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On Tuesday, Electronic Arts will release Star Wars: The Old Republic, a sprawling multiplayer online adventure that is the first legitimate competition that World of Warcraft has faced for the hearts, minds, hours and dollars of millions of players.
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Yet it has lost around two million players over the past year, and now the original evil empire is at the door. The first online game to enjoy planetwide popularity, World of Warcraft had more than 12 million paid subscribers last fall. Over the last decade no video game has engaged a broader global community than World of Warcraft. Over the last third of a century no new fiction has engaged the popular imagination and become as thoroughly essential an element of mass culture as “Star Wars.” There can’t be many people anywhere who wouldn’t at least recognize a lightsaber or Darth Vader.
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