CVG: To kick things off, could we get an overview of Tabula Rasa for folks who might not be familiar with the game?

Starr Long: Tabula Rasa is a science fiction MMORPG being created by Richard Garriott and other key folks like me who have some of the deepest experience in the genre. The game features some key elements that differentiate it from what has been done previously in MMO games.

One of those key elements is having a very dynamic battlefield. In most online games the computer controlled characters (NPCs) are just standing around waiting for you to kill them. They don't really do anything and they certainly don't interact with each other. In TR the NPCs are constantly doing things whether you are there or not. They patrol around, they interact with the world and of course they constantly fight each other (there's a war going on after all). For example the NPC soldiers of the Allied Free Sentients, which is the fighting force that you are a member of, controlled by the good guy AI are constantly fighting the Bane soldiers' bad guy AI, even seizing Control Points.

Control Points are another big differentiator for TR, and depending on who is controlling them, the good guys or bad guys, change the state of variables throughout the game. Which waypoint teleporters I can go to, what respawn locations are available, and what missions are available depend on who has taken over any given control point. For example, say you got a cool mission at one of these control points and when you complete it you return to the base only to find that the Bane may have overrun that base. Now you have to get with some other players to take back control of that base in order to finish your mission.

A corridor inside a Bane base reveals the biomechanical nature of their architecture The environment is very dynamic, it is not always creature X standing in location Y all the time, and that feeling that there is a constant war going on is one of the things I'm most proud of.