Greatest failure in the history of MMOs

Yes, I've seen EA Louse. I didn't find it especially interesting, because the discussion of why a game failed two years ago isn't likely to bring anything new to the table except for office gossip. The only new part is this:

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ……

Just for the record, I do believe this. I repeatedly voiced my doubts over the value of the "fourth pillar" of story telling by voice-overs in a MMORPG, seeing how the ability to skip quest texts was one of the first addons programmed for World of Warcraft. Just do a simple thought experiment: Imagine World of Warcraft was patched so that you can't skip quest texts any more, but would be forced to listen to them being read out slowly every time you wanted a quest. Would that want to make you play WoW more, or would you feel a sudden urge to punch your screen?

Everything I've seen from Star Wars: The Old Republic screams "WoW clone with voice-overs" to me. There is no way this game can possibly live up to the hype. In a year we will all be posting "Why SWTOR failed" blog entries.