MMO Gaming

I’ve been playing the Tabula Rasa beta for some time. Longer than some who have given their impressions, but not quite as long as others. Tobold and Darren, I think, have the most balanced views of the game from the ones I’ve read. Now it’s my turn to try and top them.

I’ll try and work this review from the beginning to the end of the game experience. That is, from when you first load up the game and create a character all the way through the content of the game as you progress in levels. So then, on with it.

(more…)

Well, it has been officially announced, October 19th is the release date for Tabula Rasa. Given that I’ve been in the beta test for quite a while I obviously have thoughts on this, but I’ll hold off for a short while longer until I can say more. You can check out the full press release at the PlayNC.com site. Or, if you prefer the abridged version, check out the TR site’s announcement.

Going along with this news is the new design of the Tabula Rasa site (and apparently the official name change to RGTR.com, because the game really needs 10 different domain names.) The site design is interesting, it feels a bit like a less cluttered version of WoW’s design scheme. Plus, it does have a few cool options hanging around if you look for them.

But, as I said, more on all this later.

There’s a pretty cool contest that TR is running. Basically it’s write the backstory for a character. I’m thinking maybe I’ll take the time to write something up, of course, the trick to that is to find some time to do it. Anyway, anyone else going to give it a go? I’ll be interested to see what the winner comes up with.

I haven’t really mentioned anything about Guild Wars recently but after viewing the new trailer of the expansion pack coming out, I’m interested. You can check it out at the official site. It’s looking pretty cool.

I’ve never really disliked GW, just couldn’t get into it (mainly because of the lack of a jump button, yeah I know.) That being said, I do own all of the campaigns that are out (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall) and have been playing the game more lately than ever since I’m doing a bit of waiting for various MMOs to come out.

Anyway, I’m interested to see what they do with this expansion and for GW 2 which will be coming out as well. Have to wait and see on that front though.

I’m not sure I’m liking this. Thanks to a poster on the MMORPG.com forums (again today, crazy) I found this little gem. Particularly important is the following quote:

Austin, Texas-based NCsoft North America, for instance, is planning — for the first time — to sell and insert ads into its popular online multi-player games such as “Lineage,” “Guild Wars” and “City of Heroes,” as well as into its forthcoming fantasy game “Tabula Rasa.”

“We’re really intrigued by it,” said Dorothy Ferguson, NCsoft North America’s vice president of sales and marketing. “It has the potential to increase (revenues), but it’s really also about enhancing the game-playing experience.”

I’m not sure I’m liking where this is heading. Not so much the idea of ads in games, I’m not completely against that, but I don’t know if I can justify $15/month cost plus deal with having ads inside the game world. I think you can have ads that work seamlessly within the game world, but I also think that because a company is doing that they are obligated to pass on the cost savings to the consumer. Arbitrarily charging more money and sticking ads in a game isn’t the idea at all.

I’ll have to wait and see what happens.

ads, advertisment, in-game ads, ncsoft, tabula rasa, lineage, city of heroes, city of villains, coh, cov, cox

Or it will be soon. It seems Auto Assault is going to be closing up shop come the end of August. For all the information check out the story listed on their site or the MMORPG.com story which has a bit more information.

From a business standpoint, this honestly doesn’t bother me. In fact, I am kind of surprised it lasted over a year as it didn’t ever seem to have many people playing it. Still, it was kind of odd seeing this announcement on the PlayNC page just two weeks ago. I’m not saying it was a hasty decision by any means but it just seems odd to go about normally and announce new content that will never be seen.

Just my take anyway.

plaync, auto assault, net devil, game closing, shut down, auto assault closing, auto assault shut down

Ethic over at Kill Ten Rats made a post on the forums that drew my attention to this, which I had missed. Well, I’m hoping I get in this round of beta invites. I’m not sure many people want to play the game more than I do, or would be more interested in finding problems with it than I would (crappy launches kill games, and I’d rather this game not be murdered.) Ah well, we’ll have to wait and see. Though…I’m not sure if I’ll be able to say one way or the other whether I got in or not, I’ll have to check out the NDA to see what it says about that.

