Tabula Rasa Interviews
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Q: With millions of players, World of Warcraft is the leader of the MMO genre, in term of number at least. Almost everyone in the MMO industry dreams of such a success. Being the one who almost invented the genre ten years ago with Ultima Online, I'm pretty sure you have strong ambitions for your new MMO. What are the main reasons that make you firmly believe Tabula Rasa will push the genre to a next level? And do you believe Tabula Rasa has what it take to break the million barrier, or even to become a multi-millions players game?
A: World of Warcraft is as big as Lineage 1 and Lineage 2. That's definitely our goal as always to have millions of customers, that would be fantastic. I think much like Ultima Online helped evolved the genre and pretty much defined where it did today, I think some of the key elements we talked about in the interview - the ethical parables, the dynamic battlefields - are definitely going to be factors that will set us apart and give us the potential to create something new and really evolve the genre and bring in more customers.
But one we have not talked about yet and I think will be key to that and will be different than all the other ones... In most of these online games - the structured online games and not the world simulations, games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Guild Wars, Lineage - when you start the game, you pick your character class. That's a decision, for the most part, that you make before you ever played the game. You might not necessarily know what's going to be your favorite play-style. Do I like playing a wizard? Do I like playing a warrior? Well, since that's a different sort of game you may not know. When it's happening you pick whatever class you think you like, you play it, and then you may discover : (Woo, I'm not so excited about that, I want to play a different one.). When that happens you have to start over. Everything you've done to that point is lost.
In our game, instead of deciding what class you are at the beginning, everyone starts off as a recruit. They're just a basic soldier and they can shoot guns, wear armors, they have one super-power. And then, at level 5, you pick a specialization. Do I want to be a soldier or a specialist? Soldier are more front-line guy, specialist is more support like healing and engineering. And then, at later level, you pick a further specialization under one of those. So, it's an advancing branching character tree versus clear defined split up character class at the beginning. And that lets it so the player is always making what we call an informed decision. They have enough experience to know : (Oh I really like this style of gameplay, so that's the branch I'm going to take). But what really set us apart is that, at any time during the advance you can create a clone of your character. That's an exact copy of that character. So, if I'm playing for long [inaudible] and I'm about to make that choice between soldier or specialist for instance, I can create a clone of my character so that even if I pick that soldier and I'd like to try a specialist a while, I don't have to start at level one, I'll start wherever I made that clone, before I made that choice.
All those clones share a footlocker, a common little inventory. You can dump equipment in from one clone into the other one and share that back and fore.
It allows people to explore the game, try different characters, try different load-out and things like that and decide : I like this, I like that.
Essentially, we're the first online game that has a save-game system. I think that it will allow people who may have been intimidated by having to make a bunch of choices at the beginning, it's a much simpler gentler start to the game that might hopefully appeal to a larger audience.
And a snip from the Richard Garrriot Q&A:
Q: In the early Tabula Rasa days, in year 2001, you explained you wanted to distribute Tabula Rasa for free and purely in digital form; the players would only had to pay for the monthly subscription. It looks like it's not the plan anymore and you're going back to a more traditional way of distribution, with a not-for-free client, boxes and retailers. What made you change your mind?
A: We are fans of the distribution model for online games in Asia, where, for example, our games Lineage I and II, millions of players in Asia have acquired it via digital download and play a subscription fee without having to buy the game at any retail outlets.
Originally, assumed we could use the same model for all NCsoft products in western territories, however, we've discovered fundamental differences in the way people buy games. In Asia, for example, retail is often not an option and gamers have embraced digital distribution. In western markets retail outlets are not only the place where people expect to purchase their forms of entertainment, it has also become the place where people learn about these forms of entertainment. Retail outlets are still the predominant means of reaching out to our customers. Additionally, it appears that the customers who purchase games at retail have a higher probability of becoming more engaged with a game than people who download it for free, which is likely a result of that initial investment.
