EA: World of Warcraft a "silent movie"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 16 February, 2011

And Star Wars: The Old Republic "is the first talkie".

EA has confidently proclaimed its in development massively multiplayer game Star Wars: The Old Republic will cause a sizeable number of World of Warcraft players to jump ship.

"We're going right at it," EA boss John Riccitiello said at the Goldman Sachs conference (reported by Industry Gamers).

"We want share, we want leadership position here. I'm not expecting to sort of knock them over, but... We're gonna get a big chunk of [their market]."

Blizzard's World of Warcraft is the most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer role-playing game in the world, with over 12 million active paying customers across the world.

BioWare Austin's Star Wars: The Old Republic, due out after April this year and before the end of 2011, marks the Mass Effect maker's first attempt at the MMO genre.

But EA is confident it can compete where so many have failed and take World of Warcraft on at its own game.

"In a way, theirs is a silent movie and ours is the first talkie," Riccitiello said. "By and large, theirs is not a voiced MMO. Ours is a fully voiced MMO in multiple languages."

Earlier this month Riccitiello was less bullish about his Star Wars MMO, telling investors that half a million subscribers would make The Old Republic "substantially profitable". Anything "north" of one million would be a "very profitable business".

"So it's our view that we can be very successful without fundamentally challenging the market leader [World of Warcraft] because we think we'll probably hit the smaller competitors harder when we get out there," he said at the time.

"Of course, we have no particular ambition to be a distant number two. Our ambitions are higher than that, but we throttle back a little bit relative to our financial projections."

EA is rumoured to have spent more than $300 million on The Old Republic, and last month EA's investors were said to be "betting against" the BioWare developed MMO.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (35) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • TheRealBadabing #1 1 year ago

    How exciting! Talking in games!

    Who know what joys the future brings? Maybe some day, these video computer plays will be in colour!

  • Dizzy #2 1 year ago

    Gameplay, end-game and content will be the deciding factors not full speech.

  • Ged42 #3 1 year ago

    /reads subtitles

    /clicks to skip long rambling speech

  • JoeGBallad #4 1 year ago

    Nothing will ever be as good as phantasy star online. There, I've said it.

  • drchocapic #5 1 year ago

    I hate to break it to them but DC Universe Online is fully voiced too. And already out.

  • Kanjin #6 1 year ago

    Yeah? How about the action sequences of the film, and the plot?! Just as important.

  • joe90 #7 1 year ago

    This is not going to end well, When do people learn, attempting to compare to Wow, means you willl then be compared to Wow, wow has been refined and modified for years. I cannot see how a launch product can have the same balance, polish and just work so well.

    Two weeks after release they will admit there are 'balance' issues, bugs, and all sorts of issues.. But hey!!, its talks.

  • TravisTouchdown #8 1 year ago

    $300,000,000 and that video's their promo? I couldn't make it to the end.

  • levitate #9 1 year ago

    This will be a spectacular showdown. I better grab my popcorn while there still are some left on the planet.

  • DodgyPast #10 1 year ago

    Scary that execs of EA don't know what makes a MMO 'sticky', I don't play WoW, but I'm guessing what keeps people playing is their friends and they use tools such as teamspeak to chat to those.

    Instead they're trumpeting that theirs will be a better single player game.

  • DirectAim #11 1 year ago

    I think people forget that it's really Bioware making this MMO, they are legends, this game has real potential, the videos look good and the whole starwars thing is awesome, WoW is great but it could be alot better, I welcome the competition!

  • linksdad #12 1 year ago

    Nothing more annoying than having to skip through reams and reams of sub par voice acting. Even when its good its never good enough to want to listen to once you have read the subtitles. Very annoying when on teamspeak. WOW got this just right (like most things).

  • SAMagic #13 1 year ago

    @drchocapic : Is it? First quest I had for Batman outside the police station had a mute NPC giving me objectives.

  • Darkjinxter #14 1 year ago

    Seems EA's resident gob wihtout a brain has forgotten, or never even heard of Gaute Godager's Steak vs Hamburger comparison when bigging up Age of Conan.
    Still, at least he's given journo's a new tagline to take the mickey out of.

  • MonsieurToni #15 1 year ago

    I wonder when they will actually give us some details from the actual game play rather than endless promotional material as of how they will be the next next generation.

  • qoobah #16 1 year ago

    MMOs live or die based on social features. And they in turn thrive around stuff to do in game - endgame content, compelling PvP, guild and small groups features.

    I can't wait for this game. It will either change the MMO landscape forever, proving that more SP-like, narrative oriented features can be the selling point of an MMO, basically negating my first sentence or be a gigantic flop. It's gonna be interesting either way.

    Since I have huge respect for BW I dearly hope it's gonna be the former.

  • InfiniteFury #17 1 year ago

    I remember when I was a youngster, father would make us stand around the monitor and sing the national anthem when the WoW servers were turned off at midnight.

    Talkies you say?

  • DodgyPast #18 1 year ago

    Maybe EA see it more as a subscription based RPG than an MMO. After all given the amount of time a heavy RPG can take to play you can make more money if you can charge for additional months plus drip feed new content to keep people playing.
    Edited by DodgyPast at 16/02/11 @ 10:26

  • Daeltaja #19 1 year ago

    EA need to stop comparing this to WoW unless they want to send it to an early grave. They should be touting it as something completely different, a narrative driven online RPG. Basically KOTOR with your mates and a constant stream of new content to justify the sub.

    I could see F2P working well for them too.

  • qoobah #20 1 year ago

    @DodgyPast

    This is actually quite an interesting notion... Slightly scary though;)

  • Murton #21 1 year ago

    JoeGBallad: "Nothing will ever be as good as the original SWG. There, I've said it.

