Tabula Rasa

[Warlock]

Any thoughts on this one?

[Rhydderch Hael]

I'm drawing a blank here.

[Tal]

I'm drawing a blank here.

Is a Computer game.

[Munkay]

I'm drawing a blank here.

:lol:

[Taelas]

I'm drawing a blank here.

I guess that was slated to happen to someone.

To actually be on-topic, from what I hear, it's good. Haven't had the opportunity to actually go in-game and check it out, though.

[Lissa]

Is a Computer game.

*smacks Tal for not getting the joke*

Tabula Rasa

[Roland]

I guess that was slated to happen to someone.

To actually be on-topic, from what I hear, it's good. Haven't had the opportunity to actually go in-game and check it out, though.

The game was in a shambles when I have up Beta Testing it back in the summer. Hopefully they've fleshed out the actual game by now. When I joined, they had just BARELY gotten out the next "Tier" of classes, and most of their skills were either broken or nonexistent. This is, of course, ignoring the horde of broken quests, and other various bugs (incredibly bad issues with physical geometry causing you to be unable to enter doors, go up stairs, and just get stuck in random areas, EVERYWHERE. The only cure? "Logoff." That was their solution for EVERYTHING. "My gun won't fire." "Relog." "I repaired my items, it took my money, but they're still broke." "Relog." "I can't complete this quest." "Relog."). To put it mildly, it made Hellgate look like... Guild Wars.:P

The gameplay was solid and fun, but the game-crippling bugs were just too numerous to withstand. Missing / broken skills, broken quests, broken GAMEPLAY, all sprinkled with the need to relog every half hour or more. Depressing, to say the least.

If that's all fixed, I say check it out. It had the potential to be a great game. It was just WAY too rushed in the last state I saw. Way WAY too rushed.

[Frag]

First I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm a card carrying fanboi of Richard Garriot. So, keeping that in mind:

The review sites are giving healthy reviews to TR, and Garriot promised he'd see the game to it's end and it was going to revoluntionize how designers approach an MMO. Hefty promise, eh? Even from him. Those two things (reviews + his promise) is enough to more or less guarantee that when I have the bux & my computer back up I'll buy it. I have a friend that's playing it and he said it's like an Auto-Assault that doesn't suck. :lol:

Everything I've seen indicates that the gameplay, as can be expected from the design standard used, is rock-solid and even fantastic. The "extras" beside gameplay most review sites have said are either operational but could use love, or slated for "soon". Thus, it sounds like it's fun and in need of polish, which is a hell of a lot better than releasing flawed and trying to patch up.

YMMV, but I'll drop back here with a full review asap.
~Frag B)

[Iolair]

I was in the beta up until launch. I heard good old Garriots promises until I was about to puke, it was almost as bad as listening to Brad McQuaid's 'Vision'. I was a huge fan of the Ultima series, so I had rather high expectations, but I always wondered when I heard RG (Richard Garriot) talk about his game, if he had actually played it.

Tabula Rasa is anything but revolutionary. There is nothing new there, nothing. I felt the story was shallow and I never had any drive to follow a storyline. The classes didn't seem unique from each other, but there is a possibility this improved between beta and launch (and fixes after) aka miracle patch.

I didn't see anything I would call new or revolutionary. Perhaps the ability to clone your character could be called new, but I don't see it as revolutionary. The quests were mostly the good old 'good out and kill x monsters' types, again nothing revolutionary.

The game will of course appeal to some people and I did wish it well. Just be careful before any purchases. Perhaps try a trial or something before you pay for anything?

Because if space games and shooting up stuff is something you find is fun, there is a chance you will find it more fun than me:)Just be careful and don't put your expectations up just because it is a RG game. And perhaps don't look for the interaction part of the MMO of the game. When the beta ended there was no reason to group up and no reason to bother with other people, because they were just a bother (aka don't kill my quest mob).

Best of luck with it to those that will play it.

[Guest]

Banned for spamming.

-Bolty

[Wyrm]

The spam bots are evolving. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

On a side note, it seems the game is only $25 for the regular and $30 for the CE at amazon now.

[Roland]

The spam bots are evolving. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

On a side note, it seems the game is only $25 for the regular and $30 for the CE at amazon now.

It's still too much. Especially with a monthly fee.:P

[Crusader]

Any thoughts on this one?

I read a news article this morning, stating beta testers massively abandoned the game and aren't coming back even with free trials. Never a good sign.

Garriot replied with "It was bad in beta, but good now! Pleeease come back!"
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_in...tory=16490

I'm not going to try it. WAR is coming!

[Warlock]

I did end up getting it and trying it out. Quite disappointing. I didn't get far (level 8 or 9) but I constantly felt like I was fighting the interface rather than playing the game - something as simple as moving my aim from one mob to another felt laggy. I doubt each mouse tweak actually went to the server but it wasn't fun.

[NiteFox]

Garriot replied with "It was bad in beta, but good now! Pleeease come back!"
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_in...tory=16490

I can't help but feel his logic is backwards with regards to the "we brought in too many beta testers", because if they hadn't then in all likelihood the game would be as bad as it reportedly was in beta at retail.

So then instead of having a bunch of angry beta testers unwilling to give the retail a try, you've got a lot of angry customers who shelled out cash for the privilege to play a broken game. With inevitable results ("zomg beta test my ass, diaf gariottt).

In my experience, you can never have enough beta testers for anything, unless your purpose is to cover up the fact that what you're presenting isn't that much cop anyway, and your intention is to try and hook as many early adaptors with said poor game and milk a substantial cash sum out of the poor uninformed saps.

Remember: It doesn't matter if a game is good or not, just as long as you have a significant amount of people laying down cash in the first retail phase you're entitled to bill it as a success, even if those people never renew their subscriptions beyond the first outlay. Korean MMOs have been running on this prospect for years, and it's amusing when a western publisher looks at some quite obvious turkeys, market the bajeezus out of them, then are forced to turn them into free-to-play games before the first run of retail boxes are off the shelf.

Edit: Speaking of the importance of beta testers; CCP, who do all the internal testing for EVE Online internally with about 6 staff for testers, released an update for EVE which eats XP's boot.ini file. Can't have too many testers. WoW has 9 million of them and still don't catch everything:)

[Crusader]

Speaking of the importance of beta testers; CCP, who do all the internal testing for EVE Online internally with about 6 staff for testers, released an update for EVE which eats XP's boot.ini file. Can't have too many testers. WoW has 9 million of them and still don't catch everything:)

When I read that on various forums (and later frontpage news on some news sites) I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The immenseness of errors is staggering.

#1: Naming one of your application's files the same as a key OS file is NOT DONE amongst developers.
#2: Deleting a file, any file, should not be handled bluntly with a 'delete aaaa.bbb -noconfirmdialog' command, but with a proper installer.
#3: Passing this through Q&A. How could they? Do they all run Vista over there? (Vista doesn't use boot.ini).

Luckily Eve isn't wow, or else one would be as if a million mouths cry out in pain!

(ps. WAR is coming!)