good points, alex. but wouldn't it be worth it to see bioware try?
Honestly, I rather wish they wouldn't. I like World of Warcraft and all (Full disclosure: I'm a fairly accomplished raider), but it is a massive time and resource sink for Blizzard. It makes them a ton of money and I wish all of those guys the best, but I'd be lying to you if I said that I felt WoW was really worth not having any other Blizzard games come out for
6 years. A company like EA doesn't acquire Bioware and the Star Wars license with the hopes of creating a dinky li'l game, either, so I don't think I'm stepping out on a limb saying that SW:TOR is a WoW sized undertaking-- Bioware has stated themselves that the sheer amount of content writing has already dwarfed their other projects.
Basically, here's how I see it: If SW:TOR isn't a big success, I don't see them creating a Mass Effect MMORPGer. And if it
is a big hit AND they do eventually look into a Mass Effect MMORPG? Well then, we're either talking about a serious time lapse between the SW:TOR and the MEMMO being released or else a company that is orders of magnitude bigger than what Bioware is now. Keep in mind that Blizzard has ballooned to over four thousand employees post-WoW. That's far bigger than Bioware, even if a huge portion of that number is "merely" tech support and customer service reps as opposed to developers. They'd have to become a different company in many ways and I'm not really sure that's conducive to them creating the games I love to see from them.
So, yes, in a vacuum, the Mass Effect MMO idea is interesting. But when reality rolls around I get leery.