For those who don’t know, World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated WoW) is a massive MMORPG produced and developed by Blizzard Entertainment (creators of the acclaimed Diablo series and the Star Craft series) that was released in 2004. According to the WorldofWarcraft website – Answers, there are over 12 million people playing it constantly, making it the most successful massively multiplayer game of all time. Many games in WoW’s ever-growing history have attempted to usurp the throne that Blizzard built, and these titles have not been small names; Games like Everquest, Guild Wars and even have had the power of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings franchise. Granted, the last of the three listed has become a huge IP with a bigger fan base than World of Warcraft and the game has picked up a lot of steam since 2007, with gamers complaining that sometimes the game is overloaded. But if you can, think of a franchise that stands out above the rest in size and dedication.
It is a fanbase with two costume regiments, the 501st “Vader’s Fist” Regiment and the Rebel Legion. It’s the franchise that George Lucas built from literally six movies, and it’s thrived through the Expanded Universe and earned the dubious distinction of being the highest-grossing franchise of all time: we’re talking about Star Wars. There are currently two Star Wars MMOs on the market: Galaxies; which is generally considered “How Not to Run an MMO” was released in 2003 and had the potential to be in the position that Warcraft is in, but due to poor management it has become such a sparsely populated game that the December 15, 2011. The other is Clone Wars Adventures, which is a browser game based on “The Clone Wars” TV series shown on Cartoon Network and updated after new episodes are released. The loss of Galaxies leaves a crack in the space that LucasArts had invested in the MMO market. Although Galaxies is generally considered to have been a flop, there is new hope in Star Wars: The Old Republic and if all indications are true, this may be the game that knocks Warcraft off the mountain.
A bit of backstory: The Old Republic takes place in the aptly named Old Republic era of the Star Wars universe, the same timeline as the critically acclaimed Knights of the Old Republic, let alone Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords. This is roughly 3,995 years before the events of Episode IV: A New Hope, while The Old Republic takes place roughly 3,600 before the movies. The Old Republic (here abbreviated as ToR) will be developed by the creators of the highly acclaimed role-playing game Bioware and will see a release from giant mega-company EA Games. ToR was first announced in 2008 and has been in development ever since, and with each video, be it gameplay or the absolutely stunning pre-rendered video, it has left people gasping and hungry for more. According to Swtor.com/forums, there are over 1,000,000 active users on the forums discussing the game as of February 2011 (pre-E3 2011 hype). Along with the release of in-game videos and rendered trailers, there have been comical tie-ins on StarWars.com for the game and continually updated information on classes, factions, and other experiences on SWTOR.com. Unfortunately, as of late June 2011, no release date or game price (estimated to be around $15) has been released, but EA, LucasArts, and Bioware have confirmed that the game is scheduled for the second half of June. 2011.
Other big hits coming out this year include Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty mw3cod.com/.