Bioware: World of Warcraft established the MMO standards

Speaking at the DICE summit in Las Vegas yesterday, BioWare's Greg Zeschuk said World of warcraft is the "touchstone" for MMOs, and that the developer's own offering, Star Wars: The Old Republic, looks to it for "standards".

"It is a touchstone," Zeschuk said of WoW, according to GamesIndustry. "It has established standards, it's established how you play an MMO.

"Every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it. And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that's pretty dumb.

"If you have established standards, WoW established them."

After commenting that triple-A development is still a viable approach to gaming, Zeschuk conceded that The Old Republic is not expected to be a WoW-killer.

"It's not like we're actually going out there to beat anyone, we're going out to place," he said. "The audience will tell us if we have a place."

Blizzard's Mike Morhaime attended the same panel, and commented that failed MMOs do more harm than good for WoW itself.

"I don't know that it serves the genre very well when MMOs come out and have all sorts of problems and players leave in frustration," Morhaime said.

"Hopefully, new players will come in, experience it for the first time and find out that maybe they're fans of the genre. If they get frustrated and leave maybe they won't give the genre a try at all.

"So, do a good job," he urged BioWare.