BioWare Licenses HeroEngine For Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO

MMO technology company Simutronics and BioWare announced that upcoming massively multiplayer online PC game Star Wars: The Old Republic is being built with Simutronics' HeroEngine development platform. The HeroEngine collaborative design platform allows for development in real-time, enabling teams in different geographic locales to build and play in a game world live on the server simultaneously. The platform is also designed to provide "instantaneous" updates and changes to game environments, potentially reducing long MMO development cycles by negating the need for nightly builds. Officially announced in October, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set 300 years after the events of BioWare's acclaimed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic franchise, thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith. "Our goal was to partner with a platform developer that knows online gaming and virtual world development, and the team at Simutronics has an excellent track record in that respect" says BioWare co-studio director Gordon Walton. He continues, "Their HeroEngine was specifically created for building MMOGs and it allows for a great amount of flexibility in the way our entire team collaborates."