EA to Take Star Wars: The Old Republic Global
EA landed the global publishing rights to Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Electronic Arts (EA) and Lucasfilm Ltd. announced on Thursday a new global publishing agreement for BioWare's highly-anticipated MMOG, Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA said that all publishing, marketing and distribution responsibilities will be shifted over to the company, reportedly centralized for efficiency.
"There's not going to be any obvious change for gamers," said BioWare co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka during an EA Games showcase event in San Francisco. "It makes things easier for us to have everything under one roof, and that will eventually benefit players." Customer service was offered as an example.
So what role will Lucasfilm (LucasArts) play? According to EA, Lucasfilm will continue serving as a key partner, collaborating on design and marketing, and as a licensor of the property. This means George Lucas and Co. will continue to stay hands-on with the project to ensure that the final experience is 100-percent Star Wars in content and overall tone.
When launched, players will explore "an age thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader when war between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire divides the galaxy." As indicated, the game will have two factions with four classes each: Trooper, Smuggler, Jedi Knight, and Jedi Consular for the Galactic Republic and Bounty Hunter, Sith Warrior, Imperial Agent, and Sith Inquisitor for the Sith Empire.
Currently Star Wars: The Old Republic is still slated for a Q1/Q2 2011 release. We're hoping sooner than later.
Indeed, I likely won't even try to play this.
I'll take Jar Jar over a game released 6 months ahead of original release date which ends up killing the game cause it wasn't ready. Yeah, I'm talking about Hellgate: London.
The problem is that EA prefers to push devs to make a game that's simple so that the mass market will eat it up. It's EA's history of buying out devs and milking them.
Simple maybe be fun for a little while but ends up killing the game in the long run.
I totally agree...look what EA did to Warhammer
I thought there would be more oldschool people here.
Whateves, I'mma go fire up Baldur's Gate Trilogy...
Well, there are too many people who, if it takes more than a year for a game to come out, just go on to the next greatest latest thing. The rest has most have said is EA. Please EA for once keep you grubby little hands off of it. I mean are you guy's just out to ruin every MMO or what?