KotOR MMO will be a great game, FACT, says Blizzard

It’s “a fact” that BioWare’s recently announced MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic will be great, Blizzard has said.

However, speaking to VideoGamer.com earlier this week prior to the midnight launch of World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King at HMV Oxford Street, chief operating officer Paul Sams issued a word of warning to his new-found rivals in the MMORPG space, saying the key question will be whether BioWare will be able to cope with online issues and “players smacking them around”.

“There’s a tremendous amount of work and knowledge that you need,” he warned. “I think what’s often forgotten is that Blizzard was the world leader in online gaming before we launched World of Warcraft. Battle.net was the largest gaming network in the world since early 1997. So we had a level of experience that candidly no other game company had and so a lot of the bumps and bruises that we got would have been substantially, monumentally worse had we not gone through many of the same experiences with Battle.net and got our teeth kicked in multiple times on Battle.net.

“So we were able to avoid certain things or knew how to better react to certain things than maybe we would have had we not had that experience. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges that companies have when they’re entering the MMO space, is they often times don’t have that MMO experience. And they’ve got all of these different issues coming at them at the speed of light, and there are a lot of issues. And so it makes it very challenging. You can have a great developer and you can have a great license but that’s not it. Those are two of the key components to give you a shot, and so they (BioWare) have that for sure.”

Late last month BioWare and LucasArts confirmed what was the worst kept secret in gaming – a Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic MMO. The “story-driven” online game was mentioned for PC only, and is set 300 years after the end of KotOR 2, and thousands of years before Darth Vader and anyone else from the films shows up. Players will be able to play as a Jedi, Sith or “a variety of other classic Star Wars roles”, and will “determine their path down the light or dark side of the Force”. It is BioWare’s first stab at the lucrative MMO genre.

Observers have suggested that The Old Republic represents the biggest challenge to World of Warcraft’s seemingly unassailable MMORPG crown, following the releases of other high profile rival titles Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.

Sams added: “How well they do will be greatly dependent upon how well they can deal with the other stuff. Because you know that team is going to make a great game. You know it. It’s just a fact. And you know that’s a cool license. It’s a fact. But can you do all the other stuff? That’s what I think companies have to look at. You better have a great franchise and a great developer. You better. That’s a requirement. If you don’t have those from my perspective you shouldn’t do it. It’s just too big of a commitment. But if you’ve got those, that’s the key ingredients to start it out. Can you do the rest? And that’s hard. Because even with all the experience we had we got kicked in the mouth. I mean, countless times. I can’t tell you the number of times that we’ve done things that were wrong or we could have done better or that the players smacked us around. It’s just tough, it’s a tough business, and there are so many more moving parts than anybody realises.”