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DeaconX 10/12/07 10:03:21 PM
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Elite Member
Joined: 2/08/05
Stand up for what you believe; Even if you stand alone. |
JULY 17th Update http://www.endsights.com/?p=85
BIOWARE MMORPG FACTS – UPDATED! JULY 10. 2008
--------------------------- This thread was created to gather all available information regarding the BioWare MMORPG currently in development. We are looking for any and all information. Speculation is inevitable, but if we must let’s try to be as informed as possible. Please feel free to help add or correct any information presented and remember to take everything with a grain of salt ;)
BREAKING NEWS: http://www.looking4group.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322 Sean Dahlberg of Stray Bullet Games (Shadowbane) has been hired by BioWare as the community manager for the MMORPG studio in Austin, TX. With this news, we can hopefully look forward to learning much more about the game soon.
Updated: Jan.21.08: LucasArts hiring an Executive Producesr - Online Business Unit http://jobs.gamesondeck.com/jobseekerx/viewjobrss.asp?cjid=13777&accountno=260
"Originally posted by ssnautilus WHO?
NEWSFLASH 30th OCTOBER:
Bioware + LucasArts sign up for "Ground-Breaking Interactive Entertainment Product": This news is verified thru the Bioware site directly: And at the LucasArts site: "SAN FRANCISCO, CA and EDMONTON, CANADA -- October 30, 2007 -- LucasArts and BioWare Corp. today announced that they have entered into an agreement to create an interactive entertainment product. The product, details of which will be unveiled at a later date, will be developed and published by BioWare and LucasArts, and will push the boundaries of the gaming market by utilizing the strengths of both companies to deliver an innovative, high-quality experience. "LucasArts has a deep commitment to developing compelling stories and characters for the unique medium of interactive entertainment, and we have been searching for a developer that shares this value. We found this in BioWare," said Jim Ward, president of LucasArts. "Through our previous collaborations, we know that BioWare has an impressive ability to blend gripping stories with technological advancements, and we believe that our upcoming product will deliver an experience that will span the traditional boundaries of video game entertainment."
"BioWare's mission is to deliver the best story and character-driven games in the world, delivering powerful emotional experiences to our fans." said Ray Muzyka, chief executive officer, BioWare Corp. Added Greg Zeschuk, president of BioWare Corp., "The collaboration with LucasArts allows us to combine our passion for creating high quality and innovative experiences with those of a company dedicated to bringing only the finest games to market."
Things are looking up! Still not sure whether it is a Star Wars/KotOR MMO or something along the lines of MASS EFFECT."
-On March 13, 2006, BioWare announced that they opened a new studio in Austin, Texas headed by industry veterans Gordon Walton and Richard Vogel, which is already working on developing an MMORPG. -Gordon Waltin worked on Star Wars Galaxies
-Development started December 2005 [Gordon Walton] http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3155486
-Due out in 2009 [Bill Dalton of BioWare] however in a recent interview after the EA buyout of BioWare the release date is claimed to be in the ‘back half’ of 2009,10,11.
-EA announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp, owners of both BioWare and Pandemic Studios -The MMORPG is already in a playable build with members of BioWare enjoying it as stated by Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeshcuk during Gamespot's Q&A on the EA acquisition.
-Licensor Liaison job was posted by BioWare Austin a while back. One of the job requirements was a strong familiarity with PC AND console markets. -Damion Schubert is the lead combat designer for the BioWare MMO. His blog: http://www.zenofdesign.com/
WHAT?
-BioWare maintains almost total secrecy about their MMO, thus no setting/IP has been either announced, confirmed or denied
-BioWare has adopted StreamBase's Stream Processing Engine. StreamBase has previously provided Complex Event Processing software to many leading financial institutions as well as the government and military sectors.
Event Processing Engine Part 1 - http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199902853 Processing Engine Part 2 - http://www.streambase.com/complex-event-processing.htm
-BioWare Austin will use HeroEngine for development of its new MMO project.
"At BioWare we selected HeroEngine because it had the most sophisticated and complete development tools available for building an amazing online experience. Our team wanted a great rapid prototyping environment and to work with experienced MMO developers. HeroEngine from Simutronics is a perfect fit for BioWare Austin's requirements."
