What are some of the similarities and differences that you have noticed in the development process on Tabula Rasa compared to when you were trying to get Ultima Online off the ground?

Richard Garriott: Mostly differences. With UO, we were in a fight to exist at all. No one believed in MMOs, so we had no funding. No one knew what features would be popular so we built lots of things not knowing how or if players might like it. We were writing code that had never been tried before, so it was hard to get it working well. With TR, the company has faith in MMOs, that’s all we do. We have a basic understanding of how to put it together, most all of our engineers have done it before. We have a basic understanding of what has come before in design, so now we are trying to push the envelope and bring new types of game play to players. That has been hard in its own way.