Tabula Rasa E3 2005 Hands-On Preview - ( Review, Preview, Article, Interview, Q&A )

Tabula Rasa (MMORPG for PC by NCsoft)
By: Kenneth Shelton

In this upcoming game from the MMORPG company, NCsoft, you play as part of the human race battling against the demonic forces of the Bane. When the game initially releases it will be comprised of 5 worlds, and each of these worlds will be embroiled in the Bane conflict, however, Ncsoft planes to continually expand these worlds and is contemplating allowing for the conquering (or the temporary subduing) of the Bane forces on a specific planet.

In addition to that, they also plan to include planets that are not currently involved in the Bane struggle where PCs can engage in PVP action, as all action on the Bane planets will be PVE.

The game is played in the 3rd party and instead of having to continually target your enemy, once your crossfire is near an enemy you will lock on to that enemy and whether or not you hit the NPC is based on a dice roll. The battlefront is Dynamic based upon control of outposts which are reinforced by friendly NPCs upon capture. Depending on the current control of outposts the quests, etc. may not even be accessible.

Another intriguing aspect of this game is that the humans benefactor race the Elo(?) have a complete pictorial language that has been developed for them for this game. Based on your ability in this language, you are able to develop mysticism that allows you to do a magic style set of actions (combat/spells).

Based on the graphics and gameplay (normal mapped, beautiful scenes and characters) elements that we saw this upcoming MMORPG from NCsoft looks like it could definitely be another hit.