EA & LucasArts: New KOTOR MMO targetting WoW

[vlad321]

EA and LucasArts Targeting WoW with New Star Wars MMO

EA and LucasArts discuss how The Old Republic could end Blizzard's MMO reign.

By Kris Pigna, 10/25/2008

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? It's far too early to tell, but you can check out our own thoughts on what we've seen of The Old Republic so far. We know this much -- if BioWare can come through on everything they're promising with this game, the MMO genre will get a lot more interesting.

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They jsut basically commited suicide, I don't think they know that not only are they going up against WoW, but Blizzard as a company, and Blizzard is well known for making the best of whatever they are focusing on. Even BioWare can't hold up a candle Blizzard (won't even mention EA and LucasArts, they are jsut a joke compared to Blizzard). Worst comes to worst Blizzard is forced to make a new MMO and bury them all in the ground again.