Commander Shepard has single-handedly saved the galaxy on multiple occasions. Okay, so maybe he had some help, but he is practically a one man army. That’s about to change, if the rumors are true of course. According to a job posting by BioWare’s Montreal studio and EA’s official site, they are looking for multiplayer programmers to work for the studio that is described as “working on Mass Effect, one of the industry’s most beloved and acclaimed franchises, as we build our way toward becoming a fully self-sufficient BioWare studio.” Jeff Goldstein, EA’s Montreal-based recruiter, had a similar posting (which has since been removed) which directed the multiplayer programmers as working on the “Mass Effect franchise.”

Here are some of the key responsibilities listed:

– Provide and implement solutions to deal with network latency, de-synchronization of data between networked machines/players, packet compression, cheating, and interrupted connections

– Implement and integrate core online components on multiple hardware platforms

– Develop and enforce best practices guidelines for other programmers on the project

– Work with databases that allow for chat rooms, client/server games, player matching, player stats, etc.

With the amount of races, abilities, classes, etc. that’s already available in the game, multiplayer would fit in just fine. There’s more than enough content to support different multiplayer modes. Hopefully it won’t take away from the awesome single player campaign either. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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