Official: Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO

It's official, today Lucasarts and Bioware reveal the "secret" Bioware MMORPG.

The official website: http://www.swtor.com/info
Gamespot Interview about the game: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/sta [...] eo/6199708

It's Star Wars fans we're talking about. They will be doing the exact same things.

Anyway, I've played KOTOR 1 and 2, and can't imagine how they can replicate the feelings in a MMO. It'd be sad if they ruined good games.

I’ll give Bioware the benefit of the doubt since they have not disappointed me yet. They strive to continue developing quality-story driven games. My only concern with SW:TOR is the art direction they decided to go with. It kind of reminds me of Star Wars: The Clone War which is leaning towards a CGI-cartoony look. The developers have stated that the screenshots are taken from the pre-alpha stages of production and many things can change since then. I believe the graphics will definitely improve throughout the course of the development cycle but it won’t get any more realistic than what you see today simply because of the Hero engine.

Bioware is using the hero engine for developing SW:TOR and more information about the engine can be found here: http://www.heroengine.com/

I don't like how the graphics is worse than KOTOR. While it's understandable MMOs tend to be lighter on graphics than typical games of its time, it's comparing against a 5 years old game here.

Will they also limit the installations of this? It doesn't have to make sense for it to happen.

EA doesn't publish games, it distributes DRM.

Or perhaps:

EA: Challenge everything, except why you cant reinstall the game you just paid for.

I don't think EA will implement DRM into the MMO because the business process is different. When EA published Warhammer Online there were no install limits or limited activations.

For those of you who are concerned about how the story won't work in an MMO setting you can refer to these great articles written by ign. There will also be information avaliable soon about the art direction and why they decided to use it.

1st Article: Explores the use of story to drive the action, both in terms of the individual player narratives and the shared experiences driven by the game's social nature.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/922/922115p1.html

2nd Article: Examines the overall history of the galaxy, exploring the two factions and the moral issues that players will face.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/922/922656p1.html

3rd Article: (will be avaliable on IGN Thursday October 23, 2008) Looks at the game's art style and share art director Jeff Dobson's commentary on the screenshots and concept art.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/923/923056p1.html

*Edit: Added in third article

Sith Lords restoration project?

Is this a reference to an upcoming game or am i just lacking in caffeine today?

The three spoken dialogue, non cut scene endings that made little sense in context to the rest of the plot in KOTOR II didn't clue you in that perhaps the endgame was a little rushed?