Tabula Rasa is a very new kind of MMORPG. It's created by some of the best people in the industry. Many of them are from the founding team of Ultima Online and go back further than that before there was such a thing as online game play.

We sat down with Starr Long ( Blackthorn of UO ) and Carly Staehlin ( Lady Moi of UO ) for a great inside look at the game. Tabula Rasa is not like the other MMORPGs. It's not mid-evil. It's not sci-fi and it's not really fantasy. It has some elements of all of them but it's really a unique dream world. We started out with a demo of the game. ( See screenshots here ) First we logged into a character and she appeared at her house. In this game everyone can own a house that is fully customizable and decoratable. You can even have all your friends over for a big party. The only odd thing about housing is that you can not see your neighbors. In fact you can't see much of anything else as your house is planted on a floating rock of sorts. ( See houses in the special E3 video. It's right at the start. ) It's very nice looking but it is a floating rock none the less. I actually didn't like the fact of not being able to see your neighbors. But the rest of the home and the land it was sitting on was impressive.

They teleported us to another area where we embarked on a mission to go save someone. We went into this cave like area with many monsters that wanted to kill us if we did not kill them first. Once inside of the caves / tunnels we met up with another player. This other player was talking to us. We could actually hear his voice through the speakers. You see... They have incorporated voice communications into the game. Starr talked about this a little. He said. "You don't want to have to stop what you are doing to type to someone do you?" It makes for some good communication talking by voice. There are still some details to work out on this but with a few people playing together it worked very well.

We went on and completed our mission saving a guy that was held hostage. We got experience points and some currency for saving him. Missions like this can be done in teams or all alone. Once in a mission you don't have to worry about any outside players griefing you while you are trying to complete it as they don't even know you are there. It's a very nice feature. But it also takes some of the unpredictability out of it as you know that no one is going to interfere. Myself I happen to like it when the unexpected happens. Hopefully they can provide this in other ways.

The game is slated to be released at the end of this year. With Richard Garriott ( Lord British of UO ) being at the helm, his vision is sure to mold this game a hit. I myself prefer the mid-evil fantasy type of game more. But this may work out very well for them. I'm still undecided if I like this dream world or not. But I will say this. If it's as good as the other games Garriott has created this will be a big hit.

I'll have to make sure that I can get into the beta testing so that I can get to enjoy the full flavor of this game. Something tells me that so far I only got a small taste.