LucasArts and BioWare Unveil Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO

— -- All the rumors you might have heard about LucasArts and BioWare doing a major deal to bring BioWare's popular take on the Star Wars universe into PC MMO-land have finally been confirmed. Yep, BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic video games, set millennia before the events portrayed in the films, are going massively multiplayer (and jumping forward about 300 years in terms of historical continuity).

The news just broke courtesy IGN UK, who had early exclusive access and now have a series of features planned "examining the setting, the intriguing moral gulf between Jedi and Sith, and the stylized visuals." Part one (linked above) is up now.

According to IGN, the new property will officially be titled Star Wars: The Old Republic, not to be confused with Star Wars: Where Have All the Knights Gone?, or Star Wars: Better Than Galaxies, Wait and See!

Speaking of, this is technically the second Star Wars MMO a-brewin'. Missed the first? It came out back in 2003, put together by Sony Online Entertainment and dubbed Star Wars Galaxies, but it did very poorly against Sony expectations. Not a total flop, but it launched with huge problems that took a long time to fix, which is basically "the death sentence on 12 systems" for an MMO. I think the game still has a pulse or something like one, but don't hold me to that.

Most interesting tidbit from the IGN UK piece, spotted by Gamasutra:

In response to community pressure to scrap this game and just make Knights of the Old Republic 3, the team suggests that there's enough content in Star Wars: The Old Republic to call it "Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9."

(So can we also take that to mean "no single-player Knights of the Old Republic 3"?)