Star Wars: The Old Republic Is Developed with HeroEngine

The Star Wars game franchises are certainly quite numerous, but one of the most successful ones, the Knights of The Old Republic RPG (Role Playing Game) series, made by Electronic Arts' BioWare studio, has been under a lot of attention lately. This is because BioWare and LucasArts, the owners of the Star Wars IP (Intellectual Property), have announced that an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) will be made, entitled Star Wars: The Old Republic.

We've seen quite a lot of representatives, from either LucasArts or BioWare, talk about this new game, about how it will change the space-themed MMORPG market forever or how it will make a considerable dent in the userbase of World of Warcraft, currently the most popular game, with over 12 million subscribers. But now, an interesting tidbit of information has surfaced, in the form of a press release that says that the BioWare team is using the HeroEngine MMO development tool, made by Simutronics.

For those of you who don't know, the HeroEngine is one of the most powerful MMO development tools out there, as it allows teams from various places around the world to build the game world in real time, making the whole development cycle much shorter. It also allows future maintenance of game servers after the title has been launched, thus gravely reducing times. 

“Our goal was to partner with a platform developer that knows online gaming and virtual world development, and the team at Simutronics has an excellent track record in that respect,” said Gordon Walton, Co-Studio director at BioWare. “Their HeroEngine was specifically created for building MMOGs and it allows for a great amount of flexibility in the way our entire team collaborates.”

All in all, some very good news for fans who were worried that BioWare and LucasArts weren't going to deliver a quality game. The use of such high-end tools is very much appreciated, as it will drastically improve the development time of this future game. As of yet, the game might appear in 2009, but no concrete release date has been revealed.