Bobby Kotick Not Worried About The Old Republic Competing with WoW

[TilMorrow]

Didn't WoW already have 14 million players at one point?

 

[Alandoril]

The only thing that BlizzardVision have to worry about when it comes to WoW is...WoW itself. Only them ruining or closing the game...or making a sequel/better mmo will ever pose any threat to it.

 

[Sgt Pepper]

Kotick is probably right, TOR will have it's 15 minutes but that's about it. As much as I hate to admit it, WoW is a juggernaut.

Bear in mind, TOR isn't Bioware per se but ex-Mythic, with some ex-SOE employees, working under the Bioware name. Bioware themselves are pretty committed to Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

As to F2P for TOR - very likely. Recouping the $100 million budget for TOR is gonna be tough. And if the rumours are true that $300 million has been spent on it then I can't see TOR pulling enough from subs alone.

 

[Ryan Warmuserken]

Kotick is probably right, TOR will have it's 15 minutes but that's about it. As much as I hate to admit it, WoW is a juggernaut.

Bear in mind, TOR isn't Bioware per se but ex-Mythic, with some ex-SOE employees, working under the Bioware name. Bioware themselves are pretty committed to Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

No, the ex-mythic guys are designing the PvP and if you talked to anyone who played Warhammer. The PvP was the best part and better then WoW.. so that's good, most of the team are bioware developers.

Sorry, have to clear up your misinformation (Writers/lead designers etc are all bioware)

As to F2P for TOR - very likely. Recouping the $100 million budget for TOR is gonna be tough. And if the rumours are true that $300 million has been spent on it then I can't see TOR pulling enough from subs alone.

F2P is even LESS likely with their huge budget they have to cover, subscriptions get more money.

I predict a steady 2 million subscriber base for TOR, that will be more then enough to pay back the debt.(on top of the millions more boxes actually sold)

P.S. EA Louse is not real, he's an anonymous troll who was bored and the sheep believed him.

 

[Ryan Warmuserken]

Didn't WoW already have 14 million players at one point?

Nope. Highest number of players is what it is at now.(12 million), definitly will get higher at the launch of cata.

 

[RatRace123]

I'm hoping SWtOR succeeds, WoW's been at the top too long.

Monopolies are bad... and stuff. Plus, the thought of seeing WoW going down gives me a very warm, fuzzy feeling.

 

[Jodah]

It may temporarily dent the titanium armored behemoth that is WoW but I expect it to fail just like every "WoW killer". People will play it, realize its not as good as they thought it would be, then come back. I know because I did the exact same thing with Warhammer. Some will stay with it but most will either give up mmos all together or go back to WoW. With Cataclysm making it easier for new players to get into the game any losses will easily be overcome.

 

[kuolonen]

Pfft, WoW.. Played it for a year and a half, then bored, then came back for the expansions 1monrh per pack, then bored again. Not gonna come back for Cata.

Unless the core gameplay changes drastically, I really dont feel the urge to return to the endless grindfest that is WoW.

Cata basicly just remakes the old areas, lumps in couple of new dungeons and Big Bad Final Boss. I understand the nostalgic call for vet players, but thats just not enough for me.

I'd only come back if levels were reset and the adventures would start anew in diffrent time or in diffrent place. A starting area for levels 1-20 really doesnt qualify since, after that, its just the same old, same old.

 

[Ryan Warmuserken]

It may temporarily dent the titanium armored behemoth that is WoW but I expect it to fail just like every "WoW killer". People will play it, realize its not as good as they thought it would be, then come back. I know because I did the exact same thing with Warhammer. Some will stay with it but most will either give up mmos all together or go back to WoW. With Cataclysm making it easier for new players to get into the game any losses will easily be overcome.

So you've played the game?

 

[Atmos Duality]

"I can't say that we're hugely concerned about that. The audience for World of Warcraft is a pretty committed group of players," Kotick said.

No shit. Every iota of the game is based on a proven addiction model.

 

[tehroc]

Anyone want to start a betting pool on when SW:TOR goes Free-to-Play plus premium content?

Not until the MMO bubble collapses. They are saying could be 2012. The genre is already under serious decline. Another year will see droves of players leaving to actually deal with the real problems going on in the world instead of hiding their heads in the sand. Revolution is coming.

 

[Jaded Scribe]

WoW is too big to be brought down by any single MMO. Even losing half their player base will still leave it as one of the largest MMOs out there.

I think BioWare's best bet is to release the game and xpacs on Blizzard's off years between xpacs.

Then you catch all the people that are tired of the current WoW xpac will comeover, and you'll get some back and forth as gamers alternate games.

 

[vrbtny]

.....This is Bobby Kotick we're talking about here.

