By Donna Desborough
Today LucasArts and Bioware announced that they will be doing "an
interactive entertainment product" together. Of course they haven't said
what this new product will be but it really doesn't take much to make an
educated guess.
For a while now we've been hearing rumours about there being a new Star Wars
MMO in the works by Bioware. They were just that though, rumours. With this news
those rumours maybe just got a little bit more rooted in reality.
In March 2000 LucasArts announced that Sony Online Entertainment would create
the MMO that we now know as Star Wars Galaxies. In April of 2003 the game went
live and it flourished and the community grew. The game was hailed as a success.
In November 2005 SOE released what was called the New Game Enhancements, NGE,
for SWG. The NGE brought about major changes to the game, core system changes.
Many players hailed it as the downfall of SWG and the game has looked like it's
been slowly failing ever since. To this day it does still has many loyal
players, many with multiple accounts. It hasn't been the same though. The NGE
changed the game that so many players loved.
If the speculation is true though what will happen to SWG? If there is a new
Star Wars MMO on the books can we expect Sony to team up with Bioware? I
personally think that if a new Star Wars MMO comes out and it has nothing to do
with SOE and SWG then Star Wars Galaxies is as good as dead. Many players likely
stay on with SWG out of love for Star Wars. If someone like Bioware, makers of
two successful Star Wars PC/console games, launches an MMO of this very popular
IP then SOE may be seeing the end of their precious game. | 
