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Knights of the Old Republic MMO Confirmed
Zafsk writes to tell us Gamespot is reporting that in a surprise move from E3 2008, EA's CEO John Riccitello announced that the long debated BioWare MMORPG is going to be a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic sequel of sorts. Currently the KOTOR MMO is slated for a 2009 release. "BioWare's first Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game was released in 2003 for the original Xbox and PC, and was named the year's top RPG by GameSpot. An Obsidian Entertainment-developed sequel was released in 2004 and 2005 on the same two respective platforms. Both critically acclaimed games are set several thousand years before the events of the Star Wars films, and cast players as adventurers who eventually become powerful Jedi Knights."
Actually, I was just thinking the same thing for the opposite reason. MMOs have a watered down grinding gameplay, they can't match the depth and complexity of a single player RPG. They're also a lot worse at telling stories. How can you have a good 'teenage kid discovers he's the chosen one and saves the universe' story, when there are thousands of protagonists?
MMOs are popular, not because they're better than single player RPGs, but because they have a good gimmick. To the hardcore fan, the single player, turn based, often tactical CRPG is obviously superior.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
One of my favorite things about Baldur's Gate and KOTOR was the fact that it was single player. I've played my fair share of multiplayer games and MMOs, but sometimes you just want to play a game where the whole universe revolves around you. Where your actions alone determines the fate of the world. Those are the kind of games that Bioware makes and I kind of think they were forced to make this MMO because EA wants a piece of Blizzard's pie. Nevertheless, I look forward to seeing what Bioware manages to comes up with.
And CRPGS are watered down PNP RPGS. How can you have a huge quest in front of you, but instead end up terrorizing the towns people and never get on to the actual quest in a CRPG? Maybe that was just indicative of my play group, but we hardly ever found the actual quest, but still had fun.
God spoke to me.