Tabula Rasa - After Action Report

[Reginald]

Recently, Richard Garriott announced his 'Operation Immortality'.  This is an event that will save a history of humanity's greatest achievements, digitized human DNA, and personal messages from people all over the world.  This archive will be stored on the International Space Station in October 2008 by Richard Garriott himself.  He will be the sixth private citizen to travel into space.  As part of this endeavor and to commemorate this event; Destination Games and NCSoft invited all previous Beta Testers and former players to come back to Tabula Rasa for the majority of the month of August.  This gave us a chance to see not only what directions the game has taken, but also to participate in Operation Immortality ourselves through in-game special events and quests.

I was in the first or second wave of Closed Beta testers for Tabula Rasa and I stuck with it until near the end of Open Beta.  I will admit that at the time I was sorely disappointed in the game as a whole and decided that I did not want to subscribe to the game in it's current form.  There were far too few quests and much to much 'grinding' in that original launch version.  Both interface and crafting instructions were nearly non-existent and the immersion factor never panned out for me since there was no story or quest line to follow.

Fast forward to August 2008; nearly a year after it's original November 2007 launch and how the game has changed!  You start out in Basic Training which is a small single player instance.  In basic training, you learn the general interface elements, the basic movement commands and how to shoot and use your logos powers.  It is a well crafted instance which not only gives you a concise introduction to the game controls but also lets you experience the war that is raging on the planet in a small controlled area.  The missions in it are varied and give you a good sampling of the situations that you will encounter once in the game proper.  You will be required to do everything from securing a Control Point (CP) to using explosives to clear a crashed drop ship from a landing pad so that reinforcements can come in to help re-secure the area.

The main game continues in this way with a wealth of missions and clearly defined objectives.  There are several instances in each zone which, when played will advance the story line.  However, other aspects of the story will emerge through many missions that occur in the general zone.  Each zone has several bases and CPs or Control Points.  The enemy, the Bane, will attack these CPs in FORCE.  While the NPCs will help to defend a CP, it requires a coordinated effort on the part of the players to ensure that the CP doesn't fall into Bane hands.  If the CP is captured, you no longer have access to it's teleport station (waypoint) or any of the special services that might be offered there when the CP is in AFS hands.

One of the more interesting situations in the game that I found was the inclusion of morality based missions.  Similar to some of the Ultima games for which Richard Garriott is famous; you are sometimes given missions where you can choose one of two or possibly more paths to mission completion.  One path will always be to follow orders from AFS command to the letter.  Other path(s) will allow you to do what you may feel is morally correct even if it goes against your orders from AFS command.  Sometimes the effect of your choice is immediately apparent in the form of new missions.  However, after talking to some of the veterans of the game, they say that your decisions may come back to haunt you, or reward you later on in your career.  They would not give me any specifics beyond that ominous statement saying that it was ultimately more fun to learn the effects as you went along.  An example of one of these 'morality' quests that you encounter very early on is a rather shady character that you meet loitering outside of the main hospital base.  Since he is being 'watched' he asks you to deliver some 'goods' for him.  These goods are illicit drugs that have been stolen from the base hospital.  At this point you can choose to go to the base commander who has already let you know that he is trying to track down the person that is selling these drugs or you can deliver the drugs.  If you turn the perpetrator in to the commander you will get a nice pat on the back and a couple of credits for a job well done and service to the AFS.  However, if you deliver the drugs, you can get a large payoff of credits (that you can really use in this early stage of the game) and a promise of possibly even more lucrative missions in the future.  Which way you go is up to you...

There are currently 4 servers; 2 West Coast USA, 1 East Coast USA, and 1 European server.  With your account you get 16 character slots on each server.  All of your characters on a particular server share the same unique last name.  You can choose any first name to go along with it or have the game generate a random first name for you.  This is particularly helpful when dealing with your Friend List.  When adding a new friend, you merely enter the players last name.  Unlike many other games, this allows you to see if your friend is online and which character s/he is playing without having to enter every one of their character names in your friend list.  When you open your friend list; it will show the entire name (first and last) of the current character that your friend is playing, what level s/he is and what zone they are in.  There is a limit of 200 friends in your friend list, so if you had several altaholic friends that used all 16 of their character slots this allows you to list ALL of them but only take up 1 space for the purposes of the list.  Another nice feature in Tabula Rasa is the shared storage amongst your characters.  When you join the AFS you are issued an AFS footlocker.  Nearly every base and town etc. in the game will have a bunk house or tent where you will find a footlocker.  You can use any footlocker in the game to get to your shared storage space.  This space can hold both money and items and any of your characters may withdraw or deposit both funds and items into the footlocker that are then available to all other characters on your account.

