BioWare's big secret MMORPG has turned out to be another new Star Wars title. Star Wars: The Old Republic will be an online RPG set during the period of BioWare's classic Knights of the Old Republic series, thousands of years before the likes of Vadar, Han or Uncle Owen.

"Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars - combat, exploration and character progression," said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder and General Manager/CEO of BioWare and General Manager/Vice President of Electronic Arts Inc., "In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we're fusing BioWare's heritage of critically-acclaimed storytelling with the amazing pedigree of Lucasfilm and LucasArts, and adding a brand-new fourth pillar to the equation - story.

"At the same time, we will still deliver all the fun features and activities that fans have come to expect in a triple-A massively multiplayer online game. To top it all off, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set in a very exciting, dynamic period in the Star Wars universe."

Alongside the announcement we have a few screenshots and bits of artwork for you to have a look at.

I hope to god those are alpha alpha alpha screenshots or this game is gonna look s*** by the time it comes out

Here's hoping they actually try to do something different, not copy WoW/WAR.

What am I saying? As long as it ends up being better than Galaxies, it'll be fine! (which shouldn't be too hard, given Galaxies is fairly horrid)

Galaxies was hard.

It was set in the time where jedi's were rare (3 of them ?) and everyone wants to be a jedi.

Honestly the whole Star Wars IP is a hard one. So many licenced products and alot of them were horrid failures, bit like Star Trek.

not copy WoW/WAR

Which copied EQ, Daoc ... which are based on MUDs which are based on PnP DnD games.

UO atleast was a little different. But the rest of them are based around "levelling".

Sorry Obes - I should've specified that post-NGE Galaxies sucked. UO was kind of what I was thinking when I said 'different' - dump the whole level thing and use something else.

Would it be too much to want them to not allow Jedis ?

Gamespot has a nice interview with some of the Devs that gives a little bit more insight into the whole thing. Still far too early to take anything said by them seriously, but time will tell.

Sorry Obes - I should've specified that post-NGE Galaxies sucked

Yes this is the truth, Galaxies was f***ing awesome and it was hard. I'm excited about this, and it's bioware.

Yeah post sucked, I was not a huge fan of pre-NGE either. But post was a complete balls up.

Not convinced Bioware can pull it off. I played KOTOR for the storyline, the game play sucked. Mass Effect had much better game play but they still relied heavily on a pause system which won't work in an MMO. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to make it for consoles as well which I can't see working either.

Goodbye KOTOR; We all know that your strong point was your story and the way you fleshed out all your characters, even minor ones. Now that you've gone down the road of MMO you've thrown away (imo) your best card.

An MMO can never really end. As in, chapter Z, game over, fin. A story that never ends will always get dull. Even if the story manages to keep overlapping itself chapter after chapter with absolutely perfect writing, it will fall short and start to get dull, then we get the 'lets make a new type of bad guys!'.

A story driven mmo? haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw. You can have all the backstory and lore you want pre-release and no matter how many writers you employ for X cost you'll lose money eventually after the 9th random threat to the universe attacks. Because it's incredibly difficult to constantly create new chapters or sequels or backstory or whatever for something and meet the expectations your [successful] initial release would have had. Unless the gameplay happens to be so crack addictive and dynamic and FUN that it keeps people paying. But then i would hardly call it 'story-driven'. And when money is lost, things get cancelled and/or cut.

EVE has a constantly growing, player-created history. But nobody gives a giant floating meteor about the story. And it [probably] doesn't have a giant amount of cash to spend on writers. Or WoW. It has a good amount to spend on writers, but i'm betting that a large majority of it's subscribers are addicted to the crack omg purples gameplay, not its (impressive) story.

I guess what i'm saying is that an MMO that prides itself on a story that never ends (unless it did go on for so long that it actually managed to reach episode 1 of star wars in the timeline and just stopped) is going to fail, unless it can back itself up with some truly awesome groundbreaking gameplay.

I miss you KOTOR :(((((

last edited by trog at 17:45:02 22/Oct/08

It was set in the time where jedi's were rare (3 of them ?) and everyone wants to be a jedi.

Honestly the whole Star Wars IP is a hard one. So many licenced products and alot of them were horrid failures, bit like Star Trek.

The Jedi thing appears to me (as a non-MMO player but a big Star Wars fan, at least until it was raped by Lucas) to be the big problem with this.

I have aaalllllllmost zero interest in the Star Wars universe pre Eps 4/5/6, not really because I don't like the story or anything, but because the movies just sucked so f***ing badly that to think about it just reminds me of the travesty that was the prequel trilogy. So playing a game in this era would bore me to tears. I can see why they'd want to make an MMO here though - it's easy to have a million Jedis then for example, I guess.

last edited by trog at 17:45:41 22/Oct/08

what the hell?

The posts, they are getting raped by code

edit: trog the savior has come to un-rape the posts!

I have aaalllllllmost zero interest in the Star Wars universe pre Eps 4/5/6, not really because I don't like the story or anything, but because the movies just sucked so f***ing badly that to think about it just reminds me of the travesty that was the prequel trilogy. So playing a game in this era would bore me to tears. I can see why they'd want to make an MMO here though - it's easy to have a million Jedis then for example, I guess.

The KOTOR universe is set about 1000years before the Star wars storyline so it's not in the same era of the new movies.

If it's set after KotOR II there won't be many Jedis theoretically anyway.

The Jedi should be like a maxed level prestige class anyway, or something similar to a melee battlecaster with very little health. You would hope that all the other classes would have ways to match the Jedi in different forms of combat anyway.

last edited by trog at 18:46:06 22/Oct/08

The KOTOR universe is set about 1000years before the Star wars storyline so it's not in the same era of the new movies.

Yeh I know; I really meant that /anything/ that happens pre 4/5/6 is now completely uninteresting to me because I assume it will just be stuffed full of bulls***