Like it or not, gold buying, selling, and powerleveling have become rather lucrative businesses, particularly with the stratospheric rise in popularity of the MMORPG. *cough*WoW*cough*. So what is it? Is it legal? Ethical? Dangerous? Sally forth dear reader, and find out for yourself!

If you thought pink fur was menacing, just try seeing it wrapped around a mean-looking alien with a blaster pointed at you.

After all the wordsand interviews (and the occasional video and screenshot of the week), we finally have a heap of new Tabula Rasa screenshots for your viewing pleasure. Check 'em out above and below.

Tabula Rasa, the brainchild of Ultima Online creator Richard Garriott, is one of the most highly-anticipated MMORPGs slated for a release this year. Set against the backdrop of hostile worlds and even more hostile enemies, Tabula Rasa puts players smack dab in the middle of humanity's last stand against the space-faring menace called The Bane.

NCSoft's Tabula Rasa is expected to go live in Q3 of this year.

More screenshots after the jump!

Word has been out that DKs will be removed come Burning Crusade. Some people have been speculating that DKs will be gone as soon as the December patch.

Well, Nethaera's been posting a lot on the WoW forums about this. As far as we can tell, it's leaning towards "highly likely." Of course it's not completely guaranteed that all that's on the beta servers will make make it smack dab unchanged to the live ones, but Nethaera's been persistent with her entries. Here's one of her more lengthy posts:

DKs were put in at the same time as the honor system to address so many people killing NPCs that were needed, but by doing so it was a bit more insurance than we really needed since most PvP was then moved to the Battlegrounds. I'm not saying we don't want PvP to still continue in the Battlegrounds because we definitely do, and we want it to occur in the Arenas and in the World via the World PvP options that are implemented and being implemented.

We don't want to kill city raids but we also don't want to have cities under siege 24/7. That's why you don't see the major city leaders dropping any sort of loot to make them a prime target for people trying to equip their characters. (I still would like to see some epic cheese though. mmm mmm)

There is a very delicate balance that we are trying to create here and it's not as simple as doing one thing only. It's like working a cryptex (ala Davinci Code). Getting everything just right is what everyone strives for. In this case though the code consists of what a variety of people want and figuring out exactly what combination is going to work best to make the most people happy.

Will it be open season on NPC's again? We'll have to wait and see.