TR even has a unique answer to the altaholics out there.  Often times it becomes a drag to constantly go over the same old beginning missions time and again before you get to the 'good' stuff and the higher level capabilities that make each class stand apart.  In Tabula Rasa when you complete certain feats you can get a clone credit.  This credit can be used at any time but it's best used just before you have to make a big decision in the life of your character.  For example: let's say you had previously decided that your character was going to be a Soldier (All purpose damage dealing type class) as opposed to a Specialist (Healer support and magic type class).  When you reach level 15 as a Soldier you have the option of either going the 'Tank/Melee' route or the 'Stealth/Ranged' route.  If you have a clone credit, you can 'clone' your character before you make your decision and then make one of each class.  You create your clone from the character log-in screen.  Select the character you wish to clone; if that character has a clone credit you can choose the clone option and you are presented with the character creation screen.  Here you can select a new first name for your character as well as customize his face, hair, body, height, etc.  The important thing to note is that this character once created will be the same level as the original character from which you cloned him or her.  The new clone will enter the game in the same location where it's original character last logged out.  However, this character will have none of it's skill or ability points spent and will have no equipment other than basic clothes so that he/she isn't running around in their skivvies!  In this way, you can get to the 'fun' part of the class without having to slog through all the basic missions, accomplishments etc. that you just completed.  While you can use your clone credit(s) any time you have one or more, most of the veterans suggest that you wait until you are at one of the class split positions so that you can try all of the classes with as little repeat grinding as possible.

The loot structure of Tabula Rasa is pretty consistent with most other MMOs.  When you slide your mouse over an item you will see the name in a bar along the top while the rest of the box lists the statistics and bonuses of the item.  The name bar will display in one of 4 colors:  a gray bar indicates a basic non-enhanced item, this is what in most games is referred to as vendor trash; a green bar indicates a modified item, these are equivalent to the low level magic items in most other MMOs; a blue bar indicates an experimental item, these items are significantly more powerful than green or gray items; finally a purple bar indicates a prototype item, these items are the best of the best.  Every item in the game can be 'enhanced'.  Enhancement recipes can be bought from vendors, given as a quest reward, or dropped off of slain enemies.  All items can have a maximum of 4 enhancements on them and each enhancement has a level range from 1 through 5.  All enhancement recipes will require one or more specialized pieces of salvage.  This salvage is not dropped from enemies, instead any item or equipment that is green or higher can be disassembled at any crafting station.  When you place an eligible piece of equipment into the crafting station matrix a list of possible salvageable components along with their chance of being salvaged is displayed.  It is this salvaged material that is used to craft or make modifications to your equipment.

While the community is fairly small the General chat is always lively and for once in an MMO I wasn't tempted to turn it off.  The majority of the existing players are very welcoming to new people and even the most basic questions are explained and answered.  While you might get one person that laughs at some of the more basic questions he is often 'put in his place' by the other players who seem quite eager to help ease new players into the game.

Tabula Rasa unfortunately got off to a rocky start and has received very little attention since that time.  However, the developers have not been idle in the past year and it shows in every aspect of the game.  During the past few weeks there has been a massive influx of people; either ex-beta testers like myself or returning or entirely new players who decided to try the game after hearing about Operation Immortality.  In any case while chatting with these players the overall opinion seemed to be positive with the majority of new and returning players stating their intention to get a subscription and keep on playing after their free time ended.

There is a lot to like in Tabula Rasa.  If you are looking for a good fast paced mix of traditional MMO and 3rd person shooter coupled with a mature and friendly community Tabula Rasa is definitely worth your time to check out.  As for me, you'll find me on the East Coast server (Pegasus) as Patronus.  While I've tried to give a little bit of an overview of what I've experienced the last couple weeks here in this post, if you have any specific questions on things that I did not cover, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

[Kaid]

I tried tabula rasa about 8 months or so ago. It is an interesting game and is a lot better now than when it was in beta but it suffers from one main problem for me. Its not enough of a FPS for a fps person and its to much FPS for most who enjoy mmo's and it had such a crappy start that it just never could get its feet under it. Honestly the whole invasions and attacks were very immersive and it had a lot of interesting stuff but it was just to little to late for me.

