Richard Garriott Leaving NCsoft
The news is flying all over the gaming sites that Richard "Lord/General British" Garriott is leaving NCsoft, the developer of MMO Tabula Rasa. For the uninitiated, Garriott garnered fame as the designer of the Ultima games, beginning back in 1980.
Garriott recently made news by taking a civillian flight to the International Space Station and bringing along with him, digitized DNA samples of Tabula Rasa players. Yeah... I know...
Anyway... you can read his announcement and reasoning here if you're interested.
As a side note, based on his comments, I'm wondering if a space game isn't floating around that bizzare brain of his.
P.S. A side note... although I never played it, I've read several accounts of how Tabula Rasa is a mediocre/bad game. I think the space ship is going down and he's leaving in an escape pod. 
Kaymen
Site Admin
Code Monkey
Joined: 21 May 08
Posts:
Posted: 12 November 2008
I didn't think that Tabula Rasa was a bad game. It made a genuine effort to break the MMORPG genre out of it's medieval rut. I think conceptually, it was pretty good, but failed on implementation. Which probably sums up most of Garriott's career.
Garret
Site Admin
Editor-in-chief
Joined: 22 May 08
Posts:
Posted: 13 November 2008
Fair enough... I never played the game. But, I think you're right about the implementation issues. See Ultima IV for details...