The ‘key’ to this decade long life cycle is to ”really perfect” the experience over time. Gameplay information remains tightly guarded by BioWare.
All this time and money for just 10 years? Well Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online is now just 4 years old, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has reached 7 and CCP’s EVE Online is 8. 10 years is actually an awful long time for an MMO, especially as most fizzle out.
”Our assumptions for break-even and profitability are not seven digit subscribers. We think we can run and operate a very successful and profitable MMO at different levels,” said EA CFO Eric Brown; they’re not delusional about being a WoW-killer.
”The key thing here is to really perfect the product. We’re shooting for an extremely high quality game experience. We view this as a 10 year opportunity.” There’s been no revelation as to what model SWTOR will be adopting yet, subscription or free-to-play?
Likely it will go with monthly subs first to test the waters and then possibly shift to F2P and microtransactions if things don’t pick up enough. BioWare still keeps a lot of gameplay details about SWTOR a secret despite what footage they have shown.
Expectations are high for Star Wars: The Old Republic, which the studio claims is Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 all in one. Are you following it?
