Making The Old Republic increased BioWare's respect for Blizzard

BioWare intend to rival World of Warcraft with Star Wars: The Old Republic, but the team is full of admiration for Blizzard's achievements.

"One thing you can say we’ve absolutely learned is, we’ve always respected Blizzard a lot, and I think our respect probably has grown after seeing just how challenging it is to make one of these games," BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk told IndustryGamers of making The Old Republic.

Not that BioWare is above scooping up those disenchanted by the long-running MMORPG.

"There’s the continued success of WoW, but it’s also been up for a while. There’s actually a lot of people that have played it that aren’t playing it right now and they’re actually very open to MMOs and they’re a great potential audience for us," he said.

Bioware fully intend to emulate, if not surpass, World of warcraft's enduring presence.

"You have to make a great game with the right content and social features - that’s our intention, to make people want to play for a long time," Zeschuk said.

"We offer a great service. We have a lot of people who’ve actually run gaming services for more than a decade; they’re actually on our team, and so having those people on board to actually help us launch our service and make sure that’s reliable and secure is very, very important,

"The ongoing plan for content and actually delivering new things and making people really see that we’re investing in it is very important, we’ll continue to invest in [The Old Republic]. It’s a long term game that’ll change and evolve and will continue to become more interesting."

The long-anticipated MMORPG still doesn't have a firm release date, but Zeschuk says the end is in sight.

"We’re nearing the finish line, we have thousands of people testing it. We’re getting ready to launch it," he said.

"It’s got great potential. I think the interest is there. The quality is there. We’re making sure the service is good and then we’ll see what happens."