I would seriously advise you jump in a play it while you can....

NCSoft is again considering what to do with this game and they have ZERO reason to keep it alive. You know that meeting they said they were going to have last week, the one about what to do with this game? Well guys don't be surprised if shutting it down was one of the options.

www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/133_34158.html

Nov 10 2008

NCsoft, the kingpin of the local gaming industry, also has its own demons that need exorcising. The company is now reluctantly discussing whether to pull the plug on ``Tabula Rasa,'' developed by famed game developer Richard Garriott and the product of a seven-year, 100 billion won investment.

(thanks gameloading, for posting this article)

So spend some time with your old friend because IMHO, the time is near.

It will come as no surprise.  I think the timing of Richard Garriot's leaving is auspicious.

i dont know why they picked Garriot to lead this project.  the guy was great (emphasis on was) back in the 90's but this is 2007/8, there is a whole new kind of game and gamer out there.  same thing goes for the guy who made Vanguard (forget his name).  they think just because they made a good game 6+ years ago that they can make a good one now.

Originally posted by Death1942

i dont know why they picked Garriot to lead this project.  the guy was great (emphasis on was) back in the 90's but this is 2007/8, there is a whole new kind of game and gamer out there.  same thing goes for the guy who made Vanguard (forget his name).  they think just because they made a good game 6+ years ago that they can make a good one now.

Well yeah, I would expect people who have been involved in great MMOs in the past to continue doing it in the future. Do you honestly expect a company to drop 75 million dollars in the lap of someone with no good games in their past?

Sometimes no matter how great the idea it fails. Do you have any clue how many MMOs run by lesser people never even go past beta? It takes great minds to get this far. RG and the people behind Vanguard created worlds that could have been great and I think Vanguard still can be. TR is in trouble and likely to get the plug pulled soon.

What whole new gamer is out there? What is this whole new kind of game?

Originally posted by Death1942

i dont know why they picked Garriot to lead this project.  the guy was great (emphasis on was) back in the 90's but this is 2007/8, there is a whole new kind of game and gamer out there.  same thing goes for the guy who made Vanguard (forget his name).  they think just because they made a good game 6+ years ago that they can make a good one now.

Funny, doesn't seem like ANYONE is making a good game now, experience or not. So I don't think that has any effect on the game. Atleast he can say he HAS made a good game, which directors haven't been able to say for the last 4 years.

i never kept up with TR so i dont know the cluster fuck was that brought it to being such a crap game

but i know VG could of been thee greatest pve game ever!!!! if big bad brad had more time to finish it

it launched WAY!!!! to early, it needed probably another year of work. and ive heard the funding ran out which caused the early launch. vanguard was such a high hope of mine and fell as short as a girl throwing a ball HAHA! ZING!

i heard vg is coming around, but after checking it out its still pretty brutally unfinished

Hmmm...no Vanguard is ten times the mess this game is. In fact from what I saw, this game really isn't all that bad just not really all that MMOish, its more like an action game like GW but it doesn't have any real technical issues.

Vanguard is a frickin mess of game that hardly runs and even if you can get it going with decent FPS, its just a "10 rats" grinder with nothing else to really do. Yeah they have "diplomacy...but it doesn't really do anything, you can grind out crafting but..loot is better and there is no one to buy your stuff. You can get a boat but it doesn't do anything at all but let you ride around empty water...you can get a flying mount but again, it doesn't offer any real benefit except you get to fly around an empty landscape.

There are not enough players in VG to support an economy, not enough to group with at any level besides cap so its a long lonely trip, the world is enormous...and deserted.

How you guys even get remotely close to comparing the two is beyond me. I strongly suggest you download both the TR free trial and the VG free trial and play them back to back. Then rebutle my post. I was a beta tester of VG and played it on and off for about 8 months. In fact I wrote a bunch of player profiles until I ran out of active players to write about.

IMHO the base issue with many posters here on this site is that RG promised a next generation MMORPG but delivered a SciFi Guild Wars instead. (what did they call that an MMO action game or something?)

