Bioware’s MMO due for release in 2009

The developer of Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Bioware, has laid out a lose timeline for the release of its upcoming MMO while discussing new technology used for the project.

Just over a year ago, the company – owned by Elevation Partners as part of the Bioware-Pandemic studio group – announced it was opening a studio in Austin, Texas to develop an MMO, although little has been said about the project since.

In a report on Information Week, BioWare’s technical director Bill Dalton has discussed the decision to use StreamBase’s Stream Processing Engine in its new game. The software can sift through up to 350,000 in-game messages per second and will be used for tracking players’ actions and movements.

He also discussed the wider issue of BioWare competing with Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, explaining that the studio was keen to go beyond WoW, and that the complex event processing provided by StreamBase means the company will be able to create an MMO with richer RPG and player-interaction functions than its competitors.