HeroEngine Preview

MMORPG.com has cranked out their own GDC-based preview of Simutronics' HeroEngine, the software that'll power BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic and ZeniMax's untitled MMORPG.
I think that the thing that blew me away most about the engine was the fact that the developers were able to actually make and alter the game world in real time. Basically, the engine lays out the world and the developers (populate) it the same way they would if they were in the game. The difference is that the developers in question have full ability to alter the world around them in collaboration with the others on their team.

Now again, my experience with engines is fairly limited, but I can remember from my brief time working on an MMO, that the time it takes for people to make specific changes in most other engines is much longer and the collaborative process is much more difficult to pull off, both in implementation and coordination and is certainly more time consuming.

This technology, we were told, actually has the ability to carry over not just into development, but into the live game. So, if you can imagine being a part of a live event where some of the monsters or NPCs are inhabited by developers, or where the developers can literally change the landscape based on the actions of the players. Hero Engine actually makes that easy.