The Engine - http://www.play.net/playdotnet/platform/home.asp Prepetual's Service Backbone - http://www.perpetual.com/platform/ -A .pdf from the EA acquisition listing all the past and future games from Bioware - notice the New MMO doesn’t have Owned IP checked - Meaning it is indeed a licensed IP
Hosted by Thompson Financial – http://www.thomson.com/solutions/financial/
Some Quotes:
-"The key points that we're gonna do that no one's done before in an MMOG are bring story, character, and emotion to it. Decisions matter, [non-player characters] aren't just Pez dispensers, and you're not in a grind," Rich Vogel
-StreamBase is designed to process enormous amounts of real-time information at blindingly fast speeds, making it an ideal platform for delivering a rich online gaming experience for thousands of players simultaneously," said Barry Morris, Chairman and CEO of StreamBase.
-"After we evaluated the StreamBase CEP software, we quickly realized that partnering with them would cut our server development costs by multiple man years," said Bill Dalton of BioWare
-"At BioWare we selected HeroEngine because it had the most sophisticated and complete development tools available for building an amazing online experience; Our team wanted a great rapid prototyping environment and to work with experienced MMO developers. The HeroEngine from Simutronics is a perfect fit for BioWare Austin's requirements." said Gordon Walton
-"We want to bring a level of storytelling that's equal to the single-player box games that BioWare has done. I think we can do that. One of the big challenges will be making our storytelling work in an environment that has multiple players." Creative Director James Ohlen
-“One thing we don't want to do is NPC Pez dispensers, as I call them -- go over there, dispense a quest, and then go "vacuum-clean" a zone. We want to make sure you listen to NPCs, because choices matter. And that's really important.” Richard Vogel
- GS: Now one of the main reasons EA gave for acquiring BioWare/Pandemic was the upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game you're developing in Austin. After listening to John's comments in the conference call, one walks away with the impression that said MMORPG is a wholly owned IP of BioWare--and therefore EA. Is that correct?
RM: We haven't revealed any details about the game. It's super secret right now. It's got all the characters and story arc that BioWare is known for, and I wish I could say more. It's the best of breed of MMO, with the magic BioWare's associated with, and our goal is to make sure people can't stop playing it.
Above from: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6180866.html
BioWare Forums:
 IT should be noted that BioWare was busy working on their own IP RPG, JADE EMPIRE when LEC wanted KOTOR II thus BioWare passed the project onto their lil brother company, OBSIDIAN ENTERTAINMENT
SPECULATION: PROCEED WITH CAUTION! -Citi's Brent Thill predicts that BioWare is quietly working on a Star Wars MMO. He says that this would be a "strong positive" for the EA, one that "bolsters [its] MMO exposure
- Riccitiello used to work for EA, left and co-founded Elevation Partners, which in 2005 bought BioWare. Now, he is back at EA as the CEO and bought BioWare back from his old company. (You cant serve God and the Mammon, ahd he knows whom he serves, apparently.) - EA has so far vaporized almost all corporations it acquired, and most game series and traditions were not taken up: Origin (Ultima, Wing Commander), Westwood (Lands of Lore, only Command & Conquer is continued), Bullfrog (Dungeon Keeoper), Maxis (Sim City and Sims all now are just "EA".)
-LucasArts rep raised another interesting possibility--that another Star Wars MMORPG could be in the works. "We have had several developers approach us expressing interest in developing a future Star Wars online game," said the rep. (emphasis in the original.) However, if any such game is in the works, it will be a long time until it surfaces. "As of right now, it hasn't gone anything beyond that (that is, no conversations, no serious talks, no pitches, etc.)," assured the rep. -Article also states: “BioWare appears the more likely candidate. Besides the fact it developed the critically acclaimed and wildly popular Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the developer just founded a new studio in Austin, Texas--home of SOE's Austin branch--which employs several ex-SOE staffers. The shop's sole project is an unidentified MMORPG set in a science fiction universe”
- (12/05) A few press releases about kotor3 were leaked and quickly dismissed by Bioware as a hoax. Not to mention an interview with the writer for the kotor comic series, John Jackson MIller, that also came out in December '05 stating: "there’s going to be another Knights of the Old Republic video game for sure." -Bioware did not work on KOTOR 2 because they were working on there own rpg already(Jade Empire)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic (I did not want to quote wiki but I can't find the original link) – Posted by Zxny
The merge between Bioware and Pandemic created a company that has made over 4 different Star Wars Games http://bioware.pandemicstudios.com/
-While BioWare has made no comments about the Star Wars MMORPG rumors, neither LucasArts nor SOE have said anything to discredit it. -In a recent interview with Jake Neri of Star Wars Galaxies it was revealed that there are no future expansion packs planned for development.
