Avalon is totally original in its conception and has one of the most complex and brutal player versus player combat systems there is whilst still offering a complex economics system and 'Pacifists life-choice' for those who are not interested in combat and want to purely role play. Indeed, many of the games you are used to playing will have been based on the complex interaction between 'fighters' and 'non-combatants' which Avalon caters for. On the one hand you have those fighting toe-to-toe and on the other you have pacifists scheming and politicing behind the scenes. It is a game which set the standards for real time games play and deserves the illustrious title of the Online Games Network's Favourite MMORPG Award.

Avalon provides an expansive web site for additional help plus detailed history of the land. There is also an advanced Java client for immediate play and an in depth introduction for those who haven't played either Avalon or MMORPGs before. If you are experienced with the this type of game then you should be able to fly through the introduction quickly but if you aren't, you will be given plenty of time and help to learn your way around.

As a quick reference, here are some useful pages about Avalon:

Introduction to Online Game - Avalon; The Legend Lives

Mud Clients Guide

The Avalon Manual

One has to hand it to the makers of EVE. It is truly a massive game system. Though, truth be told, that is about all one has to hand to them. EVE is a step in the right direction as far as graphical MMORPGs are concerned. It boasts reasonable graphics and one can modify and buy new ships until the cows come home. There are literally thousands of permutations available for choosing both race and type of ship one will fly in. Unfortunately however, the complex statistical system available for players to puzzle through and get to grips with is utterly ruined by the unimaginative administration. As is prone to happen from time to time in all competitive MMORPGs, one race has totally dominated the game but where EVE has gone wrong is in that the race has been allowed to bully all 90 thousand other users to the point of slavery. Fascinating though this is to see from an outside perspective, it does rather ruin the game environment for new players. An invented story-line 'leveling' of the playing field by the admin would greatly improve Eve Online.

EVE Online description: "EVE takes place in a cluster of stars far from mankind's original habitat, planet Earth. How far away, and whether or not that cradle of civilization still exists, is a mystery. Humans arrived through a natural wormhole and, gazing up upon an alien sky they had never seen, were completely unable to determine where this new world was located. From the New Eden solar system, where the gate of EVE once led to the old world, humans expanded in all directions at a furious pace, exploring and colonizing rapidly...."

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa is an MMORPG from NCsoft, designed in part by some of the creators of Ultima Online including Richard Garriott. The game blends certain 'first person shooter' aspects of more traditional games into the combat system of an MMORPG. It was officially released to retail on November 2, 2007, allowing customers who pre-ordered the game to access the shared servers on October 30, 2007. The game requires an ongoing monthly subscription.

Tabula Rasa is about humanity's last stand against an alien race called "The Bane". The story takes place in the near future on two or three planets, which will be in a state of constant conflict between the AFS (Allied Free Sentients) and The Bane.

For those interested, Tabula rasa (Latin: scraped tablet or clean slate) refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.