Tabula Rasa Goes Live 64
After a lengthy wait and a substantial retooling, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa has gone live. The New York Times is running a piece looking into the history of Garriott's interaction with MMOGs, while Wired had a chance to speak with the 'General' getting a better sense of what the game is about. "'It takes 30 minutes to an hour just to meet up with your friends to start playing' in most MMOs, says Richard Garriott, the new game's executive producer. In contrast, Tabula Rasa, a PC game that will be released Nov. 2, was designed to appeal to the average Joe who's probably not interested in learning what "gold farming" or "damage over time" means and just wants to amuse himself by saving the universe. It's a calculated shift designed to move beyond the hard-core gaming crowd and court the mainstream audience that has made Nintendo's Wii such a surprise success. And it isn't particularly remarkable, except that Garriott is the man largely responsible for inventing the MMO model in the first place. "
Re:Try before buy (Score:5, Informative)
Compared to existing MMO's, this is
My main game is EQ, and it's true, can spend hours getting things sorted, farming to prepare for playing 'for real'. This is 'log in, select character, go'. Never stop killing stuff, the grind for xp is very well hidden away.
Graphics look great, sound is good enough to make me want to keep it on and not turn it off instantly like most mmo's.
Now, it
I tried City of Heroes for a bit, that knocked me out for presentation, ease of use, but had little to keep me interested after early teens. I was worried at first in TR as I had that same feeling of 'this is fun, quick to play, great!' and worried that I'd hit the wall of grind/repetitiveness any second, but so far, so good. Plenty of missions/scenery to look at, and the lore of the portals between worlds offers them the chance to spice it up a bit. Seeing big Bots walking around with Chain guns for arms is also giving me incentive to hope that I'll get to drive one soon.
So, yeah, give it a bash, we'll see how it lasts at the mid-high game, but so far, it's had a pretty good start.
Just the memory leaks/crashes after a few hours of play that's the downer atm, sure to be patched soon, but considering some MMO releases (even after 8years), it seems a highly tuned and working game.
Most of all,
Fun!
The changed the game significantly from BETA (Score:3, Informative)
Besides the obvious "all this crap is broken" cries...
they made grouping almost a must for many activities. Instances? All mobs are "elite" now... and you better hope you can actually do the quest provided you can find people - many needed drops are not there.
Most landscape mobs had their difficulty moved up significantly. Basically, what people were enjoying in BETA for difficulty level and need to group isn't there anymore.
Error or on purpose? Who knows, but I know a lot of pissed of TR fans... some rapidy approaching "former"
Just What I needed! (Score:4, Informative)
That being said I was worried about this game. For as much as I knew almost anything he makes is very good quality (almost!), I am now in my 30's and am married with a child. I was pretty sure I wouldnt be able to ever play an MMO again without risking divorce.
The pleasant surprise is that Tabula Rasa is NOT like other MMO's. It has most of the same game mechanics and "objectives" as other MMO's, but the big difference is that you actually CAN jump in and play for 30-60 minutes and get something accomplished (and have fun at the same time!).
This fits into my schedule. This is just what i needed in an MMO.
Re:Try before buy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:God, now what? (Score:4, Informative)