Now that it has been a week and you, the fans, have had time to weigh the announcement of The Old Republic, I wanted to jump on here and get some feedback.

Personally, I believe the game has a lot of potential. As an ex-Galaxies player I know how great and how terrible an MMO can be, and I know the level of love the Star Wars universe gets from developers. It's a thing of pride to make a Star Wars game, let alone one set in an MMO.

My concerns? I have a few, but I also have a history of trusting BioWare and finding things to turn out well. Hell - they did Neverwinter Nights, people. The definitive RPG experience on the PC. I think we can cut them some slack

First, I just can't figure out how they'll implement various parts of the gameplay. They want to focus on dialogue, but in a multiplayer (heavily grouping) style of game, how do you allow dialogue amongst a group of players and a single NPC. The dialogue can't be generic but must be tailored for each person. Doesn't that mean the result of the dialogue must be different as well?

Second, companion characters sound fun, and I loved them in KOTOR. At least, I loved them for a while. Over time they got repetitive and more of a pet then a companion. This was probably a limitation of the medium, of course, because I wasn't able to download new content and the size of the game was necessarily small. Steady updates will probably make this go away.

Thirdly - and this is a personal hangup - I don't know how they'll make me care about the story. Yes - I know -BioWare are the KINGS of storytelling in games, and Star Wars is rife with things to write story about. I just want to know how they'll move us past clicking 'next' quickly to get through the dialogue so I can go kill 20 sewer rats.

But, all these hangups and question will probably be taken care of - I have faith in BioWare. Mass Effect, KOTOR, NWN, and more - all scream that they'll figure it out.

But what are YOU thinking?