    Fixed.

    The original SWG was one of the deepest, most ambitious RPGs I've ever played, let alone MMORPGs and no game, online or off has even attempted to step to it in terms of scope, and as all MMOs continue to copy and paste the Everquest formula in an attempt to repeat the success of WoW and all RPGs dilute themselves in the name of "accessibility" no game ever will. Sure it had it's issues, it was buggy, it was grossly unbalanced, but had the content and it had the community to make it sticky, that combined with the Star Wars license (and actually using it) means it will always be the the top of my personal list.

    Of course, SoE screwed it all up by reneging on their promise to simply rebalance the combat and instead changed the whole game to the Everquest formula, which basically poured concrete into the deep end of the game to create a much more shallow experience on par with its new competition in WoW.

    If this had been a spiritual successor to the original SWG and had that depth of character customisation and combat mechanics I'd probably take a punt on it, or if it had been given a proper Star Wars setting, original trilogy or shortly after. But a shallow MMO experience with a setting that houses virtually no lore for me to go out and explore, no thanks. Probably for the best though, last thing I need right now is an MMO subscription.

  • FortysixterUK #22 1 year ago

    What a silly billy.

  • drhickman1983 #23 1 year ago

    Touting voice acting as a major point is really not a great advert. A sizeable portion of people who play MMOs don't really care that much about the story (perhaps sad, but true), so many folks will be rushing to skip the voice acting anyway. Hell, I have a friend who plays RPGS fanatically and takes an interest in the story, but is all to eager to skip the audio once he's read the text himself (watched him play Mass Effect for a few hours, over that time I don't think any of the NPCs finished a sentence. Same with Fallout: New Vegas).

    And are we speaking "lore" scenes before end game content? Many people got really, really annoyed in WoW by "lore" scenes being repeated (case examples: Start of Argent Tournament 5. Deathbringer in ICC)...

    I'm hopeful that TOR will have a huge number of exciting features. I hope it gives us something that redefines the MMO-sphere. But talking isn't really that exciting, groundbreaking or, for many, even needed.
    Edited by drhickman1983 at 16/02/11 @ 11:36

  • HurbleBurble #24 1 year ago

    Quick question: what if you're deaf? Or play with audio muted? This really isn't a selling point in any way, shape or form and harks back to the advent of the CD-ROM with games proudly boasting of spoken dialogue.

    If it helps establish immersion and empathy, fine, we're used to that. If however it's a garbled mess of bad acting and mangled vowels it will only serve to push players away.

  • arcam #25 1 year ago

    Generally I agree that fully voicing everything is over-rated, but it seems to be very important to the mainstream. I can understand this, having experienced trying to convince friends to watch a subtitled movie.

    It also must take such a huge amount of time and money that could be better spent in other areas. Dragon Age 2 as a case in point. Yes, it now has a fully-voiced main character, but now the different races have been removed so we all play with the same character, and the six different openings that were in the first game have also disappeared.

  • spekkeh #26 1 year ago

    So let me see, they invest 300 million dollars, and half a million subscribers would make it substantially profitable. So does that mean they think they'll be able to wring 600 dollars out of each subscriber?

    I'm not sure if they're going to bundle the game together with some crystal meth, or if they have been smoking their own merchandise already.

  • Gastrian #27 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 17:56:43 13-04-2012

  • lennon #28 1 year ago

    Blimey I remember the epic quest you had to go on to become a jedi in SWG in the early days. It was soul destroying.

  • drhickman1983 #29 1 year ago

    @Spekkeh

    Hm... I haven't seen any definite figures for subscription fees or whatnot, but lets assume a modest $12.99 / month, in 1 year that'd be $155.88

    It'd take just under 4 years to get that back, per subscriber.As a long term plan it sounds fairly reasonable, not everybody will subscribe for that long, but new players will join as others drop out.

    Of course, I haven't looked at how they're working the subscriptions (assuming they're going with a subcription system?), so maybe my figures are way off. if they're offering some kind of lifetime deal then it'd be tricker I guess...

    I think the game should get 500,000 players fairly easily, due to the license and pedigree. If it's an awesome game then the figure will grow, exponentially.
    Edited by drhickman1983 at 16/02/11 @ 12:26

  • peterfll #30 1 year ago

    So in extending that analogy...

    All stereo recordings are better than any mono?
    All colour films are better than any black and white?
    Any HD content is better than anything in SD?
    Any 3D content is superior to 2D?

    etc etc.

  • Gastrian #31 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 17:56:43 13-04-2012

  • shamblemonkee #32 1 year ago

    Everquest 2 had voiced quest givers.... took roughly 5 minutes before you never listened ot one all the way through again. there's a reason most mmo's have the blurb summarised into a "go here, get this, return to x" format at the top or bottom.

    Voice work also makes updates more expensive, larger to download, and slower to produce.

  • DrMGinius #33 1 year ago

    WoW has voice acting :/

  • curtlikesmeat #34 1 year ago

    Not seen anything in videos so far to suggest this might be anything above average, just bluster from PR men. Show something good. The on rails shooter idea is dire.

  • Flipper79 #35 1 year ago

    Have EA actually done any kind of research to find out how many people playing WoW even bother to read the quest text? It's like they've completely missed what people want from an mmo. As WoW developed, questing has become easier and more efficient, rather than more long winded and immersive. That's because they know mmo's are about the end-game not the journey. Dragon Age was what, a 50+ hour game, and after about 5 hours of that I started skipping various bits of dialogue which increased more and more as the game progressed. That's just a small fraction of time in comparison to an mmo. If this is their USP, I can guarantee even if sales are initially big, they will have one of the fastest dropping subs base ever seen. All of which would be a shame since WoW is becoming exceptionally stale.