That would definitely give them more freedom. I think, as I've said above, that this is one of the big bridges they have to cross - inserting interactivity into to theme and setting to actually make it a fun and playable videogame.

I've seen and played many MUDs, some of whom are set in the past, while others are set in the future, and the latter does generally have a problem in terms of excitement to overcome; i.e. it's hard to make your players care about a sotryline set so far from Tarmon Gaidon, or so distantly related, that the events seem unimportant.

I'd just like to see some of their ideas on what will go into the game because it is very easy to make a crappy videogame based off of a license, and I'd rather see how they'd cope with the design challenges.