tabula-rasa
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Does the industry need to give WoW competition?
Right now WoW stands as the big boy on the online gaming scene. It will take quite a bit to close the gap between it and the other -- some could argue the inferior -- titles. Mark Ward at BBC News wrote an article on the subject of competition to World of Warcraft last week, and it raises some interesting issues. Mark interviewed Funcom game director Gaute Godoger, the man responsible for the upcoming Age of Conan MMO. Gaute believes that competition is needed for WoW because it has such a stranglehold on the market right now. Normally, I would have to agree with him, since competition breeds innovation. But in the case of Blizzard, they are competing with themselves for innovation, which is why WoW constantly comes up with new and fresh concepts and content that other games strive to copy. From where I sit, the company appears to be driven by the internal desire to put forth the best game possible, and so I see little in the market today that would have the potential to actually compete with their ethic.
How not to rob Richard 'Lord British' Garriott
Richard "Lord British" Garriott could not have designed a more perfect ending to this little chapter in his game called life. Recently Garriott, who is currently working on Tabula Rasa, was the victim of a burglary. Some youths broke into Garriott's vacation complex, drinking over $5000 in alcohol and having their way with the property. The little felons would have gotten away with it too -- if they hadn't left the digital camera used to document the night's events behind! "We were joking to ourselves about tomorrow morning, when they wake up with a hangover, they're going to wonder where that camera is ... This is one of those Darwin-style kind of awards, where people leave the self-incriminating evidence behind at the scene," Garriott said to Austin's KVUE. This is the second break-in on Garriott's property in two years. We're expecting him to either build a moat around the property with a dragon or have it patrolled by some giant mechanized death machine.
Tabula Rasa not vaporware -- starts beta testing
NCSoft's Tabula Rasa began sign-ups for beta testing this week. The sci-fi MMO, headed by Richard Garriott of Ultima fame, is a title that's been a long time coming. Showing at E3 2005 and 2006, with launch dates always shifting, there still is no reasonable explanation as to why this game is taking so long. We're sure to get another Tabula Rasa fix at Min-E3 and with any luck they'll finally nail down an official launch date. See also: Tabula Rasa at E3 (2005) NCSoft's E3 booth tour (2006) PC impressions: Tabula Rasa (2006)
NCsoft Austin shows 70 workers the door [update 1]
Perhaps fueled by the disappointing performance of Auto Assault and other MMOs under NCsoft's control, the company has confirmed that they have indeed made a round of cuts to their Austin office -- 70 employees have been pink slipped. According to a statement on the company's Lineage II boards:"NCsoft's Austin business has announced an immediate restructuring within its organization that included the difficult task of reducing members of its workforce. ... the company sees a slowdown in its launch pattern and the need to streamline its business. For this reason, NCsoft has reduced its 300 person workforce in Austin by approximately 70 people to accommodate this change. This decision has no impact on the schedules of any projects currently in development and service to NCsoft's current games will continue without interruption."While some have blamed the subscription numbers of AA and City of Heroes/Villains, an NCsoft rep assured GameSpot that those rumors were false. A rep said the figures shown were incorrect, and "not just barely wrong, but all wrong." NCsoft's Guild Wars may be enjoying some real success, but it seems the others may be holding the company back. Who knows how this will affect their upcoming venture Tabula Rasa, but considering this recent news, it can't be all positive.[via MMORPG.com][Update 1: The Austin chapter of the International Game Developer's Association (IGDA) is looking to help any recently laid-off game designers. They write, "There are plenty of employers around town who would like to snatch you up as soon as possible because of your previous work experience. We'll be displaying the resumes on our website along with an announcement of this opportunity for other employers around town."Interested? Stop by their website and see what they need from you.]
New Tabula Rasa gameplay vid
NCsoft has released a new gameplay video from Tabula Rasa, the forthcoming MMORPG from Richard Garriott's Destination Games. You'll want to crank up the brightness, as this is one dark and muddy looking featurette. Watch it on GameSpot, or download it from File Front. See also: Joystiq E3 impressions: Tabula Rasa, Lord British to receive lifetime achievement award
Lord British Defies Blizzard's Throne
Longtime gamers will immidiately recognize the name of Richard Garriott, a.k.a. Lord British, creator of the original Ultima series & MMO pioneer. After several years out of the spotlight, Garriott has teamed up with NCSoft, makers of CIty of Heroes & Lineage, for a new MMO called Tabula Rasa. In this audio interview from TGDaily.com, the Lord talks about his vision for a next-generation MMO and why he doesn't fear competing with Blizzard's juggernaut.I've played Garriott's games for around 20 years now, in one form or another, and I'd love to see him at the forefront of online gaming again, but a lot of things have changed since Ultima Online, and it will be curious to see how Garriott's new venture fares. The interview can be found here.
