Before Old Republic, BioWare wanted to do a Marvel Comics MMO with Spider-Man

Bioware wanted to do an MMO for Marvel Comics? Or Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones? That’s what Kotaku gleamed from a piece on Star Wars: The Old Republic in the Los Angeles Times.

Does the thought of swinging through NYC with Spider-Man, or patrolling the North Wall with Eddard Stark, make us wish Lucas hadn’t handed over the Star Wars license? Of course not, then we wouldn’t have a superb piece of work like TOR showing the prequels how to write a back story. Still, think of the adventures RPG gods like Bioware could have sent us on in those dense pop-culture worlds. Making our own mutant, becoming one of Tolkien’s Elves, Hobbits, or Orcs, it’s enough to make your imagination explode.

Besides the hints at what could have been, the LA Times piece is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at perhaps the most expensive production in the history of video games. Apparently EA has a plane chartered for shuttling employees from Bioware’s Austin headquarters to EA’s main office in California. Wonder how many parsecs that takes?