Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa [PC]

Richard "formerly Lord British" Garriott, creator of the Ultima series, opened his presentation with the words: "We're in a unique position in making MMORPGs," and it's probably the most accurate statement we heard all show.

Garriott is responsible for some of the best single-player games of the 8- and 16-bit era, as well as arguably the most popular and long-running online role-playing game, Ultima Online. After acrimoniously departing EA, he's been working on an entirely new MMORPG, Tabula Rasa, and it's ready to show off.

"Frankly, we're quite critical of early MMORPGs -- they brought in some undesirable ideas," Garriott said. Like a number of massively multiplayer games currently in development, Tabula Rasa is intended to avoid the negative concepts associated with EverQuest-like games -- these include harsh death penalties, long travel times, rigid character roles, and dull combat, to name a few.

"We're not going to have a giant world map," he told us. Rather, Tabula Rasa has a series of small zones, and players can move easily between them. Players can teleport instantly to the location of anyone on their friends list, a skill which has historically only been available to certain classes, if at all.

One of Ultima Online's best-loved features was its player housing options. The inhabitants of its world could each buy a plot of land, construct a house, and furnish it to their hearts' content. Tabula makes this process much easier; new players all receive a personal floating island and home, which will grow and develop with your character.

What about its missions? Garriott plans a scripted, instanced, story-based experience for players, much more akin to the single-player Ultima games than typical MMORPGs. They'll often be short, too -- "People's time is valuable," he said -- and even playing solo, missions can be completed in as little as half an hour. Player-versus-player combat, another popular Ultima Online feature, is also going to be a focus, with special battlefield areas set aside for head-to-head fighting.

Death doesn't come with much of a sting. Players can self-resurrect mid-mission, and suffer only the loss of any bonus experience they might gain on completing their tasks.

Garriott wasn't keen to go into too much detail about the character advancement system, but it clearly shares the forgiving attitude of the game's other features. Three main development paths are available, corresponding roughly to "classes" in other games. But in Tabula Rasa, your character is saved every time you take a significant advancement decision. At some later point, you can choose to suspend your current development and return to an earlier save, taking different choices. If you get bored of that path, you can go back to where you were whenever you like. Flexible doesn't begin to describe it.

The combat system is also... well, unusual. Each character and enemy possesses three main statistics: body, mind and spirit. Each combat ability a character has is associated with one of those stats, and will decrease it slightly when used. Damage is calculated by the difference between your stat in that area and your target's. Body attacks are weapons or physical strikes, mind attacks use ideas to assault your opponent, and spirit moves use musical instruments to cause damage.

Tabula Rasa's near-future setting is just as unusual. "We're very detailed worldcrafters," Garriott said. Based on our quick demo, he's right. The backstory, concerning a departed race of advanced aliens called the Benefactors, certainly sounds novel.

We'll have more details on this intriguing MMO in future updates.