EA’s Frank Gibeau and Lucasarts’ Tom Nichols: SWTOR to have more subscribers than WoW
“We have very high expectations for this,” said EA Games president Frank Gibeau, speaking this week at LucasArts’ HQ in San Francisco.
“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.”
#1 by Recursion on October 24th, 2008
LOL!!
What else needs to be said here?
#2 by Naladini on October 24th, 2008
Have they set a date for release yet? If not, maybe they’re counting on attrition over the next 3-5 years to give them their victory….
#3 by Cedia on October 24th, 2008
My spidey senses are tingling. I’m about ready to put this game into the “stay far far away” category.
#4 by Merkwurdigliebe on October 24th, 2008
Ah, damn. EA is the publisher?
#5 by dartwick on October 24th, 2008
Honestly the sky is the limit for the success os SWOTR.(this could be said of any MMO but its reasonable to say it about SWOTR.)
That said its unreasonable to expect that.
#6 by Brandon Reinhart on October 24th, 2008
This seems highly unlikely.
#7 by Blah on October 24th, 2008
Riiiiight….
Something I read before is coming to mind…”Past performance is no indication of future success”.
EA seems to run their mouths alot. I wonder how the EA Mythic team feels about this news?
#8 by Mortarion on October 24th, 2008
The best part of that quote is thus: “EA’s reputation is for wanting to win.”
Keyword: Wanting to win.
#9 by Matt Mihaly on October 24th, 2008
I seem to recall the Star Wars: Galaxies team predicting they’d break a million subs and not getting anywhere close. I have a lot of respect for the team making SWOTR but I think perhaps they overestimate the value of the Star Wars license in an MMO setting.
Happy to be wrong though, and they can count on my sub for a couple of months, at least.
–matt
#10 by Nyght on October 24th, 2008
Old as time: A fool and his money….
#11 by ixobelle on October 24th, 2008
Because nothing is EVER going to dethrone WoW, AMIRITE?
While it may or may not happen, it’s silly to dismiss it outright. I’m a firm believer that the ‘next big thing’ will be whatever Blizzard decides to follow up WoW with, but it doesn’t make sense to say “here’s our new game coming out, we have no intention of making it good enough to take the #1 spot”.
In all honesty, I HOPE the next big thing is a spacey kind of thing, because swords and elves and orcs and dragons have just been done to death.
#12 by Merkwurdigliebe on October 24th, 2008
“…because swords and elves and orcs and dragons have just been done to death.”
I’m still waiting for a Full-Throttle-themed MMO.
#13 by Kaalinn on October 24th, 2008
To be honest, this claim seems a lot less audacious coming from those guys than from anyone else yet.
I’d probably be even more convincend if someone from BioWare had said it instead of EA, but he IS right. EA can roll out the same financial backing Blizzard does, BioWare is capable of extremely polished and coherent design (I’m totally in love with Mass Effect) and they’ve wrote Star Wars that’s better than pretty much everything other than the original trilogy.
Of course neither company has any experience with serious MMO hosting (though there is of course NWN’s multiplayer), but so did people like Origin when UO came out.
Maybe I just WANT it to be true because BioWare is unlikely to completely wrack their own story and universe while trying to do this like Blizzard did, but I’m not writing it off as impossible for now.
#14 by Moorgard on October 24th, 2008
Would I bet money on it happening? No. But is it within the realm of possibility? Absolutely.
#15 by Dave G. on October 25th, 2008
EAs reputation is for wanting to win… really?
I thought EAs reputation was for running every project they do as a death march where programmers work 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week, for ridiculously little pay while managers crack the whip.
I thought EAs reputation was for infecting their customer’s computers with insidious DRM schemes, while at the same time preventing customers from using what they’ve paid for if they should have the misfortune to need to install it more than 3 times… in their entire life.
I thought EAs reputation was for being an absolute ass of a company that doesn’t give a shit about their customers or the state of gaming in general, just as long as they can continue to churn out the same unimaginative crap year after year while pissing on as many people as they can.
Hmm. Must be thinking of a different EA.
#16 by Gawain on October 25th, 2008
Godspeed, you crazy bastards. Godspeed.
