Online gaming legend Richard Garriott – he of
Ultima Online fame and, more recently, the developer behind NCSoft’s mighty sci-fi MMO
Tabula Rasa – spoke to the gathered horde at the Develop conference in Brighton earlier today, touching on the recent NCSoft/PlayStation deal and discussing the future of the MMO genre.
Garriott remained tight-lipped about the recently-announced PlayStation/NCSoft deal, merely stating that NCSoft should be announcing more specifics about what is in store for the future of PlayStation 3 online gaming closer to the end of this year.
SPOnG was lucky enough to catch up with Garriott for a full demo of his genuinely groundbreaking sci-fi MMO
Tabula Rasa at E3 recently.
Summing up why
Tabula Rasa was so important for the development of the MMO genre, Garriott told SPOnG that: "
Tabula Rasa is basically very different in terms of combat, dynamic battlefields and the way we utilise story. I would argue that for the last ten years almost all MMOs have been built as refinements of the Ultima Online and Everquest models. I’m a big believer that once Tabula Rasa comes out that people will use this more fast-paced type of combat, the dynamic battlefields and the in-depth storytelling – even in an MMO space – and I would argue that a lot of MMO developers will probably follow this model for the next ten years."
[url=http://spong.com/feature/10109623]You can see the full
Tabula Rasa E3 interview right now on SPOnG.
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