Tabula Rasa's Brian Hudson has penned a developer journal about a new instance coming to the game in Deployment 10. Called Velon Hollow, you can read about it and check out the screens after the jump.
Features
WarCry sat down with Tom Potter, lead designer of Tabula Rasa, to talk about the game's present, its future and Richard Garriott's impending spacewalk.
Tabula Rasa is the sci-fi MMO developed by Destination Games and published by NCsoft. It launched close to two months ago on November 2nd and I've been playing it daily since the Pre-Order Head Start in October. That's part of the reason why it's taken me a bit to write this review.
Sound
The sound in this game is amazing. I actually left the music on, and for me that is a rarity. Audio in Tabula Rasa is used effectively to make it necessary to listen in order to maintain situational awareness. Several times while I was running around the battlefield I actually had chills when I heard a Bane Dropship coming in behind me. The screech of a Lightbender or the hissing speech of the Thrax will haunt you even when you aren't playing. Tabula Rasa does have in-game voice chat and the quality is quite good. While not absolutely necessary, voice chat does make Control Point battles and instances go much smoother.
Click Read More to see the entire review of Tabula Rasa.
In the latest installment of our ongoing Tabula Rasa Q&A series, we get a special treat. Richard Garriott parachuted in for one answer in this edition to talk about Logo. The remainder of the Q&A is answered by Lead Designer Paul Sage and Community Manager April Burba.
WarCry: Have we asked "Why did you pick "Logos" to describe the psionics and language in the game? Are you referring to the ancient Greek philosophical concept or to the more Biblical connotation"?
Richard Garriott: The word "Logos" is used in our game both for the symbolic language and for the force-like super powers our players learn to wield. "Logos" is often used to describe god-like powers that manifest reality with the power of your mind and spoken words, such as "Let There Be Light and there was." Added to this is the concept of a logogrammatic language, which uses pictographic symbols for communication.
Read more after the click.
Lead Designer Paul Sage joins April Burba to answer the latest in our Tabula Rasa Q&A series and the first since they launched the game on Friday. Burba and Sage tackle questions on humor, differentiation and what launch day was like.
WarCry: One underplayed part of TR is that the game actually has quite the sense of humor, such as the messages played over the PA systems in human bases. Talk about some of the ways you guys have taken the destruction Earth and made it a touch less than serious.
April Burba: That's nothing. Have you seen the Mini-British running around? He is on a quest to find his rat-tail. There are tons of little 'easter-eggs' if you want to call them that all over the world. There are Apple IIe's that have the opening lines from Akalabeth. There are also some pretty funny NPC chatter/actions. There is one NPC standing precariously on several chairs welding directly into a pipe. Another NPC has some funny commentary about it.
Read more after the leap.
It's been a long time in the making, but Tabula Rasa launched today. Earlier this week, we sat down with Starr Long of NCsoft to talk about the new MMORPG and what people can expect from it as it appears in stores today.
"[Tabula Rasa] is intentionally easy to understand and get into, but definitely evolves over time," Long told us in an interview just prior to the launch. The base mechanic of aim and shoot is obviously simple, but as they advance in levels, players need to do more than just aim and shoot. Many enemies are puzzles unto themselves. In effect, there is a rock/paper/scissors game, where enemies don't deal well with one kind of weapon, but are extremely vulnerable to another. If the player doesn't consider these factors, they can make their life quite difficult. Elements like that are what Long believes helps give a rather simple premise long term appeal.
Read more after the jump.
The Tabula Rasa Pre-order Head Start began when the servers went live on Monday. I got into the game on Tuesday and have been playing quite a bit since. Here are some early impressions of the game in its current state that will launch on Friday.
After logging in and creating a character, I found myself in the tutorial area, and no offense to Captain Burba, but I didn't want to skip past this first part of the game. After running a few short missions designed to give familiarity with the controls and interface, I made my way into my first combat with the Bane. The combat in Tabula Rasa is fast and dynamic, and even though it gives the impression of FPS-style combat, it's not quite that reflex/"twitch" orientated.
See the full Pre-Order Head Start Preview on the other side of "Read More".
Tabula Rasa Community Manager April Burba has come back for another round of questioning. This time, Matt Lowery asks about medics, melee options and more in this soon to be released NCSoft product.
WarCry: How exactly do Medics work? Can they heal you in combat, do they have to stand next to you?
April Burba: Medics have a combination of ways to heal allies. They have Regen Wave that massively raises the health and power regeneration rates of all squad members within a 25m radius for a full minute. There is also a healing disc tool that can be a direct target tool, a cone, or an AoE around the medic. Medics also have a leech ability that when cast on a bad guy causes anyone who damages the enemy to gain health or power based on the attack damage type done. Further, Medics have an insanity ability that turns baddies against each other - if you make an enemy healer insane, it will heal the good guys in your squad.
The full interview after you click "Read More".
Game developers love a good opportunity to sit down and talk about their visions for the future of this industry, and of course talk about their upcoming games. CVG recently had a chance to sit down with Richard 'Lord Garriot' British to talk about a few things, like hey, where'd you get that cool name, man?!
So, first things first - where did the moniker Lord British come from?
Richard Garriott: I was actually born in England. When I was first playing D&D I needed to find a nickname, and earlier that year I'd moved to Texas, and all the locals thought I had a British accent. The nickname stuck, and when I started writing games I'd always include my character Lord British.
My very first publishers said that Richard Garriott wasn't a very memorable name, and dumped me from the credits and left only Lord British as the author of the early Ultima games. Most people don't know this, but Lord British's first name is Canterbridgian.
Read more here.
The folks at RPGVault sat down with NCSofts Victor Meinert and John Mueller to discuss the various aspects of Tabula Rasa art direction and implementation.
Jonric: In total, how many people make up the complete art team, and has the number changed during development?
Victor Meinert: The Tabula Rasa team is definitely an international effort, especially art production. We literally have teams all over the world. We've got people in Seoul, Beijing, LA, San Francisco, and of course, our core team here in Austin. John and I have gotten to see parts of the world we normally would never have seen in making Tabula Rasa. Worldwide, the total numbers fluctuate depending on what phase of production we're in. Overall, the art department averages around 40, but we've peaked near a high of 70 during this last push for launch. Our core team here in Austin is around 20 to 25 and growing.
You can check it out in it's entirety here.