 All things being equal the main issue with this game appears to be that it has the playability of a normal PC game. You basically "play it through" and then you are "done", I'm est it has maybe 1 or 2 months of play before you esentually "finish it"? In the big picture of Video gaming thats actually pretty good (most games you are lucky to get 40 hours out of them). For an MMO, thats pretty bad. To do an action MOG it needs to have a lot of content and an open ended aspect like GW. You grind out to level cap in GW in about 1 - 2 weeks but you have so much content AND basically an unlimited amount of gameplay in the PvP portion. TR shoulda followed this more closely.

To say this game was "poorly" made is a stretch. It was poorly and incorrectly marketed and not filled out enough at launch and then RG lost focus and went to play Spaceman Spiff instead. It needs an open ended aspect and like I've posted here a few times, IMHO more emphesis on "Control Point" gameplay (with impact) and Humans vs Bane in a PvM style set up would have given this game the edge it needed.

Other then that it would have helped if it was correctly marketed, the wrong people totally bought into this games hype lol.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Do you honestly expect a company to drop 75 million dollars in the lap of someone with no good games in their past?

You are speaking of Richard Garriot, the man who made Ultima Online?

{ Mod Edit }

Originally posted by eldanloco

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Do you honestly expect a company to drop 75 million dollars in the lap of someone with no good games in their past?

You are speaking of Richard Garriot, the man who made Ultima Online?

{ Mod Edit }

 

What was wrong with Ultima Online?

Originally posted by Torak

Hmmm...no Vanguard is ten times the mess this game is. In fact from what I saw, this game really isn't all that bad just not really all that MMOish, its more like an action game like GW but it doesn't have any real technical issues.

Vanguard is a frickin mess of game that hardly runs and even if you can get it going with decent FPS, its just a "10 rats" grinder with nothing else to really do. Yeah they have "diplomacy...but it doesn't really do anything, you can grind out crafting but..loot is better and there is no one to buy your stuff. You can get a boat but it doesn't do anything at all but let you ride around empty water...you can get a flying mount but again, it doesn't offer any real benefit except you get to fly around an empty landscape.

There are not enough players in VG to support an economy, not enough to group with at any level besides cap so its a long lonely trip, the world is enormous...and deserted.

How you guys even get remotely close to comparing the two is beyond me. I strongly suggest you download both the TR free trial and the VG free trial and play them back to back. Then rebutle my post. I was a beta tester of VG and played it on and off for about 8 months. In fact I wrote a bunch of player profiles until I ran out of active players to write about.

 

IMHO the base issue with many posters here on this site is that RG promised a next generation MMORPG but delivered a SciFi Guild Wars instead. (what did they call that an MMO action game or something?)

 

 All things being equal the main issue with this game appears to be that it has the playability of a normal PC game. You basically "play it through" and then you are "done", I'm est it has maybe 1 or 2 months of play before you esentually "finish it"? In the big picture of Video gaming thats actually pretty good (most games you are lucky to get 40 hours out of them). For an MMO, thats pretty bad. To do an action MOG it needs to have a lot of content and an open ended aspect like GW. You grind out to level cap in GW in about 1 - 2 weeks but you have so much content AND basically an unlimited amount of gameplay in the PvP portion. TR shoulda followed this more closely.

To say this game was "poorly" made is a stretch. It was poorly and incorrectly marketed and not filled out enough at launch and then RG lost focus and went to play Spaceman Spiff instead. It needs an open ended aspect and like I've posted here a few times, IMHO more emphesis on "Control Point" gameplay (with impact) and Humans vs Bane in a PvM style set up would have given this game the edge it needed.

Other then that it would have helped if it was correctly marketed, the wrong people totally bought into this games hype lol.

 

I have been playing VG 3 months and compared to TR it is worth my $15 a month. There are more people on now than  you might have been used to and finding groups at different levels is far from impossible. VG has issues no doubt, but compared to TR it is a true MMO. TR would have been a decent PC game if it had no fees after purchase. Should have went with the GW buy it and no monthly fee system, then maybe it would have been worth the total money I spent on that tiny MMo with so little to do.
 

Originally posted by eldanloco

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Do you honestly expect a company to drop 75 million dollars in the lap of someone with no good games in their past?

You are speaking of Richard Garriot, the man who made Ultima Online?

{ Mod Edit }

 

Eldanloco, try reading Rokurgepta's post again and the post that he quoted. He isnt referring to Richard Garriot, but to someone else's ignorance. He agrees with you lol.

