Back in September, MMORPG.com Community Manager Laura Genender gave us a preview of NCsoft's new MMO, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. Well, the game launched this past Friday and today Laura brings us her early impressions of the live version.

When the Tabula Rasa servers came up early this past Monday night, I was there and ready to explore the changes made since my beta preview in late September. I came into the game slightly tentative – my past TR experience had been fun, but not exactly fulfilling, and hadn’t really convinced me that this was a long-term habitat.

While I’m still leveling up and making a lasting decision on TR (yes, I will do a review!), my first few days were nothing short of fun. The changes were apparent right out of the tutorial. The missions were more appealing, with more guidance, voiceovers, and rewards that were actually useful to my Recruit. While drops and rewards still quickly replaced my original color palette chosen in character creation, the replacements were a neutral slate-blue instead of the former pink and orange eyesores. And all over the newbie world I found dye recipes to fix my armor up at a crafting station.

Read the whole article here.

Glad you are having fun.  Sounds like they really cleaned the game up from beta. 

I am curious about the control points, I wonder if the opposition scales to the amount of players in the area?  Could be this will be a problem with new players in the future when the beginning zones are fairly empty.

Good to hear some good things about TR. Hopefully TR will release a Free Trial so I can see if I like it enough to buy it.

Too little too late and still not enough personally. I was in the beta and had a collectors edition pre-ordered and was waiting like crazy for this. Unfortunately, the logos system proved shallow (hey, here's a bunch of random fetch quests where we tell you exactly where the logos are rather than actually using them to create an interesting and rewarding reason to explore the world), the capture system was completely weak at the time (though its better now, I will give it that) but ultimately the biggest thing was it's all run and gun, and I expected a bit more depth than that. At this point Hellgate has a definitive hold on my time and will do so until the MMO I am waiting for is released next year (protip: not warhammer, though I do like it).

I had a lot of trouble finding where my quest items or solutions were, a lot of running around which was very frustrating so i quit, back to guild wars

Originally posted by Kordesh

"Too little too late and still not enough personally."

I'm sorry I stopped reading your post after this. How can it be too late when the game just launched? That makes no sense and is highly annoying. I would also like to say that I'm not a fanboy, I haven't even played the game.

The changes do indeed sound positive, particularly the increased difficulty.

The thing that intrigues me most is that Laura actually had trouble with the healing.  I say it's high time a game finally added a little challenge to the healing classes.  I know some dedicated healers think their job takes skill in every game, but I seldom feel challenged when I play one.

I hope they don't ever allow F-key targeting.  It sounds more realistic the way it is.  I'm sure it's frustrating for those who are used to healers being an "I win" class, but anything that makes people take a more active role is a good thing in my estimation.

I played a little during Beta and again over the weekend with the head-start for preorder.  Actually, I'm an AA refugee, so NCSoft gave those of us who had long-term subs pre-order and retail keys to TR so we didn't feel TOO awfully ripped off.  I'd been looking forward to TR too, because I'm a 5-year  vet of UO and was interested, if not hyped, to see what Richard Garriott's new work would look like.

Unfortunately, this one isn't for me.  It's just too much running and gunning and not enough depth.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a BAD game at all.  The control point attacks are fast and furious and a lot of fun.  The instances are pretty tough to solo in the early levels.  There's enough gear variety to make it interesting, but the crafting is horrible atm.  I hope they improve that.  But the game's just TOO fast for my taste.  There's hardly any time to catch your breath, unless you head to one of the non-control-point bases.  Outside of them, just keep running and shooting and running some more.  That's not how I like my MMOs.

Also, the UI is WAY too fixed-in-place, particularly the chat window, which is located in the upper left quadrant of the screen, exactly the WORST place for my vision to see it.  If you're not happy with the placement of things in the UI, it's hard to enjoy yourself and, in this day and age, customizable windowing should be a no-brainer.  And, while you get 5x5 toolbars for "skills" and grenades and emotes, you only get 1x5 for weapons and tools, which I understand they're working on.  Considering a specialist has a few tools, and you usually like to have a shotgun, rifle, EMP weapon, and class weapon at least handy for swapping around, there's not NEARLY enough slots.  And since the move/shoot stuf is disabled when you open your backpack to manually equip a tool...it's just not a good system.

It's a good game, polished, great sound and good graphics.  And it'll get better.  I just don't feel this is the one for me.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Glad you are having fun.  Sounds like they really cleaned the game up from beta. 

