BioWare: Unfair to say Star Wars MMO lacks innovation

Star Wars: The Old Republic’s director James Ohlen has stated it is unfair to say the MMO lacks in innovation.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Ohlen explained that other genres such as shooting and strategy games, have been using the same kinds of mechanics over a period of 20 years.

He specified: “If you look at a Battlefield or a Call of Duty or a Gears of War or even a Half-Life – those games use the same tried and true interface and the same tried and true game mechanics of the first-person shooter genre that’s been around for 20 years.

“If you look at real-time strategy games, they kept the same tried and true interface and the same tried and true mechanics that existed for 20 years. Same with adventure games, same with platformers, same with fighting games, sports games.”

He goes on to say he believes many people don’t consider MMORPGs entire genres, rather just something that describes the game World of Warcraft.

“But it is a genre, and we wanted to appeal to fans of that genre – we don’t want to turn them away by making something that’s radically different. And we wanted to take the lessons that have been developed in that genre over years and years and years and basically refine them, much like other companies do with other genres.

“So, I don’t know, it’s just the way it is, but I don’t see us as not being innovative. We’re actually a lot more innovative within the MMO space than comparable games in other spaces like the first-person genre, the action genre – games like that.”

He adds that so far Star Wars: The Old Republic has been slightly stronger in the US than in Europe:

“Star Wars [the brand] is a little bit stronger in North America than in Europe. The expectations on what the game was going to be for a lot of people was kind of different to what we were building. We were building essentially a classic MMO with BioWare storytelling set in the Star Wars universe. And there were a lot of people out there who wanted us to reinvent the universe and come up with a game system that had never been done before.

“And that was something we weren’t doing, so it was going to be disappointing for those people.”

Star Wars: The Old Republic’s first content update, Rise of the Rakghouls, is set to release January 17.

Many users complained TOR was too similar to World of Warcraft despite the use of cut scenes and conversation trees. This include Rift developer Will Cook who told us he was “personally disappointed [The Old Republic] was going to be standard action-bar combat.“