Last year, BioWare announced its entry into the massively multiplayer role-playing game market. The Canadian developer has enjoyed over a decade of critical and commercial success with its single-player RPGs for the Xbox and PC, such as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. However, little is known about its first MMORPG, which is currently in the works at its Austin studio.
Now, a little more is known about the BioWare MMORPG. The most recent issue of
Information Week contains an article examining some of the technology behind the project, which will reportedly use enterprise software from StreamBase Systems. In the course of the article, BioWare technical director Bill Dalton revealed that the MMORPG is currently slated to ship in 2009. As of press time, BioWare reps were unavailable to confirm the date for the game, which currently has no title, genre, publisher, or platform associated with it.
In the past, Massachusetts-based StreamBase has made headlines because it is partially owned by a company that provides technology to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). BioWare's MMORPG will use StreamBase's powerful software for "complex event processing" to sustain massive gamewide events involving thousands of players.
"With a multiplayer online game, you don't know whether you're going to have 1,000 people playing or 50,000," Dalton told the magazine. BioWare will also use StreamBase software to identify cheaters, prevent code hacks, and keep track of the MMORPG's customer base.
