You've seen every screenshot, watched every movie, pre-ordered and camped out to get a hold of the game on day one, frantically ripped off the wrapping, shoved it into your machine of choice and then... disappointmenton. Here's how we felt, what about you folks?

   

The latest Galactic Showcase post in LucasArts' and Sony Online Entertainment's Star Wars Galaxies official website features The House of Poetry. Located in Solleu-suv-Mer, Naboo, this area is a place where players can sit down, write their thoughts, and place it up on the wall for all to see.

The House of Poetry is open 24 hours a day and is a great place to meet new people (or aliens depending on your taste). Every first Friday of the month, the regulars of the location meet to talk about writing and poetry. If you're interested in gaining access to this place, you'll be pleased to know that admission is free. 

If you're passionate about writing and play LucasArts' Star Wars Galaxies, you might want to drop by The House of Poetry to chat with some of the people there. Heck, you probably won't find any other place in  the whole galaxy where you can openly post your thoughts without getting shot, cut, or trampled by a Bantha.

When fighting against somebody, we sometimes think, mostly in jest: can't we all just get along? In the upcoming MMORPG from NCsoft, Tabula Rasa, that is not an option - considering the Bane invaded Earth first. In this new video, we see the just how massive scale Tabula Rasa's war is going to be.

Alien environments, alien... well, aliens, plus the power of the Logos are showcased in to video. We also get a preview of how the war is going to be in-game and by the looks of it, it's going to be massive. Anyway, check out the Tabula Rasa video below to see what we mean.

Since it'll a little over a month before we see Tabula Rasa hit the shelves, it would be best to see the video. It just might tide you over until release.

 

The producer of the upcoming Transformers movie, Tom DeSanto, has his eyes set on procuring the rights for NCsoft's City of Heroes. He is currently planning on turning the popular MMORPG into a movie, and then into a television series.

DeSanto talked about this move saying that "a big superheroes vs. aliens movie" hasn't been done and that he envisions this as "the next big superhero franchise." That's well and good but he didn't factor in the appeal of the game. The game became popular not because of the storyline; it became popular because people wanted to play a superhero or supervillain that was their own creation. Movies and television shows in general lose that kind of interactivity.

That said, we'll just have to wait and see if his deal with NCsoft pushes through. After all, DeSanto is the same guy who secured the rights to Transformers and produced the first two X-men movies, he can probably pull off something like this right?

Gaming news website GameSpot recently scored an interview with Richard Garriott and Starr Long. The whole interview touches on the backstory and the enemies in NCSoft's upcoming MMORPGS Tabula Rasa.

According to Long, the game's producer, players will only be limited to playing human characters at launch. As the game continues to expand, players may be given more choices on what races they choose to play as, and "there may be options in the future for you to play one of the aliens who are our allies in the Allied Free Sentients."

Another cool feature that Long revealed is that players can freely check out the other variations of a character's class tree without having to create another new character. "What makes Tabula Rasa truly unique, though, is that at any point, you can create a clone of your character so you can explore all the variations of our class tree without starting over each time."

Combat will also be very fast-paced. As game designer Garriott revealed, apart from the humans fighting the bane, the game's whole environment is also up to its knees in action. "Non-player characters are constantly fighting each other (Bane versus AFS, predators versus prey, and so on) instead of just standing around waiting for you to kill them."

Tabula Rasa has just entered closed beta testing, and the developers are now focusing on new maps and missions, finishing all the Tier 4 abilities and weapons, crafting, and clan versus clan warfare. After that, finalizing content will be the main focus in order to meet the game's late 2007 release schedule. For the full interview, click on the "read" link below.

The massive surge of new MMORPGs spawned (and spawned again) a broad spectrum of games - from cowboy shooters to orcs, from dragons to spaceships - many of which are innovative. With so many MMOs around, a game would have to find a way to distinguish itself from the others.

So, those who want to play as aliens, raise your hands. Here comes Atriarch.

Currently being developed by World Fusion, Atriarch is a mix of RPG, strategy, and empire building elements which plunges players into the alien and organic world of Atriana. There are five character species, namely: Cavolon (Plantmasters), Eshlar (Architects), Lokai (Explorers), Tyrusin (Warriors), and Unarra (Beast Lords).

Currently, the devs have been using the Tyrusin Region of Pallidrost as a default location for their tests and demos. They will now include Drasius (Eshlar Port City), Orescent (Lokai Desert City & Capitol), and the Cavolon Foreign Embassy in the Swamps. Plus, all the cities will be melded into one globe instead of each resting on an individual globe. They also worked on some server bugs and still working on others.

We'll keep you posted on news about this new MMO. Atriarch is still accepting beta testers and you can check out their site by clicking the link below.

What in the world is Tabula Rasa and why should we bother checking out, or even trying out this MMO? Blizzard's Burning Crusade is coming out on January, there's Guild Wars Nightfall, why should I give a damn about Tabula Rasa?

Why should we care about this game? The storyline? So far, the backstory is your standard post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi fare. Nothing really new. Aliens go to earth, wipe things out, the world starts anew. Clean slate. Nothing new. Done and explored before. But what about the thicker-than-cream-soup betrayal plot? Nope. Knights of the Old Republic has explored the betrayal bit already. Not convinced.

What about the character design? Oh yeah, guys in suits fighting ugly-looking insect aliens. Nuh-uh nope. Beautiful as the screenshots may be, no. It isn't really exciting and new. It all looks like an ugly version of Halo mixed in with Star Wars.

What about the gameplay? What about the fact that in some planets, the gravity will be a bit different? What about the fact that the gameplay is a mix of MMORPG and Shooter? What about the huge choice of weaponry? What about those cool looking gameplay videos? What about the news that the development team is listening to cries in the Beta Test that people want Melee weapons, and the rumors that things like lightsabers will show up? Yawn. No not interested.

So what is it about Tabula Rasa that makes us want to play it?

Richard Garriot.

The guy responsible for Ultima. That's credibility right there.

Of course you guys can all accuse us of being a bit too snooty in the first four paragraphs, but there's reverse psychology for you.

The idea whether aliens are real or just a figment of man's imagination has been debated over and over in our history for a long time now. That is until Tabula Rasa. As far as the universe of the said MMORPG is concerned, the alien existence is very much true and they are capable of erasing humans from Earth with their advanced technologies. We are talking about the ruthless Bane that has suddenly appeared in Earth's territory and waged a war that can totally exterminate the human populace. While it seems that there is no hope for us to match their very advanced technology, light is within our reach.

For a quick history, the Bane used to be member of the alien race Eloh, but due to a series of events that lead to the betrayal by the Thrax, the Bane broke off from the Eloh and swore they will never be fooled again. In their quest to control all the planets and all living things within them, they came across the Blue Planet we know now as Earth.

Invasion ensues and chaos immediately spread all over the planet. But just as it seems that everything's gonna be Bane waste, the Earth's remaining inhabitants were able to discover advanced technology implanted by the Elohims centuries before and used them to create portals called wormholes to escape to other planets. Along with other alien planets who were also ravaged by the Bane, they formed an unusual alliance called Army of the Allied Free Sentients.

And now dear mortal, it is your duty to defeat these monsters and get rid of the universe, evil and greed. Hence the title Tabula Rasa which means clean slate. Yes, a new life is at hand, but only for those who dare raise arms against a race that is threatening to dominate the whole universe.