BioWare: 500 Worlds in SW:TOR by 2025
BioWare is shooting to have 500 explorable worlds in Star Wars: The Old Republic by 2025.
This weekend during Comic-Con 2011 in San Diego, BioWare senior creative director James Ohlen said that the developer is looking to play host to 500 worlds in Star Wars: The Old Republic by the year 2025. That's right: BioWare expects the upcoming MMOG to still exist online 14 years from now – the same amount of time it took to develop Duke Nukem Forever.
"I can say that we have 19 major worlds," he said during a Q&A session. "Then we have an indeterminate number of minor worlds. And our goal, obviously this being an online game, that we're hoping is going to last for decades, we're going to be, obviously, adding more to the galaxy map as the game progresses. We want to add dozens of worlds. Hundreds of worlds eventually. In 2025, we'll hopefully have 500 worlds."
"Guaranteed!" added director of production Dallas Dickenson.
Will 500 worlds be overkill? Electronic Arts' Frank Gibeau claims that The Old Republic will provide 200 hours of gameplay for each of the six available classes -- that doesn't even include crafting, raiding and other multiplayer aspects. He even pointed out that Ultima is on its first decade and still has tens of thousands of subscribers and is widely profitable for the company.
"It's just the nature of the beast that you have to build this amount of content," he said in an interview in June. "Do I wish it wasn't this expensive? Absolutely, but I think everybody does. At the same time it doesn't really do us much good to comment on how much it costs. Ultimately what matters is whether it's a good service and do people really like the game."
So far BioWare is slated to start beta testing on weekends come September. Dallas Dickenson said during the Comic-Con 2011 Q&A that fans should sign up immediately if they have not already done so.
"We're going to be allowing huge numbers of people in," he said. "If you haven't gotten in yet, this is going to be your best chance to do so. So sign up right now to be one of our testers, and there's a very very good chance you'll be playing the game in September. We're going to be inviting thousands and thousands of people to jump into the game, try it out, and give us their feedback."
Does that mean The Old Republic will launch sometime soon after that? "We are going to be beta testing weekends in September and right now our release window target, we are targeting holiday 2011 as our release window," added BioWare community manager Stephen Reid
To read the entire Comic-Con 2011 Q&A session, head here.

Have Tom's readers / editors / writers / forum mods setting up anything? I'd love to find Tom's peoples in-game...
Im getting excited lol... its been years since I felt more than just ho-hum when it comes to new games arriving.
/cry
At least I get off at 5.
As to my response to them having 500 worlds? Those worlds are going to be awfully lonely if they don't ramp this game up...a lot. Not everyone is going to want to play another MMORPG hack and slash grinder to the highest level like all the others out there. Add in some SWG aspects. A REAL space combat game. Buildable houses. Player-fed world economy. PC towns with governor votes... More of the same is boring, bioware! Please understand!!
Sadly, you need to do a bit more research on SW:TOR, as it is by far not a hack and slash grinder. I wouldn't mind BioWare trying some SWG aspects a few years from now. I'm sure they could implement it a lot better than SOE did.
So, your response of "please not more of the same!" is "please add things in from another game!"? That seems a bit backwards. Besides, this isn't a sandbox game. Never has been, never will be. If you want a sandbox game where you can play as Uncle Owen, SWG is still alive for a couple more months.
wow, as far as i can tell isnt story driven, as in its not a kotor like experience when playing, swtor is, from what i read.
everquest is on its 11th or 12th year, and still going strong enough for another new expansion this year, the 14th or 15th i believe.
and wow is in its 7th year, and still has multi millions playing it, while something like everquest peaked at i believe 400000 (that could have just been how many active players were ever on at once though).
but 500 world is retardedly excessive unless there is high quality story for every one. look at everquest, i play on the test server there, there are only i think 10 zones out of 200+ that are used for leveling anymore, and the only zones that get constant use are from the newest expansion with some form the second newest.
as for level progression, swtor will never require all of those unless thy implement a quest based level system like you are capped till you complete XXX, everquest 2 did that, i didnt know that, so i just kept killing the same crap over and over again, and by the time that i realized the quest, i was level 20 (up from level 6) and it killed the game experience for me completely.
There I fixed it.
...talk about running before crawling...