Do you play more than two MMORPGs at the same time? Ever wish one of them had one of the features of the other? Well, according to Blizzard poster Tigole, we might see a feature from Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa make it to World of Warcraft (well, sort of). Details in the full article.

The virtual world of MMOs is proving to be a profitable investment, and even Harvard Business School is taking notice. The Ivy League institution recently held a panel with six of the industry's most influential members to discuss the status quo, and just as important, the future of the virtual realms in gaming as a business market. Check out what they deem to be the biggest barrier to overcome, and for some more analysis on how money culture is making even the virtual world go spinning 'round.

For as long as there are rules to follow, there will always be someone who will try to go around them, or even break them. In that respect the game world isn't that much different from the real world. In a recent article, CNN takes a closer look at cheating in MMORPGs via the new book "Exploiting Online Games" by Gary McGraw and Greg Hoglund.

They observe that some online game companies seem to have accepted that cheating is an inevitable part gaming so instead of tightening security they just observe game play and look for anything suspicious. Some companies really crack down on cheating though.

Nexon America Inc., for instance, apply patches to remove every method of cheating they discover in their games. Others just actively boot cheaters from the game. The problem with this though is that most of the time they can just return with another identity.

One idea from Intel sounds promising. To prevent cheat commands coming in from a player's computer to the game's server, a chip will be embedded unto the PC itself. The chip will monitor if the PC sends commands that don't coincide with the rules of the game, like if a single mouse click sends a "fire 100 shots" command.

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa on the other hand, says they've done all they can do to prevent cheating in the game. Starr Long, producer of Tabula Rasa, comments on cheating in MMORPGs:

In the old days we didn't really think through what would happen once we started letting people play together. Every single piece of content we put in the game, the first thing we say is 'Here's what we want this thing to do.' And the second thing we say is, 'OK, how are players going to try to exploit this?

Developers certainly don't benefit from cheating. What about the players? Hubert Thiebolt, who leads one of the largest teams in World of Warcraft says that cheating degrades the experience for everyone else. Perhaps measures for preventing cheating should start with the only ones who benefit from cheating.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft (WoW) is generally considered as one of the most, if not the most, successful MMO video game these days. So, it is quite understandable if some development companies are wary of going head-to-head with WoW and its 8.5 million strong user base.

But that is not entirely the case for Tabula Rasa's Richard Garriott. The game developer is credited for Ultima Online - the decade old MMO title that revolutionized the genre. According to Garriott, Tabula Rasa should be thankful to World of Warcraft more than anything. He explained,

The people that World of Warcraft brought into online gaming have been churning out, and are now looking for other forms of online entertainment. So we're very excited - truly, honestly - to see any successful massively multiplayer online game. World of Warcraft has done us a great service.

The renowned game developer added that it is rarely that one player plays the same MMO title for more than one year or so. Garriott then discussed that while it is true that Ultima Online still has a couple of hundreds of thousands of players, almost no one playing today has overlapped with the ones who played it a year ago or the year before that.

Lastly, maintaining the idea that the MMO genre will be too crowded, Garriott said that the real danger is when fans get a taste of a bad MMO game. He commented,

What's interesting is the MMO space is still growing so rapidly. The only enemy we have are bad games. If people try MMOs and get a bad taste because of a bad game, they won't continue to play MMOs. They'll go back to playing offline.

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!

The debate over the actual place of role-playing in today's MMOs is a tired tune already. The debate's been raging since the days of isometric MMOs, and times when screams of "Por Ort Grav!" was all the rage.

The problem now, we guess, is that the masses have a very different definition of what a role-playing game is. Often it involves totally eschewing the role-playing aspect. Although that's just a very hasty generalization from us.

IGN's Wow Vault reports that a World of Warcraft player asked about this, and about the animosity that people who RP face while in the game. Below is Blizzard's Nethaera's response to said player, it provides us with great insight into this eternal struggle between the Role-Playing and Game aspects of MMORPGs.

People are often uninformed of what RP is all about or feel intimidated by it because they feel if they attempt it they will be teased. There is a lot of extremism on both ends of the spectrum. There are those that shun anyone that can't RP well and thus make it so the people that try and don't do well stop trying and never learn to enjoy it and there are those that shun anyone that RPs because they think it's stupid or feel intimidated by it. There are many that wrongly believe that RP = carebear when that isn't true either. PvP and RP can go together very well it's just not something you normally can do well while doing the other simultaneously. Of course there are always macros for that.

There IS a middle-ground however that people don't realize is there. The middle-ground consists of those that enjoy doing it and don't force others to do it too and there are those that respect RP that don't do it but don't harass those that do.

I will RP with people and see how they respond. If they play along, then great. If they don't, it's no skin off my back. I respect that. If they try to push my buttons, I'm more like to go a little toward the extreme for the fun of it to see if I can get a laugh out of them. ;)

The middle-ground seems very reasonable.

So, is it just WoW that is experiencing this problem? Is it perhaps easier to actually engage in some role-playing in other MMORPGs like say Tabula Rasa or EVE? What about Second-Life? Is SL a massively Multiplayer Role-Playing without the Game, or is it just a bunch of people playing doll house using real money? We'll let you folks discuss that one.

What in the world is Tabula Rasa and why should we bother checking out, or even trying out this MMO? Blizzard's Burning Crusade is coming out on January, there's Guild Wars Nightfall, why should I give a damn about Tabula Rasa?

Why should we care about this game? The storyline? So far, the backstory is your standard post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi fare. Nothing really new. Aliens go to earth, wipe things out, the world starts anew. Clean slate. Nothing new. Done and explored before. But what about the thicker-than-cream-soup betrayal plot? Nope. Knights of the Old Republic has explored the betrayal bit already. Not convinced.

What about the character design? Oh yeah, guys in suits fighting ugly-looking insect aliens. Nuh-uh nope. Beautiful as the screenshots may be, no. It isn't really exciting and new. It all looks like an ugly version of Halo mixed in with Star Wars.

What about the gameplay? What about the fact that in some planets, the gravity will be a bit different? What about the fact that the gameplay is a mix of MMORPG and Shooter? What about the huge choice of weaponry? What about those cool looking gameplay videos? What about the news that the development team is listening to cries in the Beta Test that people want Melee weapons, and the rumors that things like lightsabers will show up? Yawn. No not interested.

So what is it about Tabula Rasa that makes us want to play it?

Richard Garriot.

The guy responsible for Ultima. That's credibility right there.

Of course you guys can all accuse us of being a bit too snooty in the first four paragraphs, but there's reverse psychology for you.