Star Wars: The Old Republic vs. World of Warcraft

There’s likely going to be something of a showdown between Star Wars: The Old Republic and World of Warcraft over the coming weeks, and that’s the subscriber-seeking confrontation that has spawned this two-page editorial on The New York Times. Surprisingly, the author has clocked in some serious time to both:

In the last couple of months I have spent at least 125 hours in beta tests for the Old Republic and have played another 30 hours or so since last week, when the retail servers opened to people who ordered the game months ago. You don’t play a game that much (or at least I don’t) unless you’re enjoying yourself. I’m in a guild of cool people, and my Sith sorcerer is uncovering more mysteries of the dark side every day.

I’ve also returned to World of Warcraft, the siren of my youth (or at least five years ago), which I hadn’t played seriously since early 2007. I was inspired to jump back in after visiting the BlizzCon convention in October. I have been playing World of Warcraft 20 to 30 hours a week since then, have reconnected with online buddies and have had a great time.

Having steeped myself in both games recently, I can say that any notion that the Old Republic will be a WOW killer is absurd. World of Warcraft boasts a variety, breadth and level of handcrafted content that no other game is close to matching. That said, the Old Republic is by far the best, most exciting online game since the original World of Warcraft. It should be a Star Wars fan’s dream and deserves to attract in excess of two million paying players in the three languages English, French and German available at release.