Richard Garriot Calls For MMO Innovation
Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series and the upcoming Tabula Rasa, has appealed to MMO devs to innovate in his recent keynote speech at the Develop Conference. He says that very little has changed since his groundbreaking Ultima Online was unleashed nearly ten years ago.
"Fundamentally the gameplay is unchanged. We owe it to consumers to provide new kinds of gameplay."
Garriott, always the forward thinker basically created the MMO genre and it's great to hear him coming forward and calling for change instead of adhering to the oft heard "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." attitude. He also hopes to steer MMOs away from the traditional "fantasy" realm and never ending level grinding and beef up things like AI interaction and storyline. According to Garriott, these are all important factors in forwarding the genre.
I am very excited to see how Tabula Rasa is going to use of these new features. NCSoft has always done a great job of reaching beyond the normal constraints of the genre to create something interesting and new (take City of Heroes/Villains for example) and I think Tabula Rasa, delayed as it may be, will be a breath of fresh air in a stagnating MMO world.
MMO design has not changed in a decade' - Garriott [developmag.com]
Fruit Brute
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 25 July 2007
Other stuff like this: MMO, ncsoft, richard garriott, tabula rasa
