EA and LucasArts Targeting WoW with New Star Wars MMO

[azeroth192]

Obviously, when any new massively multiplayer game hits the market, there's no avoiding the fact that it's competing with World of Warcraft. But with the recently announced Star Wars: The Old Republic, Electronic Arts and LucasArts are not only accepting the competition, they're welcoming it -- and they're using some fightin' words to do so.

"We have very high expectations for this," said Frank Gibeau, president of the EA Games label, to Videogaming247. "Just look at the base of Star Wars fans, plus what BioWare can do. Trust me: we want to win. EA's reputation is for wanting to win. This is going to be a powerful category and there's lots of ways to compete in this category. [Blizzard] created a much larger opportunity for everybody else, but that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way."

At this point, Gibeau evidently tagged LucasArts online boss Tom Nichols into the fracas, as he expressed his own thoughts on how to take down Blizzard's behemoth. "When World of Warcraft came out, everybody thought, 'No, the market is only this big, because that's as big as EverQuest was.' Blizzard showed that it could be much larger," Nichols said. "Our goal is to show that by bringing storytelling to the genre that we can attract an even wider audience. Plus, we have the benefit of this huge brand, which has done very, very well for nearly 30 years."

When pressed whether he actually predicts TOR could become bigger than WoW, Nichols was unsurprisingly confident. "I think this game has that potential, with a premiere developer behind it; with a clear differentiating feature being story and something that's very compelling, and being a feature that's true to BioWare's expertise as well as the Star Wars brand; plus the power of the Star Wars brand, which is still doing very, very well 30 years after it started."

So realistically, what are LucasArts' and EA's chances? if BioWare can come through on everything they're promising with this game, the MMO genre will get a lot more interesting.

[Mr. Hrm]

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[robertallen]

What's to happen with the license of Star Wars Galaxies? Is SOE going to be forced by LucasArts to pull the plug on this game?

[Mr. Hrm]

Good question!

[azeroth192]

Two Star Wars MMOs to Exist in Virtual World Harmony read this one it should answer your questions

[ultramega]

Lots of people are fed up with a lot of aspects of WoW right now. That means all the new MMOs coming out might find a larger audience than they anticipated...

[Mr. Hrm]

I think warhammer has had a healthy 500,000 audience and growing?

[ultramega]

Not sure, but I know of at least a dozen folks who've left WoW for WAR.

[Mr. Hrm]

Blizzard says that they are beginning to come out.. but that is Blizzard saying this. ;p