Tabula Rasa

[Leper_Kahn]

Does anyone have this game? I was thinking about picking it up, but I'm not entirely sure. It seems pretty good from what I've read and heard.

[Khanderas]

I have it, I played it for two months and it is farily ok.
I picked it up at start and it was quite buggy then (like how everyone could do nothing in a level 20-25 zone since the sky animation pretty much locked down all comps). I have not played it in quite some time though.

A few intresting takes on alts (all your alts are clones of your first guy, except clones mean copy-careerpath-and level-but-nothing-else-including-gender) who all share the same footlocker (bank if you will). This system really needs a post only about cloning, there is quite some info, much of it complicated to explain.

The crafting system has some potential as well. Take a gun with say... +firedamage and disassemble it. You get a component for +firedamage on guns. Then find a recipie to add it to another gun (stacking with whatever the second gun already has).

Quite a lot of different damagetypes, some of them bordering on silly (rocketlauncher that does ice damage or laser-shotguns) but it matters, thankfully. Enemies are weak and strong against different elements and the 5 weapons equip slots fill up fast with "good to have's". A multilayered backpack gives plenty of room for drops.



The story is basically this. The humans (of our earth possibly) have discovered an alien who shares freely the knowleadge of Logos, the building blocks of reaility. Unfortunatly they have a faction that do not want to share it and have enslaved an insectiod race known as the Thrax.
The Thrax, trashes Earth completly. Killing 90-something percent and the rest flee though a wormhole to alien worlds.

Now humanity is bent on revenge, some are elite solders, who can understand and use Logos for special powers (hint: you are one of them) and the war is on.


Overall, as a MMORPG (cause that is what it is) I'd give it 8/10 atleast. Alien bugs, fancy weapons, battles Diablo style almost (as in kill it with fire, ice or lighting, or machineguns, rocketlaunchers or sniper rifles). If only I had enough time.

By now the bugs should be largly fixed, the classes farily balanced (as in intresting at almost all times) and with a better guildbase (when I played it, at launch, it was hard to view other players as anything else then other NPC's)

[Bryn]

I don't have it, but there are a few videos of relevance.

First up is the intro (http://www.blur.com/tabula_rasa.html). Despite the amazing Blur Studio graphics, the story kinda put me off, but that's jsut my opinion; the animation certainly makes up for it.

Second, the Zero Punctuation review (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9-Tabula-Rasa). You might have already seen this, but it's quite funny, as always :smallsmile:

[Tom_Violence]

Does it have the traditional MMOG issue of massive level disparities (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/12/31/)? Basically, is it just yet another MMOG in a different setting? I guess at least the fact that you're in some massive war kinda makes it slightly more acceptable that everything you do is utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

[Khanderas]

Second, the Zero Punctuation review (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9-Tabula-Rasa). You might have already seen this, but it's quite funny, as always :smallsmile:
One has to keep in mind though that ZP-guy really hates RPG's and really REALLY hates MMORPG's.
You can't build a MMORPG game without grind of any kind. People would play it and then move on, it is simply not the buissness model if you can do everything in it in a week.
Some points are valid though (I agree that "Lord/General Brittish" is fairly creepy, chances are low you will play with him though. And hey, if I could rule a virtual empire like that, I would :smallbiggrin:)



Does it have the traditional MMOG issue of massive level disparities? Basically, is it just yet another MMOG in a different setting? I guess at least the fact that you're in some massive war kinda makes it slightly more acceptable that everything you do is utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
They claim it is not just another MMOG in a different setting, but it is. It may be a better setting, it may be worse, depending on taste, but most elements are there. The level disparities works much like Diablo 2.
How I mean by that is that you can hit and damage enemies just fine regardless of levels between them and you, but the innate regen can make it tough to impossible to take them out. This makes it so, with enough low level guys you can take out most things together... as long as it wont kill you back.
Compared to WoW for example, where if a level 60 attacks a level 69 most attacks miss, spells are resisted at an alarming rate, and the higher levelled one gets bonuses to hit and such.