which many think to be the first credible threat to World of Warcraft. Of course, lots of people said the same about Lord of the Rings: Online and The Matrix: Online too.

I won't argue that SWTOR will be an awesome MMO, I for one will be playing it when it comes out, however personally I think the "first credible threat to Wolrd of Warcraft" will be the new MMO from Blizzard.

And before you all start screaming at me, think of this: all other MMOs have simple been copies, either partly, or wholly, or WoW with a few new features. Only when someone can pull off an MMO that is truly original - then we will see WoW will mostly likely go down. ;)

That kind of implies that you think WoW was 'truly original'. It wasn't. It's just a souped up Everquest really. Star Wars has a huge following, so this game is likely to be extremely popular. They'll just have to watch that they don't wreck the game by making loads and loads of changes just before release (I'm looking at you Champions Online), or by releasing game changing content upgrades (SWG, you can go hide the corner) that break the game.

Personally I'm hoping for good things :)

Well I signed up for the beta the day it was announced and I hope I get on it. I have been missing the star wars universe in MMO glory since they broke the fantastic (albeit, buggy) SWG. That also gives me confidence that that won't happen again as it's different devs this time.

It won't be a wow killer, nothing will be. They have cornered the market and changed peoples perceptions about what an MMO should be. It is the ultimate in casual online role-play and that's what keeps the money machine ticking over. That and the bazillion people playing it that don't want to quit for losing the only friends they have got, virtual or not. That is fine with me. They cater for different tastes.

Bioware is going to have a BEAST year. Dragon Age: Origins was fantastic and theyre releasing an expansion which is pretty glorious. And Mass Effect 2, as long as EA didnt ruin it looks to be glorious as well. Probably an expansion/DLC for that later in the year then KAPOW, The Old Republic destroys everything in 2011. End of 2011 we can look forward to a DA:O sequel and middle of 2012 I would suspect Mass Effect 3 which should hold us all over until Diablo III comes out sometime between 2013 and 2020.

I think it really comes down to audience appeal. Blizzard had built up an audience with their Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo games. When they announced they were releasing an MMO set in the Warcraft setting, most of their audience were excited to dive into a setting they had only experienced through Warcraft. Part of the appeal is WoW's casual nature and toon-esque design. The former allows a player to login quest, craft, socialize for a bit and logout. The latter allows the game to be scalable thus reaching a greater audience who may not have the money for a high-end computer.

EA and Bioware already have a huge fan-base with Star Wars, but they need to appeal to the casual players if they want to succeed. The MMO has to have a competitive monthly pricing, available world-wide, stable, and scalable. I think a Star Wars MMO has great potential if done right, especially considering the lack of sci-fi MMOs on the market. They should take a cue from the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon, and model the visual architecture around that; sometimes photo-realism isn't always the answer, you need something different. I hope they can get it right. The MMO market (ie WoW) needs more competition.

w00t jedi online :D

By the time this is finally release it will be more like the Ancient Republic!

too late.. guildwars 2 will be out by then, and I'll be griefing in the open pvp areas

Shame it's such a long way away. I thought that was going to be early this year.

i, for one, had to commend LOTRO for being WoW's biggest threat (IMHO... now stop throwing stuff!), but I even dropped from it after 3 years playin it coz its been goin "meh" for awhile... (tho thats great compared to other MMO released the last few years that managed to become "meh" in a month or two)

im still a big fan of old-skool SWG, so hopefully i can see somethin similar with this. could be *my* next big MMO. StarTrekOnline looks ugly...

now where did Huxley (or Hurley or Hoxley or wutever - that FPS MMO game thats sposed 2 b in development the past few years) go?

Sooo...i might have actually finished KoToR 1&2 by then :D

who knows about huxley.. last I heard an investor woke up from tossing around in his sleep and yelled who the .. would name a game huxley!

I for one am looking forward to The Old Republic. For one I enjoyed the KoTOR games on the pc (even though II was unfinished) and I feel SWG is a piece of rubbish, especially after the NGE patches. A year away, I can wait. I have Star Trek Online and Lego Universe to look forward to in the shorter term.

As for a challenge to WoW....no. I don't think anything will take WoWs crown, and considering what it is like in WoW at times I rather hope many of the screaming raging idiots stay there. Leave STO and SWTOR to those of us who perhaps like our games a bit more dignified.

And lego. Lego rocks. You know it.

It'll probably look like crap by then.

Originally Posted by wafflesomd
It'll probably look like crap by then.

It needs to look crap as it has to run on Intel integrated graphics.

It needs a scaleable graphics engine

dif between wow on min and max is huge

Spring 2011 is just so far away