Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview

MCV caught up with LucasArts CEO Darrell Rodriguez for an article-style interview about their current and upcoming Star Wars video game lineup, and, as you might expect, the discussion heads into The Old Republic territory.

Beyond those two titles, there’s Star Wars: The Old Republic a project with a huge production force (and budget to match, no doubt) that will take the franchise to MMO territory.

There’s still a year to go on The Old Republic, even though it was announced in 2008, and already LucasArts has shopped it around at Gamescom, E3 and other events.

(PR and promoting it is very important for this kind of game,) says Rodriguez.

(The technicality of building an MMO is a drastic undertaking you don’t do it lightly.)

The Old Republic is being made by EA’s BioWare Austin studio and will be published by EA, too. That company’s publishing and development teams are a key ally when it comes to successfully transferring the Star Wars IP to MMO, and being able to turn it into a business that has the potential to challenge Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, he says.

There are other keys to making a Star Wars MMO’ˆwork, says Rodriguez (Sony Online Entertainment tried before with the underwhelming Star Wars Galaxies).

(Our secret is story and characters. That’s something our phenomenal IP has, and a partner like BioWare is well known for. So far I’m excited by the progress The Old Republic is making and the excitement from the industry and consumers when we’ve shown it proves it’s going to be a great game. A huge game.)