wonder just how quiet it will be in the MMOs I play when this train finally rolls. And for how long.
I also wonder how we’re supposed to get the SoE authenticator in the U.K.
Also I wonder whether you can run the smartphone authenticator apps on tablets, and if so can you run them on tablets with a Windows OS? And if you can, then could you not authenticate your login from the computer you were logging in on?
Best regards,
Julius
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