I dunno Peltz. Not that I wouldn't have welcomed a regular Kotor RPG but Bioware seems to be willing to take the MMO thing to another level, not just copying WoW and its grinding. I actually just had a (silly and rather heated) discussion with a friend about The Old Republic, which he dismissed from the start as 'crap'. I might add that he's a WoW addict.
I asked him why and he said that the idea of a 'story-driven MMO' was stupid and that the Star Wars universe was too 'confined' and would need a lot of stuff made up to be interesting. My reaction was 'wtf'.
If the Star Wars universe is 'limited' then what could you say about WoW when it first started out? 3 RTS games and some novels. That was all the lore there ever was. 
I'm just saying, making up stuff along the way is no biggie.
My main argument was basically that it's BIOWARE doing it, who haven't shown any signs of losing momentum/quality/vision in their games over the past decade and haven't released a single bad title. He said they didn't have enough experience with the MMO genre, to which I posited that that is perhaps a good thing given their ambition to take the genre to a new lvl.
ANYWAY...I'm just saying: I believe they can take the genre and put in something that we haven't seen yet. In short, I'm a believer in their "story-driven MMORPG" plans.
There's a 4-page article on the game in my gaming mag, some things I found interesting:
-the development team currently features 12 full-time writers
-it's set 300 years after the events of the Kotor games, and 3000+ years before the movies. This gives them ample room to manoeuvre between the lore elements.
-the background is the uneasy truce between the (resurgent) Sith Empire and the Republic which is in chaos. Power ties are unclear, political and economic interests are at odds with each other etc. The jedi are thanked for their services and more or less banished to their home planet Tython, and the Sith emperor left for destination unknown, leaving the dark council behind as their 'leadership'. So: the jedi are looking for a renaissance and new leadership, while the sith are trying to consolidate their advantage with its leadership hopelessly fighting amongst themselves.
-When creating a quest, they tried to envision the player character asking the questgiver the question "Sorry, I'm saving the galaxy. How does this task relate to that?" which should eliminate a lot of the standard "kill six snow moose" quests.
-problem with MMORPG's is that the story experience is almost similar for every class and even sometimes faction, and lacks context. The Old Republic will feature a different story for every class for the Sith and the Jedi. They compare it to how Han Solo and Luke Skywalker both have their own seperate stories in the saga but do meet each other at crucial moments etc.
-being a Sith doesn't mean that you have to be 'eval', or being a jedi/republic soldier doesn't mean that you're necessarily gonna be the good guy. There's going to be a lot of moral flexibility there, allowing for a very 'grey' character. The Sith are not just evil as a whole. There are some very real reasons why they feel they need to avenge themselves. In the last great war, the entire Sith race was pretty much killed in what could be called a genocide, after all. You can be the good guy in the bad place or vice versa. Another point with the morality system is that you can't save (obviously). Moral choices will be important, and there's no going back with that character with no saves.
-Because a survey showed that 40% of the MMORPG players prefers to play alone, they're going to implement a companion system. They act a lot like the NPC's in the Kotor games, in that they have dialogue, offer criticism/advice on quests and situations, have their own sidequests etc. They can leave you when you really pissed them off, too. There are many companions but you can only take one with you at a time...you can swap them but for story's sake it's recommended you stick with one of them if possible.
-a lot of their attention is going into making the non-force using classes and races appealing to the player. Jedi classes and lightsabres will be available pretty much from the start (unlike in SWG and even the Kotor games) Not said how though. PvP is a big point of focus too.
Erh, that's it. Release still a long time away. But I'm gonna play as a non-force using Sith with my main, I can tell you that much.
