A look at Star Wars: The Old Republic

There has been a lot of news coming out of E3 this year in terms of MMO's, and some of the most exciting comes from Biowares new creation, Star Wars: The Old Republic(Or TOR for short). Now, I'm incredibly psyched for TOR. In my opinion there hasn't been a really great MMO release in a long time. The last huge release I can think of was Warhammer Online, and that ended up being a bit of a let down. I really think that this one has the potential to be huge.

The first reason for my excitement is the company behind it, Bioware. Some of their more recent projects include Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, the ladder being my favorite non-MMO game. No, they haven't done an MMO before, but I actually think their current experience is better. They know how to get an RPG right, and while a lot of an MMO is interaction and socializing, that's usually not the aspect I'm worried about. If you watch some of the E3 coverage from G4 you can really see that Bioware knows what they're doing.

What I love about Bioware is that they aren't trying to make some whole new crazy game with this really insane niche, because that never works out. Instead they're taking some of the core mechanics that do work in other MMO's, namely WoW, and applying them to TOR, and adding some of their own unique things on the side. From the way they speak about the game, you can tell that they're really looking to WoW for a lot of their ideas, which I think is great. They have no MMO experience, and WoW is so incredibly successful. Why not, right? However, there are many naysayers yelling "Oh great, a WoW clone. Hurp Durp." Which I really don't understand. First of all, none of us have played the game, we've simply seen some of the coverage of others playing it at E3, so you can't really judge it from the very little we've seen. Second, I really think it's time for an MMO that takes more ideas from WoW.

I think WoW is/has been the best MMO on the market. Plenty of games I've seen people yell "WoW Clone!" at, like Warhammer for instance. However, Warhammer was trying not to be a WoW Clone. It tried to do it's own thing, have it's own uniqueness, and it focused too much on that, and not enough on what actually would make it a good MMO. I would love a company to take a page from Blizzards book, and I think Bioware is doing that. No, it won't be exactly like WoW, but they're taking all the things that work in WoW, using them, and adding the Bioware flavor.

Spring 2011 can't come sooner.