Slashdot Mirror
Tabula Rasa Goes Live
After a lengthy wait and a substantial retooling, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa has gone live. The New York Times is running a piece looking into the history of Garriott's interaction with MMOGs, while Wired had a chance to speak with the 'General' getting a better sense of what the game is about. "'It takes 30 minutes to an hour just to meet up with your friends to start playing' in most MMOs, says Richard Garriott, the new game's executive producer. In contrast, Tabula Rasa, a PC game that will be released Nov. 2, was designed to appeal to the average Joe who's probably not interested in learning what "gold farming" or "damage over time" means and just wants to amuse himself by saving the universe. It's a calculated shift designed to move beyond the hard-core gaming crowd and court the mainstream audience that has made Nintendo's Wii such a surprise success. And it isn't particularly remarkable, except that Garriott is the man largely responsible for inventing the MMO model in the first place. "
While I'm sure we all share the utmost respect for your memories of imaginary deeds, I personally disagree with the notion that the level of inconvenience is the ultimate level of difficulty. I'd rather enjoy a brief, challenging scenario/quest/mission/run/raid/whatever than a lengthy, tedious, repetitive one.
While the atmospheric value of lengthy and demanding preparations is clearly illustrated by your post... does that actually make it fun (with fun being the traditional reason for playing games)? For some, sure. For others, not so much.
It's the simplest and most overused method of scaling difficulty. It doesn't matter whether you're walking for hours to get to the right zone (or back for supplies), collecting hundreds of drops for a recipe or just killing ten rats repeatedly until you can get to the level where you're magically allowed to kill ten dire rats. I am truly saddened by the fact that difficulty is most typically made "hardcore" through excessive annoyance.
It's still purely artificial inflation - exactly the type that you claim to despise. I don't care whether you consider it "hardcore" or not, there's plenty of room to accommodate multiple levels of commitment to imaginary universes.