Bioware-MMO posts

There hasn't been a lot to talk about lately in terms of new info for Star Wars The Old Republic but the official web site for BioWare's long awaited MMO still has new updates every Friday. This week the site talks about how the development team handles the design of player starships for the game.

The idea of players owning their own starship in the game was first revealed in the summer of 2010 and the feature goes over how one of the ships in the game, the X-70B Phantom. came about. The ship, which is meant for the Agent class, has influences like the Naboo starships in the Star Ware prequel movies but the team also "wanted to evoke the feel of something that a certain British spy might drive. " The article goes over how both the exterior and interior of the Phantom were designed and created.

The founders of one of the most successful game developers of all time will be getting a big honor in 2011. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced that BioWare's co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk will be the latest game developers inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame. It will be the first time in the award's history that it will be given to two people in the same year. The award will officially be presented during the AIAS's annual DICE Summit on February 10 in Las Vegas.

After getting their medical degrees, Drs. Muzyka and Zeschuk founded BioWare and since then have given us some of the best PC and console games ever made. Titles like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect,and Dragon Age Origins have cemented the developer's reputation as one of the best, if not the best, RPG maker in the industry. At the moment the developer has three games scheduled for release in 2011: Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3 and the long awaited MMO Star Wars The Old Republic.

[Via email press release]

As widely predicted by the internet speculators, CD Projekt has just confirmed that the whole "shut down" of its DRM-free web site GoG.com (Good Old Games) was just a marketing stunt. In fact the service is relaunching. The web site became inaccessible last Sunday with the site saying the service was closing "due to business and technical reasons." According to an online press conference today with GoG.com reps, 98 percent of the site's code has been rewritten for the relaunch that will allow six times the amount of users and traffic compared to the old version. The game will still offer DRM-free downloads of PC games and will still not use a download client.

While we are happy that GoG.com is coming back we are not happy at all that CD Projekt made the call to deliberately deceive the media and its customers about its status. While the company certainly generated a ton of press it did so in the wrong way, in our opinion. We will update this post with any new info that comes from the online conference.

Update: The relaunch will happen on Thursday at 8 am Eastern time and will add the original Baldur's Gate and its expansion pack to the service on Thursday as well for $9.99. GoG.com execs also said during the online press conference that the ultimate goal is for GoG.com to be the "number one alternative" to the Steam download service.

It's going to be another busy first quarter of the year in 2011. There's already a ton of major game releases slated for that period and today it got another AAA title. VG247.com reports that Electronic Arts has just announced from its Gamescom press conference that Dragon Age 2, the fantasy RPG sequel from BioWare, is getting a March 8, 2011 release date here in the US. Europeans will be getting the game, as usual, a few days later on March 11, 2011.

Other major games already slated for a first quarter 2011 release include Crysis 2, Portal 2, Homefront, Bulletstorm, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Brink and many more.

PC owners of the original Dragon Age Origins got a few atvantages over the console ports of BioWare's RPG title. One was the release of mod and editing tools for the game while the other was the ability to move the camera to show a more tactical viewpoint of the game itself. Recently rumors hit the Dragon Age 2 forums (based on info from a French language magazine) that both features would be removed from the PC version of the upcoming sequel to the game.

The game's main designer Mike Laidlaw went on the game's official forums to do some damage control. For the PC mod tools, there's some good news as he said that the tools used to make Dragon Age 2 are almost the same as those that the team used to make Dragon Age Origins. He states, "While we won't be releasing a toolset update in tandem with Dragon Age 2, we ARE investigating what it would take to update the community toolset to match ours, along with providing DA2 content in the future."

As far as the PC camera issue, Laidlaw did admit, " ... we likely won't pull as far up as we did in DA:O," he added, " .. we are still working with the camera to keep the key elements of the tactical experience," While details could still change between now and when the game ships, he states, "you can still maneuver the camera around the battlefield and issue orders from a remote location, just as you could in Origins."

Electronic Arts has been involved in two direct-to-DVD animation releases for its games Dead Space and Dante's Inferno. Today the publisher revealed that the anime treatment will be given to BioWare's Dragon Age RPG franchise. The anime will be handled by the well known Japanese anime import company FUNimation as the first title in their new Original Entertainment division.

It's going to be a while before the Dragon Age movie is done. Production just started last month and it won't be be released until sometime in 2011. We are betting the movie will be released at the same time as a new Dragon Age game ships out. Dragon Age has already spawned a novel series, a comic book series and a pen-and-paper RPG.

Is it good to have a companion in your travels? BioWare hopes the answer is "Yes" for players of their long awaited MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. Today the game's official web site posted up word that the game will give your player character an NPC companion. It could be an alien. It could be a droid. In fact as you play the game more and more companions might show up.

Like Chewbacca was a faithful friend to Han Solo, your player companion could become your best bud in the game. However Bioware states that your companion could have some hidden agendas and might even turn into an enemy. Each player class will have their own unique set of companions, each of which will open up a unique set of quests and adventures.

While we wait to see what developer BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts has in store for the future of the Dragon Age RPG franchise, it looks like folks who want to learn more about the game's fictional back story have another outlet. The Machinima.com web site has launched a new multi-part video series that was created via the game's mod tools.

You can check out the first seven minute installment in the series, titled Warden's Fall, via the above video. The storyline takes place directly after the events of Dragon Age: Origins and follows Grey Warden Kristoff who also appears in the recent commercial expansion pack Dragon Age Origins Awakening.

[Via Joystiq]

This month is the 30th anniversary of the release of perhaps the best of the six Star Wars movies, The Empire Strikes Back. So it's perhaps not a coincidence that the newest planet reveal for the upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic is set on one of that film's major locations, the ice world of Hoth.

Yes, players in BioWare's upcoming game will be able to explore Hoth in a time period thousands of years before the Rebellion fights the Empire's AT-AT units. According to the game's official web site, the Hoth system was also the location of a massive space battle between Republic and Imperial forces and as a result the planet has become a starship graveyard. In the game's current timeline the planet is now filled with technology that both Republic and Empire forces want to claim for themselves.

BioWare has already released a number of downloadable content, both free and paid, for its hit sci-fi RPG Mass Effect 2. However most of that content were basically expansions, story wise, for the main game. However it looks like at least some of the future DLC for Mass Effect 2 will serve as a transition for the events that will happen in Mass Effect 3.

In a chat with Videogamer.com, BioWare's Casey Hudson admitted the developer has plans for lots of Mass Effect 2 downloadable content and he added, "We'll start to have packs that'll tell the story between Mass Effect 2 and 3." There's no word on when they will be released or exactly what kind of story they will tell.