Curse-Gaming TR Hands On/1

==NCSoft Office Tour==
Two weeks ago NCSoft invited Curse out to their offices in Austin, Texas. On the agenda was not only Tabula Rasa - their upcoming sci-fi MMORPG - but also an entire day of activities ranging from a tour around the NCSoft offices, to a guided tour of Richard Garriott's famed Britannia Manor.
It was a very eventful day; one filled with lots of entertainment - both in the realm of video games and outside of it.
It started off fairly ordinarily; we met up with Richard Garriott, Starr Long, and Paul Sage in the NCSoft conference room. After a brief introduction, the fun started, and Garriott took us on a tour of the office, showing us many of his collections that he's placed throughout the various rooms and hallways.
These items serve as landmarks, not only for Garriott, but also for Origin and NCSoft. The first stop was the famed Apple II where Garriott programmed and published his first game - Akalabeth - in 1979, which was later published in a flashier packaging by California Pacific Computer Company. Seeing this really painted a picture of the history of one of the greatest minds in video gaming history; even the industry's best can - and probably did - start out small.
From there he took us to another section of the office - a rather long hallway - with framed pictures lining it from one end to the other. He explained that this hallway was a chronological history of not only his works, but Origin's, and ultimately NCSoft's - all the way from the original print Akalabeth, sold in a zip-lock bag on one end - to Guild Wars: Factions on the other end.
He also explained a bit of the history of each of the games on the wall, and mentioned that Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar was the first Ultima game in which he really tried to focus on expanding the story arcs and making sure that they were able to carry over into future titles. This did well, as the story of some of these characters continued on through Ultima VI: The False Prophet.
When we got to the end of this wall of framed works, he mentioned that soon he will be adding Guild Wars: Eye of the North and Tabula Rasa to it.
Another interesting picture was a framed concept art piece for each class in Tabula Rasa. The reason it was interesting is comical in nature; next to the Ranger class artwork was a picture of none other than Walker - Texas Ranger, a Chuck Norris-played character from a mid-90's TV series.
That ended the tour of Garriott's game development history, and so we headed back to the conference room, to talk Tabula Rasa.
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