I am curious about the control points, I wonder if the opposition scales to the amount of players in the area?  Could be this will be a problem with new players in the future when the beginning zones are fairly empty.

It seems to me that the Bane (and AFS?) forces do scale depending on how many and what level PC's are involved. I remember successfully defending Landing Zone (LZ) at level 7 with only a few other PC's and fighting level 8-10 mobs. The next day, with me at level 10, I went back to LZ to help defend and encountered more, higher level (10-12) and different type mobs. There were more and, I believe, higher level PC's defending at the time too so it did appear to scale.

It may just be that the reinforcements scale, however, unless mobs despawn when no PC's are in the area and respawn when they approach. Either way, it was a challenging but winnable (with coordination) fight in both cases.

Trying to assault or defend a CP solo might be very difficult. A teammate and I once tried to take LZ alone (as  a duo) when it was Bane-controlled and we got spanked.

Originally posted by NGESUCKS

Ive uninstalled it off my pc and will not be playing this POS. I just cant get over how this is a clone of SWG'S (star wars galaxies) NGE crap that didnt work for SOE and it doesnt work for this game either. Not to mention i cant get over the G.I joe feeling of the game. Anyone got the quest to kill 20 cobra gaurd dogs? It just sucks and i give this game 6 months if there lucky.

Of course, sounds like you don't care much for military type games anyway.

I find it a refreshing change that I don't have to hack / shoot the same damn mob for 2 minutes to kill it. And I don't have to just stand there with my thumb in my bum to fight.

Standing behind a rock and shooting at your target is not "exploiting", in TR, it's called "Cover".

I'm willing to bet that TR is around for a good long while, considering how good it is now, and how much additional content they have planned for it. And considering that this isn't an SOE game, that content will probably actually make it to the game

I played TR beta until launch. It's a really fun and easy to play game that feels like a lot of different types of games. That may not apeal to some purests, but I think if managed well could be huge.

dot dot dot

However, MMOs lag, even with the best system specs and good badwidth they will probably always lag. Only on a LAN is everyone going to have low ping across the board. On the interwebs unfortunately we still have ISPs offering dial-up. Can you f-ing believe that sh!t? DAIL-UP!!! WTFBBQSHOOTSSELFINHEAD

So I hate to say it, but lag + FPS is very frustrating. Any hardcore or even semi casual FPSer will tell you lag is a no sell. While TR has an interesting targeting mechanic, it doesn't make up for the fact that you and or mobs can and will 'pop' out of sync. Which blows hard. When a CP gets taken over I want to be there retaking it, and not feel like my shots all come too late or see mob's fall animations play at 4FPS.

I want TR to do well, in fact in my perfect world all well designed video games would be successful, and TR is well designed. Please don't listen to the trolls who have no clue what design is.

I personally like the run and gun aspect. I want there to be more to the combat than that. But as long as every nub with a laser shotty runs around like a bafoon, we will have to also in order to collect the lootz we so badly desire. I can't really fault the TR team for people nubness. My feeling is this will be lessend at higher level content.

So my verdict as it stands is: Tabula Rasa is a very fun game that suffers from way too much lag that cripples the before meantion 'fun'.

Do I want the devs to optimize the sh!t out of that game and slash texture and model complexity? No. I want better technology and better networks so the market doesn't have to suffer the unfair evaluation of a market of players with no technical savay who make the MMO genre accross the board a bloody lagfest.

Is there a solution? Not a short term one. You need lots of people on a server to make it feel alive, and you need no lag to make it enjoyable, so catch 22....

odd....I never suffered any lag. Ping topped out at ~ 220, about 130 average.

FPS at the most extreme would drop to ~25...but that was only in the largest of battles.

And my machine is kinda old....AMD64 3200 single core, 2gb DDR333, SATA HDD, ATI 1650x 512mb.

Running at almost max detail, 1024 x 768.

Lots of mixed reviews is what I'm seeing.  Some quitting already and others saying they like the game.

For me the most critical point is that even in the positive reviews are basically say 'Ok the game is fun, maybe not great, but fun."   I don't see any resounding critical reviews saying this game is an incredible piece of work, a leap forward and something that will really impact the MMOPRG genre like one would expect from the 'Father' of all MMOs. NCSoft paid $18 million for Garriott for a reason.  Just fun probably wasn't it. 

