Community Manager Laura Genender recently had the opportunity to ask questions of Starr Long, the Producer of Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa to ask him some questions about what we can expect to see upcoming for the game.

MMORPG.com:	What kind of high end content is slated for Tabula Rasa? Will there be raids, and if so, can you give us some examples?
Starr Long:	We have already begun adding new maps starting with patch 1.3 with a new level 50 instance. We are hoping to get another couple in with patch 1.4. We also are going to work on multi-squad maps sometime “soon.” These will be maps that multiple groups can enter (instead of just one group).

Read the whole interview here.

So baically the main bulk of the expected content wont appear until 'later' meaning mid 2008 'it'll be complete' enough for many of those naysayers to come back, just after AoC is a 'complete diappointment' for them, good good *hides from the stoning* i kid i kid, but it's good news to know WHEN the stuff is out at least

they had better concentrate on customer relations and get their lazy gm's working or hire more. this game is like a drug, so interesting and yet so infurriating with the way the gm's handle things, i cant decide on a month by month payment or simply leave it alone......................

Originally posted by graill

they had better concentrate on customer relations and get their lazy gm's working or hire more. this game is like a drug, so interesting and yet so infurriating with the way the gm's handle things, i cant decide on a month by month payment or simply leave it alone......................

As to the high end content?  Well I'm no where near level 50 and I'm enjoying the game so far.  But if lvl 50 becomes raid mania and PVP, well I'll just move on.  I'm not interested in a who is uber and who has the better gear contest..

I would like to know what people expect for a level 50 to do?  If your not going to raid, and you don't want to PVP what else is there in a game to do?  Sure you can go out and RP, if that's your thing good.  I just can't understand what any one has to do once they get 50.  Sure you can farm the full set of purple armor and weapons, but then what?  yea you can mod them to the max, ok all of that is great, but there is no instance that you have to work to finish, no amazing item that will drop, if the best you can get is Purple, then any one can get the best set of gear.  Now people can argue that having the perfect set of stats and effects on a weapon make it better than other ones, and I agree.  If there is nothing to use it on, no real PVP other than finding a clan and roaming the world looking for people in that clan to fight... well that just seems weak to me. 

This development team needs to get on the move, there are a LOT of MMOs out and a LOT more coming out soon.  This game is great when your level 25, try and get though the 40s and then tell me the game is just as fun, while there is nothing to work for at the end, and nothing new to look forward to when you get to 50.  Games don't have to launch complete and I don't expect them to, I do expect them to have a thought about what your players should be doing once they have no more experience to gain, and have something for them to do.

This is all rabble rabble! basically thanks for paying up front for our office supplies, monthly fees and oh by the way stick around so we can continue to strip you of your cash and we may just be able to afford some new ingame items! bah, rabble rabble is all i got out of this!

Originally posted by sabutai22

This is all rabble rabble! basically thanks for paying up front for our office supplies, monthly fees and oh by the way stick around so we can continue to strip you of your cash and we may just be able to afford some new ingame items! bah, rabble rabble is all i got out of this!

 

Rabble... rabble... rabble... same copy/paste TR hater response... rabble... rabble...

I think the communities of MMOs these days need to have more of the game finished before they will truly stay with them for a long period of time.  Most successful MMORPGs tend to have at lest some high level content finished and in the game before it launches.  TR just has none.  I for one will give them one more month, see what happens.  If there is nothing to do when February rolls around they will have one less customer.  I am not sure how many people will stick around when they seem to have all these cool features planed, and well none of them will be in before middle of 08.  The time for finishing the game has past, they need to get the promised features in very soon.

Originally posted by triprunner
I've started playing TR just about a week ago and i love it. I strongly hope they'll introduce PvP on lower levels. What about humans fighting FOR Bane? That be something. We all know not all of us are good right? There's black sheep in every species... Besides that could create some cool PvP opportunities not just clan vs clan fights (although that's better than nothing) like proper PvP missions or instances. Shame that Bane isn't playable, that would make my day totally. All out PvP with some PvE content, well we can dream sometimes can't we?

