After reports of Star Wars: The Old Republic early access users complaining about queues to get into game servers that lasted multiple hours, BioWare has said publicly that they are looking into the issue. The game is set to launch officially tomorrow. Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer – Live Services posted the following message on the official SWTOR web site:

For those of you still waiting to get into Star Wars: The Old Republic - a privilege you earned by pre-ordering the game, we might add - BioWare offers some good news: they are offering a two-day grace period for Star Wars: The Old Republic customers. The move is meant to reward fans who pre-ordered but have yet to get early access to the game. They are concerned about getting it in time for the December 20 launch of the game.

Star Wars Galaxies, the popular MMO created by Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts is shutting down by year's end. SOE announced that it planned to shut down the Star Wars themed MMO in December of this year. They are doing this, they say, to switch the focus on the next Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic.

SOE president John Smedley said the closure of SWG will not affect the team because it will be transferred to an undisclosed project in Austin.

An official letter to SWG players was posted on the forums, laying out the bad news:

Those speculating on where Clint Hocking, former Ubisoft Montreal creative director, would end up can be put to rest today. Hocking has taken a job at Lucas Arts as creative director on an upcoming and as-of-yet unannounced project. Hocking left Ubisoft Montreal after serving as the company's creative director for nearly nine years. Hocking made his intentions to leave the company publicly on his blog earlier this year, saying: "I am too comfortable. I am too content. And I know where that can lead for me. Fortunately, for the first time in my life, I know the way forward," he wrote in May on his personal blog.

Today LucasArts confirmed that the man who helped steer such franchises as Splinter Cell and Far Cry was now working at the company:

"We are pleased to announce that Clint Hocking has joined LucasArts as creative director on an unannounced project," a LucasArts representative told GameSpot.

Hopefully we'll hear more about this project that Hocking is working on and why he thought it was important enough to jump ship to LucasArts.

Jim Ward, who left the CEO job at video game publisher LucasArts in early 2008, is now hoping to win a seat in Congress.

Ward, a Republican who currently works as a venture capitalist, is running to represent Arizona's 5th Congressional District. That seat is currently held by two-term Democrat Harry Mitchell. The district includes Scottsdale, Tempe and parts of Phoenix.

Ward outlines his philosophy on his campaign website:

I’m not a professional politician.  I’m a businessman.  And I don’t disagree that this country needs change.  But, in my experience, there’s the right kind of change and the wrong kind of change.  I believe what’s happening to this country represents the wrong kind of change...

Ward lists his political philosophy as conservative on Facebook. He has protested (see pic at left) against President Obama's healthcare plan.

Partially via: Kotaku

Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, seems perfectly willing to cut right through the video game industry's party line on piracy.

Gotta love that.

In separate interviews published today, Stude dismissed dire industry claims that publishers would give up on PC games over the piracy issue. Then he slapped LucasArts for its approach to PC gaming.

On the piracy issue, Stude told Gamasutra:

The [online game] revenues being generated [in China and Korea] just blow the mind. You're talking almost 5 billion dollars. Almost half the world's PC software revenues are coming from marketplaces that have almost no retail at all...

 

You look at a game like Spore… despite the fact it's pirated out there on torrent networks, its selling great by any standard... it sort of bucks the notion that all games are going to be destroyed because of piracy. That's not the case...

I'm not saying that the [PC gaming] industry needs to accept piracy. I'm saying that if there’s nothing that can be done, the assumption that gaming will die on a platform is ridiculous.

LucasArts was taken to task over a producer's comment that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed wouldn't be ported to PC due to the challenge of developing for a broard range of PC configurations. Stude told gamesindustry.biz:

That's not an educated answer. In the last several years there have been at least 100 million PCs sold that have the capabilities or better of an Xbox 360. It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game potentially and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response...

 

LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time. That's my opinion... I think the last good PC game they made was probably Jedi Knight 2... So I can understand why they would make that call.

Reporter Mike Musgrove digs into the ESA's recent difficulties in today's Washington Post.

Musgrove brings an interesting perspective to the piece, given that he wrote one of the early profiles of embattled ESA CEO Michael Gallagher last September. In response to Musgrove's questions about losing Activision, Vivendi, LucasArts and id as member companies, Gallagher said:

There are hundreds of trade associations in Washington and virtually all feature member turnover and the ESA is no exception.

Full Disclosure Dept: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics…

Following Activision and Vivendi out the door, LucasArts has made its exit from the Entertainment Software Association official.

GamePolitics broke the news last week that signs pointed to LucasArts leaving the organization which represents the interests of US video game publishers.

Since that time, both LucasArts and the ESA went into silent mode - until late today (Friday afternoons being the corporate mind's preferred time for dropping bad news).

Despite giving the kiss-off to ESA, LucasArts says that it will still exhibit at E3 in July.

We should note that while working on this story no fewer than five LucasArts PR reps failed to return GP's phone calls, e-mails and IM's. The ESA also chose not to respond. Notice that nobody was denying the rumor. Obviously, there was a good reason for that.

Joystiq has the ESA's press release, which the publisher's group did not deign to send to GamePolitics. I assume that's by way of payback for reporting the rumor.

Classy.

Last week, GamePolitics first began to suspect that Activision and Vivendi might have left the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) after noticing that the game publishing giants were no longer listed on the member section of the ESA website.

Today there is another major company missing from that list: LucasArts

We've got messages out to several LucasArts contacts in an attempt to confirm. An ESA representative promised us he would "look into that."

So, we'll call this one officially a rumor... for now.

But if true, the exit of LucasArts immediately on the heels of Activision and Vivendi could signal that the ESA, founded in 1994 to represent the interests of US video game publishers, is rapidly taking on water.