Star Wars: the Old Republic then might kill Warcraft.

if I had a penny for each time someone said X would kill WoW.

I'll believe it when I see it.

It's Star Wars, a franchise that practically everyone knows & loves (or loves to hate) & BioWare, the company whose star shines brightest on the cRPG firmament. A deadly combination.

I hope the outcome is the opposite, no single-player KoTOR 3 :meh:

Agreed. I would much rather have single player KOTOR over MMO KOTOR anyday.

Yes, the star wars MMO looks very promising. I'm hoping it's really good because I intend to buy it at launch. While I too will regret that there isn't a 3rd KotOR I am very much looking forward to this.

The real issue is whether or not The Old Republic will have long-term staying power, and also how quickly its developers are able to release new content.

BioWare is a top cRPG developer, but they're new to MMORPGs, and some of the decisions they've been making (100% voice acting for all NPCs being one example) lead me to believe TOR might be a "casual, done with it in a month" sort of game. I'm not saying it won't be fun, but I am saying that MMORPGs without enough content to keep people interested for many months are ultimately destined to fail.

World of Warcraft accomplished what was formerly considered impossible: It caters to both casual and hardcoe players at the same time, and also stays addictive month after month after month after month.

An MMORPG based around storytelling, a la single-player cRPGs... well, great stories can only go on for just so long, and it's rare that any computer game with a decent story can't be completed in under a month. All of the Black Isle games, all of BioWare's games... hell, every cRPG ever released can be completed if you put in two hours per night every night for a month, or two at the outside.

Well, it does seem BioWare is taking this MMO business pretty serious - they started a whole new division in Austin, Texas for it. I doubt they'll be making the same mistakes of say, FunCom.

This is being more cynical than I usually care to, but I have a hypothesis about this:

I do think it's pretty clear that a large part of V13's purpose was to attract more investors - not just to help with making the game, but to bouey up a company that's been in trouble for some time. In that light, perhaps the relationship between Earthrise and V13 makes a bit more sense. I wouldn't say it's just a publicity stunt - but that is something that Masthead gets out of this. For myself, I wouldn't have really known much about Earthrise if I hadn't heard about it relation to V13. (Any publicity is good publicity, after all - and a press release is always good for free publicity.) It also helps Interplay in making an argument that they're serious about this project, in the hopes of attracting more investment.

For the really cynical part - if I was to get Machiavellian about this; it could be that V13 was planned to fail from the start, to attract money and interest in the company and shift the increased revenue onto other projects that would be more cost-effective, low-risk, and more likely to succeed. In that view, a relationship with Masthead makes even more sense (especially as far as what they'd get out of the bargain.) They would get some free publicity, and a chance at the potential fans of V13. (ie, "Hey, that's too bad about V13, but we have a post-apocalyptic MMO that you might be interested in...")

Again, that's a highly cynical take on it. I'm not even sure I'd agree with it, and I certainly have no proof of any of that. But still...