Star Wars: The Old Republic has been a long time coming, combining BioWare’s classic cinematic storytelling with MMORPG conventions. While scouting for a studio began in 2005, development didn’t begin in earnest until 2006 when the Star Wars IP was locked down.

“[BioWare co-founders] Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk believed it was time to get into the MMO space; they’re always thinking about how BioWare can continue to be successful in the future,” recalls James Ohlen, creative director. “So they sent a few of us down to Austin to open a studio.”

“[Austin was chosen] because of its rich history as a great location to make online games,” says BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk. “Any time you start a new studio, there’s a challenge in getting the right mix of people, culture, and personalities. That’s probably the biggest thing you need to get right and something we took a lot of care doing.”

When they first started on the game, they realized that the rabbit hole went deep – it would involve more systems and dialog than all other previous BioWare RPGs combined. “There are more game systems in it than in any other BioWare RPG,” says Ohlen, “with a lot of those systems having a lot more depth than in any other RPG I’ve ever worked on. The fact that this is a game with huge worlds that are each the size of a game by themselves — that’s been a huge challenge for us.”

One of the difficulties was managing the size of the Austin studio. “It took me a decade to build up the Edmonton staff,” says Ohlen. “But I had to build Austin in like four years.”

On the front of free-to-play games, Ohlen says, “First of all, I believe that there is only a group of developers — like Zynga — who are making smaller games. For the most part, the successful ones are still the big ones, like World of Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and all of EA’s big sports franchises. What you are seeing is just two different areas, both of which are growing, and I think it’s good that small games exist because they allow for more innovation and more risk-taking because you’re not betting the farm every time you build one.”

“Yes, it’s getting difficult for companies to compete in the subscription space because players’ expectations are so high,” he added. “That has been a big challenge for us, mainly because Blizzard set the bar so high with World of Warcraft. But I think we’ve hit it and we’re bringing innovations that are really going to change the way people view the AAA subscription MMO.”

As for going F2P down the line, Ohlen says, “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future but, right now, we’re very much focused on making it a subscription game.”

While the game has finally released, that hardly means that the job is over for the various writers of Star Wars: The Old Republic. “Though the game is now a trilogy — with Chapters I, II, and III — we are planning to keep it going for a fourth chapter — and more,” says Daniel Erickson, writing director. “That is my hope… that I’ll continue to have a job here. The writing team has been hard at work on additional content because the lead time for content is quite long when you’re doing AAA professional voice acting and such.”

As far as success goes, there are plans in place to make a profit regardless of how much of a hit it is. “While I can’t give away exact numbers, I can say that we have plans for super success in the millions of subscribers… and then we have plans for if we have a much smaller subscriber base,” said Ohlen. “While it would be great to get the kind of numbers that World of Warcraft gets, we don’t have to come close to those in order to be wildly successful. We could be well below WoW and still be incredibly profitable.”

Source: Gamasutra