Can this month's Star Wars: The Old Republic fulfill years of development effort and hype? Can the new massively multiplayer game from BioWare achieve World of Warcraft-like success? Will it survive as a subscription-based MMO or have to switch, as so many of them do these days, to Free 2 Play?
These are old, tired questions. Today, we get the opportunity to rephrase: Will the game last as long as the Star Wars: The Old Republic tattoo that BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk just got tattooed onto his arm?
He Tweeted a picture of it today, referring to it as his "launch tattoo" (to go with his "launch beard.")
So I asked him, via Twitter, if that was a real tattoo or just one of those stick-on ones that longtime gaming executive Peter Moore would slap onto his arm when he was hyping Grand Theft Auto. (Moore's Halo one was real. But that GTA one was fake, right?)
Zeschuk's answer to me: "I don't mess around."
He seems like a confident man.