Tabula Rasa Preview

MMORPG.com has put together a preview of Destination Games’ Tabula Rasa, after speaking with Ultima creator Richard Garriott about the MMORPG at the Austin Game Conference. An excerpt to follow:

The issue of player importance was one of the reasons instancing took such a grip in this space. In MMORPGs as compared to their traditional brothers, players were forced to be just like everyone else. They were no longer heroes. From here, instancing evolved to put players at the center of adventures. Yet, by being private and repetitive, another form of (specialness) global impact was lost.

Garriott addresses this by tying the instanced missions into the battlefield areas and making their completion have an impact on the larger, common-area battle. For example, one battlefield has a large wall that is strategically important. Players can take an instanced mission which allows them to knock out a portion of that wall.