We've said it countless times: the best spokesperson for NCSoft's Tabula Rasa is Ultima Online">Richard Garriott (also known as Lord British). Why shouldn't he be? The guy's legendary for his work on Ultima Online. Given, the current dominance of Blizzard's World of Warcraft, it only makes sense for NCSoft to put their best foot forward.

If in case you folk's aren't sick of him yet, here's more Tabula Rasapimpage from Lord British. In the March 7 edition of The Austin American-Statesman, the business section has a front page story on Richard Garriott and his much touted Tabula Rasa. Below is an excerpt:

Garriott said he did the high-concept elements, letting the developers work on individual missions. One of his contributions was creating a pictographic language for the game that players need to master in order to succeed.

"If you are going to create a reality, you need to create that reality very completely," Garriott said, explaining the intensity of designing a game that is complex and compelling enough to keep players interested for hours at a time — and willing to keep paying the monthly subscription. "The designer, the developer and the writer need to understand that reality much deeper than ever necessarily shows up in the plot thread. That way, you can create something that is internally self-consistent and has a sense of history and culture and reality to it."

It seems that in the face of Azerothian dominance, the folks at NCSoft are banking on the Garriott's Tolkien-esque approach to world creation. This matters to you gamer folks, because it is the world after all, that you'll be spending hours and hours playing. Setting credibility matters.

Anyhow, if you guys want to watch the complete video interview with Lord British, feel free to use our read link below. It should lead you to the Austin American-Statesman video interview. Enjoy folks!

In an interview with GameDaily, Richard Garriott talks about the development of the gameworld of NCsoft's upcoming MMO Tabula Rasa.

Garriott informs that he believes that designers need to know a lot about the history of a universe, its people, its science, its culture, and its language, because this comes out directly in the telling of the story. This Tolkien-esque style of developing has lead to the creation of the languages he has used in Ultima Online - the runic language - and the new logogrammatic Logos language featured in Tabula Rasa.

He adds that while the runic language was very useful for Ultima Online in that runes work Greek for English speaking westerners and stay in theme with the world, for Tabula Rasa he needed something different. He needed it to be still easily decipherable yet he needed something that would hold true regardless of your country of origin and your original spoken language.

In Tabula Rasa the pictographic "logogrammatic" language, known as the Logos, is left through out the universe by an advanced alien race for all civilizations with developed enough language skills to read.

Oh, and just in case you're planning to use this info to help you in that translation contest that NCsoft has up, just keep in mind that the language is not a word for word to English language. Keep in mind that when translating into English or any other language, the idea of the symbol is more important than the exact English word.

For the whole interview, feel free to use our "read" link below.

Eurogamer has considered MMOs as a separate platform from the PC as it is a growing part of the gaming world with each passing year. As a result to WoW's success (read: cash cow), MMOs are popping up like mushrooms. Cynics either consider them as imported mind numbing grindfests from Asia or WoW rip-offs.

However, others beg to differ. The question is whether WoW can keep it's throne in 2007 with all the other MMOs wanting a piece of the pie. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (steroid shot men and giant swords), LotRO: Shadows of Angmar (based on J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece), and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (from the maker of EverQuest, Brad McQuaid) are mentioned in the list along with what else - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

Tabula Rasa makes a surprising entry on the list, given its numerous delays and tight-lipped devs. Redesign has ultimately caused it's nth delay, and we're surely not complaining that they want to have the game released when it's really ready. Hopefully, this sci-fi MMO would be released by the end of this year.

Eurogamer concludes the list with Honourable Mentions - AION: Tower of Eternity (who wouldn't want to have usable wings?), Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising (to an age of togas and gladiators), Huxley (an MMOFPS), Pirates of the Burning Sea (Harr!), and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (from the pen and paper RPG).