We’ll see, more on this later.

ncsoft, plaync, tabula rasa, beta test, tabula rasa beta, beta invites

Well…I’ve started playing EQ 2 a bit now. The worst part is…it’s actually really fun. Damn. I’m still messing around with a bunch of classes, not sure what I want to stick with. I’ve got a level 7 Guardian, a level 6 Wizard, 3 different level 4 characters (a Berserker, a Fury and an Illusionist) and a level 2 Monk. I didn’t enjoy the Monk to be honest. I might delete him to try out Ranger or something like that.

I also downloaded Lineage 2 to try out a bit as well. I haven’t gotten far enough into it to say much about it though. I will say I don’t think it’s my kind of game exactly. I mean…it uses the function keys…I hate that (not that it matters at all with my gamepad) and there is no jump button. That doesn’t bode well for a game…I love to jump. Anyway, I’ll have to spend some more time with Lineage before I can judge.

I’ll update later, possibly tomorrow, on EQ 2 again with some more thoughts.

soe, sony, sony online entertainment, everquest 2, everquest, eq2, EQ II, lineage, lineage 2, ncsoft, fury, illusionist, monk, berserker, wizard, guardian, ranger

How incredibly cool this is I can’t describe, so I won’t try. I’ve been looking forward to reading about how this went since I heard about it, and I can only imagine how awesome it would have been. Richard Garriott wrote up an entry over on PlayTR.com about the experience.

Damn, I’ve got to get me in on one of those.

stephen hawking, richard garriott, tabula rasa, zero-g, space, ncsoft, plaync

I want Tabula Rasa. I want it now. Seeing as that isn’t going to happen though I’ll take a moment to explain why I want it so badly. Well…okay…I won’t explain it, I’ll let Mr. Garriott do that. Take a look at this article. If you don’t think that Tabula Rasa is going to be the game pushing the genre ahead after reading that then you can’t be pleased at all.

Seriously…I want it.

Via Curse Gaming

Tabula rasa, garriott, ncsoft, destination games, curse gaming, upcoming games, innovation, mmorpg, mmog, mmo gaming, mmo games

According to the PlayNC Spring Newsletter Tabula Rasa will be coming out this fall. About a week or so ago a letter was sent out to all those who signed up for the beta test saying that closed beta would begin “soon.” Given that is the case I imagine the “Fall” launch of the game would probably be around late October to early November.

Why?

The way I am figuring if closed beta starts at or around May giving the game six months of time in beta (a few months in closed beta and then another couple in open beta) would seem fairly appropriate.

Given, this is all speculation, but it makes sense to me. I know one thing, I can’t wait…I’ve had my game on pre-order for a long time (yes, I’m that hardcore about it.)

Tabula rasa, garriot, ncsoft, plaync, newsletter, closed beta, beta test

Richard Garriott seems to have gotten another interview done, this one with The Hollywood Reporter, talking about Tabula Rasa and the MMOG market (again.) Personally by this point I think I would just start making copies of the answers and hand them out to people as I walk down the street, but that’s just me.

I’d really like to see a few original questions in among the bunch but it always seems to be the same ones over and over again. Not that the answers aren’t interesting but after the second or third time I can start quoting them, and that’s really not good.

Anyway, seems in all the excitement I forgot the link, so here it is.

the hollywood reporter, tabula rasa, mmog market, mmorpg, mmog, online games, ncsoft, richard garriott

I said I would take a few minutes to point out some things I found especially interesting from the Highlight of the Week, and here they are.

the user interfaces have come up to… well not quite the same sort of level, but they’re getting there where the ease of play is better.

