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Starr Long talks Tabula Rasa's future
Laura Genender, community manager for MMORPG.com, recently spoke with Starr Long, producer for Tabula Rasa, about the future of this sci-fi fragfest. What they have planned will most assuredly keep players coming back for more. Here are some of the highlights: Control Points will eventually be controllable by clans, and yes - other clans can then challenge them for it. This will be absolutely huge! A revamp of the Logos tablet seems imminent. For starters, players will be able to hear the entire story of the Eloha all at once instead of just bits and pieces at a time. Higher end game areas are being planned and "big plans" are in store for upper level content, some of which is already being worked on for release in near-future patches. A crafting revamp will occur early next year based on player feedback. Within the next few months they hope to release more new level 50 instances, Hybrids, PAUs, and the Clan ownership of Control Points. Just to name a few. For the complete manifest of new features, be sure to read the entire interview with Starr Long on MMORPG.com.
Forum Fun: Tabula Rasa Military Surplus 101
As a rush of items hit Tabula Rasa's new Military Surplus over the last couple days, things have been pretty chaotic, to say the least. Players have yet to strike a balance between prices that are ridiculously inflated and those that are barely higher than what you could sell them for to a vendor. There's a strange dichotomy to Tabula Rasa's economy that can be attributed to the fact that items aren't bind on equip. So you can get a purple quest reward, use it until you grow out of it, and then sell it on the Military Surplus for a tidy profit. (Or my preferred strategy, buy the quest reward as soon as you're high enough level for it, use it until you receive you've completed the quest, then sell the duplicate for what you paid.) Theoretically, this should lead to a huge glut of rare items on the Military Surplus, but people are still spending AFS credits by the boatload.As a service to the community, forum poster Doctor Victeonus put up a "Military Surplus 101" thread over on the PlanetTR forums. In it, he outlines what the MSRP (Military Surplus Recommended Pricing - very clever Doc) should be for items of different grades and levels. I haven't had the chance to try out his method since the market has calmed down a bit, but it's a very interesting guideline nonetheless. Now if somebody could just sort out the insane market for crafting ingredients, I'd be a happy camper.
Military Surplus not without bugs
As reported to you yesterday, patch 1.3 of Tabula Rasa went live yesterday, bringing in many of the changes, fixes, and additions that we'd been salivating over for weeks. The addition of Military Surpluses, which allow players to auction off crafting items and old or unused gear, was among our favorite new things to play with (along with the change in itemization), because it gave some value to those AFS credits we'd been hoarding since launch. And while there were kinks in the repair numbers that got ironed out yesterday, there appear to be more bugs within the Military Surplus of which we weren't initially aware. From the official website:Some players are reporting their auctions from yesterday are currently missing their date and time. We are investigating this issue, but so far, it does not appear that items are at risk. We will post an update as soon as we have it. Thank you for your patience.It didn't sound like too big a deal until I logged on this afternoon and found that some of my items on auction not only lacked a start or end date, but could not be taken down from the Military Surplus. What a bummer! Of course, I'd still recommend continuing to put up items as normal, because the market for purples is still so inflated that there's a tremendous amount of money to be made, bugs or not.
Tabula Rasa 1.3 patch delights despite repair hiccup
After much to-do, Tabula Rasa's 1.3 patch finally went live today. The Military Surpluses are finally giving the game's currency some value, the Festive Seasonal Holiday Observance Flora look spectacular, and rare weapons are finally doing the sort of damage befitting their type. My purple Laser Cannon went from being a situational weapon to one that I can use in a huge melee to considerable success. I am overcome with holiday joy!The only hiccup was a problem with the repair system, which DG has acknowledged and are currently hotfixing as we speak. The changes to itemization necessitated that rare weapons were more costly to repair, but something got fudged in the implementation, and when players logged back in post-patch, they found that the item health on their equipment was much lower than it was pre-patch, and that things were prohibitively expensive to fix. As of 4:30 EST, they pulled down the servers to fix this problem. The update on the website says that players that logged in before this fix will receive a "credit bonus" to compensate. We'll see what that means when the game comes back up in a little bit.
MyTabulaRasa fires up the BBQ Awards
MyTabulaRasa likes things hot. Which is good considering that a great deal of the United States is getting pounded by Old Man Winter at the moment. If you visit TR's Forums & Fansites section you'll find this description for them: MyTabulaRasa is one of the only pure forum based fansites for the Tabula Rasa Community. If you like things hot, stop on by, because these forums are burning with rants, raves, and game intel.Fitting considering the new contest these folks are running. The Barbeque Awards let troops show off just how they put the kibosh on other players during Player versus Player matches. All you need to is submit the hottest screen shot of your winning moment and you might win a prize. Oh, these aren't just your run of the mill ghetto prizes either. MyTabulaRasa don't roll like that.The BBQ Awards will be held each month and the player who submits the best screenshot gets themselves a 15-day game key. Each monthly winner will then move on to the finals (held every six months) where they'll be pitted against the other five monthly winners. The prize? Six months of free gameplay. Ya, you read that right. Oh, and shots of your victorious moment are allowed from Clan Battles and Solo victories.They're are a few rules and regs (nothing that would stop anyone from doing something that's FREE), so check out the BBQ Awards page on MyTabulaRasa. What are you waiting for solider?!
