BioWare: World of Warcraft Set MMO Standards
During the DICE 2011 keynote panel, BioWare's Greg Zeschuk admitted that world of Warcraft set MMOG standards.
Thursday during the keynote panel at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, BioWare's Greg Zeschuk admitted that Blizzard's World of Warcraft has established MMOG standards in which BioWare will follow with Star Wars: The Old Republic.
"It is a touchstone," Zeschuk told the audience. "It has established standards, it's established how you play an MMO. Every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it. And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that's pretty dumb. If you have established standards, WoW established them."
Zeschuk also admitted that it will be an "interesting challenge" to compete with World of Warcraft, noting the MMORPG's overall size in regards to its international reach and the yearly revenue it generates from subscribers and in-game purchases worldwide.
"In some ways they [Blizzard] cracked this market wide open," he said. "Obviously Star Wars is a very big license and it's something that when done right--and it's something we did right with KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic) years ago--it's an incredible force multiplier on your efforts. We've added things so that anyone that plays it knows it's a BioWare game."
BioWare's apparent take on Star Wars: The Old Republic is to launch an established, stable realm in the market rather than unleash a Star Wars-based mammoth (Bantha) out to take down World of Warcraft and other MMOGs. "The audience will tell us if we have a place," he said.
Also present on the keynote panel was Blizzard's Mike Morhaime. He told Zeschuk to "do a good job" with the Star Wars MMOG. His take is that The Old Republic may bring in MMOG "virgins"-- those that previously never considered playing a subscription-based MMOG. If those new players try BioWare's epic and walk away discouraged because of bad gameplay or instability issues, they may not give the genre another try. Naturally if The Old Republic rocks and new players decide they're newborn fans of MMOGs, Blizzard and other publishers/developers will likely reel in a new customer in the long run.
"BioWare is a great developer and obviously Star Wars is a very strong license," Morhaime said. "We think it's good for the MMO genre for additional MMOs to come out that are actually fun and good to play. I don't know that it serves the genre very well when MMOs come out and have all sorts of problems and players leave in frustration."
Star Wars: The Old Republic is expected to launch in Q2 2011.
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I'll never understand why companies and more importantly players like the mmo genre as it is... All of the games use more or less the everquest combat system, which to me is simply unbearably bad compared to nearly any other rpg out there.
Only mmo's use the "learn a million skills and spam button pressing" combat system instead of one that actually requires thought, and I'll never understand why. How is just pressing buttons and waiting on timers fun or strategic? On top of that, mmo's often require farming, and many enemies designed for groups are the same as those designed for individuals, but with more life and damage, and a larger character model.
If it's going to require a group to kill, it should be able to do something different than an enemy that doesn't. Why not instead make you fight an entire army, or enemies powerful or mobile enough to be unreachable by individuals? Sure, you can blame technical limitations, but if technical limitations prevent more players from changing the environment, why bother with more players at all?
You'd think someone would try to make an mmo with a combat system that isn't everquest, as having more than twenty players in and of itself does not limit you to using the everquest system. Judging by WoW's popularity, however, anyone playing an mmo wants to play everquest, and anyone who doesn't like everquest but also can see the potential for a lot of players in another game does not exist.
What would be wrong with trying to make an mmorpg that uses the final fantasy, neverwinter nights, oblivion, demon's souls, or any combat engine other than the everquest model? The only attempts at MMO shooters, PlanetSide and MAG, both relied rather heavily on a leveling system, why not make an mmo shooter that is just that, a shooter like call of duty or battlefield but on a much larger scale. Nearly any genre could benefit from a lot of players, assuming you could handle lag. Even something like a racing game with a persistant world (ala test drive unlimited but with a good racing engine) or a fighting game could make for a good mmo if developer's didn't focus so much on making mmo's to beat everquest.
It just seems silly that the potential of a lot of players in a game is wasted on everquest clones and not applied to all the other genres out there where it could really shine. Maybe the problem really is due to technological limits, as all of the attempts at variation in mmo's have had poor gameplay engines, possibly intentionally designed to minimize network strain. Admittedly, it does tax a network a lot more to handle 100 players all constantly aiming, moving, firing, and whatever else in first person than it does to handle 100 players only occasionally moving and quickly (but not constantly) activating skills, but that excuse can't be valid forever.
... End rant much longer than and not entirely relevant to the article... Were it not for the fact that the old republic will try and use a generic mmo-type engine instead of an actual rpg engine like KOTOR did, this probably wouldn't have been relevant at all...
^^ So that'd be the Warhammer 40k MMORPG game then
Cant' wait for it to come out.. It has mass front line fighting and first person aspects to it - apparantly.