In contrast to the report we made two days ago, Bioware's community manager Stephen Reid made a post on the Star Wars: The Old Republic's official forums clarifying that the game will not require EA's Origin service to play or patch. Now, if you want to buy it digitally, you're still going to be limited only to EA's new fruitless attempt to compete with Steam, but thankfully you won't be required to sign up for Origin to partake in the Star Wars goodness if you buy a copy at retail.
Selected Stephen Reid quotes to break it down:
"While Origin will be the exclusive digital retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, that does not mean that Origin is required for you to access or play The Old Republic," he explained.
"Origin is a digital storefront, and the desktop application is there to give you quick access to Origin exclusives and deals. However, you won't need to launch the Origin application to run The Old Republic, nor will you patch the game via Origin.
"Once the game is on your hard disk, you'll be connecting to our servers to patch and launch the game, and Origin does not have to be running to do that."
