BioWare has revealed that its planning to launch its top secret MMO currently in development in 2009.
The release year for the game has spilled from the mouth of the developer's technical director Bill Dalton while speaking to business technology website Information Week about the use of StreamBase technology in its MMO.
StreamBase is being used by BioWare to track the actions and movement of players in the game, essentially allowing the developer to make fixes to the game world in real-time and react quickly to exploitative players.
Dalton explained it will be "embedded in the foundation of the game platform" and will "monitor and maintain the status of all players. Each player's movements and actions need to be tracked."
BioWare has revealed little to date on its MMO project, which is understandably surrounded by a huge amount of interest. However, the developer did speak about the philosophy that's driving development and some of its aims and goals for the project back in November last year.
"The key points we're gonna do that no one's done before in an MMOG are bring story, character and emotion to it", Rich Vogel, co-studio director of product development, explained at the time.
BioWare additionally revealed the likes of plans to have a good selection of visual customisation for player characters, how it'll be possible to solo in the MMOG and that end-game content is a major part of the design plan and different to WoW's end-game model: "...we don't want players to be stuck grinding through the same content over and over again".
We can't wait to see what RPG powerhouse BioWare is producing for the MMO genre. Let's hope we don't have too long to wait until 2009 before its game is finally fully unveiled.
Whether or not they announce it, this technology will also likely be used to track gamers in relation to in game advertising. By counting if a player is near an advertisement, how long he/she remains there and if he/she is facing the ad, BioWare and other companies can make more money from advertisers...
Oh i hope not. I absolutely love KOTOR1 & 2, but I don't want to have to play the closing chapter to the story over the net, it just wouldn't attract me.
Nevertheless, Bioware are masters of their art (I can't think of a game of theirs that hasn't been deemed a classic) and I daresay whatever this MMO game is of theirs it'll blow WOW or EverQuest2 out of the water!
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