{ Mod Edit }

That's why he should of went in the direction of making a UO 2 that would of been a hit but instead he followed the other MMOs.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

I have been playing VG 3 months and compared to TR it is worth my $15 a month. There are more people on now than  you might have been used to and finding groups at different levels is far from impossible. VG has issues no doubt, but compared to TR it is a true MMO. TR would have been a decent PC game if it had no fees after purchase. Should have went with the GW buy it and no monthly fee system, then maybe it would have been worth the total money I spent on that tiny MMo with so little to do.
 

That's exactly what I am talking about. You were the wrong person to target the game at. So much that you are willing to endure a technically inferior game then play a gamestyle you don't like.

Either way they are peer games. VG WAS at about 40k a year ago TR can't be a whole lot better off. VG will remain running for now as the stationpass enables SOE to keep all their games running (sorta like an MMO socialism) NC runs everything individually to live and die on their own performance (or lack of it) Anyway arguing about VG and TR is like arguing which is better, being set on fire or falling off a cliff. Pointless.

At least until SOE announces that they will be changing their overall strategy in the market with the coming of Freerealms, the Agency & DCU and starts cutting the fat. SOE isn't doing so hot in the market either these days and is probably in far worse shape then NCSoft as they have no big ticket names anymore and never had anything close to the level of success of Lineage 1 or 2. In fact SOE has damaged its reputation so badly that even if they made a good game I doubt that people would seriously give it half a chance. NC on the other hand...Aion, breaking records in Korea. Give it 3 months after launch and we will see how good the game really is. Then of course NC has GW2 on the way...

  There is no reason to keep it alive imho. The scraping of the first attempt at developing it with western  and eastern eastern developers failed due to dev egos. The next attempt with western only developers under Richard G resulted in a game that was poorly executed, and lost at its core on what it was trying to be.

 It didn't turn out as something that would make a lot of players want to play it long term. Good laugh for the first three weeks is all it was. It didn't help that the dev team decided to then take the game in the direction of capture points with clan vs clan warfare.

 This isn't enough, people can get a fix of that type of gameplay in Battlefield 2 or COD4 for example that does it 10x better imho for no monthly sub. Attempting action where most gamers interested in that type of action will not go to a game like Tabula Rasa and stay for any length of time, as it's poor compared to the other choices out there.
 

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by Death1942

i dont know why they picked Garriot to lead this project.  the guy was great (emphasis on was) back in the 90's but this is 2007/8, there is a whole new kind of game and gamer out there.  same thing goes for the guy who made Vanguard (forget his name).  they think just because they made a good game 6+ years ago that they can make a good one now.

 

Funny, doesn't seem like ANYONE is making a good game now, experience or not. So I don't think that has any effect on the game. Atleast he can say he HAS made a good game, which directors haven't been able to say for the last 4 years.

Hold on a minute.  This has nothing to do with making "good" games.  In the case of TR and Vanguard it has everything to do with making "ready-for-release" games.  Both those games could have been great.  Releasing betaware is the problem here.
 

Originally posted by indiramourn

Originally posted by Abrahmm

 

Funny, doesn't seem like ANYONE is making a good game now, experience or not. So I don't think that has any effect on the game. Atleast he can say he HAS made a good game, which directors haven't been able to say for the last 4 years.

Hold on a minute.  This has nothing to do with making "good" games.  In the case of TR and Vanguard it has everything to do with making "ready-for-release" games.  Both those games could have been great.  Releasing betaware is the problem here.
 

Since we are on that subject...

I only did the trial and although I didn't think it was all that bad, is it in a "ready - for - release" state now?

(I haven't a clue beyond level 15 as a commando, and I gotta say, rocket launchers did, in fact, ROCK) I experienced no technical issues and it didn't really feel grindy at all, I was doing missions straight through although most of them were pretty basic they kept with the fast paced nature of the game. The instances, although not super impressive, were pretty good...

However, like I said before, was more like GW then a traditional MMORPG (and that is why its catching so much flak IMHO)

So what are its real core problems? As a noob / trial I just don't know. I would guess its long term playability (I've only written that about 2 dozen times in various ways) and it dilutes at level cap to nothing more then a few limited repeatable activities or something. (I really gotta read up on this game one day)

 EDIT

I just got a message from massively.com and I just won a Tabula Rasa contest prize (soldier pack) which has a t-shirt, TR dog tags, and the game....

