Star Wars: The Old Republic
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood writes this quick piece concerning the official announcement of the worst kept secret in gaming, the BioWare MMORPG based on the Knights of the Old Republic franchise.
Well, the worst kept secret in gaming is a secret no longer as the BioWare / LucasArts joint venture was revealed today to indeed be an MMO based on the popular Bioware Knights of the Old Republic series was announced.
The name of the new game is Star Wars: The Old Republic, and true to its predecessors, it will have a strong focus on story, giving players difficult choices to make and even companion characters that will have access to their own stories and quests.
We only have a few details to go on at this time, but we can already tell you that the game will take place about 300 years after the first two Knights of the Old Republic Games. For those of you out there who might be wondering, that’s about 3,500 years before the original trilogy, so I wouldn’t get hot and bothered about running into Luke Skywalker or his Dad while in game.
The story sees a Galactic Senate post-war that was brought nearly to its knees by the actions of the Sith Empire and while the Jedi are still serving as the defenders of the Republic, its citizens place the blame for crumbling conditions at their feet, straining relations and encouraging the Republic to develop their own protectors, independent of the Jedi.
There will be two different factions in the game: The Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire, each with their own set of classes. Given the information that we have about story, we can draw some assumptions that at least Jedi and Special Forces characters might be available.
I would suspect that something similar might be mirrored on the Sith side of things, with that faction being in a similar state with both Sith forces and their own elite troops.
In terms of platform, the team is only speaking about a PC version for now, but did not rule out the possibility of a move to consoles in the future.
It’s hard to say what this announcement means for the future of the current Star Wars MMORPG, Star Wars Galaxies, currently run by Sony Online Entertainment and while speculation may run rampant, the game’s future is far from certain.
While there are still many questions left unanswered about things like a release schedule, betas, and a business model those many players who have been waiting anxiously for this announcement now have their answer.
MMORPG.com will continue to follow this story and will bring you new details as they become available, including some of the pre-alpha screenshots that have been made available on the official website.
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