Tag Archives: kotor

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 is now available on Steam, together with enhanced performance and visuals.

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Hold on to your hats, there’s a another big list of shorts for you today below the break.

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It’s Good Friday. It’s especially good if you got the day off to celebrate Jesus and bunnies and stuff. Here’s some shorts to make it even more of a good Friday.

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BioWare’s Ray Muzyka has told Play magazine – via Joystiq – that PS3 is “a really amazing platform to work on”.

So much so, in fact, that apparently BioWare is considering joining the MMO PS3 crowd if the firm can figure its way around challenges with the console interface design.

Star Wars MMO The Old Republic will not end up on PS3 though he said, but the developer is considering “other MMO games in the future”.

Hit both links for full interview and extra information.

BioWare’s to use an off-the-shelf engine for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the company’s confirmed.

The MMO will be built with Simutronics’ HeroEngine, a dev kit specifically made for creating online games.

“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 BioWare studio boss Gordon Walton.

“Their HeroEngine was specifically created for building MMOGs and it allows for a great amount of flexibility in the way our entire team collaborates.”

The game’s not dated as yet.

Speaking in an investor call last night, EA boss John Riccitiello confirmed that BioWare MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic is to be based on micro-payments.

“We are continuing to stick to the plan relative to building out our direct-to-consumer models which include micro-transactions and subscriptions,” he said.

“The recent launch of Warhammer [Online] is a great example of that.

“Other initiatives we’ve announced, for example [the] Star Wars online MMO, are mid-session games which are micro-transaction-based,” he continued. “You’ll be hearing more about those in the February [conference] call.”

The Old Republic is undated as yet.

Riccitiello was speaking to investors after EA issued a Q4 sales warning last night.

More on Shacknews.

LucasArts online head Tom Nichols has told VG247 that upcoming BioWare MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic is a PC-only game, ostensibly conflicting a report that the title is in consideration for console release.

“It is PC-only,” said Nichols when asked if KOTOR’s Xbox tradition would be upheld.

When pushed on whether or not the game would come to consoles in the future, Nichols there was only one version currently in the works.

“We’re just focussed on the PC platform at this time,” he added.

Nichols was speaking at the San Francisco launch of The Old Republic, on the same day EA Games president Frank Gibeau told Eurogamer there was a possibility the title could move to consoles.

“They’re both under consideration,” he said, speaking of TOR and Mythic’s Warhammer Online, but added, “We’re not really in a place to commit or announce anything specific with regards to those.”

Upshot: don’t expect The Old Republic on your 360 any time soon.

Speaking to VG247 at LucasArts in San Francisco yesterday, BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk said that the team behind freshly-revealed Star Wars MMO The Old Republic will be the biggest team in BioWare’s history, as well as confirming some future dev plans and a fairly startling figure regarding the size of the company as a whole.

“A whole range of stuff,” said Zeschuk when asked how the developer was split down now in terms of resources.

“Obviously, we’ve got this game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, down in Austin. The studio’s dedicated to that.

“We got a lot of stuff going on in Edmonton. There’s Mass Effect stuff going on: we won’t say exactly what, or when, or how.

“We also have Dragon Age, and we recently released the Sonic handheld game for DS, and we’ve got other DS plans that we’re thinking about these days.

“It’s quite a bit of stuff. We’ve a pretty a big plate full of things we’re working on. Across the studio we number probably over 400 people.”

Muzyka added: “Close to 500 including Austin.”

Ray wouldn’t be drawn on the specific size of the team for The Old Republic, however.

“We’re not talking about team size and structure and things like that, or scheduling, but it’s a big team,” he said.

“It’s going to be the biggest team we’ve ever had at BioWare.”

The Old Republic was announced in San Francisco yesterday.

Speaking to Eurogamer at today’s Star Wars: The Old Republic reveal in San Francisco, EA online boss Frank Gibeau said that both the BioWare MMO and Warhammer Online may make the move to console.

