BioWare Considered Several Other IPs For Their MMO

Before eventually inking a deal with LucasArts to build Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare was apparently considering several other settings for their massively multiplayer title on, including The Lord of the Rings, A Game of Thrones, Silmarillion, and “a Gunslinger-esque Dark Tower”. That’s according to a brief interview with BioWare Austin’s James Ohlen on PC Gamer, anyway:

(Each setting has different strengths, ) Ohlen added, describing the 10 page documents that the team drew up at an early design stage. (If we were going to do a Game of Thrones MMO, what kind of rules and what kind of gameplay elements would really bring that world to life? Each one had that, but we always focused on the story at the fore.) In those early stages, a compelling narrative was more important than the setting. (When we were first were deciding on what kind of game we were going to build, I really wanted to do a story-based massively multiplayer game because hey, it hadn’t been done before,) Ohlen said. (I thought: hey, good way to innovate that’s what Bioware stands for and that’s what we’re good at.)

Star Wars provided the perfect fit. The rich canon of the Star Wars extended universe provided plenty of scope for heroic narratives, and the natural dual faction set-up would give players something to fight for. There were other advantages, too. (We had an in-built fanbase with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,) Ohlen said. (In fact, when you ask our fans (what kind of MMO would you like us to build?) they almost always say (how about Knights of the Old Republic massively multiplayer game?)