Star Wars: The Old Republic roll-out avoids digital gridlock

Servers for EA and BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic are beginning to reach capacity as the company manages a steady digital roll-out ahead of the official launch on December 20.

BioWare begun early access to the highly-anticipated game this week for those who had pre-ordered the game, with EA putting 106 servers in operation - 64 in the US and 42 in Europe. Blizzard's World of Warcraft has 491 operational servers across those regions.

As of last night, three servers in the US were at 'full' capacity, five were classified as 'very heavy', 27 as 'heavy', 29 at 'standard' capacity, with none classified as 'light', according to analyst firm Cowen & Company. Some users have reported short queuing to access the game.

All eyes are on the massively multiplayer online game as Electronic Arts takes on the giants already established in the market, most notably Activision's World of Warcraft but also upstarts like Trion's Rift.

Subscription sign up for the game is expected to be strong - over two million participated in the beta.

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has suggested that the game can be profitable with as few as half a million subscribers. But that business model is in question with so many high profile MMOs adopting a freemium model this year.