#17 by D-0ne on October 25th, 2008
Clue to SWTOR think Guild Wars but Multiplayer.
#18 by Ian on October 25th, 2008
Hmm, Looks like Lucasarts has finally made a deal with the “Dark Side”.
#19 by Boanerges on October 25th, 2008
I bet it took Raph Koster a good 5 minutes to stop laughing after hearing this. Lucas has really shot any kind of venture like this in the foot. His newest movies and exploits are not really aimed at your prime MMO audience (Jar-Jar Binks anyone?). Add in the fact that the movies failed to live up to expectations from the fans of the original 3 movies and you’ve got a recipe for mediocrity.
#20 by Iconic on October 25th, 2008
*Shrug*
SW:G failed prior to the NGE for a few specific reasons:
1) Buggy as hell. Most new games have bugs, but the glaring bugs in SWG never got fixed.
2) Lack of Jedi and The Force. This is pretty much THE element that makes Star Wars different from any and every other sci fi franchise. A Star Wars game without the Force is like Salma Hayek without cleavage.
3) Lack of space combat. Space ships that dog fight in space as if they were flying in an atmosphere are part and parcel of Star Wars. Including this feature as an expansion was too late for many people who’d already left the game due to 1 and 2.
Of course the NGE absolutely destroyed the game by driving away the crafting/taming/socializing world builders in order to capture the non existent demophraphic that was begging for a content poor, bug ridden level grind WoW knock off set in space.
Relevance to SWTOR?
The setting of SWTOR encourages lots of force users and lots of space battles. The game can be true to the star wars mythos and still has a lot of room to show us stuff we’ve never seen before. It could beat WoW, or it could fail. The devil is in the details. The only thing we know is that it has virtually nothing to do with SW:G.
#21 by Aufero on October 26th, 2008
I wish them luck. So far all EA ownership has brought Bioware is DRM problems.
#22 by dartwick on October 26th, 2008
Iconic said “stuff”
Or maybe SWG failed prior to release because the game desin was all about character development and structured interaction but the IP was about wide open fun and excitement.
#23 by UnSub on October 26th, 2008
So far I know more about the magical hopes for SWOR than I do any active game mechanics. There seems to be a lot of “hey, this would be cool and awesome!”, but not much on the “… and this is how we are going to do it”.
It’s textbook
1) Get SWOR licence
2) …
3) Profit (and more than WoW for a success)!
#24 by faefrost on October 27th, 2008
“Just look at the base of Star Wars fans”
Ummmm? Has anyone pointed out to them the bagage and resentment those fans carry called SWG? They will surpass WoW by making a good game, NOT by having a well known IP that has been screwed up in the past.
#25 by Ashendarei on October 28th, 2008
“ixobelle Says:
October 24, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Because nothing is EVER going to dethrone WoW, AMIRITE?
”
The only problem with this line of reasoning, is in this case EA is involved.
that means 2-3 things are guaranteed to happen:
1. at some point the creative process will get hit by a semi then eaten by a dog, then shit out before it actually makes it into the game.
2. Expect the whole DRM fiasco to return, it’s EA, they DON’T learn from their mistakes.
3. The amount of resentment to George Lucas and the amount of douchbaggery that he’s bestowed upon us with his “New and Improved!” star wars movies, including the expansion of the series to poorly done full CG movies (that look like claymation) leaves a large amount of unhappy fans. An unhappy fan is less likely to shell out $50 + 12-15$ more a month for a game like this.
Basically Faefrost summed it up best with this:
“They will surpass WoW by making a good game, NOT by having a well known IP that has been screwed up in the past.”
I couldn’t agree more, and with EA’s track record I’m not even CONSIDERING purchasing this game.
#26 by sanyaweathers on October 28th, 2008
Except EA didn’t have anything at all to do with WAR. They left it entirely up to Mythic/GamesWorkshop.
Unless, of course, half my IM list has been lying to me for the last year.
I’m not convinced EA is the devil, and I’ve long since spent their dirty, dirty money.
#27 by nerd gone bad on October 31st, 2008
And then Blizzard will release Starcraft Universe and it’ll be game over Georgey-boy.