Here Are the First Details About BioWare's KOTOR MMORPG

As was previously rumored and reported by our team, BioWare was indeed working on an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) based on the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic universe. The studio, also responsible for the first two titles, has been working for quite some time with the owners of the Star Wars Intellectual Property, LucasArts, and finally it has made an official announcement regarding its latest project, today in San Francisco.

Although the game was rumored to be in development for quite a while now, it wasn’t until this summer that EA boss John Riccitiello let the news that BioWare was indeed working on a KOTOR based MMO game slip. It was from that point on that speculations really flied all over the Internet and everybody eagerly anticipated this press conference in San Francisco. Here's what Tom Nichols, executive producer at LucasArts, had to say about this collaboration with BioWare.

"This project originated a couple years ago when BioWare spoke up and said, 'Hey, we'd love to do another project with you guys,'" explained Nichols. "We were thinking about working on new, additional projects in the online space, and Galaxies was three or four years old, and we started to look into the future about what we might want to do in the MMO genre. And I think the timing was pretty serendipitous that way, since BioWare wanted to work with us, they wanted to do an MMO, and they had a lot of experience playing MMOs. They wanted to bring some of their learning and aspects of their gameplay – namely storytelling – into MMOs, and we were looking to reapproach the genre with a major partner."

"The biggest challenge for this game is the sheer amount of content you have to create. This is a HUGE game. Just to give you an idea of how huge this game is, we were taking a look at it, and it has more story content than every single other BioWare game that's come before put together. That would mean Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights II, Knights of the Old Republic, Knights of the Old Republic II, Jade Empire, Mass Effect – and all the expansions," said James Ohlen, one of the lead designers on the initial KOTOR games, about the size of the story contained in the upcoming MMO.

Well one thing's for sure, it will definitely have a lot of success, largely due to the fact that there are a lot of Star Wars fans out there who can hardly wait to satisfy their need for anything related to the futuristic franchise of movies and games.