BioWare and LucasArts are pleased to announce that Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will launch on December 20, 2011 in North America and in the European Launch Territories! The announcement was first made by BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk during their keynote address at the 2011 Eurogamer Expo in London, England. Speaking to a packed room of press and fans alike, Dr. Muzyka acknowledged the weight of the moment and the patience of the fans.

This is a post to link all the collected information about the Star Wars The Old Republic release date -

Bioware Comments:

Official "Release Date Window" - BioWare and EA are currently targeting a release window of holiday 2011 for ‪Star Wars: The Old Republic (Posted by StephenReid)

Swtor release date and preorder date and box images leaked today in swtor forums .according this link http://www.swtor.com/community... the preorder date is tomorrow and the release day is 27/10/2011( the last informations claim for 31 December 2011,read below for more ) .This is the full post .
You can Preorder from Swtor official Page @ http://swtor.com/preorder &

THe System Requirements are :

enjoy it or hate it

So far it seems like they have only been testing in small amounts ( 100 players ) and that will most likely not be the case with the release.

When swtor goes live and servers are awaiting the first players to walk in it ,there is always a risk to be the first day

1. crash fest
2. Queue fest
3. Synchonize problems Fest
4. Exploit / dupe / Hack Fest attacks and of cource
5. Lag Fest

because Tor has not been tested in mass amounts of variety combinations of [gamers - "gamers"] / [clients -workstations hardware setups] / [clients - workstations software setups ] / [clients - workstations network situation ].Ι ΒΕΤ 50000 credits that the forums in the first days will be hammered with to many problems that will be the community manager's nightmare. A recent mmo game I have been seeing executing open test it fairly correctly was Rift. the headstart gave pre-ordered players the ability to play days before the launch. Failure myths within the normal release has already hammered some mmorpg releases in the past. i don't want right now referrer any of these mmos, but many of us we know what happend in the past. I'm not saying Bioware or better EA should start inviting thousands of players right now, but it would be a good choise the hard test and be better preparation for the worst case scenarios within the last month before launch. An other option is pre-sell and pre-launch a week before normal start, but the time to investigate and solve the problems is limited.

‪Update 5/5/2011
EA Announces: SWTOR Due 2nd Half of 2011 Fiscal Year 2012 Key Titles by Label and Platform — this list excludes Star Wars®: The Old Republic™, which is scheduled to launch in the second half of calendar 2011.
Original 4/5/2011
Everyone at BioWare and EA is working to ensure that Star Wars: The Old Republic is delivered at the quality level you expect from BioWare and Star Wars.

‪Star Wars: The Old Republic is expected to launch in the second half of 2011. Information on the release date and pre-order programs will be released as it becomes available.

more : Original Announcement

P.S.
We will be with all of you on Release Day !

Hello, i am truck_driver_tim - , as you can see, heh! silly me. So silly, obviously you can see my name and avatar on the left, i'll remember that for next time.

I want to talk a bit about the games release, it is just taking far too long. I think they should release right now and let us play the content that they have done so far, and patch it up while we're playing. You'll still get all the box sales you're after, because as others have said, the information so far is just not cutting it for such a long time period, I mean, I know so far the information you've given us is proving to be such a great game, a revolution in MMO experience, never seen before gameplay, and all that, it's not because there's a star wars tag on the game, that's not where your fans are coming from, it's clearly the information and content you've shown us so far, such as space combat!

Swtor.gr: Κανείς δεν θέλει να πληρώνει ένα παιχνίδι που είναι σε Beta κατάσταση.Δεν νομίζω οτι η Bioware ή η EA πρόκειται να βιαστούν να βγάλουν το παιχνίδι.
Όσο αφορά αυτά που έχουμε δεί για το Swtor , είναι αυτά που θέλουν να μας δείξουν , οπότε κανείς δεν ξέρει με σιγουριά πως θα είναι.
I guess we have to wait much longer... - If we look at the information (or better the lack of it!) concerning the game Bioware offered so far I got more and more the impression that the game won't be released in Spring 2010. It looks as if Bioware presents the most things that they have developed so far that they can be shown, that could mean that such a lot of stuff is still in a state of developing that it can't be shown.
Well it's just six month untill Spring 2010...
Well of course I do not want to play a game in Beta state (look at the MMO's of FUNCOM or Cryptic) but if I look at the information policy of Bioware it seems to me that they overvalue their capacity...

What do you mean? [Swtor.com Community]