I'll admit that there is a fairly large segment of the SWTOR community that have very unrealistic demands of the game in the first place. The people that expect things like the game to get rid of looting because none of the characters looted corpses in the movies, or get rid of class roles in the game and let people have more customization in that regard, will probably and most likely end up disappointed. However for everyone else there is a game that is one of the few MMORPGs set in the Star Wars universe, and not only carries that banner on it's shoulders but also the test of if story has a big enough hold in the genre for it to be focused upon.
Both of those reasons are extremely big responsibilities for The Old Republic to undertake but so far it gladly does so, and while I don't have any expectations of the game's failure, I do believe that if in the event that it does not do well there could be some serious repercussions.
The first is of course the loss of money, from what I've read SWTOR has been a huge money sink for Bioware and it's supporters, and while I don't believe there has been an official release on how much money the game has cost so far, I have seen more than a few articles putting it as 300 million. This also makes it one of the most expensive games ever made, and definitely the most expensive game that Electronic Arts has been tied to. All of the money being put into this either leads to that the game will be as astounding as most people want it to be, or it could be a severe loss of money for the companies involved but even then assuming that the game does in fact not do as well, the sheer amount of pre-orders and copies that will be sold upon the game's release will possibly make the money impact less consequential. Nevertheless though, 300 million dollars is a huge sum to put into a game, and even if the funds are evened out, if the game doesn't do well future companies might be more skeptical or even in general less willing to shell out that kind of money for development, this could potentially affect the future of Bioware games if they need the money that would be lost.
There is of course, also Bioware's reputation at stake. Bioware has always been known for making really good games and that is what makes them one of the most known names in the video game industry. From very early games for the PC such as Baulder's Gate to the recent Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, all of the games released from Bioware have been quality single player games. This is not entirely good however as with fame in general if you're doing anything and you're famous, the world has it's eyes on you, this especially poses a problem when wanting to chart out in the unfamiliar territory that would be Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games. All of Bioware's successes have been from mainly single player based games, or non-massively multiplayer games such as Neverwinter Nights, and while even then it was possible to play NWN online, it was just an option given to players; other than making it compatible online, and providing a great tool set for it, the normal campaigns really didn't have any astounding features that made people want to play it with others, and in fact the last expansion released for NWN was very buggy when it came to playing it online. With that said, Bioware did do things that made it a great online experience in general such as making multiple forms of communication easy, implementing grouping systems, PvP systems, DM tools, the ability to trade items, and of course the ability to make entire new modules or worlds with the Aurora Toolset that it provided. With just these few things, players since the release of NWN (including myself) have enjoyed the online game play immensely which does prove that Bioware does know what people want in an online game, but even then it still is a whole new world when actually designing content made to be played with others, and having many other elements of being massively multiplayer within it.
Besides having little experience in making Online games, there's also the issue for some that SWTOR is being developed by Bioware Austin which is a fairly young studio giving people the belief that it doesn't have the “veterans” who worked on titles like Mass Effect and thus wouldn't result in a good game just from that. The fact that it's done by a fairly new studio within Bioware could possibly save the company from some general grief if things don't work out but generally many people also don't distinguish different studios from one another, and while I personally don't believe simply being a new studio would result in failure, if it does in fact do just that, the results may impact Bioware's reputation more than just a little bit.
Last but not least, and the thought that started this entire post to begin with is the game being basically the banner carrier for story in MMORPGs. Right from the start representatives of the company have said that the game seeks to add a new pillar to MMORPG fundamentals, that being story. This also essentially means players that like story in MMORPGs games shouldn't have to look farther at all, this is the game to be playing for that element in the genre, however at the same time with that very idea, this is the game that will put story in MMORPGs to the test. I somewhat recently saw one of Yahtzee's videos on F.E.A.R. 3 and in it he mentions that usually it isn't “fun” to read a story with another person which I think can be true for some people. The reason for this is how fun experiencing a story is with someone else depends on the people involved generally, in that if they like stories to begin with, and if they're comfortable enough to enjoy watching or reading something with someone else. While I personally have a small group of friends that I would enjoy ToR's story with, there's more than a few people that aren't in similar situations and I believe that the effect of story on them will be far minimized. Again however none of this is proven, there hasn't been a MMORPG out with a similar system of dialog or individual story in history. On the other hand however, there have been MMORPGs with good stories but for the most part their stories are fairly linear or uninvolved such as in Lord of the Rings Online for the linear aspect, or World of Warcraft for uninvolved. So that brings me to my point finally, while there are a lot of factors for and against story in MMORPGs, this will be the first true test of if the Bioware level of story telling has a place within MMORPGs or if it will be shot off into the distance. In the case that it doesn't do well, that'll probably be the end of any deep story involvement in MMORPGs for quite awhile if ever which is somewhat of a grim outcome, but if SWTOR does do well we could possibly look forward to even more similar games with different settings or features, however they still would have a degree of Bioware's depth and involvement in storytelling.
So with all of that said, there's a lot riding on the success of ToR, both for Bioware and possibly the future of the MMORPG genre. Of course all of it is speculation, it is entirely possible that the game could not do well and things could keep on getting better anyways, or another company takes the role of story on it's shoulders and proceeds that way. However the one thing that is for certain is that story has never had a bigger role in any MMORPG before SWTOR, and for that aspect alone, while I realize that this entire post was somewhat negative, I for one, don't want SWTOR to fail in any way.
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