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Tabula Rasa team talks two patches ahead, sort of
Another week brings another gaggle of player questions for Critters over at the Tabula Rasa community team. Nothing of terribly much interest this week, though they're reporting that the development team is already on their second week of development on patch 1.6... which saddens my little gamer heart because we've scarcely heard any details about 1.5 yet. We know it exists, surely, but since one of the few details we have heard was later rescinded, it's hard to get terribly optimistic about the whole thing. We're not totally wise on the development process, but doesn't it seem a little premature to be working on 1.6 when players have only just came to terms with 1.4? Maybe I'm out of touch, that's always a possibility.They also go on to address some slightly mundane questions like whether there are unlimited clone credits (no), whether player attributes pass over to clones (yes), whether item rarity should be affecting the quality of tools (yes, and they're fixing it), and whether we can get some more information on the always-popular Personal Armored Units (no, but stay tuned). There seems to be a growing frustration with these community updates, to which we are certainly not immune, and it stems from the general absence of real substantive developer feedback about player concerns. We'll see what the mood is next week.
NCRage goes toe to toe with "Critters"
NCRage (a new website dedicated to all things NCsoft, so you know I'm a member) recently sat down with Amy "Critters" Crider, the Tabula Rasa Community Coordinator, and talked about her role, the community program, and what the dev team is working on next.Rage asked her about the interesting dynamic between TR and the fan community, specifically in regards to the fact that unlike CoX, Tabula Rasa does not have any official forums. They're all run through third party fansites. Part of Critters job is to work directly with them by promoting their features and events. She personally visit them daily to address or note hot topics, and provides "official" responses on a regular basis. In fact, the community is so important that issues in the past have been bumped up on the "To Do" list. One example given by Critters was item rarity. The whole concept was "introduced to make mission rewards more important and make it easier to recognize an item's worth." Plus, several emotes were added based on player suggestion.Be sure to check out the whole interview with Critters. It goes without saying that NCsoft knows how to run an MMO. The players make the game, and giving them this much access, attention and say is undoubtedly something that other, less gamer-friendly MMOs, should take to heart.
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]
Cassiopia server's roleplay event recap
Last week we reported on an ambitious roleplay event happening on Tabula Rasa's Cassiopia server. For those of you who didn't or couldn't attend, here's the lowdown on what happened. The gist of it was to take all control points in Descent and hold them for one hour. Things started off well with the capture of Fort Virgil. The large group then split into various smaller groups and went after different control points around the battlefield. Around the time they were grabbing the final control point, the group lost Virgil again. So Alpha Wolf Tommy (who we assume is some sort of sci-fi Rambo) went and took back Fort Virgil single-handedly. By this time, the GM who was in attendance by the name of Critters, was spawning things left and right for the group to kill. Eventually Critters surprised everyone by spawning entire packs of Striders, which are strong enough on their own. In the chaos of defeating all the Striders, the group yet again lost Fort Virgil and so the event ended. Although there were rewards for everyone involved as they regrouped at camp Cato. Apparently pleased with their efforts, Critters handed out berets and some obligatory screenshots were taken for good measure.All in all it sounds like everyone had lots of fun. So like we said last time, we hope these continue to happen at healthy intervals on all the servers.
Vanity, thy name is Pet
Och, that's reaching for it, innit? Regardless, Time Well Wasted's Justin Olivetti has posted about one of my favorite topics: collecting 'vanity pets', those (not always) little autonomous critters that follow you around and do little other than look cute. Actually, Justin's provided a well-thought-out list describing the things pets actually do, and he doesn't just talk about World of Warcraft, either. So it's stand up and be counted time, O Readers: What's your favorite pet, and what did you do to get it? In fact, I welcome screenshots ... if I get enough of them, I'll post a gallery. Imagine: your critter, famous! You may send your shots to akela.talamasca at weblogsinc.com.[Thanks, Justin!]
WoW Moviewatch: Think of the animals
ZeusJones sends along this movie he made, in support of his new organization seeking to protect the apparently innocuous wildlife around Azeroth. How many innocent lives have you mindlessly snuffed? Please, stop the slaughter. Now, I'm all for Zeus' little campaign (and he's even got a blog up and running for it), but I want to warn him: those animals might not be as harmless as they seem. True story: I was in Heroic Underbog this weekend, and a frog hopped by while we were waiting for mana. I clicked on him, and Frost Shocked him out of his little froggy existence, as I usually do whenever we see critters around.And I kid you not-- I was very surprised to see a little red 1 roll up my scrolling combat text. I checked the combat window, and sure enough: "Frog hits you for 1." Completely true. I don't know how he did it (it was an instant spell! he's a critter!), but that frog tried to take a bite out of me. Maybe I should have bought Griftah's amulet.
Flipper Critters video provides pinball fix
The Nintendo Gal has been so kind as to upload this very delectable, mouth-watering video for Flipper Critters, a game that seeks to revolutionize the way we think about pinball. The footage presented really conveys an awkward approach to the timeless flipper-flapping past time of gaming. This isn't to say that the awkwardness presented is to be taken negatively, however, as we're very excited to give the final product a go after seeing this footage. Beyond the video, Nintendo Gal's kindness even extends to offering up a plethora of screenshots as well.[Via Nintendo Gal]
