IGN has posted the fifth designer diary for Knights of the Old Republic written by BioWare designer Lukas Kristjanson. Here's a quote from the diary concerning the fact that the game takes place 4,000 years before Episode I:
First off, we tend to think of futuristic settings as being relatively new, and that perhaps only a few years ago there were no starships. Does this mean that the only equipment with a respectable provenance will be primitive, like the same old swords and bows? Not so in Star Wars. At the time of the movies, the galaxy has had faster than light travel for over 25,000 years. The Old Republic, the venerable organization of thousands of worlds, was built around the discovery of hyperdrive systems. Civilizations have come and gone in this age of discovery, and many technologies have been lost to the ages.
Read the full diary here.