Therumancer said:
Also my personal conspiricy theory in regards to this is that we're looking at this from the wrong angle. Blizzard is probably scared right now, and with good reason. Their success and relations with guys like Kotick are based on World Of Warcraft. Next month we get an annoucement on the release date of "Old Republic Online" which barring a miracle of explosively bad game design is going to seriously cut into WoW's profit margins.
Hmm.
I'm curious if a Star Wars MMO holds as much weight ever since SOE screwed the pooch with Star Wars Galaxies...
MMORPGs aim to monopolize your time; all progress you make with your character goes directly toward keeping *YOU* anchored to them. The higher the level/shinier the loot, the harder it is to give it all up. Simply put, uprooting a significant chunk of WoW's population will not be easy.
I predict that TOR will be a high-stakes ordeal; either they deeply cut into WoW's market (in the long run), or they totally flop. There will be no middle ground.
Given how stable WoW has become (technically, economically, even culturally), that's a very tall order even for a mega-project like TOR.
On the other hand...if TOR does accomplish the impossible, and uproots WoW (digs into its playerbase, and makes it stick, not necessarily overthrow WoW entirely) it could mean the end of what has been the single most consistent profit machine in the history of gaming.
...At least until this "Project Titan" launches.
Simply put I think this is some high level brown nosing, which is why they are doing it out of the blue. The big boys at Blizzard are getting out the knee pads and puckering up. If "Old Republic" fails that will be good, but the way this looks they doubtlessly want to err on the side of caution.
The timing does seem odd, though the context is hardly odd at all. Blizzard-Activision has the biggest balls in the gaming business right now short of the Big Three (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft). Even if there was dissension in the ranks, the shareholders would have none of that publicly while they're still doing so well.