Will I get 6 days or 7 days of early access?

Speculation it is! Wild speculation, even!

Consider this:
Preorders for the game started in July. There are, in essence, five months between the preoder and launch--and--early access was going to start five days early. So, it would be logical to assume that EA had planned to distribute the preorder populations in populations based linearly on the month of preorder. However, its hard to say with any certainty how that panned out for them and why they decided to go to seven days of early access instead of five. But, if it helps, just assume that you'll probably get in X days after the 13th where X = (number of month your redeemed code) - 7.

Speculation.

First week of pre-orders will get 7 days. Everyone else who pre-ordered AFTER, will get 5 days. There. Speculated. We know the stress test ran successfully with hundreds of thousands, many of which publicly stated they would not play the game. My guess is they will, however my gut instinct tells me they likely cancelled their pre-order which is great for the rest of us ;)

The problem is nobody knows the planned depth of the amount of players to be slotted in each day, or how Bioware plans to distribute them.

Assume there are 2 million pre-orders (number pulled out of ***).

Possibility 1: Bioware will linearly distribute players to each day based on a percent of the overall total.
Meaning : On day one, 1/7th of pre-orders will be given access. On day two, another 1/7th. And so on. That would add about 286,000 people each day.

Possibility 2: Bioware has a predetermined number of people to add each day.
Example : Bioware determines that 400,000 people can be given early access a day. On day one, 400,000 people get in. On day two, 400,000 people get in. On day five, 400,000 people get in. On day six and seven, there is nobody left to add except people who decide to preorder ON those days.
Example : Bioware determines that 200,000 people can be given early access a day. On days one through six, 200,000 people are given access. On day seven, the remaining 800,000 people would all have to be given access or end up bumped to release day.

Possibility 3: Same as possibility 2 except Bioware adjusts it on the fly.
Example : Day one goes smooth as silk so Bioware decides to up the amount.
Example : Servers **** themselves on day 3 and Bioware severely restricts the amounts added the following days.

There is absolutely no way anybody on this forum can answer what will happen without knowing insider information direct from Bioware.
In addition, this is based solely on a total queue number; we also have none or very limited information as to how many people ordered within each time frame. Thus, there is no way anybody here can say anything resembling "If you ordered before August 15th you will be in on the 6th day at least" and Bioware themselves, before the forums were shut down for the reset, posted that they also would not / could not give out information like that.

Quote: Possibility 1: Bioware will linearly distribute players to each day based on a percent of the overall total.
Meaning : On day one, 1/7th of pre-orders will be given access. On day two, another 1/7th. And so on. That would add about 286,000 people each day. By nefloyd

Just to expand on this idea, I saw a pole on the SWtOR forms that asked in which month did people place their pre-order and redeem their code? Over 60% of those the responding to the pole indicated that they pre-ordered in July.

So, if we run with nefloyd's numbers of 2,000,000 pre orders, with 1/7th getting in each day, it could take up to 4 days for just the ones who pre-ordered in July to get in to early play. 60% of 2,000,000 = 1,200,000. 1,200,000/286,000 = 4.2 days.

So lets hope nefloyd's possibility 2 is closer to the truth. don't know about you guys but i like those numbers much better!

As long as we are all just speculating...I would disagree with @marshalclaw. I think the July - August crowd will be over the first few days since that's when a ton of the long fans pre-ordered. Then the August - November would be a couple days since not a huge rush of people would decide they wanted to pre-order in mid September..and lastly all the people that decided they wanted the game after the beta test and ordered in late November and December will span a couple days.

@ethontalis my point exactly

I would expect non linear math to be used to spread the load, because not everyone who gets an invite can use it that day and incremental build ups will also wash with expected logins around multiple time zones. .

Also take in guilds system allocating blocks of players to some servers could adjust the rates of expected server fills.

With open day on Tuesday the 20th and expected peak usage over the weekend, I'd expect all to invited by friday so that server choices are settled before then.

My speculation:

EA/Bioware says "#$%^ it" and lets everyone in on the 13th.

Congrats guys!

"My speculation:

EA/Bioware says "!@#$ it" and lets everyone in on the 13th.

Congrats guys!" -superhero6785

Oh how wonderful would that be :D considering I didn't pre-order until December 3.

there is no probably, as that is all up to bioware/ea and they are keeping a tight lid on theyr plans.

I will say this, hopefully you get in before Thursday, hell hopefully everyone gets in before that :P

Stephen Ried recently twittered that they will continiously let people in. this can be read into the following. That it wont take 24 hours between each wave, which for me is more likely. It does not take more then 5 hours for the absolutely slowest players to get out of starter area. So lets say 5 hours between each intervall.

Today vgchartz have 900k (an estimate) of non digital pre-orders in the states. EU have about 30% gaming market compared to the states, lets do some math.

Usually digital orders concist of 15% of total sales, this number is slowly growing so lets say 20% for kicks. This means that 1.08 mill in the states have pre-ordered, and 324k in EU. These numbers are to me are far more reliable then the 2 mill some are saying.

Lets say the server list is also accurate, for both EU and US, that leaves 1.404 million people, for 120 servers. 11400 people per server. They also said they had 80k-100k bots on a server before it crashed. This is a silly argument to make but that would mean everyone would get in on the 13th, so i think its kinda baseless and pointless to assume that many.

With 11400 per server, that means in techinal possibilites term about 1000 people per wave. This not to overcrowd areas(since there are 4 different ones 250 per zone is a huge number). This also means that within the first day 4-5k pepole per server will be let in (480k-600k) depending on server load. Its very possible only due to one reason, sharding.

Sharding makes the launch go ALOT smoother for every client then most people care to admit. The whine about this feature baffled me before, i dont think people realized how great it is.

