Yah... that's what I thought.

It would be awesome, but I refuse to play an MMO with subscription fees or no (free with game) singleplayer mode.

Why? Just because thats how WoW does it?

I don't see why the 'need'. The achgievment could stand alone fine without some pixel reward, works fine in all single player games.

I just want to know what happened to Reaven.....

cyber creativity creates cashflow

sweet pirets, gangs, the exchange, the republic and the Sith empire. Cool can't what to fly a ship.
but is it going to be a expanse pack for star wars galixys or is it going to be a game in its self.
and one more question do i have to pay to play or just add stuff to it like the Ebon hawk and other cool stuff

I don't know what's worse.. LA + EA or LA + SOE? Chances are EA and LA will bog Bioware down so much or this new Star Wars MMORPG will become the "NGE2" or LA's fabled dream of what the NGE should have been. Either way, I'm not getting my hopes up to much over this. From what I read it sounded like an MMO, minus the RPG bit. I don't want to see a single player game with a multiplayer mode tacked onto it. These days that will get any game labled as an "mmo".

What I'm worried about seeing..

1) EA and LA pushing bioware to make a not so polished or boring game.
2) Dumbing the game down for consoles.
3) Making the whole game cookie cutter-like.
4) A shinier NGE.
5) The standard class + level + "talent" based character progression.
6) Jedi being the only class/profession.

another MMO, another grind fest equals another potential cash cow.

its not even officially confirmed lol its all hype

The EA CEO confirming it sounds like an official confirmation to me.

Free to play, and it breaks my boycott.

That describes all MMORPGs. You either like the gameplay or you don't, and if you do like the gameplay, you can't find anything better than WoW, and in fact, WoW is so vastly superior to all other current MMORPGs that it's no contest. There's WoW all alone at the top, then there's the 2nd tier consisting of games like EQ2 and LOTRO that are very good, but nowhere near being in WoW's league.

KOTOR was a great game and even though it was a Star Wars setting it was generic enough to support a huge and believable campaign. So, if they manage to nail down solid gameplay it could be a nice offering. KOTOR actually played a lot like an MMORPG. The fact that Sony isn't involved is another plus for them.

I hope it works out. I'm still enjoying WoW and the expansion is coming, but it'd be nice to have an entirely fresh MMORPG to explore. LOTRO was the last MMORPG worth spending more than the free month in away from WoW, IMO, and although it's very solid it is simply lacking in features or content compared to WoW (which is how you can describe any MMORPG compared to WoW).

"can Bioware/EA be the one to beat Blizzard at their own game?"

WoW would seem to be a freak of a game - since it blew the doors off the MMORPG genre and radically altered the landscape and expectations for the genre. But Blizzard has had similar success in other genres, especially with Diablo.

Love or hate WoW it's hard to deny that Blizzard has an incredible knack for nailing it when it comes for designing fun and addictive games that appeal to huge numbers of players.

So anyways - I seriously doubt anyone will "beat Blizzard at their own game" anytime soon. Make a good product? Yes - that's possible. Do unto WoW what WoW did the the rest of an entire genre? Very, very unlikely.

Has anyone here played 'Age of Conan'? I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on that MMO. It got good reviews and if I was gonna play a MMORPG that would be the one I'd 'want' to play. I don't really know if it's really any good though.

Any thoughts?

Instead of an mmo, they should make a movie of KOTOR instead of that Clone Wars junk that's coming out in August. That would make fans happy.

First of all, I'm very excited to hear about a new Star Wars MMO. If it's halfway decent I'd be willing to try it for at least a few months, just for being Star Wars. Blizzard did something good for the MMO genre by being so successful, but also at the same time it's bad in that now big companies are going to look at this section of the PC market and say "Hey, me too(for $$$)."

That brings me to Age of Conan (in response to FrostMage asking if this is a worthwhile MMO to try out). I think FunCom said "Hey, me too" after looking at Blizzard's success and pushed out a potentially great game way too early to make it in before World of Warcraft's Frozen Throne expansion- and Warhammer Online's release. What you have now is a pay to play Beta game! After playing for 3 weeks I had decided to quit my subscription. The changes they are making to the game (like balancing classes on the fly, because apparently they did not bother to do this during 5 years of production or in the beta), make it very much feel like you are helping to pay FunCom so that they may polish the game for the console market(the XBox 360). Add to that how easy it was to level, a lack of content (after lvl 50+), a very skeletal crafting system (you cannot craft until lvl 40 and then at lvl 70 you cannot craft anything unless you are part of a large guild that has created a guild city + the workstation, i.e. a forge for weaponsmithing, a costly endeavour) and a large amount of bugs added weekly to every game patch you can see how frustrating it is to justify paying monthly fees for this game. The Age of Conan general forums are swamped with I quit posts, angry cries of things being broken/nerfed and delusional fanboy defending posts. The game was fun for awhile and the look and the feel of Hyborea makes World of Warcraft look silly. It is just that FunCom released too early and are now fumbling to complete the other half of the game, but really it had potential - if it can retain enough of a player base to justify doing that.

Hopefully Bioware will take their time in making this new Star Wars MMO - if it's 4 years later I'm sure I'll still be looking forward to it.