Talk about karma lol....

Of all the damn contest that site had, I won the TR....

Originally posted by Torak

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

I have been playing VG 3 months and compared to TR it is worth my $15 a month. There are more people on now than  you might have been used to and finding groups at different levels is far from impossible. VG has issues no doubt, but compared to TR it is a true MMO. TR would have been a decent PC game if it had no fees after purchase. Should have went with the GW buy it and no monthly fee system, then maybe it would have been worth the total money I spent on that tiny MMo with so little to do.
 

 

That's exactly what I am talking about. You were the wrong person to target the game at. So much that you are willing to endure a technically inferior game then play a gamestyle you don't like.

Either way they are peer games. VG WAS at about 40k a year ago TR can't be a whole lot better off. VG will remain running for now as the stationpass enables SOE to keep all their games running (sorta like an MMO socialism) NC runs everything individually to live and die on their own performance (or lack of it) Anyway arguing about VG and TR is like arguing which is better, being set on fire or falling off a cliff. Pointless.

At least until SOE announces that they will be changing their overall strategy in the market with the coming of Freerealms, the Agency & DCU and starts cutting the fat. SOE isn't doing so hot in the market either these days and is probably in far worse shape then NCSoft as they have no big ticket names anymore and never had anything close to the level of success of Lineage 1 or 2. In fact SOE has damaged its reputation so badly that even if they made a good game I doubt that people would seriously give it half a chance. NC on the other hand...Aion, breaking records in Korea. Give it 3 months after launch and we will see how good the game really is. Then of course NC has GW2 on the way...

 

You are assuming I did not like TRs gamestyle which you are 100% wrong on. The gamestyle was great, the fact the game was so easy I soloed to 50 in less than 2 months and then got there and had nothing to do but farm for loot to sell on the MS was the biggest problem.

Then trying to run an alt through the same boring quests killed my joy of the game. You played the trial, and I bet the trial was great because TRs best parts are below level 30. Hell after the first 20 levels I thought I found the MMO to play for years to come. Then I got past the truly polished and well built areas and got into TRs less thrilling game play areas. Post level 30 is really just blah, the missions are the same as any other MMO, nothing innovative there and CPs become a grind after you see the same exact Bane for the thousandth time.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

 

You are assuming I did not like TRs gamestyle which you are 100% wrong on. The gamestyle was great, the fact the game was so easy I soloed to 50 in less than 2 months and then got there and had nothing to do but farm for loot to sell on the MS was the biggest problem.

Then trying to run an alt through the same boring quests killed my joy of the game. You played the trial, and I bet the trial was great because TRs best parts are below level 30. Hell after the first 20 levels I thought I found the MMO to play for years to come. Then I got past the truly polished and well built areas and got into TRs less thrilling game play areas. Post level 30 is really just blah, the missions are the same as any other MMO, nothing innovative there and CPs become a grind after you see the same exact Bane for the thousandth time.

Sounds like Vanguard Maybe Brad and Rich are buds or something.

Yeah bro, there is no winning with these things, is there?

Originally posted by Torak

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

 

You are assuming I did not like TRs gamestyle which you are 100% wrong on. The gamestyle was great, the fact the game was so easy I soloed to 50 in less than 2 months and then got there and had nothing to do but farm for loot to sell on the MS was the biggest problem.

Then trying to run an alt through the same boring quests killed my joy of the game. You played the trial, and I bet the trial was great because TRs best parts are below level 30. Hell after the first 20 levels I thought I found the MMO to play for years to come. Then I got past the truly polished and well built areas and got into TRs less thrilling game play areas. Post level 30 is really just blah, the missions are the same as any other MMO, nothing innovative there and CPs become a grind after you see the same exact Bane for the thousandth time.

Sounds like Vanguard Maybe Brad and Rich are buds or something.

Yeah bro, there is no winning with these things, is there?

 

To me at least Vanguard you gain skills and abilities past 30. In TR 30 is he last level you get new skills.

There is no winning but there is endless debate.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

 

To me at least Vanguard you gain skills and abilities past 30. In TR 30 is he last level you get new skills.

There is no winning but there is endless debate.

Well I gotz me 30 more free dayz.

I winzors! For now anyway...