The recent trend we have been documenting is for MMORPGS to only be developed for major franchises which have a chance to sell in the WoW dominated marketplace. The creative freedom and capital needed to develop a new intellectual property from scratch are just too imposing for most companies to invest in. Without a gaurantee of having a fan base already in place there is no way to know for sure your game will even be noticed next to WoW. The Star Wars IP is certainly one of the most valuable and marketable of them all, with millions of fans clamouring to PVP as Jedi Knights. However even the bungling of George Lucas in the recent prequels was nothing compared to the chaos the Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG has suffered at the hands of incompetent ownership and horiffic development decisions.

An example of what destroyed Galaxies is simple and painful. Jedi holocrons were introduced to the game as something players could collect for rewards, but initially had no use. The players were told these items would become "end game" and aught to be the things they invested their time aquiring. What actually occured was that the developers decided players had farmed "too many" of these after not adding a use for a prolonged period of time, and decided to delete them all prior to adding their function! This type of disconnect between gamers and the companies that controls their fate calls into question if any of these people have EVER played a video game before in their entire lives. Hope does now exist for the idea of JvJ (Jedi vs Jedi) PVP again, as a new company is stepping up to the plate with a different type of Star Wars MMORPG.

Bioware, which was recently purchased by EA, is rumored to be working on a Star Wars MMO set in the time of the Knights of the Old Republic! This means the game takes place thousands of years before the storyline we all know from the movies. Luke, Leia and Han are not going to be flying around adventuring, instead there is a galaxy filled with Jedi Knights and grandiose conflicts to explore. The "modern" plotline involved the Jedi Knights being killed off, making having thousands of players running around on Jedi characters unlikely, but this older time period is perfect for catering to the obvious desires of the Star Wars MMO crowd.