NCsoft's E3 booth tour
NCsoft's booth was mostly about the games, with banks of PC stations set up for passers-by to play at. There were plenty of knowledgeable staff on hand, and plenty of t-shirt giveaways. However, the booth's main attraction was its stage -- when we visited, The Mutaytor was helping to create the post-apocalyptic atmosphere appropriate to Tabula Rasa. At other times in the day, Guild Wars tournaments took centre stage, with large crowds gathering to watch top PvP teams face off. Between this and the pyrotechnic dancing, we really managed to get a feel for the atmosphere of NCsoft's game offerings, something which few other booths managed to convey.
PC impressions: Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa is a sci-fi themed MMO from NCsoft. Among its arsenal of features are: party-based voice chat, instances and open battlegrounds, a range of weaponry and an interesting cloning system. The class system is branching, and players can clone their character at any time -- change your mind about a class, and you can just dust off the clone and try again, rather than re-roll at level one. Playing the game, it comes across as the crazy lovechild of a MMORPG and MMOFPS. Combat is fast-paced and loud, with a big focus on guns and special abilities. Aiming isn't the FPS-style twitch-based shooting, though, and players progress through levels and missions much like in other MMOs. Being able to zoom into first-person view makes Tabula Rasa play almost like a straight-up FPS at times, but without the response and accuracy that FPS games are used to.
MMO design: the job of creating worlds
Decisions over how long burning rivers should stay aflame for can have a profound impact upon the atmosphere and enjoyment factor of a virtual landscape. This, and many other decisions like it, is how Richard Garriott spends his time these days -- as executive producer for Tabula Rasa, he has to help craft a variety of planets. World-building isn't a new hobby; fantasy authors and tabletop GMs have been facing questions like this for years, and often throwaway comments cause a lot of trouble for those making film adaptations or video game versions of the world. Creating a world from scratch for gaming means that all the important questions need to be answered at once, however, or the players will ask them. It doesn't stop at the design stage; game companies are providing governments, too, by creating laws and rules on the fly.Universes created primarily by users, like the world of Second Life, still operate within boundaries and constraints set down by the developers and providers of that world. If the Metaverse idea is really the future of online gaming, there's going to be a lot of influence exerted by some early decisions, just as early networking protocols and standards still influence today's Internet.[Via Walkerings]
Tabula Rasa at E3
Excuse us for a moment while we wax philosophical. Tabula Rasa, when it's not a proper noun referring to the new MMO by NCsoft, literally means "scraped tablet" or blank slate. According to the philospher John Locke, tabula rasa represented the idea that all human minds are a blank slate at birth with no pre-programmed behaviors and therefore each individual is free to author his own destiny. John Locke would have probably liked the MMO genre, because all players enter a given virtual world as a blank slate. We create a character who enters the world naked and defenseless, and the game then teaches us how we're supposed to behave and what we're supposed to aspire to, as players. Tabula Rasa the game is an MMO set in some far-distant future after the Earth has rendered charred and uninhabitable in an intergalactic war between hostile alien species. Surviving humans have banded together to fight against and put an end to the war, saving the universe in the process. This is one backstory that could have been popped out of the random sci-fi adventure generator, it's that hackneyed. Luckily, the gameplay and graphics on display at E3 easily trump the story. Though the game isn't due out until February or March of next year, it's already looking fairly polished and playable. We spoke to the lead level designer about the game and he described it as "less twitch" than most typical first person shooter games, though it does have strong FPS elements to it. He also noted that the game is entirely player-versus-environment at this point though they haven't ruled out adding PvP elements later. Tabula Rasa is due in the spring of 2006. Check out the five Tabula Rasa gameplay videos here.
Tabula Rasa goes low key with site update
Richard Garriott is considered the daddy of the massively multiplayer online game. Ultima Online was unlike anything anyone had seen before. The scale of the world and the addictiveness of the gameplay took a lot of jaded gamers by surprise. It's a tough act to follow, but he's going to try with Tabula Rasa. Expectations couldn't be higher for the MMOG title, especially after a sudden retooling that Garriott thought was necessary. Was the delay a sign of a project in trouble? Or was it further proof that whatever we end up getting will be worth it? The Tabula Rasa website has been updated with a simple run-down of where the project is, and why. They promise more updates as we get close to E3. [via ShackNews]