- Insiders knowing that Bioware being in production with another Star Wars MMO could be responsible for all the rumors flying around in early 2006 that SOE was loosing the Star Wars license, which may not be so false after all. I hate to think of SWG's player numbers in 2009. That would be 10 years since SWG started production and could also very well be the end of the SWG/SOE license contract with Lucas Arts, just in time for its replacement. Analysts claim it is a Star Wars MMO!
Source - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15841 AT The risk of losing credibility if they are in fact wrong for reporting the BioWare MMORPG is KOTOR BASED:
-NOT A D&D TITLE: Scott Rouse, SR. Brand Manager - Dungeons & Dragons The domain was registered last week.
The registrant is a company that is supposed to keep the other companies info private.
If it's just "grabbing a url" bioware wouldn't have set it up to redirect to their own website - they would have just had some random crap on there. They wouldn't have set it up on their nameservers. If you look at the IP - it's the same as bioware.com.
Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: LUCASARTSBIOWARE.COM Created on: 11-Oct-07 Expires on: 11-Oct-12 Last Updated on: 23-Oct-07 Administrative Contact: Private, Registration LUCASARTSBIOWARE.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2599 Technical Contact: Private, Registration LUCASARTSBIOWARE.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2599 Domain servers in listed order: NS1.BIOWARE.COM NS2.BIOWARE.COM
http://www.eucantina.net/archives/834 On July 3rd, 2008, LucasFilm filed for trademarks for the following:
The trademarks have been registered for “Entertainment services provided on-line by means of global and local area networks, namely, providing interactive computer game software, interactive video game software and interactive computer games and interactive video games, all on-line by means of global and local area networks” You can view a screenshot of the trademark for “Star Wars the Old Republic” here. It is important to note that these trademarks were registered in the same way as the trademark for “Star Wars Galaxies”. These are officially registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It appears that at least one of these titles may be used to create a new online Star Wars game. “The Old Republic” title makes me think about that KOTOR MMO everyone’s been talking about. Credit for the screenshot and discovery of “The Old Republic” title goes to the website StarWarsUniverse.com
Riccitiello also states that the KOTOR MMO will “sidestep the consoles owned by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo,” presumably making it a PC exclusive. To all the KOTOR fans–excited? Or would you rather have another single-player experience?
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Briansho 10/12/07 10:26:27 PM
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Elite Member
Joined: 3/05/06
Functionless Art is Simply Tolerated Vandalism... |
IMO they are going to move a lot of people over to Ultima Online Kingdom Reborn in hopes of resparking a steady amount of subsciptions for that game. |
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Elikal 10/12/07 11:47:56 PM
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Advanced Member
Joined: 2/09/06 |
some more facts: - Riccitiello used to work for EA, left and co-founded Elevation Partners, which in 2005 bought BioWare. Now, he is back at EA as the CEO and bought BioWare back from his old company. (You cant serve God and the Mammon, ahd he knows whom he serves, apparently.) - in one of the recent interviews on Gamespot with one of those responsible guys, Ray Myzuka, said, the Bioware MMO "got all the characters and story arc that BioWare is known for" - EA has so far vaporized almost all corporations it acquired, and most game series and traditions were not taken up: Origin (Ultima, Wing Commander), Westwood (Lands of Lore, only Command & Conquer is continued), Bullfrog (Dungeon Keeoper), Maxis (Sim City and Sims all now are just "EA".) |
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cheeba 10/13/07 1:28:02 AM
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Apprentice Member
Joined: 9/13/03 |
Originally posted by Briansho
What are you talking about? UO has already been handed off to Mythic. They are the ones that finished Kingdom | |
