Tabula Rasa Creator Richard Garriott On World Of Warcraft

Ultima creator Richard Garriott is set to make waves in the vast ocean that is MMO gaming with his new title Tabula Rasa. While promoting his new title, he also takes a few shots at World of Warcraft.

“As many kudos as I would like to give World of Warcraft, it’s basically a remake of EverQuest, just incredibly polished and refined,” he said. “There are harbingers of failure in that model. Everyone in these games is obsessed with the concept of how much damage-per-second they are inflicting and maximizing their D.P.S. When you do that, you are no longer playing a role; you are playing an inventory-management game.”

He added, “With Tabula Rasa we wanted the player to spend as much time as possible actually looking at the environment and what they’re shooting at.”

Tabula Rasa is going to take a mainstream approach by letting players learn the mechanics of the game within thirty minutes to an hour and then go from there. I’m not sure how he’s going to pull it off, but considering his comment he fails to realize that FPSs with RPG elements are also hard to pull off. Deus Ex is the only thing that comes to mind what was able to do that successfully, and even that title suffered difficulties when it simplified a few elements with its sequel. Will Tabula Rasa be as successful and as influential as Ultima?

Source: New York Times

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