Great interview with 'Tabula Rasa' creator Richard Garriott aka Lord British

[cHodAX]

I really like the sound of this MMO from the way RG describes it, the whole control system seems very different from a traditional MMO and we are long overdue a good futuristic game of this type anyway.

The leveling system for a start sounds very sweet.

Tabula Rasa has a very different leveling mechanic. We have a class "tree" that your character goes through, and you can load and save your character state all up and down the tree. You can "clone" your character at any point along that tree. What that means is that you can, for example, once you've explored the soldier class up a few levels, you may decide what you really wanted to try was a ranger. Well, that ranger—which has more sniping and spy skills—that branch of the tree may have only been 10 or 15 levels behind you. You can go clone your character back at that branch and explore up the tree the other way. And so we think people will explore a much broader suite of all the content we provide compared to most MMOs.

Have a read for yourself, well worth the 5-10 mins.

 

[old.Tohtori]

You might want to post a link for the less "action based" lifeforms on the forums

TAbula looks to be a nice addition to MMO, nothihg ground breaking, but might be a futuristic MMO the genre's been waiting for.

Though what's wrong with the control system these days

 

[cHodAX]

Though what's wrong with the control system these days

Feels too removed for my liking, the first MMO I played 'Jumpgate' was all skill and you really felt like everything you did mattered. The DAoC control system was decent because a good degree of skill was involved and the character reacted to your commands quickly, the same can't be said for 99% of other MMO's out there though. In them you press the button and some time in the next 5 seconds your character does something, the latency between command and action just kills any aspect of reality for me, it just doesn't feed natural or fluid. From what RG has said about Tabula Rasa it seems that your skill in aiming and postitioning as well as group tactics play a huge part in how effective you become, that is what a real MMO should be in my humble opinion. Just too many namby pamby games around now that only require a low skill threshold because the control system is so slow to react that it evens out the battlefield between the average casual player and a talented regular player far too much.

 

[Pirkel]

Rofl @ still not posting the link Papa Cho

 

[cHodAX]

Rofl @ still not posting the link Papa Cho

Lol, it is the medication I tells ya!

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/765/765698p1.html