January 12, 2001: Raph Koster was the lead designer of Ultima Online and is now working on an online Star Wars game. In case I haven't linked to it before, his personal site has a wealth of information about designing Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs (aka Persistant Worlds aka blah blah blah). Check out the Gaming section to begin with. The guy has a lot to say.

And he's speaking at this interesting-looking conference: Entertainment in the Interactive Age along with (among others) Will Wright, of SIMs fame and other gaming bigshots.