It came as no surprise that Electronic Arts, LucasArts, and BioWare put World of Warcraft on notice when they announced Star Wars: The Old Republic late last month.

Every MMO released this year has tried to distinguish itself from Blizzard’s monolith in some aspect, and with The Old Republic, BioWare is focusing on storytelling, their realm of expertise.

Developers from BioWare Austin talked about how they will address this chronically underserved aspect of the genre at a round-table discussion, covered by Joystiq. Most of all, they want to treat the player as seriously as if this were a single-player experience.

“You will never in the game go into a cantina and poke a random person to see if you can solve their problems and they’ll give you money,” said Lead Writer Daniel Erickson. “You will never have some stranger on the street ask you to save their cat. You do large, heroic things.

“I always tell my writers,” Erickson continued, “to imagine if the very first response you could ever choose to any quest they might pitch is, ‘Excuse me, I’m saving the world. Is this important?’”

According to BioWare, The Old Republic contains more dialog and content than all its past titles combined.

“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 level to the last level, you will not see one repeated quest, line of dialogue, or piece of content,” said Erickson. “It is a 100% different story experience.”

Class-specific starting points and storylines are not enough to set it apart from World of Warcraft. Almost every race in that game had a unique starting point and quest line for the first ten levels. These came together toward the end, but remained split between Alliance and Horde, just as The Old Republic splits players into Republic and Sith factions.

While it’s unclear how much unique content different classes in the same faction will enjoy, Blizzard promises more detail with their class stories, which will provide more content and allow for a richer role-playing experience.

“You start the game on Korriban training to be a Sith and that is your world, and that is your context,” Erickson said, adding, “and you’re going to take that context into the world and then interact with the rest of the galaxy.”

Other MMOs visibly lack this “context.” Your character springs out of the ground at a designated starting point alongside a dozen other newly created avatars or enters the gameworld through the same story as every other character in that world. It detracts from the experience and makes it less personal.

BioWare RPGs have always been about immersing the player in the background and choices of the lead character, and Erickson said the epic choices that defined past titles would be a part of The Old Republic, made even more serious because players cannot save and go back.

That’s something entirely lacking in other MMOs, which esentially reduce the player’s choice to do a quest or don’t. No matter how The Old Republic fares against World of Warcraft or whatever Blizzard comes out with next, it’s sure to innovate the genre and how MMOs are played.