I liked this quote because it is so distinctly true. Interfaces in MMOs tend to be…decent or acceptable at best, though they are getting better. That would perhaps be a good topic for discussion later.

The new games all have a characteristic that I like to describe as one where you come into the game, you’re given a quest, you go out on a quest, you are not killed, you come back and get a pat on the back and get told what a great person you are and you’re given another quest. All of that has to happen in about 15 to 20 minutes, and if it doesn’t happen in the first 15 to 20 minutes, it’s a design flaw and if you die during that time it’s a design flaw. And so, those are the same sort of things people expect and want to see in console games: ease of use, quickly being able to get into them and have fun.

Interestingly enough this is incredibly true of my own time after picking up World of Warcraft. The very first character I started, not knowing anything, was a Human Priest. I managed to suck and die several times and ended up just deleting the character entirely and rolling a Dwarf Hunter that I played for quite a while. No one wants to start off the game and “lose” immediately. On the other hand though, with time, the inverse should be true, as players learn the nuances of the game the difficulty should scale up so that there is the need for skillful playing.

but basically it’ll be an account where, for one price, you can play absolutely everything that NCsoft has to offer.

This is really interesting and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go from here. He also mentions a launcher, which I assume is the PlayNC launcher that is currently used with Dungeon Runners (possibly some of the other new games coming out as well, but I haven’t gotten a chance to play most of them yet.)

What we love is other good games, because we think if there’s another good game in the market, people come in, play that game and have a good time. Then they go, “You know what, I want to check out other good online games.” What hurts our business is bad games. If there’s a bad game, people come in and play it and they go, “That really sucked, I don’t want to play these MMP games.”

I don’t understand the obsession with people believing that the success of one person means other people are unable to succeed as well. Good games are good for the market, bad games are bad for the market (as a whole) this isn’t earth-shattering news so why the desire to make it seem like there has to always be a hatred between developers? It just seems a bit ridiculous to me to push the idea that there should be a split of who is successful and not. I’m glad to see him come out and say it, there is not going to be a “WoW-killer” nor is there going to be an “any other game-killer” they will exist together and appeal to various individuals but all will have or continue to have success.

Anyway, those were my highlights, anyone else catch anything interesting?

I had a choice to make, two interviews I came across both had the chance at being good Highlight of the Week material, but I wasn’t sure which to go with. It occurred to me, of course, that I could do both, but I didn’t want to taint the good name of Highlight of the Week by doing so. Instead, I bring you the interview that didn’t get chosen.

It’s all about Tabula Rasa straight from Richard Garriott. A lot of it has me even more excited than I was, and I’m interested to actually see how it turns out, with all the hype it has been getting anything less than phenomenal could prove to be fatal. Of course, before I run it I will need to get a new computer, so I guess it’s time to start saving up.

Richard Garriott, ncsoft, destination games, tabula rasa, upcoming games, new mmos, interviews

I was under the impression that the number of people asking for invites would slow, considering I originally put up the post a week ago and it didn’t seem to garner much attention from certain sources, but that appears not to be the case. Instead of shrinking as I send off invites, it is actually growing. Currently there are 17 people awaiting an invite. Not a huge number, but with only 4 going out at any one time, and not every person activating there invite the second they get it, it takes a while to get through them.

Until they cut me off, of course, I plan on sending them out as soon as I am able to (when a person activates theirs) but for the moment know that you are not being ignored.

Several people e-mailed me directly for an invite using the contact feature or just siphoning my e-mail address from that page and may be wondering if they will get a response. You probably won’t immediately, but if invites continue to flow in as they have been I will take the time to reply to those people who asked me for a more personal update directly related to them. I am not ignoring those that e-mailed me by not responding, it just takes time to get back to everyone and I’m hoping it doesn’t become a necessity because of long wait times (though it may.)

At any rate, that’s the update for the end of the week. I’ll be sure to update again if the need arises.

Dungeon runners, invites, serial codes, refer a friend, ncsoft, free games