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BioWare: WoW is the "touchstone" for The Old Republic

by Jef Reahard on Feb 10th 2011 10:30AM

World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Star Wars: The Old Republic

142

Debate has raged long and hard in fan circles as to whether or not BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG is a "WoW clone." Speaking on the keynote panel at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk added a bit of fuel to that particular fire by outlining how SWTOR is treading the path laid down by the current king of the genre.

"It [World of Warcraft] is a touchstone. 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," Zeschuk said.

Zeschuk also addressed the social gaming trend, saying that triple-A projects are still alive and kicking thanks to Blizzard's success. "Bigger does work. Big has worked and frankly, WoW is the biggest. On a pure revenue basis it's probably the biggest game ever by a country mile. It generates so much revenue it's an incredible international business unto itself," he said.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Tags: bioware, business-models, dice, dice-summit, fantasy, greg-zeschuk, mmo-industry, sci-fi, star-wars-the-old-republic, swtor, the-old-republic, World-of-Warcraft, wow, wow-clone

Reader Comments (142)

@Gildas You are a smart person. Game companies should hire you as a consultant just to sit in meetings and say nothing but that.

This is how most quality (i.e. successful and critically acclaimed) games are developed. The fact that so many people are getting worked up over it is kind of adorable.

Lets go ahead and use WoW as the example. By all objective measures WoW is the “best” subscription based MMO in existence. It has the most subscribers (12+ million), it makes the most money (around $1.25 billion annually), and it is the most critically acclaimed MMO (93 on Metacritic). Blizzard turned WoW into a successful game by using EQ as a “touchstone.” At the time WoW was being developed EQ was the big kid on the block. Blizzard took the features that worked in EQ, polished it up, and then added their own twist to it. The twist they added was building the game around solo and quest based leveling, and this ended up being a major point of innovation for the MMO genre. This is how most successful and popular games in any genre are developed.

Bioware is merely using the conventions that have been established by other successful MMOs and adding their own twist (i.e. a heavy focus on story). This is how most good developers create good games, and how genres evolve and “improve” over time. TOR is certainly not guaranteed to be a huge success, but I think it is the first MMO that has the capacity and potential to compete with WoW.

@Rive

The difference is that WoW actively worked to subvert many of the "rules" of Everquest. It may have been built on EQ, but it was largely a response to what was wrong with EQ, not what was right with it.

Saying "Oh no, we're never going to break the rules that WoW established" is just lazy and incompetent.

@Mystal

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what Greg means when he talks about WoW rules. Finding those things that don't work and improving them is a part of that process. That's where developers adding their own twist comes in. Obviously, you have to improve on the experience.

I think that when Greg is talking about WoW rules he might be referencing, in part, ideas that Gordon Walton talked about a number of years ago. Gordon Walton is the studio director for Bioware Austin and he gave an interesting speech about this subject a few years back. You can read about it here http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15386

I could be wrong but I think that is what Greg is getting at.

@Rive Oh my god thank you! That is exactly what I think is happening.

Massively for the 1st time i'm dissapointed with you. The gamespot report doesn't sound like your report at all!

"That said, Zeschuk noted that anyone who plays Star Wars: The Old Republic will see that it is a BioWare game."

You should pay more attention to your sources... unless you have something against this game.

@sleepr "Zeschuk began by noting that World of Warcraft remains the touchstone in the industry, and it proves that big games still work. He also said that because of WOW's influence, it is important to maintain the standards that the game established."

and

"Second, he said that they aren't going out there to beat anyone, in that they aren't positing the game as the oft-feared, never-materialized WOW killer."

The media can take people out of context.

@sleepr, The Gamespot article you linked early is only a summary of the panel, not a transcription, and therefore it is not all-inclusive of the discussion. We've cited direct quotes from Gamesindustry.biz, as noted in the article.

-Bree

@Brianna Royce I actually feel if anyone is taking this out of context it is Gamespot or the readers.

@Brianna Royce Even if it's only a summary there are still quotes in them and i didn't see one of the ones your source wrote. Unfortunatelly you guys are hurting a company and a game, if that didn't happened i couldn't care less.

sleepr -- The fact that Gamespot didn't include the exact quotes we used doesn't mean they were made up, since Gamespot's article is not a full transcription of the event. Please review the material we cited from Gamesindustry.biz -- the quotes we used are direct quotes sourced from there as Jef noted. It's our job to report what was said, not to hide it just to make Zeschuk look good to one group or another. Besides, what he said was incredibly smart. BioWare would be fools not to consider WoW's success and methods. It's really common sense.

-Bree

@Brianna Royce Sure, because if he did really say that gamespot wouldn't want to put it online... even more knowing that they would get tons of views. I'm not buying that, sorry! And i know they would be foolish not seeing what's good in WoW, but the way your sources wrote it is not the way Dr Greg or Dr Ray speak.

Cya.

If I wanted to play WoW I would. Definitely will not be buying it now.

@SaintV It's sad to see people like you, honestly. You just believe in everything people write... if you go read gamespot version, it's completely different from what they have here in this website. But whatever do what you want.

/sigh

First off by the very focus on the story aspect TOR is a hugely different animal than WoW... they should be focusing on that not the similarities to WoW. The pr department made a huge mistake here and massively why do I have a feeling this was a big interview where you took the most drama making point and posted it as the headline?

@Nhoj1983 They probably knew a lot of people would read it and post comments.

i think he could have chose his words more carefully by being more specific and not so vague as to exactly what they were taking from wow. and the article kinda took the atmosphere surrounding what was being said out of context. there was a WoW guy on stage with him and i think it was more of a diplomatic statement than anything else.

but of course they are going to look at wow and see if there is anything they can steal from it to make their game better. theyd be stupid not to. but if you look at the features that TOR will have that WoW doesnt then i think you're only left the trolls who will be saying this is a WoW clone.

I find it funny, no HILARIOUS that this is coming from Bioware the same week as everyone has been enjoying GW2 art, videos, and armor. They are already shooting themselves in the foot.

@(Unverified) Or maybe you should just check other media and see that everything that is transcribed in this article is pure BS.

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BioWare: WoW is the "touchstone" for The Old Republic

Reader Comments (142)

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 3:51PM Thac0 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 3:48PM Rive said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 3:55PM Mystal said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:49PM Rive said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 10:34PM Jellytoezz said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 3:51PM sleepr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:04PM Stellar25 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:20PM Brianna Royce said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:33PM Stellar25 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:46PM sleepr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 7:49PM Brianna Royce said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 10:04PM sleepr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 3:53PM SaintV said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:51PM sleepr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:03PM Alamar01 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:03PM Nhoj1983 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:05PM Stellar25 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:40PM freebase said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:45PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:53PM sleepr said

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