Bioware will do to LotRO’s epic story content what Blizzard did to Everquest’s quest content.
But is the Star Wars setting as universally accessible as Azeroth?
Here’s a thought: WoW gained critical mass because very early on it convinced a large enough section of the non-‘male 18-30’ market that it was for them as much as anyone. As soon as you have large population diversity in a social space you will get the Facebook phenomenon, and let’s not forget that WoW was right there with Facebook at the start of the current online social peer recruitment zeitgeist.
Granny posts updates on Facebook. Granny plays a Night Elf Hunter in WoW.
Will Granny want to play a Jedi?
It depends. Can she be a Jedi librarian?
If you look at book and movie sales, science fiction always does better than fantasy. It’s only in games where elves in fetish leather with bows do better than guys in bathrobes and laser-swords.
I suspect that any grandmother willing to play a NElf Hunter will probably be willing to give a Jedi a try, too.
Good opening line.
@Tesh: Well, she could go and work in the Library of Ossus I suppose. More importantly the Jedi have the Bake Cookies path in their crafting skill tree, which may well win over the granny contingent.
@Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green: Is that really true? Crikey, I would have had fantasy as the easy winner.
It’ll be interesting to see. I remember reading that the Ancient Gaming Noob‘s mother and daughter both play WoW with him on occasion, so I’d be interested to see if they will even try to make the transition. Not that that would prove anything one way or the other, but I just can’t picture it happening for some reason.
@Zubon: Thank you. As with anything in the blogosphere, I’m sure it’s been said before and better, but in writing the previous post it struck me how similar the idea of LotRO’s epic book content is to what Bioware claim to be doing with TOR. Of course, Bioware get to see what worked and didn’t work with Turbine’s effort and then put their own spin on it, and story is their speciality after all.
Star Wars is fantasy with a very thin sci fi veneer. Wizards, princesses, sword fights, even (Krayt) dragons.
The only time the IP got close to science is when they imaginatively and plausibly explained why Han Solo used the word parsec wrong in the first film.
It’s worth remembering that Granny knew what a Jedi was when you weren’t born yet. :D