Videogaming's worst kept secret was just announced at Lucasarts offices in San Francisco: Star Wars: The Old Republic, a massively multiplayer online game based on the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic universe, is in development.

In case you missed the two Knights games, they were RPGs that took place more than 3000 years before the Star Wars movies. This afforded creative freedom from clones, who's related to whom, what the deal is with the Trade Federation, midichlorian counts, and whether Greedo shot first. None of that has happened yet, so you can just ignore it and enjoy stuff like wookiees beating the snot out of droids and evil Jedis shooting lighting from their fingertips.

Star Wars: The Old Republic will split players into two factions that will be able to engage in the usual player vs. player shenanigans. The Sith start on Coruscant and the Jedi start on a planet called Tython. One of two major twists in this MMO is that each class will have its own story arc, with branching storylines. And each class is unique to a faction. Lead writer Daniel Erickson told Shacknews:

…if you roll a Jedi character and you play them from the first level to the last level, and then you roll a Sith and you play them from the first, you will not see one repeated quest, line of dialogue, or piece of content. It is a 100% different story experience.

The other major twist is that players will get "companions". These NPC characters were described as "virtual friends". You can level them up, give them equipment, influence how they develop, and even hook up with them. Yeah, that's right, hook up with them. If you've played one of Bioware's games, this shouldn't come as any surprise. No-holds-barred inter-party dynamics is a staple of their RPGs.

The Old Republic is being developed by the new Bioware studio in Austin that's headed up by the lead designer of the original Knights of the Old Republic. The whole shebang is now owned by Electronic Arts, so along with Warhammer Online, this is how they intend to compete with World of Warcraft. And Lucasarts assured the gathered journalists that this wouldn't be the end of Star Wars: Galaxies, the ill-fated MMO that's apparently still chugging along.

No release date was announced and the specifics were vague enough that you probably won't see this one until 2010. But for now, you can poke around on the official site.