Originally Posted by
Gritalian
They are entering a market that has basically been dominated by one developer... I mean, we're talking Michael Jordan domination. How many games have we seen come out with even a relative amount of hype and get its subscriptions cut drastically after the free month ended? Hell, I'll just name the one's I've quit: SWG, Lotro, City of Heroes/Villains, Age of Conan, Eve, Aion, Warhammer Online, Rift, Forsaken World, and there is probably more that I can't even remember.
So why would Bioware decide to keep an NDA at this point?
For one, the limit news in itself creates hype when news is eventually released.
Second, it's Star Wars... it already has its own enormous fan base.
Third, it's Bioware, which many people who play games consider being one of the gold standards as far as story, character development, relationships... three things that mean a lot in the world of mmos.
Fourth, most people who gravitate towards playing MMOs purchase every "big" MMO, any way
So they have these four things going for them, among many others... why exactly would they show their cards when releasing a product that rivals a game that has probably the biggest video game population there is? They are going to get their sales, it's pretty much given based on the number of preorders they projected. Those who don't buy it right on release will have friends who do buy it, word of mouth is likely to be high. Realistically, the people who don't buy this game (our of the WoW population) are going to be the ones who can't afford two $15 monthly subscriptions, or those who just don't have enough time in their week to work on two different characters in two different games aka the people who raid/pvp casually on the weekend and are currently 4/7 regular. Nothing against those people, but more than likely they don't have the time resource to manage playing two MMOs.
The possible gain due from releasing mass amounts of news content now is probably too small in terms of affecting sales and would only give the edge to their well established competitor (Blizzard) who has been known to do things like releasing patches during other games release dates or sending out mass amounts of beta invites during early access for preorders (like they did with the WOTLK Beta when Warhammer Online early access went live).