A recent article on Gamasutra discusses the decline in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft subscriptions and claims it might be attributable to SWTOR, at least in some part. Gamasutra says: In an interview with Eurogamer, senior World of Warcraft producer John Lagrave said that the game’s recent drop in subscriber numbers “has to at least be attributable” to the release of The Old Republic, although he did not divulge updated subscriber numbers. “We certainly do look at [where WoW players go], and we have a very smart bunch of guys who do our analytics for us,” he explained. “”Of course people are trying Star Wars — our development team are trying Star Wars! I’m one of the few people who’s still playing it actually, but yeah we’ve seen a dip in subs.” He continued, “It certainly has to at least be attributable to The Old Republic,” but added that “it’s also…
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SWTOR was Built to Compete with WoW
Dallas Dickinson, director of production for Electronic Arts’ BioWare division had a lot to say about SWTOR at GDC recently. The initial plan with the creation of the game was always to become a leader in the genre. Well, anyone who plays MMOs or even knows a little about them knows that Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has had the top spot in the MMORPG scene for some time now. Many others have tried and failed to capture that spot and when SWTOR appeared closer to launch, many would speculate about whether or not it would steal the spotlight from WoW. Now that we are post-launch, has it succeeded? VentureBeat brings us the story: In fact, the public relations folks promoting the company’s Star Wars: The Old Republic game were told — only half jokingly — to announce the game onstage as, “Star Wars, MMO (massively multiplayer online), BioWare,” and then…
Compare/Contrast SWTOR to other recent MMOs
Everyone’s talking about SWTOR and if it’s going to be any good as well as how it compares to other recent MMOs. You’ve heard all of the comparisons to WoW. We’ve heard all of those a million times, it seems but World of Warcraft is not the only game it’s being compared to. One Reddit user did a write-up on how it compares to other MMOs of today in terms of gameplay, zones and maps and more. Here’s a sampling: Leveling is slow-paced. You have to do fairly significant travel and quests for each level in comparison to WoW and WHO. Quests stayed consistent through 20 levels. ll quests are accepted via cutscene and voice over, with various conversation options that add more dialog before eventually getting to the accept or deny dialog. (Dragon Age) The UI is nothing special and doesn’t appear to be customizable. The user puts both…
WoW Killer or WoW Failure?
Is there room for 2 incredibly powerful MMO’s on the market, can Star Wars: The old republic out shine World of Warcraft where every other MMO has failed to be #1? Maybe… It might be too late though, with WoW already being as big as it is. But we’ve seen game play after game play in anticipation for Sw:Tor to shine brightly in our hands making us the rulers of our own destiny with a lightsaber or Two. If Tor cannot succeed in drawing you in as promised with it’s epic story telling than we might see millions of dollars and hours just thrown away, but I’ve always had faith in the Bioware franchise ever since Balder’s Gate pretty much the only thing I do have faith in. “So where does that leave EA and BioWare Austin? Possibly up a creek given how much money has reportedly been poured into…