@Vodrin, I think your scenario is most likely.

To those discussing 2 million pre-orders. Where are you getting these numbers from? I'm having trouble believing pre-orders are that high.

"Early Game Access* will begin on December 13th at 7:00AM EST, 2011 and ends on December 19th, 2011 at 10:01PM EST. During this time, we will be emailing invitations to join Early Game Access based on the order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code. Pre-load the game client now, so you're ready to play when your Early Game Access invitation arrives. Note that download time can vary and may take awhile."

This from an email... Sounds like they are going to start with X amount of people allowed to log in at 7am and open up more through out the day. When you get your log in access is based on when you ordered your game.

Draahl, honestly where did you get those completly illogical statistics from? EU has been a bigger market then US for atleast half a decade now, which is also no suprise since EU has around 800 million citizens compared to U.S.A's 300 million.

The last statistics I've seen for US vs EU concerning Western Mmo Market (from 2007) US still had a slight edge, but wether or not this has changed saying that Eu has 30% of the gaming market US does completly destroy any credibility you may have had.

Infact all your statistics seem like they have been pulled out of thin air, and have absolutely no basis in reality.

The most anyone will get is 5 days. Launch is 12/20

per order early accsess is between the 15th and 19th.

So no you will not get 6 or 7 days.

Jaeke your a window licking retard. RIF. Nobody will be playing on the 13ths. Early access is from 15th-19th its only been said 10 million times for the last 9months.

So tommarow on the 13th when nobodys playing you can blow me.

1gamma45 read it and weap tard.

Stephen Ried twittered it to be the 13th, and news have been out for almost a week abot that. Your the only one clueless and stupid enough to believe otherwise.

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20111207

Here is my completely speculated mathematical assumption on preorder access, take it how you will.

First, how I obtained my initial data:

As of December 11th, The total number of physical preorder copies was 939,358. I gathered my data from weekly reports through VGChartz, to determine the amount per week. I made an assumption that for every 6 physical copies preordered, 4 digital copies were preordered. I made this assumption based upon sales figures over the past several years on physical copies to digital copies. The most recent numbers from a 2010 Forbes report, show approximately 60% of sales are still physical copies, while 40% are now digital. (sources at the end) This brings my complete preorder total to 1,565,597.

With these numbers, we can now make assumptions as to how Bioware is going to allow access. Using these numbers, I will make several assumptions based upon the time span at which everyone will be allowed access.

One assumption is that everyone will have access by the 15th. So we will say then, that everyone will have access on the either the 13th, or the 14th. Since the 13th is beginning at 7am, that cuts the time of the 13th down by 7 hours, or to 17 hours. This gives us a total of 41 hours to spread out the numbers, IF Bioware is going to give people access hourly. So by this assumption:
649,150 people will be allowed access on the 13th. This means if you preordered before ~9/10/11 you will get access on the 13th
Everyone else gets access on the 14th.

Another assumption is that everyone will have access by the 15th, which also includes the 15th. If Bioware is going to give people access hourly, then:
483,912 people will be allowed access on the 13th. This means if you preordered before ~8/20/11 you will get access on the 13th
683,169 more people will be allowed access on the 14th. This means if you preordered between ~8/20/11 and ~ 11/5/11 you will get access on the 14th
Everyone else gets access on the 15th.

Another assumption is that early access will be completely spread across 6 days. We will assume that everyone will get at least one day of early game access. Which means invites for early game access will end on 11pm - 11:59pm on December 18th. So then:
194,271 people will be allowed access on the 13th. This means if you preordered before ~7/30/11 you will get access on the 13th
274,265 more people will be allowed access on the 14th. This means if you preordered between ~7/30/11 and ~8/13/11 you will get access on the 14th
274,265 more people will be allowed access on the 15th. This means if you preordered between ~8/13/11 and ~9/24/11 you will get access on the 15th
274,265 more people will be allowed access on the 16th. This means if you preordered between ~9/24/11 and ~10/22/11 you will get access on the 16th
274,265 more people will be allowed access on the 17th. This means if you preordered between ~10/22/11 and 11/19/11 you will get access on the 17th
Everyone else gets access on the 18th.

Sources:
VGChatz : http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders/40888/USA/
Forbes : http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/09/20/digital-vs-physical-pc-game-downloads-surpass-retail-unit-sales-by-3m-says-survey/

Please look at my sources, I am aware of this. Here is my chart:

WE # Total To date
7/23/2011 19324 19324
7/30/2011 99936 119260
8/6/2011 84671 203931
8/13/2011 60993 264924
8/20/2011 36726 301650
8/27/2011 32680 334330
9/3/2011 25452 359782
9/10/2011 26355 386137
9/17/2011 16778 402915
9/24/2011 23221 426136
10/1/2011 37377 463513
10/8/2011 54709 518222
10/15/2011 30283 548505
10/22/2011 57573 606078
10/29/2011 48732 654810
11/5/2011 43779 698589
11/12/2011 54543 753132
11/19/2011 72708 825840
11/26/2011 74916 900756
12/3/2011 15734 916490
12/10/2011 22868 939358

This is real data for physical pre orders.

My guess would be that they will try and get everyone in over the course of the first few days, assuming that nothing goes wrong. That way, if something does go wrong, they still have some time in which to fix it.

So, whether you get in early or late will depend as much upon what sort of glitches occur as anything else.

You may have a good chance of "cutting in line" if you joined a guild that had a GM that was an early pre-order.

?

You might gain access as a group.

@SnoDragon

I didn't pre-order until September 26th, but I was lucky enough to participate in both Beta Test Weekends. I was also lucky enough to get a lot of playing time for both, and even found a couple of small glitches to report. Does that categorize me as "most faithful?" :)