Why Star Wars: The Old Republic needs to succeed

These days knitting circle gossip about the fall of Star Wars: The Old Republic is a tired story. After the news came out recently that the upcoming game managed to break all of EA's pre-order records, despite having a collector's edition that costs roughly a pound of flesh, it was clear that SWTOR had more than a little life in it yet.

But even with the title riding on the good news of pre-order success, it's hard to unhear the kicking and screaming we've been hearing for over a year about The Old Republic inevitably turning out to be a disaster.

Back in 2010, when an anonymous ex-employee of BioWare Mythic blew the lid on the office politics that were taking place behind the scenes of The Old Republic's development, the idea of a then (unreliably) reported $300m being spent on EA's Jedi extravaganza made it look like the firm was carefully positioning itself under a falling anvil.

Soon after, in late 2010, Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubert said that both EA and Bioware 'estimated a development budget of over 100 million', adding that 'with micro transactions maybe I see the game having a chance but I don't think that EA or BioWare will ever be profitable with this game.'

In fact just scanning through search results Google shows how much of the blogosphere has become an echo-chamber for The Old Republic scepticism.

But it's the money that's always been the biggest issue following the game. EA named The Old Republic its most expensive title ever, and even big-boss John Riccitiello said recently the game needs to make somewhere in the ballpark range of $2m to be a great investment.

Unfortunately, the old model of throwing meat into the machine and cranking out huge projects is becoming increasingly less reliable in online games. Realtime Worlds' fledgling steps into the crazy world of MMO development ended when All Points Bulletin was roasted by critics and the studio closed down as a result of poor sales. EA's last major MMO adventure with Warhammer Online failed to drag away any of World of Warcraft's audience despite the massive amount of money poured into the project.