Poll: Does The Old Republic have what it takes?

[Willeus]

With the recent 4.0 Cataclysm patch and the release of cataclysm on the horizon, MMO fans are more excited than ever to dig in to the next installment to World of Warcraft. But, The Old Republic is also receiving a lot of hype from the gaming community and shows promise to finally bring some competition to the MMO field.

My question is this: Will The Old Republic succeed where countless others have failed? Can it actually prove to be serious competition to the monolith that is WoW?

 

[Keava]

Depends what you consider competition for WoW. It's a known fact that both EU and NA WoW numbers are dropping for quite a while now and it's mostly the Asian market holding over 50% of subscribers. Many of people i know that play or used to play WoW are waiting for something new and it's a common trait among the MMO crowd.

Problem with TOR is that we don't know enough about it. How exactly will the conversations play out, how the end game will look, how playable with be the PvP, is crafting going be fun, etc. From the various scrapped bits it sounds amazing, but how it will actually be once you play it? Won't know till they let us play it.

WoW on the other hand is pretty known brand on the market. You know exactly what you can expect from it. It's flaws are widely known and discussed everywhere where people play MMOs and so are it's merits. It also had plenty of time to establish it's position and to create space for various communities that grew around it. People are reluctant to leave everything just to try a new title.

With that said i'm pretty sure EA/BioWare can pull off over 1 million box sales in first month (WAR managed that, duh), and if they manage to keep at least 700k subs past 3rd month they are on a good way to chip at WoW's western world subscriptions. Release will be several months after Cataclysm which means large group of players will already see the initial content offered by Blizzard in the new expansion and thus they might want to give TOR a try.

 

[xxcloud417xx]

WoW won't die unless Blizz kills it.

However swtor will be good on it's own. It doesn't need to kill WoW to be great.

 

[Korten12]

maybe, though I think GW2 has a bigger chance to rival WoW.

 

[TPiddy]

It's going to be a friends thing. Most people play WoW because they know someone else on it. If enough people have enough friends to get on the TOR bandwagon it could really take off.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

I think TOR could be very successful, but no game will touch WoW. It's simply not possible. MMO players are fickle, and they don't like change. If their friends are on WoW, they're staying with WoW.

 

[GahzlyGriffon]

Im not going to get swtor as i feel it would ruin all the other sw games ive played.

TOR will do good and a few hundred thousand ppl would change from wow to TOR but wow will be fine .

But im waiting for 40k dark millenium next year and with 2 great MMORPG`s with huge fanbases will absorb allot of paying customers away from blizard.

Maybe then with enough MMO choice on the market will wow fall but not anytime soon

 

[Valksy]

Will definitely give Old Republic a good long look. I hope that the devs will be wise and not release a half-ass, half-finished game that doesn't work correctly (that should cover Tabula Rasa, Warhammer, Age of Conan etc etc etc). I watched some dev videos at the weekend and they were very in to waiting until the game was ready and making sure that players have cool and interesting fun from the get go.

But then Devs have been seen in the past to talk a good time and not be able to put their money where their mouth is.

Part of the problem is that WoW is a very polished game, well supported, runs well and has a huge amount of 3rd party information and content. It is no longer OK to release a game that lacks polish (which is rather unfair given how many years went in to WoW before it launched and how many years it has had since to get all shiny).

It will be worth a look.

And yes, I agree that when WoW crashes down it will be be because Blizzard did something really dumb (like an item store for things that actually matter rather than fluff).

 

[Cab00se206]

I think that Bioware is not actually aiming to to make a WOW-killer. EA might want that, but they're a bunch of complete idiots. WOW is an insanely popular game that's been going strong and growing for years and years. Bioware isn't trying to create a game that tries to muscle WOW out of its fanbase, they're just trying to make a kickass game. From everything that I've seen about TOR, it seems very likely that the two MMOs could coexist pretty comfortably. The two games just seem to be suited to different demographics. Sure TOR will probably poach a couple of thousand people from WOW who want to try something different, but that's really statistically insignificant.

What really annoys me is that everybody keeps asking whether TOR will 'kill WOW', which is stupid on many levels, or trying to compare it to WOW. There was one guy on the swtor.com forums who was complaining that there was no healer/tank character build like the Paladin from WOW. THIS IS A DIFFERENT GAME! If you want to have the exact same character class makeups as WOW, you'll be disappointed. If you want to try something different, then this will be a good thing.

So yeah, TOR won't kill WOW, but I reckon that WOW won't swamp TOR either, and the two may be able to exist side by side for a while IMO.