[Reginald]

Tabula Rasa was never meant to be an FPS.  It was always intended to be a faster paced, science fiction MMO.  Due to it's poor start and it's lack of missions people thought that it was just an ill conceived FPS.  Now that the mission structure is fully in place the fact that it is an MMO in a science fiction setting is really shining through.  You don't have to grind or do base defense to level up if you don't want to.  You can go from 1 to 50 only doing quests and still have plenty of quests left over.

From what I have seen so far, there are at least 3 different planets to which you can travel.  Each planet has zones and missions and base defense and everything else that the game now offers.  Also, once you get one human character to level 50 then you will open up mission sequences that allow you to play alien races and hybrids.  Each which has it's own story line in the game.

[Bearmug]

Well, I read this thread, made a trial account, downloaded the client, played..... upgraded account .

Few things I like:

1. Crafting - simple and easy, use skillpoints for crafting skills instead of combat skills, without all the random junk crafting to get to crafting skill/level x and be able to make what you really want - it is getting changed though, so it remains to be seen how will it go.
2. Gear binding - only non-tradeable items I found for now are starter gear. I even put some Experimental quest rewards on auction. I actually bought some before I did quest, noticed it's same as quest reward and put mine on auction . You can put armour on, use it, outlevel it, and trade it to someone else or drop in your locker for your next alt.
3. GM events - unlike most other games, it is normal to have a GM hosted event - there is server wide radio message that base x in region y, on planet z is under attack and all personell is requested to come to defence. Who wants to go can get there easily (if they have the point visited already)
4. Cover, crouching, trenches, taking time to aim all makes a difference between life and death. And mobs know it too.
5. I can't click on mob, turn on autoattack, go make a coffee and come back to loot.
6. Cloning <3 <3
7. So many viable options for gameplay - for example MA armour (beginning armour type) is perfectly viable at high level due to it's inherent bonuses. Sniper with MA instead of Stealth might not be able to get into a perfect sniping spot, but once he is in trouble he will be more likely to run away.

Edit: Almost forgot:
MASH type announcements in bigger bases:
'Don't dispose garbage thru wormhole, guys from other side are complaining'
'Tonight's movie is carryover from last wednesday, and so is dinner'

[Leon]

To the Tabula Rasa Community,

Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we've achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.

So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

Before we end the service, we'll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009.

We can assure you that through the next couple of months we'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while. For more details about what we are doing for Tabula Rasa players, please click here.

Stay tuned for more information. We thank you for your loyal support of the game and encourage you to take us up on the benefits we're offering Tabula Rasa players.

The Tabula Rasa Team
On February 28, 2009, Tabula Rasa will be shutting down its servers, and as of January 10, 2009, the game will be free to play.

To thank our loyal Tabula Rasa fans we've prepared a little closing down gift. Any active paying player as of 10:00 AM Pacific Time on November 21st, 2008 will be eligible for all of the following:

    * 3 free months of City of Heroes including digital client
    * 3 free months of Lineage II including digital client
    * Aion beta access (coming soon)
    * Aion pre-order access (available in 2009)
    * 1 free month of Aion including digital client (available in 2009)


These offers are limited to active paying players. Subscribers who join or reactivate canceled accounts after 10:00 AM Pacific Time on November 21st, 2008 will not be eligible.

If you are an eligible Tabula Rasa player, you'll be receiving notification directly from NCsoft in the near future with information on how to collect these thank you gifts.

If you are a player that has pre-paid for Tabula Rasa subscription time beyond January 10, 2009, you will be refunded for that pre-paid time by February 28, 2009.

Should you have further questions please don't hesitate to contact our customer support team at http://www.plaync.com/us/help/.

From everyone at NCsoft, we'd like to thank you for the support and enthusiasm you've dedicated to Tabula Rasa over the last year.

So..

Yet another MMO bites the dust.

Leon

[Reginald]

Unfortunately so.  I really think if people had given TR another chance after all the re-vamps they would have liked the game.  It had a solid core and they were expanding on it right to the end.  The only consolation is that I get 3 months of CoX for free, while I liked TR better, i guess that Paragon City will have to be safer for the three months that Templar Forge will once more walk it's streets in defense of the citizens of that sprawling metropolis.

[Brasse]

The problem that all new MMOGs face is simple: they get ONE chance. That thirty days included is about the maximum most players will allow the devs to make the game stable, fun and fulfilling. There are just so many choices out there for players, that once a game loses a subscriber, they are almost always gone for good.
It ain't rocket science.