Making Bane playable, as it is done in LotRO, would be nice, but I'm not sure if making them a separate faction to play as permanent characters would work for the game. 

Oh BOY!   They hope to introduce raid instances for the endgame soon so TR can be just like every other stupid MMO based on the race-to-endgame-and-raid-raid-raid business model!

Hooray!

Jesus Christ, they're taking away engineer's Temporary Wormhole ability? Thank you for making us completely useless to squads now.

Jesus Christ, they're taking away engineer's Temporary Wormhole ability? Thank you for making us completely useless to squads now.

Just like they just did to medic

Starr Long what a name :) Sounds like the name of some 80s **** Star.

Removing personal wormholes hardly was *the* group thing that engineers had to offer. I'm not wild about giving away the extra flavor that it brought to engineers, but they're getting an entirely new and useful ability out of it.

I hate the way they're going with PvP though. Humans against Humans PvP makes absolutely no sense with the story of TR. Earth was destroyed people. Killing another human in that environment would likely be the most evil thing that could possibly be done. I think TR caved to a vocal minority with PvP as it is now. OTOH, Bane classes and skills are well thought out and differentiated and would make a great playable race for PvP. For that matter, it even makes sense to be the Brann, who are the criminal penal colony survivors of their race. I could even go so far to say that it's possible to be the Cormans, since they're viewed with open dislike by the AFS. Neither of those two groups though have fleshed out skillsets to make a plug in playable race.

Level 40 will eventually grant you the PAU. Level 50 will let you command an NPC squad. Those are good incentives to level to those points. There's 8 different classes to the game, and it's a different playstyle to play most of them. I don't buy the level 50 boredom stuff. Make a guy down the other branch for a while.

in other words, the game will start looking complete around 6 months after launch

Just what many of us have been saying since early beta

There's plenty of content and gameplay to go around for the normal player. Hardcore extremists are bound to find disappointment in every game they play. There's a ton of fun to be had in the game. Instead of always whining about what's missing--something that every game can be trashed for--how about talking about how much action this game has compared to the stand still and press 1, 2 for 70 levels.

Just this....

If Starr applied the same level of honesty to the project in development that he has applied to this interview the game may be worth playing.

The classic :

So lets get this straight.... the very thing that you basically marketed this game on as being the unique (the most over used word in MMO's) logos system never actually got any love at all....

Thanks for confirming the suspicions of the most cynical among us about how the hype always gets more time and moey spent on it than the game. Between banging on about the logos and printing Richard Garriots name on everything (which I bet he wishes hed never heard of the game now) you could have added all the content your promising and then some.....

Very shoddy, very half baked, very dissapointing and totally predictable...

Thanks for nothing.

Logos tablet could have been so much more, I agree. It would have been great if you could use the logos words to make your own abilities, sort of like how Saga of Ryzom had their plugin system for spells.

I like all the naysayers here.

I especially liked the guy with the Xfire which says he played the game for under an hour and was talking about how boring level 40 and 50 were.

Does the game have flaws? Sure, but I don't let it consume me like some folks here appear to be doing. Instead, I'm having a blast defending control points and running the missions. By the time I hit 40 or 50 the extra stuff will be in.

Why exactly are some of you already there? Slow down and smell the roses! Games are meant to be enjoyed and savored, it's not a race to 50.

This game is the best thing since SWG and I will be playing it for a long time to come.

Originally posted by graill

they had better concentrate on customer relations and get their lazy gm's working or hire more. this game is like a drug, so interesting and yet so infurriating with the way the gm's handle things, i cant decide on a month by month payment or simply leave it alone......................

Nice interview, looking very much forward to the content.

Originally posted by bstuart

Jesus Christ, they're taking away engineer's Temporary Wormhole ability? Thank you for making us completely useless to squads now.

 

Just like they just did to medic

2. TR is one of the games where it doesn't really matter how a group is assembled class wise and how the individual group member spec, so you can't get obsolete in the first place as you never were required.

3. Medic is a good class.