14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO is set to "more than compete" with the current most popular online game, World of Warcraft, as BioWare, its developer, has revealed that internal testing shows a high interest in the new title.
BioWare has worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic for quite some time now, and the new MMO is finally reaching the end of the development stage, even if it still hasn't received a concrete release date.
During last week's E3 2011 conference, BioWare co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka revealed, via CVG, that the game has been showing impressive results from all the internal testing, with players enjoying the experience and wanting to stay subscribed for quite a long time.
"We've been testing the game aggressively for quite a long time... and the focus for us as we head towards launch is on security, stability, saleability and retention," he said.
"We're actually getting more and more confident as we progress and the results from consumer testing are incredible, a fantastic response - really high net promoter scores, extremely high desire to subscribe from the player base, and in fact it increases over time. The higher the level they get in the game, the more they want to play and the more they want to tell their friends."
Muzyka then highlighted that Star Wars is one of the biggest intellectual properties in the world, so the game will have to appeal to a huge demographic of both experienced MMO players and brand new ones.
The BioWare executive also touched on the many comparisons industry representatives are drawing between The Old Republic and World of Warcraft, saying that the upcoming MMO will implement plenty of new features that WoW simply can't get because of its aging infrastructure.
"In addition to that... World of Warcraft has helped to grow the audience for us and as a seven year MMO now, we're launching some really innovative differentiating features that I think we'll have an opportunity to capitalize on. I have tremendous respect for the folks at Blizzard, but I think we're building a product that will more than compete."
You can check out our own impressions of Star Wars: The Old Republic from the E3 2011 conference.