So the big news this past week was undoubtedly the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the upcoming MMO based on the Knights of the Old Republic franchise, developed by Bioware and LucasArts. SWtOR takes place a few hundreds years after the end of Knights of the Old Republic, but continues the Stars Wars storyline in no doubt great ways, considering Bioware’s talents at developing massive storylines with quality gameplay, we can only imagine where they could take such huge possibilities as an ever-expanding world based on the Star Wars backstory.

But with the forthcoming release comes some big questions. First, what about that other Stars Wars MMO? What was it again….oh yeah….Star Wars Galaxies. Is it sticking around? Yes states LucasArts exec Tom Nichols, who sees no reason the two games can’t exist together. It seems they still have big plans for Galaxies, plans they wish to pursue aggressively should The Old Republic be a big enough hit to revive the original Sony-backed Star Wars MMO.

But then comes the whopper of a question. Can SWtOR really take on World of Warcraft? EA games president Frank Gibeau believes so and we certainly think World of Warcraft will be in a run for it’s money.

“Just look at the base of Star Wars fans, plus what BioWare can do. Trust me: we want to win. EA’s reputation is for wanting to win. This is going to be a powerful category and there’s lots of ways to compete in this category. [Blizzard] created a much larger opportunity for everybody else, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way.”