10 Years Ago Today: BioWare Thinks It Can Do SWTOR Better Than WoW's "Massive Investment Of Time"

A lot of people had a lot of very high hopes for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Not least among those were the co-founders of BioWare, Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka.

While SWTOR wouldn't be formally announced until Oct. 21, 2008, an interview with the two from 10 years ago today gives a sense of the scope that BioWare was shooting for with its as-yet-unrevealed MMO project.

The original interview appeared in the December 2007 issue of Game Informer magazine, but all we have to go on is the summary provided by Massively, whose old articles are now found on EndGadget. According to that article, both Zeschuk and Muzyka said they played World of Warcraft but they

expressed dissatisfaction with the way that making progress in the game is so time-consuming that "it's almost like having another job." They said they are thinking about ways to make the genre more accessible and easier to "pick up and play and have fun."

Raise your hand if you don't think Star Wars: The Old Republic was especially innovative at launch, especially as it relates to progression and the "massive investment of time" Muzyka laments regarding WoW. It was your standard, level-to-max-then-instanced-activities-to-gear-up, or at least was in the beginning. Recent changes, like the Galactic Command system, have mixed up the formula a bit, but not without some significant growing pains.

Muzyka also said that WoW's "staying power hasn't been as strong," just three years after its launch at the time of the interview. It still seems to be doing OK.