Richard Garriott talks MMOs at GWU lecture
Yesterday, the Washington DC chapter for the Association of Computer Machinery welcomed game design guru Richard Garriott to speak at its last meeting for the 2007 calendar year. Garriott, who has been writing and designing games professionally since the age of 19, is currently the executive producer on Tabula Rasa, though he's perhaps better known as the man behind Ultima Online, likely the MMO for which he will be most remembered. It helped pioneer the massively multiplayer game as we know it, and ushered in many gaming conventions that we're still familiar with today.While we were expecting something of a more technical speech from Garriott given the venue, the lecture was more autobiographical, with the esteemed Lord British explaining how, as one of the industry's oldest members, he's had to ride the wave of expectations in PC gaming over time. He also reflected on many aspects of Tabula Rasa's recent release, making it a relevant discussion for gamers who are more familiar with his more recent offerings in the genre.
Tabula Rasa patch this week, attributes not part of respec
In case you missed the Weekend Wrap-up post by the impeccable community staff over on Tabula Rasa's official website, here's the scoop. The long awaited 1.3 patch will be hitting the live servers this week, heralding in some of the big change we've been talk about for weeks, including the Rage nerf, Military Surpluses, the itemization changes, and perhaps even the completely non-denominational Festive Seasonal Holiday Observance Flora. The only downside is that the promised respec will not apply to attributes. So you can reset all your ability points governing which skills you can use, but your attributes won't get another look until 1.4.As excited as we are to see all these changes, perhaps more exciting is the rapid pace that Destination Games is setting for getting their content from the test servers onto the live servers. We reported on the changes to the build on the PTR only a week ago, and already they're set to go live? That's pretty impressive. It's much faster than certain other games that I won't mention by name.Click here to check out the patch notes.
Tabula Rasa 'Recruit a Rookie' rundown
We know that many gamers were finally seduced into Tabula Rasa's warm embrace with the recent deal that popped up on Amazon, where you could get the CE for half off the retail price, but we also know that MMO players as a whole are a jaded lot, and bargain prices alone aren't enough to to pull you away from your current games of choice. To this end, NCsoft is currently running a refer a friend promotion for Tabula Rasa that could net you a three day trial of the shooty sci-fi MMO. On the PlayNC site (under Account > Manage > Game Accounts > Tabula Rasa), subscribers can email a trial code to a buddy, which will allow them to download the client and give the game a spin. For those who don't have friends who would be interested in receiving a trial, or who people looking for a code themselves, try one of the links below: Tabula Rasa Vault's Referral Thread PlanetTR's Trial Key Request Thread SciFi Massive's Recruit a Rookie Thread In the event that you do choose the purchase the game after using a trial, make sure to use your game code to upgrade your account, not make a new one. Every time somebody upgrades their account from a trial to a full account, the person who made the referral receives a free month of play time. There is a limit of four referrals per account, but that's a potential four free months for the cost of sending a few emails. So hop to it.
Tabula Rasa servers down, rabble rabble rabble! [Updated]
In a bit of news that I am quite displeased to report, Tabula Rasa appears to be having server troubles this evening, as both Western servers, Cassiopeia and Orion, have gone offline for some seemingly unscheduled maintenance. When we first sat down to write this post, the European server Centaurus was down as well, but has since come back online. We're hoping that this is just a freak incidence of somebody tripping over a power cord or something, and not a debilitating outage. The Bane can't be trusted on a server by themselves all weekend.No word from Destination Games yet, but we'd expect an update soon. In the meantime, I'll be... I don't know, reading a book or something?[Update: As of 10:37 EST, the servers all appear to be online and in working order. Back to battle with you, soldiers!]
Richard Garriott to speak at GWU on December 10th
Just a heads up to any massively multiplayer nuts living in the DC Metro area, Destination Games head honcho and MMO luminary Richard Garriott will be speaking to the DC Chapter of the Association for Computer Machinery on December 10th at George Washington University from 7 to 9 p.m. EST. Garriott will be talking about some of the more technical aspects of modern game development, getting into the nitty gritty of design documentation, programming techniques, and UI creation. The lecture is free, so even if you just want to come to sit and swoon at the infamous Lord British, you're welcomed to do so.Of course, if you're from the other side of the country or just can't make it, you can check back here to Massively where we'll have a write-up of the lecture for your viewing pleasure.
