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BioWare doctors ring NASDAQ opening bell

Muzyka and Zeschuk mark the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic with ceremonial kickoff to the day's stock market trading.

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A short time ago in a state several days' drive away from the GameSpot offices, BioWare cofounders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk celebrated the launch of their company's long-awaited massively multiplayer online role-playing game by getting all dressed up to go to the market. To mark the official release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the pair donned Jedi robes and brought a retinue consisting of stormtroopers, an Imperial officer, a Wookie, and EA Labels president Frank Gibeau into the NASDAQ stock exchange to ring the opening bell.

Would you trust these men with a lightsaber? Or ringing a bell, for that matter?
Would you trust these men with a lightsaber? Or ringing a bell, for that matter?

While The Old Republic officially launched today, the game has been playable in an early access program to those who preordered it. That was apparently a considerable number of people, as one analyst projected yesterday that the game's user base had already hit 1.5 million members, and players have been forced to endure at-times lengthy waits to get into crowded servers.

Although The Old Republic is BioWare's first MMORPG, it is not the developer's first experience working with George Lucas' sci-fi franchise. It helped establish The Old Republic setting--several thousand years before the events in the original Star Wars film trilogy--with the 2003 Xbox and PC role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

For more on the developer's return to the realm of lightsabers and midichlorians, check out GameSpot's ongoing coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

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