“They’re both under consideration,” he said, although he added: “We’re not really in a place to commit or announce anything specific with regards to those.”

The exec explained that many factors needed to be assessed before making a concrete decision.

“We’ve got this product, and we’ve got Warhammer at play,” he said.

“So we’re trying to look at the primary research required to understand how would you deploy it, what the client size looks like, how big is the back-end, what the play experience looks like… Once we’ve got some of those questions answered, we’ll be able to decide which is the right play to go after.”

More through the link.

When asked about KOTOR’s RvR aspects and how they’ll work with respect to the game’s wildly ambitious story, lead writer Daniel Ericson said that the two will be completely intertwined.

“This is Star WARS,” he emphasized.

By Nathan Grayson

Straight from today’s KOTOR-splosion, lead writer Daniel Ericson claims that the KOTOR MMO will contain more story content than anything else BioWare has ever produced.

He reckons that gamers can even play it as a solo game (Read: not an MMO) if they so choose. Very cool.

More soon.

By Nathan Grayson

Here it is. LucasArts, BioWare and EA are announcing new MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic as we speak. Find the first screenshots, concept artwork and game logos after the break.

We are covering the LucasArts press conference live – hit this to get all the news as it happens.

For all announcement details on the game, hit this.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic – an EA-published, BioWare-developed story-driven MMO – has just been announced in San Francisco.

The game has been confirmed for PC only and has no release date at this time.

It’s set a few thousand years before Darth Vader’s reign when the Republic and Sith still were at loggerheads with one another. In fact, its just a few hundred years after the era that Knight of the Old Republic was set it, for those of your who followed the Xbox RPGSs.

We’re told you can be Jedi, Sith and many more characters from within the mythology. The game will focus on your character’s choices and it is here the light and dark side of the force plays its central role in your character’s development.

We’re promised the game will be more story-driven than previous MMOs with the aim being to emotionally involve people as well as offering a traditional massively multiplayer experience.

More soon.

Remember we’re live-blogging the whole thing right here. So don’t miss out.

DO NOT HIT F5. As in, don’t refresh this page. We’re about 5 mins away from starting and the blog will run on it’s own. So for the sake of clarity, we repeat: DO NOT HIT F5. Thanks.

We’re coming to you LIVE from San Francisco! LucasArts is hosting a huge press conference here today, scheduled to start at 2.00pm PST. That’s 10.00pm BST or 11.00pm CET, if you’re on the mainland.

As the conference starts the embargo will lift on a press release announcement and visual assets, so watch the front page for those.

We’ll be bringing you all the news from the event itself as it happens. After the break.
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According to this recent job ad from LucasArts, the company is looking for Q&A testers to “test MMO games for bugs”. That’s ‘games’ plural.

EA chief John Riccitiello recently confirmed that a Knights of the Old Republic MMO was under way at Bioware, but this ad purports to the fact that LucasArts has more than one MMO in development.

More over at CVG and thanks to DarthMaulUK for the heads up.

By Mike Bowden

EA boss John Riccitiello confirmed at E3 today that BioWare’s working on a new Knights of the old Republic game with an MMO “component” to it.

The project has been heavily rumoured for some time.

“We’ve got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development,” said Riccitiello.

“The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon.

“And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about – in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry at the point when we get closer to telling you about it.”

He was then asked if the game was Knights of the old Republic and his response was a resounding, “Yes.”

That’s the kind of megaton we’ve been waiting for. Thanks, Portfolio.

By Mike Bowden

Here. In a nutshell, a “tipster” contacted 1UP claiming to have a script for the following:

“This is a role-playing game set in the historical past of the Star Wars universe. Jedi and Sith battle across the galaxy with the power of the Force and are joined by soldiers, politicians and nobles. Players must choose the destinies of heroes and villains in a thrilling and dangerous universe.”

Read the rest of it for yourself. If you still like Star Wars after all this time, you really do need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.