Theorycrafting: putting Rage to the test
There are times, and it happens with almost every game released, when the description of a certain game mechanic or ability is ambiguous enough that players are left unsure of exactly what it does in certain specific game situations. When the devs aren't handy to provide direct clarification, there is a certain subsect of the gaming population that likes to engage in theorycrafting, grabbing large chunks of data to see how closely abilities work in practice to the numbers set forth on their tooltips or in the patch notes. Among the only solid theorycrafting I've seen so far for Tabula Rasa is from the folks over on the Tabula Spot forums, where among the many things they're working, is on figuring out which Logos abilities stack with Rage.So far, the results don't look terribly promising. Neither Lightning Discharge nor Shrapnel show a statistically significant difference in damage when Rage is activated (and here we seem to be talking about the nerfed Rage on the PTR). This seems to conflict with the Rage tooltip, which says in part, "Utilize the power of Logos to increase the damage done by your attacks." Interestingly, while Rage doesn't appear to work with Logos abilities, it does work with hand-to-hand. Methinks they should consider amending the tooltip to reflect the way it actually works.
Paul Sage promises changes for Specialist classes
Hey all you Specialists out there! Feeling a bit down? Tired of your Soldier friends flaunting those fancy chainguns and graviton armor while you run through the Plains in motor assist? Sick of throwing heals at pick up groups who forget you're even there? Well hang in there friends, because Paul Sage has the answer for you! According to the erstwhile Tabula Rasa designer, many of the changes in patch 1.3 are aimed at shoring up some of the weaknesses in the Biotech and Medic trees, including an AE damage/heal for the Biotech and a big debuff ability in Disease for Medics.Perhaps more importantly, Sage revealed that they're going to be tweaking the significance of attributes to try and make Health a more meaningful statistic, instead of its utility now, which is basically just a rough estimation of how long it will be until you die once your armor is worn down. These changes won't be coming until 1.4, so they may be over a month away, but it's reason enough to go back to level 5 and retry that Specialist clone again, if you haven't already.
TR 1.3 patch heralds in big changes on PTR
It seems like it's been a long time coming, but many hotly-anticipated changes to Tabula Rasa are finally making their way onto the build currently running on the PTRs. Exactly which changes, you ask? Well, honestly, just about all of them. According to the patch notes they released today, Rage is getting its big nerf, Military Surpluses will be implemented to give the game's economy a serious kick in the butt, itemization has been changed to make item rarity factor into damage, players all get a free respec, and of course, there are tons of bug fixes, skill tweaks, and even a few new missions.There's no ETA on this patch going live, but the preface to the patch fixes seems to indicate that it might be another few weeks. According to the notes, "We are giving players patches earlier in the development process now - so this patch will NOT be going to the live servers. We will have another patch going on the test server in the near future that will be closer to a 'live' version." Giving it a bigger lead time seems like a good idea, but the sooner they can get these fixes live, the sooner general chat will stop being a non-stop Rageathon.
Garriott says too many Beta testers hurt Tabula Rasa
Gamasutra caught up with well-known designer Richard Garriott at the Independent Games Conference held late last month in Austin, TX. During the event he was asked what lessons he took away from the marketing of Tabula Rasa; his response was a bluntly negative appraisal of their Beta test. Too many testers were added too early, in his opinion, which created a current of negative views in the community and soured a lot of potential players on the game. The people who did participate in the beta, we've had to go back to and say 'look, look, we promise: we know it wasn't fun two months ago, but we fixed all that. Really, come try it again.' We've had to go out and develop free programs to invite those people back for free before they go buy it. So the beta process, which we used to think of as a QA process, is really a marketing process.Massively, of course, was there as well. Check out Elizabeth Harper's great writeup of the keynote in full.
Top 5 combat tips for Tabula Rasa recruits
So you bought Tabula Rasa, created your character, and conquered basic training with ease, and maybe even found your first Logos. Good for you! As with any new MMO though, the learning period has only just begun. There are a myriad of subtleties, strategies, and nuances that dictate your success in Tabula Rasa, and most of them are only discovered via trial and error. That or prodigious use of alt+tab and Google. After spending some time on TR's dedicated new players channel, we've boiled down the most common sources of complaint and confusion, and compiled them into our top 5 list of combat tips for Tabula Rasa recruits. It's by no means a comprehensive guide, but for players still getting their bearings, and perhaps even for some veterans, this should serve as a basic guide to surviving in Destination Games' Tabula Rasa.