As always I'll wait til the free trial and see which of these reviewers are telling the truth and which ones are blowing nothing but smoke. 

Originally posted by Hexxeity

The changes do indeed sound positive, particularly the increased difficulty.

The thing that intrigues me most is that Laura actually had trouble with the healing.  I say it's high time a game finally added a little challenge to the healing classes.  I know some dedicated healers think their job takes skill in every game, but I seldom feel challenged when I play one.

I hope they don't ever allow F-key targeting.  It sounds more realistic the way it is.  I'm sure it's frustrating for those who are used to healers being an "I win" class, but anything that makes people take a more active role is a good thing in my estimation.

I would not be opposed to a different "difficulty" on healing - I actually think that the healing tools badly need a reuse time, or less room for ammo (meaning more reloads), or something.  A clunky targetting system that makes it impossible to hit my allies, though - that's not my idea of a fun challange.  I shouldn't dislike friendly NPCs for "helping" aka getting in my way...that just isn't friendly :)

Right now I’m only level 11 – I have a lot more gameplay to go before I’m willing to give this game a positive or negative score. The good news is, I want to log into the game. I feel a pull and an immersion that were not present last time I played through Tabula Rasa. Let’s hope that stays!

TR is good. It jsut needs more depth. I am level 15 and I am just taking my time. Played through beta, then took a break. now I am back enjoying it again even though I am familiar with content. Leveling faster. Less chance to waste your clones. Game is good it just needs continuous diversity and more more depth. If they won't work on it and just leave it as it is without adding new content that will lift off the ground for example.. it will inherit Auto Assault fate.

Played since early Beta and now pre-order (up to Lvl 14, just 1 step from Commando).

However I am gonna give it a week or three before I buy the full version.  At the moment there is just 1 EU server and sometime it is so full that you have to wait before you can log on.  Once on the lag in some areas is awful.

General British has promised a better service via more hardware.  Once this is completed and there is a second EU server available I will be back giving the Bane a facefull of shotgun.

Originally posted by chriswsm

Played since early Beta and now pre-order (up to Lvl 14, just 1 step from Commando).

 

However I am gonna give it a week or three before I buy the full version.  At the moment there is just 1 EU server and sometime it is so full that you have to wait before you can log on.  Once on the lag in some areas is awful.

General British has promised a better service via more hardware.  Once this is completed and there is a second EU server available I will be back giving the Bane a facefull of shotgun.

Devs always seem to underestimate server needs - think WoW, or Lineage II's netconableno!  From the business standpoint, though, it's probably better to have 10 crowded servers than 10 extra empty servers ;)

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

odd....I never suffered any lag. Ping topped out at ~ 220, about 130 average.

FPS at the most extreme would drop to ~25...but that was only in the largest of battles.

And my machine is kinda old....AMD64 3200 single core, 2gb DDR333, SATA HDD, ATI 1650x 512mb.

Running at almost max detail, 1024 x 768.

When FPSers talk about lag, they mean anything more than 35-50ms ping as being lagged.

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

odd....I never suffered any lag. Ping topped out at ~ 220, about 130 average.

FPS at the most extreme would drop to ~25...but that was only in the largest of battles.

And my machine is kinda old....AMD64 3200 single core, 2gb DDR333, SATA HDD, ATI 1650x 512mb.

Running at almost max detail, 1024 x 768.

When FPSers talk about lag, they mean anything more than 35-50ms ping as being lagged.

However, a game can be quite smooth at ~200 ping, as far as an mmo goes. You're not trying to snipe a running target between the eyes, so that extra bit of latency doesn't kill the game.

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

 

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

odd....I never suffered any lag. Ping topped out at ~ 220, about 130 average.

FPS at the most extreme would drop to ~25...but that was only in the largest of battles.

And my machine is kinda old....AMD64 3200 single core, 2gb DDR333, SATA HDD, ATI 1650x 512mb.

Running at almost max detail, 1024 x 768.

When FPSers talk about lag, they mean anything more than 35-50ms ping as being lagged.

yeah, I played FPS games competitively for a long time. It's simply not possible to get that kind of "ping" in a MMO, simply due to the size of the environment, and the amount of other players.

 

However, a game can be quite smooth at ~200 ping, as far as an mmo goes. You're not trying to snipe a running target between the eyes, so that extra bit of latency doesn't kill the game.

200 ping is kinda rough - I am happy when I'm running 60-130ish :) but I'm spoiled, lots of servers based in my city!