 

[Fumbleumble]

I'm not surprised Kotick isn't bothered.. I'd be VERY surprised if TOR broke even, never mind making the kind of money WOW does.

 

[Labcoat Samurai]

I lost interest in TOR the moment they showed that it would be following the 'holy trinity' class model that ruins MMOs.

I was under the impression that TOR was designed to permit any character class to fulfill any of the roles (healer, tank, dps) and that you could even reasonably expect to solo with NPC helpers. I'm probably missing something here. Could you elaborate on what you mean?

 

[WolfenD]

I'm so looking forward to Star Wars kicking WoW of its throne of MMORPG.
Besides the KNOTOR game actually has a story and isn't just go here and grind.

 

[Hyper-space]

TOR is probably going to attract the people disenchanted by WoW, instead of going after WoW's userbase, so its going to be 2 different demographics.

 

[Asehujiko]

Well, at least this subscriber *is* going over pretty darn certainly. Provided of course that SWTOR's execution is decent enough and that some of its core promises are upheld, which we still need to wait until launch day.

Though the ultimate test is as to how it feels like when you play it. Mechanics-wise so far the reveals have not been quite surprising...but there's more to it than just that really. For one I am almost positive that SWTOR will have darn good player retention due to its story aspect at least. And contrary to most naysayers, that actually *has* been voted as one of the key reasons why people will be trying it out at least. And retention is always easier when you build up a world and characters, to which some attachment is developed over the course of the game, as opposed to a few characters whose text you usually prefer to skip through (for those saying that over here most will skip over the audio work, take into account ME2's 15% rate of skipping over).

The only think that I think could potentially sour it is of course a poor execution (servers crashing, lagging, customer support not on point, glitches, exploits that break the game, ect.)...and many MMOs have fallen down the drain because they lacked in this department, in spite of their great promise. Really, we need to just wait and see how this one will do.

That much vaunted story of theirs is also going to be their downfall. What do they expect people to do once they're through with it? Sit with their thumbs up their ass and wait for expansion packs?

 

[Anaklusmos]

Pfft, WoW.. Played it for a year and a half, then bored, then came back for the expansions 1monrh per pack, then bored again. Not gonna come back for Cata.

Unless the core gameplay changes drastically, I really dont feel the urge to return to the endless grindfest that is WoW.

Cata basicly just remakes the old areas, lumps in couple of new dungeons and Big Bad Final Boss. I understand the nostalgic call for vet players, but thats just not enough for me.

I'd only come back if levels were reset and the adventures would start anew in diffrent time or in diffrent place. A starting area for levels 1-20 really doesnt qualify since, after that, its just the same old, same old.

The revamping part in Cataclysm is not just cosmetic, the core gameplay for most classes has changed, the philosophy for levelling has changed (levelling is no longer a grind, you can do 1 - 60 in 3 days now, and quests are now fun I will admit, it's no longer about kill X for Y and collect Z amount, one quest is actually a homage to Plants Vs Zombies), each zone has a main story which you follow to a resolution so it makes it more involving, dungeons now have a difficulty curve so they start off easy and get progressively harder, I could go on and on about the changes going into Cataclysm to make it better but I already sound like a brown nose, and people here will think I'm just trying to promote it.

 

[rsvp42]

Wow subscribers aren't going anywhere, and certainly not to the The Old Republic.

Don't know about the rest, but I'll be picking up TOR when it comes out. I've played WoW to my limits at this point and many times over. I don't have the time to invest in heavy raiding and my play time has been so sporadic this last year that I probably wouldn't enjoy it if I tried. The new quest chains are alright and leveling a werewolf sounds fun... but I feel like it will just blend into the same experience before long, an experience that has at this point become repetitive and lackluster.

I'd love to recapture that feeling of waking up early in the morning to play, seeing the Barrens for the first time with my Tauren. Getting my first gold. Doing some group quests for the first time and learning how to pull. There was a kind of simple awe in it. But repeated playthroughs have dulled the experience. I can hardly be bothered to even read the quest text anymore and I was probably a holdout in that way already (I mean so few really read it).

I'm not saying TOR will be leagues ahead, but it will at least be different. It'll be something new to explore and a feeling of camaraderie with the other players taking the plunge and hoping for a great game. At worst, it ends up being lame and I just quit. Big deal. But there's a chance it can be great. I don't care about killing WoW. There's no need to kill it. It will die a slow death on it's own. It may even reach the ripe old age of ten years if it's lucky. But in the mean time, plenty of players will want to move on to something new and I think TOR will have the right ingredients to welcome those players.

Only time will tell. Also, what ever happened to hero classes?