Fri, Sep 23, 2011 | 13:01 BST
Bioware: “We have to be ready for the biggest online launch in history”
Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic Project Lead James Ohlen has said that the company is working hard preparing for what could be the largest scale online launch gaming has ever seen for the Star Wars MMO.
“Because of the hype around the game right now, our launch numbers are predicting something really huge, which means we have to be ready for the biggest online launch in history essentially,” Ohlen told Gamasutra in an interview focusing on that atmosphere at the studio during the final stretch of development.
“We’ve been running a lot of tests, just making sure we’re going to stand up when we launch.”
This mirrors comments from Bioware Vice President Greg Zeschuk back at GamesCom, who told VG247 that the team were “being very careful and thoughtful and working very hard to get it right,” regarding server quality.
Another focus for Bioware in the final stretch is balance, Ohlen tells Gama, but underlines the fact that the core of the game is complete and won’t be changing. “We’re not making major changes now, we’re just making changes that we can,” he elaborated.
Gamasutra has the full interview for your reading pleasure. EA is still being mum on a release date for The Old Republic, but it should launch before the end of the fiscal year.
Related posts
MW2: Acti calls “biggest entertainment launch in history,” $310 million day one in US and UK
Steam on Mac one of the “biggest events” in its history, says Valve
8 
Posted in: EA, MMO, PC, RPG
Tags: bioware, James Ohlen, Star Wars The Old Republic
8 comments
#1
GrimRita
23/09/11, 1:08 pm
I think Guild Wars 2 will be a much larger launch and I am sure they wont be dithering like Bioware/EA are.
Besides, if they are ‘limiting’ the amount of copies available to buy, then they MUST know what to expect so surely you need to make sure you have the right infrastructure to prepare for such a launch. So players should EXPECT the game to ‘stand up to the launch’.
#2
Judicas
23/09/11, 1:25 pm
They won’t have half as many people as wow launched with, they need to stop saying foolish things to hype their game.
#3
viralshag
23/09/11, 1:33 pm
@2, WoW launched with around 200k players if I remember an article I read correctly. This game will launch with a lot more than that.
#4
hives
23/09/11, 1:38 pm
@2 – Well, they actually can do it. TOR already broken pre-order record, more people pre-ordered it than ANY other EA game EVER. So…
But it’s quite sad, that all you have to do is make a WoW clone in SW setting to appeal to so many people. Don’t get me wrong – TOR will be amazing with BioWare’s story etc, but AS a MMO game… Well, it’s rather traditional and nothing new. Apart from story.
#5
Erthazus
23/09/11, 1:46 pm
“TOR already broken pre-order record, more people pre-ordered it than ANY other EA game EVER. ”
since when? It has only 400K preorders.
#6
viralshag
23/09/11, 1:59 pm
@5, Well what other EA games have recieved more than 400k pre-orders? And on that note, out of interest, what other PC titles have had more than 400k pre-orders?
#7
Talkar
23/09/11, 2:33 pm
@4
Honestly, i’m going to play it like a single player game until the endgame.
@5
If your thinking of the numbers on VGCHARTZ then read what is written with small. Those numbers are only retail, and only in the US. So all those of us who preordered on Origin, and all those of us who are in Europe, we don’t weigh in on those numbers, so it is extremely unaccurate for PC games. I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual number of preorders was around the 1.5 – 2 million units.
#8
Jedi Magic
23/09/11, 4:52 pm
@5 The actual record is for the most preorders in the shortest amount of time which was over 200k in the 1st five days. Battlefield 3 has the most preorders of any EA game currently at over 1.5 million.