BioWare Interview, SWTOR is Fastest-Selling Game in EA’s History

The results of an interview that VideoGamer conducted with BioWare’s Ray Muzyka during last month’s GamesCom are now available, and there’s quite a bit of interesting information to glean from the Q&A. In addition to learning that Star Wars: The Old Republic is the fastest-selling title in EA’s history, we also hear a bit about the direction they’re taking the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises in the future:

Q: The pre-orders on Origins get to play first, and that helps to ease the pressure if you will?

RM: Yeah, it does.

Not everyone is going to be in the same area to start with – there will be some people that have played a bit longer. Based on the pre-orders, it’s been crazy. It’s been the fastest-selling game in EA’s history. And that’s a really great thing, because it means a lots of fans are ready to play our game, and we have to make sure they all have a great experience when they come on – it’s scalable, it’s secure, it’s stable, high-quality content, and a service aspect post-launch that if they have issues we can address those.

So it’s really fun; it’s a really interesting challenge, especially when we’re adding all this innovation and storytelling into the traditional MMO feature-set, and enabling it in the Star Wars universe, where the expectations are “It’s Star Wars” and people approach that with a pre-conceived notion what that means as well – so we have to satisfy that to players too. But it’s a challenge that we’re up for.

The beta test feedback is great already, but we’re not satisfied. We’re continuing to iterate, evolve and improve the content, and it’s not going to stop at launch – we’re going to continue to evolve and add more features and content post-launch for years.

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Q: There’s a nervous quality because everybody desperately wants it to be as good as it is in their heads – but it’s almost like you’re promising the moon on a stick: better RPG, better combat, better everything…

RM: We’re doing our best to achieve that. The team are really proud of the whole… they’re taking it head-on. They know that the expectations are really high from existing fans, and we also want to pull in new fans.

We’re always ambitious and we’re trying to get an emotional engagement and we’re trying to reach the world. So, you know, we want to reach the fans that have played our games before, but we also the new people to enjoy it.

Q: Do you think that’s possible to do both at once?

RM: I think so, yeah. I mean, it’s control of accessibility and depth at the same time – it’s not one thing one for the other – it’s not sacrificing depth, it’s about achieving both at the same time. Emotional engagement is powerful if you can deliver it in a way that players want. We’re billing it as an action-intense experience, but it’s also a deep RPG with a great story arc.