14 DAY TRIAL // Star Wars: The Old Republic has performed better than expected in the months since its simultaneous world release and as gamers discover more of the experience the developers at BioWare are having to answer charges that the new game lacks innovation and is too close to its main competitor.
As part of a post mortem analysts of Star Wars: The Old Republic conducted for Eurogamer James Ohlen, who is the game director for the MMO, argued that, “If you look at a Battlefield or a Call of Duty or a Gears of War or even a Half-Life – those games use the same tried and true interface and the same tried and true game mechanics of the first-person shooter genre that’s been around for 20 years,” he said.”
He also used the strategy game genre as an example of the way interfaces can remain unchanged in the long term while the mechanics that exist under them evolve in new and interesting ways.
Ohlen added, “So, I don’t know, it’s just the way it is, but I don’t see us as not being innovative. We’re actually a lot more innovative within the MMO space than comparable games in other spaces like the first-person genre, the action genre – games like that.”
He believes that most gamers and industry watchers have been so focused on the very successful World of Warcraft that they ignored the trends and the smaller MMOs that change a lot of elements of the core experience.
The BioWare developer reiterated that The Old Republic was designed as a classic MMO which would benefit from the well known storytelling expertise of BioWare in order to hook both old fans of the genre and newcomers.
The Star Wars MMO is set to receive a new major patch next week, set to add a new Operation and a new Flashpoint for gamers to enjoy.