Well, earlier I've signed on for the Tabula Rasa Beta which will probably be opened to the public in a couple of months I'm really excited for this game because after WOW,Guild Wars,and every other fantasy-based mmo I'm really yearning to try a game that's Sci-Fi since that's where my other interest is it's very awesome to see Richard Garriot, the creator of Ultima and Ultima underworld to finally take a break and try something new.Richard in my book has been my favorite creators and designers even though I've nevered played or completed an ultima game just reading through his story of how he broke into the industry at 17 making games on an apple II and his mission to create worlds and not just levels with bots really interested me as everyone know Ultima IV:Quest of the Avatar was probably one of the greatest RPG masterpieces ever created just reading about the game you see just how much influential this game would be on many RPG's afterwards or in Japanese Role-playing games and Ultima VII's would feature the world in full 3d and it would improve the series fully.The Ultima series to me is what The Lord Of The Rings was to the fantasy genre, the grandfather of them all.We could also remember playing Ultima Underworld series which was designed by some Key people from System Shock 1.Ultima Underworld and Eye Of The Beholder would influence the creation of the first-person shooter genre and it's success.So when I hear of Richard Garriot in any part of the game world I listen and I hear.When I first heard of Tabula Rasa, believe it or not I balked I thought why would someone give a game a weird name like "abula Rasa " it sounded foreign, it wasn't until Game Informer E3 edition that I found out that Tabula Rasa was being headed by a company named Destination Games which was started by Richard and his brother Robert which is now NCAustin and Robert Garriot is president of NCsoft American division, in the article it described the gameplay and a new language called logo's which is an alien language which when deciphered reveals special powers or helpful bonuses it really interested me when they said that Tabula Rasa was going to eschew expansion packs to have new stuff open through the game they also described that you could travel to different planets and have the freedom to pick ****s and then switch them if ur dissatisfied with the ****which was a plus because you can't switch ****s in fantasy mmo's you're pretty much stuck with that ****once you pick it. Tabula Rasa right when you hear about it has a much needed depth and FPS **** controls which will keep things happening instead of killing enemy A to go to enemy B on an everlong treadmill it just kills me to have to play a game and get mobbed from enemies and then die and have to pick them off one by one until they get wiped out so I'm hoping that this game deliver on it's promise to not let the questing feel like a work out.Tabula Rasa is the fresh air I need and I hope it has an bigger impact than ultima . Richard's first foray into the online arena was Ultima Online in 1997 but it was userped by SOE's Everquest series but was killed by WOW, Ultima Online didn't get the love from Electronic Arts when Richard Garriot pitched the idea to the higher up's there they refused to greenlight it because they thought it would flop even though UO would not be recieved years later at it's height it had over 500,000 people and after eight expansions it's finally getting an overhaul by EA Mythic so it should get the attention the success of UO online games became a priority and most of EA's p.c. houses were making MMO's but it wouldn't be long before Orgin System the renowed development house would be shut down by E.A. after the founding member of Origin and creator of Ultima would leave to start a company in Austin and work on the very thing they set out to destroy the vision of creating worlds.So in closing Tabula Rasa represents the renewed desire to finally create a world to rival the Azaroths and Tyria's of the MMO genre here's to one fun run into a new frontier thx for reading.