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Via GDC Europe, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a retrospective interview with BioDocs Greg and Ray on their breakthrough hit, Baldur's Gate:
More information.Ray: We ended up sending out our first game Shattered Steel to ten publishers. Of those publishers, only one is still in business- EA. We originally called Baldur’s game Battleground Infinity; it was going to be an MMO [about a pantheon of different mythologies]
Greg – there really hadn’t been any kind of MMO then. Even then we were too ambitious. Looking back at the documentation, the cover art was done by the lead programmer. It would have been interesting because Bioware’s first game would have been an MMO.
Ray: Interplay had the Dungeons and Dragons license through TSR so what they provided was converting the engine to Dungeons and Dragons instead. We thought that would be a good license to develop in.
Greg: what we always wanted to make was the experience of that top-down experience. That top-down world exploration of Ultima was a really big inspiration for us. One thing that’s important to realise was we started it back in the mid-90s, and that was when RPGs were dead in North America. People would kind of scoff when you said you were making one.