So I'm not going to lie here. I played World of Warcraft, for probably...3 or 4 years, I think. I can't remember if I started up in '04 or '05 (I stopped playing May of '08). Regardless, MMO's became a hugely distracting part of my life, to the extent that things were excluded because of it. But that's not the point of this. Recently, Bioware has been working on an MMORPG based on their Star Wars Old Republic universe (I say theirs, because they essentially created the time frame with Knights of the Old Republic). This presents a two-fold problem for me. One, I'm a huge fan of Star Wars, I read the extended universe, I play Star Wars video games, I read Wookiepedia when I'm bored...you get the point. Second, I'm a huge fan of Bioware. They've reached the same esteem with which I've held Blizzard in ever since Warcraft II - specifically when I see they're making a new game, I no longer question if it will be good or bad, I just buy the game and blindly hand over my cash. So you can see why this new game is a particularly potent kind of poison.

On the one hand, I do not particularly want to get back into an MMO, as I said; WoW was a...problem...for me. For my personality that game was essentially like crack, I was addicted to it, I will not lie. So you can understand me when I say I'm hesitant to pursue another game of the same genre. However, as I said above, it's Bioware, and it's Star Wars; metaphorically, the check has already been written.

But I must question how well the game will end up doing. A large part of the success from WoW comes from the fact that there is just so much to do in terms of endgame. There are countless instances to troll for new gear, dozens upon dozens of daily quests that can be repeated every day you log in, and factions with reputation you can grind to acquire new things with which to brag about. Blizzard rightly so has said not to try and copy them, because, simply put, you can't. They've been perfecting their "dangling carrot" strategy for 5 years, there is literally no way you can compete with them on their turf. To compete, you must innovate and pursue either an entirely different market segment or do something Blizzard doesn't.

This is what Bioware has done, really. In effect they've created Knights of the Old Republic 3 [Online]. Each of the 8 different classes gets their own storyline that is supposed to carry them from level 1 to level...whatever [the level cap is]. They will be fully voice acted and the player will have the option of "choosing their own adventure" that has become all the rage with RPG's lately in terms of dialogue choices. This is something Blizzard cannot compete with. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the mythos of their games as much as the next person, probably more. I'm a self-professed lore-whore. But Chris Metzen is a hack. I will not equivocate on this point, and as long as he's in charge of world building, Blizzard won't be able to hold a candle to Bioware. And Bioware is taking full advantage of that fact.

What time will show, however, is how well the game can stand after you've hit their level cap. In WoW I was a priest. There was no other class that brought me the same level of enjoyment, thus leveling 8 other alts really had little appeal to me. The same is going to be very true in this game. While technically there are only 4 classes (2 factions, 4 classes for each, just named different) there are supposed to be 8 origin stories, but am I going to have the same enjoyment level playing through as a Jedi as I would playing through as a smuggler? Am I going to want to play through it 8 different times? Am I going to like being a Sith Warrior more or less than a Jedi Knight even though they're essentially the same class? There is a lot of game out there.

Assume for a moment that I can't stand playing through as anything other than a Jedi Knight. I've invested probably dozens of hours playing through my individual storyline and now I want to go kick some Sith ass! Am I going to have the option of doing so? What if I suck at PVP (cuz I'm a n00b)? Am I going to have instanced options available to me? What about raids? Is my guild K|\|16ht5 going to be able to go take down some star destroyer (or whatever the Sith have)? Is the game going to go the cheap route and do the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" path and suddenly make Jedi and Sith fight together to save the universe from Generic Evil™? These are all very pressing questions.

Or are they even going to matter with this game? Has our - or perhaps must mine - collective conception of an MMO been so shaped by what has come before that we are unable to reconcile with this new idea? I admit that my exposure to MMO's has been limited primarily to Guild Wars and WoW, and thus isn't very expansive, but even those 2 followed very similar paths and ideas. Perhaps the game's biggest success will come primarily from the fact that it simply is KOTOR3[O] with some nice co-op features and that will be enough. Maybe Bioware isn't expecting huge monthly revenues from the game. Whether that's wise in itself is something different entirely.

So I suppose we're back where we started. Will the game really succeed? And will I be able to resist blindly buying it? Perhaps these are questions for a different time. Of course Bioware could just invite me into their closed beta whenever it starts. *wink*wink*