Craig Morrison (Game director of Age of Conan) talks about the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic on his blog and brings up some really good points about the potential success of SWTOR. His very thorough (long, but worth the full read) post brings up some very good points. He addresses different reasons why the game is showing early success, how it compares to the massive MMO hit from Blizzard and also, where it might go in the future.
A snippet:
The game will most likely sell extremely well out of the gate, almost certainly the most successful first month sales of any MMO ever, and probably by a wide margin…it will then possibly even retain over a million subscription customers (something it should be remembered no game other than World of Warcraft has managed)…truly massive numbers…unless the game somehow collapses it is going to post seriously impressive numbers…yet…you can already read many comments across the net which indicate that there is a sizable number of people who are referring to that as a potential ‘failure”.
All valid points from a man with a lot of experience in the game industry. Morrison points out that for SWTOR to come up 2nd to WoW will not be considered a success by the masses and that while it would signify a great deal of success, most will still garner it a failure unless BioWare is able to beat WoW records with SWTOR. It really comes down to the big issue of what actually constitutes a successful game.
How would you define success in the MMORPG world?
The views of a gamer might vary from that of the game developers or even investors of the company backing the game. It’s tricky when we start dealing in matters of entertainment, along with a license as big as Star Wars, which so many people can relate to.
Morrison also talks about how much things have changed since 2004 when WoW released, what different tastes exist today, the wide variety that is available now as opposed to even just 5 years ago and many more valid points. It’s a good read with a different perspective that even SWTOR fans can respect.