Urquhart had trouble grasping Battleground Infinity because he wasn’t sure what BioWare intended it to be. Did they think they could deliver on a game the scale of a proper MMORPG? Because to Urquhart, it was more like a real-time strategy game: top-down, isometric view; numerous characters running amok on a battlefield.
Before long, BioWare had offers from Sir-Tech, the studio that had made the Wizardry series of RPGs popular on the Apple II, and Westwood, creators of Command & Conquer. The doctors held off on signing contracts and went back to Urquhart with an updated demo. He came away impressed. The game’s setting and characters were grounded in fantasy, with players controlling a party of characters.
Just like in a Dungeons & Dragons game.
“Something went off in my head,” Urquhart recalled. “I took this party-based [concept] and called them up and said, ‘What if we made this a D&D game?’ They said, ‘That would be really cool.’”