Activision Not Concerned About Star Wars: The Old Republic

There has been a lot of discussion and debate about the next big MMORPG over the past twelve months and EA/Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is the one title that’s being touted as a WoW killer. We have heard this before of course, and time and time again new MMOs have failed to pull players away from Blizzard’s World of Warcraft which now has 12.5 million subscribers worldwide.
Speaking to Reuters, Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick was asked whether he thought The Old Republic had a chance of taking subscribers away from the World of Warcraft franchise.
“I can’t say that we’re hugely concerned about that… the audience for ‘World of Warcraft’ is a pretty committed group of players”.
EA will be looking to hit the MMO community hard with The Old Republic, they have years invested in the project already, and with Bioware behind the game, it may just have a chance. MMO gamers are notoriously fickle and demand quality and polish, so if EA give the Old Republic the development time to reach that polish, it may tease some players away looking for something completly new.
It’s not just EA Activision should be keeping a close eye on, Trion Worlds’ RIFT is just about to go into closed Beta and it has some very promising features that will appeal to fantasy gamers.
Read Jeff’s last MMO Weekly which discusses WoW-killer or the lack of.