14 DAY TRIAL // Publisher Electronic Arts and developer BioWare have finally announced that launch date for their Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, telling players to prepare to play it on December 20 in North America and on the 22nd in Europe.
The announcement will come as a relied for those who were worried that the game might slip into 2012 and one veteran BioWare developer, Georg Zoeller, who is the main designer working on The Old Republic, says that one of the reasons for the delays that affected the game was the huge amount of content that the team needed to create.
Speaking about the challenges linked to launching a new MMO Zoeller has said, “Achieving the required - and expected - volume of content without compromising quality. MMO players are pretty unforgiving when it comes to quality – you usually get one shot to get it right. Your launch sets the trajectory of where your game is headed and quality of content, even more than quantity is a major contributing factor to success of failure.”
Zoeller has been working at BioWare since 2003 and has worked on games like Dragon Age: Origins, the first Mass Effect, Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights.
The developer says that just Alderaan, one of the 17 planets that can be visited in the new Star Wars MMO, has more creatures roaming on it than all of Dragon Age: Origins, a game that BioWare worked on for 5 years.
To make sure that the content is there and that more can be delivered post launch BioWare was forced to bulk up the development team and create better tools.
Zoeller has also emphasized the care that BioWare has taken to create a real feeling of place in The Old Republic, mainly by voicing all the characters a player will meet and by creating complex and detailed backstories for the various elements of the game world.