april-burba
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NCsoft Austin sheds staff
Rumors abound across the manifold tubes of the Internet over just what is (or is not) presently going on at NCsoft Austin. NCsoft's Austin office is presently home to Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners, at least one unannounced fantasy MMO, and noticeably fewer developers than last week. We have some confirmed departures, including staff from Dungeon Runners such as April 'CuppaJo' Burba, and Crickette -- The much-loved April Burba, you may recall was the newly minted Associate Producer for Dungeon Runners, having recently transferred from the Tabula Rasa team. That comes courtesy of Jester of w00tstudios.net, a well known DJ and broadcaster on the MMO scene, via the CoX forums.
Tabula Rasa weekend roundup
The Tabula Rasa Friday Night Fights were, according to the Weekend Wrapup, more sparsely attended than usual because of the holiday, but the competition was still tight. Slamscape and Embers rose through the ranks in their respective brackets before they met each other in battle. After a fierce battle, Slamscape claimed the title of Friday Night Fight champion. Slamscape and his partner, Bethel, then faced Embers and Grier in the Final Challenge, but lost. Next week, the competitors will once again face Glass, Tabula Rasa's only four time championship winner, and soon to be, perhaps, it's first five time winner.Community manager April "CuppaJo" Burba is leaving the Tabula Rasa team for another position at NCsoft, and to give her a memorable farewell, they threw her a dance party. The images from the dance party are so disturbing, they will be branded into your brain forever. Look at them at your own peril.
Staffing shake-up on Tabula Rasa
Feelings must be mixed over at NCsoft Austin today, as the Tabula Rasa team is experiencing a bit of a staffing shake-up. April "CuppaJo" Burba, who only a few months ago was promoted from Community Manager to Associate Producer, will be leaving the team to take on the same Associate Producer role with the Dungeon Runners team, who just recently released their first retail box. Dane Caruthers, long-time Tabula Rasa team member, is being promoted from QA Lead to fill CuppaJo's combat boots at Associate Producer. and Neal Johnson will be getting the nod to take Dane's former position.Just two months ago, Tabula Rasa designer Paul Sage left the team to work on another unspecified project within NCsoft. The flight of their lead designer and associate producer within such a short timespan is worrying, to say the least. We don't think the game is going anywhere or anything dramatic like that, but as gamers it makes us a little uncomfortable to have people we don't know shepherding the team forward. We will, however, be looking forward to Dane's first communiques as Associate Producer.
SXSW08: How gamers are adopting the wiki way
One of the many excellent sessions in the ScreenBurn track at SXSW Interactive this year, the "How Gamers Are Adopting the Wiki Way" panel featured George Pribul (lead admin of WoWWiki.com), April "CuppaJo" Burba (Community Manager for NCsoft's Tabula Rasa), Angelique Shelton (GM of Wikia Gaming at Wikia Inc), and Jake McKee (Principal at Ant's Eye View) talking about the symbiotic relationship between gamers and wikis. Interesting factoid: WoWWiki is now the second largest English-language wiki in the world behind Wikipedia. At 3 million unique users per month, a full half of English-speaking WoW players visit WoWWiki every month. Head on over to our MMO-besotted sister site Massively for the complete writeup.
TR's CuppaJo dings, promoted to management
Tabula Rasa's lovely and lively community manager, April "CuppaJo" Burba has gotten the thumbs up from management to move on to greener pastures... situated a couple offices down the hallway. She's taken on the rank of Associate Producer for Tabula Rasa in recognition of her efforts on the game for the past three years. According to her letter to the community at large, she'll be taking on a sort of shepherd role, goading new patches through development from design to execution, as well as performing triage in outage issues and things like that. We hope she enjoys her new position and (we hope) expanded paycheck.Taking her place as the main community contact will be Amy Crider, better known to most players within the community as Dev_Critters. CuppaJo promises she'll poke her head when she can, and when Critters is on vacation. We, for our part, welcome our new Critters overlord (overlady?) and hope we've all got years of fun community events ahead of us.[Via TR Vault]
TTH interviews April "CuppaJo" Burba - again
Ten Ton drops "the Hammer" on Tabula Rasa's Community Coordinator April "CuppaJo" Burba again, this time they bombard her with a slew of questions regarding what players can expect from the Bane bashing game in '08. April's very honest answers (a trademark from her CoH days) might shock and amaze you as she dazzles them with a lot of new information.For instance, she readily admits that TRs end game needs work and players need more of a reason to move beyond level 30. Ironically, she even fesses up about an issue that seems to be gaining some serious traction - not just in TR, but within the industry as a whole: players don't feel special enough. A host of PvP and Clan changes are being worked on. New areas on the TR website will be added where players can access competition ladders and compare their characters (i.e., see how many PvP kills a player has, how fast someone completed a mission, what kind of loot they have, and more). She states that attribute points need to be tweaked because the way a player currently specs out their character doesn't affect them as much as it should. Uh, can you believe a game official actually admitted to that? Additionally, the ethical choices that players are faced with (which I really enjoy) will become much more meaningful. We don't want to give everything away (like the juicy tidbit about an upcoming contest regarding something very special - oops!)... so before I spill all the beans, hop on over to TTH's latest Q&A already!