Tabula Rasa devs foster Friday Night Fights
Destination Games posted another Tabula Rasa Weekend Wrap-up this morning, revealing the results of the latest Friday Night Fight. As part of their burgeoning community-centric approach to their game, they've been heavily involved in supporting the event that, not unlike the group in a particular movie starring Brad Pitt, seems to have started organically and has gradually grown with the support and interest of the player base. In Friday Night Fights, players roll new characters, strip them of all their high-tech weaponry and armor, and duke it out in hand-to-hand in a tiered series of battles.What separates FNF from a nude gnome raid on Iron Forge is that the developers have actually helped facilitate transforming it into a legitimate community event, building a boxing ring for the event to take place in, and making sure that Tabula Rasa dignitaries like Sarah Morrison and General British are on-hand to cheer the fighters to victory. They're so involved, in fact, that after this past weekend's tournament, the winner was granted one of General British's berets, the only one like it in the game. When is the last time Thrall paid players the same mind?
Forum fun: an open letter to Tabula Rasa's minimap
One of the joys of the weekend is that we actually have time (sometimes) to bounce around the internet, hitting up all our favorite forum spots to see what the buzz is on various game community forums. Given that I myself have become something of a Tabula Rasa addict, I've taken to patrolling the loose confederation of forums that make up the community in lieu of official forums. Among the posts that caught my attention most was a rant on PlanetTR's Rants and Flames forum by poster BenBot. He begins his post:Dear Minimap, I hate you. Don't we all. Benbot brings up a number of good points in his post, not least of which is that there are often no discernible visual cues that differentiate between terrain that can be traversed and terrain that can't, and the minimap often confuses this issue by making it appear as though you're right on top of a mission objective, when it's actually on the other side of hill that it's going to take 20 minutes to get around. Anybody whose ever been to Benefactor Valley in the The Divide will feel my pain. And unfortunately, it is something that's unlikely to be addressed with the current content, because of the work involved with going back to re-texture old terrain. That won't stop people from complaining about it though, or us from reporting on it!
Weapon swap glitch in TR to get hotfix soon
Destination Games threw a quick notice on their website last night saying that they had been made aware of, and were currently working on a fix for, what has become a very troublesome bug in their seminal MMO release, Tabula Rasa. The bug, in the wording of the release, made it such that, "If you try to switch weapons immediately after firing, your weapon will remain the same. Instead you have to wait a sec or two, then try to switch again." That's putting a bit of a sugar-coating on the bug, which has actually been much more of a nuisance than their release lets on.One of Tabula Rasa's most endearing gameplay features is that it's combat requires quick, almost shooter-like speed and precision in order to dispatch with enemies as efficiently as possible. Soldier classes need to be able to move between their equipped weapons smoothly, as different weapon types serve very specific purposes in combat, and moving between them mid-battle is absolutely key to taking on large, mixed groups of enemies. Specialists too need to be able to move between their repair and healing tools at will, in order to maximize their utility at keeping parties alive. According to the release, it should be fixed as of this morning's maintenance. This bug has thrown a wrench in the way the game has played the last two days since the patch, so we're happy to see them getting on top of it ASAP.
TR Feedback Friday addresses Military Surplus, emotes, bugs
Well we have to say, the folks doing the community management for Tabula Rasa have done a tip-top job keeping up with community feedback and maintaining an on-going dialog with the player base, even despite their lack of official message boards. For this week's Feedback Friday, they've addressed a number of concerns that have been plaguing the Tabula Rasa community recently. Most notably, they said that the Military Surplus stores aren't quite ready to go live yet, but are available on the public test realms for those interested. They also announced that some new emotes will be hitting servers soon as veteran rewards and there'll also be a special /cutthroat emote for those who were part of the end of beta event. Very cool.Considering the game has only been out a month, we haven't really gotten a good feel for the patch release schedule yet. But just based on the way they're talking about it and the speed that things seem to be moving from PTR to the live servers, we'd be willing to bet that Military Surpluses will make their way live in another two weeks or so, and at the very latest before the end of the calendar year. We'll keep you posted.
Live at the Independent Game Conference: Richard Garriott keynote
This morning your cheerful (only because we've had enough caffeine) Massively staffers are reporting to you live from the Independent Game Conference in Austin, Texas where Richard Garriott is about to deliver the morning's keynote address. For those of you who aren't sure why you should care, let me give you a mini-bio: Richard Garriott helped pioneer the MMO industry with the launch of Ultima Online a decade ago. If that that doesn't ring any bells, all I can say is that you could trace the heritage of most massively multiplayer games today directly back to UO. This morning, Garriott is going to be speaking on good game design through research. Curious to hear his thoughts on the subject? Keep reading for our live coverage of his keynote.
