Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview
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How do you go about pleasing MMO fans, Star Wars fans and BioWare fans simultaneously?
Our core design group includes all of them, and many of us have multiple hats on. We're all MMO players, we're all Star Wars fans, and obviously we're all BioWare RPG people. One of the things we discovered very early is that context done well doesn't offend anyone. People that say they '˜hate story' tend to mean they hate bad story that gets in their way. Very few people honestly say '˜I hate to understand what's happening'. What people love about MMOs are the social systems, they love the feeling they're in an actual space. They're interacting with other people, everyone can see what they're doing, they love to play with their friends, and they love having huge challenges.
When I heard about MMORPGs I thought '˜oh my god, this is the greatest thing ever. Finally, this is what replaces the old pen and paper RPGs I'm going to have an RPG I can play forever.' And we showed up, and there was the box for the RPG and there was the setting book, but there was no dungeon master and no story and you had to just kind of wander around and make your own fun. So all we did was got the other part of the RPG that we expected to be there and brought that in, but it's a big, big undertaking.
