BioWare: Mythic will help Star Wars MMO News

BioWare has told Eurogamer that Mythic Entertainment will "without a doubt" help out on Star Wars: The Old Republic, as there are "absolutely opportunities to share and learn" within the newly formed RPG/MMO group.

As for BioWare helping Warhammer Online, however, co-founder Greg Zeschuk is not so sure.

"I think we always have lots of opinions to share, Ray and I," said Zeschuk in an interview published today. "We've both played Warhammer, and actually I've still been playing it on and off for a while, so I think for us it's not to much a popularity boost as just the fact that we can probably bring perspectives to the table that will be new and perhaps helpful to the guys from Mythic in the same way from an online perspective they can certainly share with us.

"To give credit to the Austin team [making Star Wars: The Old Republic], we have a number of serious MMO veterans on there, so it's certainly not neophytes, but there's absolutely opportunities to share and learn things back and forth."

BioWare's other co-founder, Ray Muzyka, will head the RPG/MMO group, with Zeschuk installed as group creative officer. But despite the reshuffle, Zeschuk reckons "not that much" has changed.

"I think because we had been already working side by side within EA, we had already been sharing stuff back and forth, so there wasn't any, 'Oh no, now we're forced to share things, how terrible.' We'll just continue what we're doing, which is actually sharing technology ideas," he explained.

"I think it will work very much like the Austin studio. Austin is one of the BioWare studios, but they're very independent. They manage the internal processes, they run it like a BioWare studio, but in the Austin vision.

"They've got stuff they're working on, Mythic's got stuff they're working on, and it's going to be a great team there. We've known the people there for quite a while, so in general, they've got their agenda, we've got our goals, they've got their goals, and what Ray and I do at an overall group level is try and make sure that everything is aligned and all the sharing is happening and everyone's supported and getting the resources they need," added Zeschuk.

Star Wars: The Old Republic still has no release date, and Warhammer Online hasn't announced any drastic changes since the merger.

BioWare, of course, has plenty of other projects to worry about: Dragon Age: Origins in particular, which launches on 23rd October for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Head over to our full interview with Greg Zeschuk for an intriguing voyage into the creative backbone of BioWare and what building a fantasy world at the world's most renowned RPG studio actually takes.