Tabula Rasa Hands-on Preview

The guys at Stropp's World have written up a quick hands-on preview of Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. Some cited reservations:
There seems to be only one real style of play, and that is using guns with some Logos action in the mix. Games like WoW, LotRO, and the like have a number of classes which allow a player to mix it up. Mages can be Frost, Fire or Arcane. There are Tanks, Rogues, Hunters with lots of variations. Tabula Rasa does allow specialisation of your character into a Guardian, Ranger, Demolitionist, Medic and the like later in the game, so it's hard to say for certainty on this, but I'm not sure it will really make all that much of difference to mix up the gameplay.

Overall, Tabula Rasa is way closer to LotRO on the scale than it is to VG:SOH. However, that is not to say that it is ready. The game is scheduled to be released on October the 19th which is less than a month away. I think it's too soon.