BioWare and LucasArts Going After World of Warcraft

Videogaming247 has posted some remarks made by LucasArts' Tim Nichols suggesting that he thinks Star Wars: The Old Republic will potentially surpass World of Warcraft's 11 million subscribers.
LucasArts online boss Tom Nichols concurred, saying that the firm is banking on The Old Republic's storytelling component to bust through WoW's 11 million subs record.

(When World of Warcraft came out, everybody thought, '˜No, the market is only this big, because that's as big as EverQuest was.' Blizzard showed that it could be much larger,) he said.

(Our goal is to show that by bringing storytelling to the genre that we can attract an even wider audience. Plus, we have the benefit of this huge brand, which has done very, very well for nearly 30 years.)

When asked specifically if he believed the game will be bigger than World of Warcraft, Nichols said all the ingredients were in place.

(I think this game has that potential, with a premiere developer behind it; with a clear differentiating feature being story and something that's very compelling, and being a feature that's true to BioWare's expertise as well as the Star Wars brand; plus the power of the Star Wars brand, which is still doing very, very well 30 years after it started,) he said.

(The opportunity is there for us to do that.)

Star Wars is probably one of the few IPs that could reach as many players as World of Warcraft, but the game would have to be very, very good. Can BioWare pull it off?