BioWare - MMOG Startups @ RPG Vault

RPG Vault has the second in their series on MMOG studio startups, this time looking at BioWare's Austin studio with Rich Vogel and Gordon Walton:

We also made the decision that if we were to build a BioWare game, we needed design leadership from the mother ship. James Ohlen, the studio creative director agreed to move to Austin, and brought along a few key design leads. We also ended up with several other strong veterans in important positions. They veterans were invaluable as our cultural touchstones, and were an excellent reality check on how well we were doing in staying aligned.

We immediately started evaluating available middleware, as we wanted to be in a position to be building and playing our game, not spending a year or two creating technology first. We were fortunate to find some that matched most of our needs, though we knew we would end up doing a lot of additions and changes to get exactly where we were looking to end up. We also had to integrate some of BioWare's knowledge in this area into our project.