Ray Muzyka: BioWare Austin MMO To Innovate On WoW

Author: by Staff

Talking to Gamasutra as part of a new feature on life at BioWare following its acquisition by Electronic Arts, founder and CEO Ray Muzyka has said its highly classified MMO project will bring as much polish and quality as Blizzard's WoW, but will innovate on a number of fronts. BioWare's Austin studio was founded in March of 2006, and since that time has been working on a 'mystery project' that many have speculated could be Star Wars related. While Muzyka still left the project undetailed, he did say of the title: It's going to feel like a BioWare game. It's going to have the best of breed of MMO features, and some new innovations that when we reveal them, hopefully they'll be impactful for people. Speaking on Blizzard's massively successful World of Warcraft, and of the lack of equitable competition that's followed, Muzyka added: It's not a slight at all on Blizzard. I think they've done a great job. But the fact that people want to play that kind of game is an opportunity to really deliver that level of polish and quality, and innovate in a few key areas, while they continue to innovate in a few key areas, too. I got to sit next to Rob Pardo for like three hours yesterday at this dinner I was at with a bunch of other studio leaders, and I just talked in admiring terms of how much I love their games, and how I've played every single one of them and finished every one of them. And he's played all of our games, and we were debating the merits of different design philosophies, and he's telling me how they built GUIs, and I was telling him how we built GUIs and hired people and approached design concepts. It's just awesome, right? We're very different from them, and yet it's a very similar starting point and end point, in terms of the quality we give our fans. You can now read the full feature for more from Muzyka on the company's moves to the DS and PS3, and what the future will bring for the developer and publisher.