Overly Positive

Over at SWTOR Junkies, there’s a post that starts out as a “tired” topic – WoW vs. SW:TOR. Yep, there’s already talk of that from people, though to be honest, did you expect any different? The reigning king of the hill is always going to be compared to those who challenge it, either directly or indirectly, to knock it off.

Still, that wasn’t quite the point of the post. The point was to present a few things that were learned by the author from other launches that they want Bioware’s MMO product to do well, such as launch when ready, having complete systems, and building good community. I can get behind a lot of the things he said – after all, they’re probably things that other MMO releases didn’t do so well, that were ultimately responsible for them underperforming in some manner. It’s no secret that Bioware needs to be watchful of what has been happening in the industry in the last couple of years in order to do well.

Frankly, if Bioware plays their cards right, they will most certainly be a Force to reckon with (see what I did there – quality humor) come the launch and the months that follow it. It may even be enough to deal with the behemoth of a title that Blizzard has used to dominate the MMO market share. You can dare to say the word “WoW-killer” if you want – trust me, I’ve been tempted, considering the mission of this blog – but, I’m pretty optimistic about Bioware’s chances for a current, single reason – they’re being careful.

Great care is being taken by Bioware in terms of the release of information they’ve had (tightly controlled), the way they’ve tried to foster the community (teasing with tons of speculative tidbits that create tons of discussion), and how confident they’ve been about the product that they have released so far, knowing that it will be blended and dissected by the community.

If TOR is talking about anything in a hypeworthy manner, it’s selling the unique aspects of their offering, such as the pillar of story that Bioware is so invested in – something that is going to take a lot of wheedling by their team to get people, especially the min-maxers, to buy into. These kinds of conceptual, nebulous design ideas are “safe” because you can talk about ideal systems without really having revealed the dirty details, this early in the development cycle. The discussion that is generated from such cautious “toe in the water” releases from Bioware may even fuel the work in progress that the design of the game truly is – a way of data mining without the risk of saying something you can’t deliver on.

As for the details, well – you can be sure that Bioware is not going to be talking unless whatever details they have will work for players to digest, regardless of it being positive or negative – which is what makes the Gameplay Video Guide coming out later to be so powerful and significant. It’ll be the first peek into the SWTOR experience from a meaty details perspective.

Until then, I”m more than happy to let Bioware simmer the pot for a bit longer.