Electronic Arts has announced that in an effort to offer a better game play experience, or to prevent servers from being crushed with the influx of players playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, EA will be limiting the numbers of copies (both digital and retail) to help balance things as they ramp up.

While the company is not giving out any numbers and they will most likely not ever do so, this artificial attempt to limit the number of players and adding them a little bit at a time might prove to actually be a good thing in the end.
EA is not saying how long after the initial influx of players is reached they will wait before making more copies available both retail and digital. Currently, pre-ordering is still your best bet to lock in your place in line to make sure that you can play on day one if you want to play on day one.

Based on the number of pre-orders already, it is looking like SWTOR is on track to start out a bit better than EA might have suspected which is good news for the investment that EA has put into the project.