General Discussion

Recently, Community Manager Laura Genender visited the NCSoft offices in Austin, TX to take a look at the upcoming MMORPG, Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa.

Recently, I traveled to Austin, Texas to visit the NCSoft offices and to take a look at the upcoming MMORPG, Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa. During my stay I got to talk with Garriott about the new game, as well as sample it for myself!

Speaking With Garriott

Tabula Rasa is so named for the blank Logos tablets that players start with, but the name also fits Garriott's approach to the game's design. He feels that our industry has entered a status of stagnation: MMOs today all base their foundations off of UO and EQ. In making Tabula Rasa, Garriott's goal has been to rethink the genre completely, and to start with a blank slate (the English translation of the title).

Garriott feels that TR offers players new approach to MMO gaming, and he highlighted five ways that it does so:

Combat: Garriott described the average MMO combat system as a more technical version of whack-a-mole: you autoattack, watch your UI, calculate what combination of skills produces the most DPS - rinse and you repeat.

Read the whole article here.

This game actually sounds more and more interesting with every report.  If the biggest low spot is that the in-game action takes away from your desire to read quest text... then I might actually consider that a good point.

In most games I generally skip the quest text... after a few years of reading the same basic thing with only the "end" different it all becomes meaningless anyway.  Until a game can come out with writing as good as a published novel and the ability for the player to actually reach the "end" of the story and impact it in some way... then I don't really see the need for quest text and such.  There are many, many good sci-fi books to fill my reading time, but a decent sci-fi MMO (that is avatar driven) would be something quite new.

As far as skipping dialog text, maybe Voiceovers are in order for this kind of a game.

The game sounds fund, and keeping the reviewer in mind (VG is "the shitt", and not into FPS's), i bet its allot more fun and engaging than this article leads you to think.

Good article nonetheless.

In all fairness, I don't like long quest texts and jibberish,
and I want fast action, and I hate fantasy...
For some of us this game is just getting insanely great.
Hopefully mr Garriott will have the decency to put in voice-overs AND shorten the info as much as possible and instead involve the story during the combat...

God I want this game soooo bad..

I have one question: what is the point of a game so fast paced it slams you through without story where there is no PvP? At least if they are slaming you through sans immersion to end game PvP, there is a purpose.

Maybe I'll play, but most likely not until they add PvP. The game and setting seems so perfect for it too, that's what is sad. It could have been the game that changed MMOs forever by pitting the invasion forces against the "good guys" and making battles matter.

"Garriott even alluded to possible future plans of player-owned outposts and PvP, but not at launch."

This is good to hear.

I never played Ultima Online, but the general consensus seems to be that it was famous for its great PvP.  Given this background, it seems odd that Garriott didn't make PvP a higher priority for Tabula Rasa.