Tabula Rasa Undergoes Massive Overhaul

The Tabula Rasa site has been replaced with a large announcement stating that the game has undergone massive overhauls in the last year. The designers apparently felt that the game simply wasn't shaping up to be what they had hoped, and went back to the drawing board for some elements. From the announcement: "Over the next few weeks you will see changes to the Tabula Rasa website. The site will be receiving a major overhaul in advance of this year's E3 event. You can look forward to new creatures, new features, and new information."

Comments

That's good, at least.

[startled]

The last E3 demo they had was an awesome idea for a demo: the game has voice comm built in (about time! all MMOs from here on out should be voice), so they had a "tour guide" take groups of people through a mission. How could that go wrong?

Unfortunately, the rest of the demo was a disaster. You had 3 types of attack; enemies were resistant to various degrees against each type of attack. So, use the right type of attack against the right type of enemy. And... that was about it. No interesting combos (in the demo at least), no obvious cases for teamwork, and certainly nothing to distinguish it from Everquest. Even if the game possessed those qualities (which the demo very much made me doubt), the demo didn't show a single distinguishing trait, except for disconcerting art direction.

I lost all interest in the title after playing that demo. The fact that they're overhauling the game (a while back, they replaced a lot of people, and announced they were slipping the release date for massive changes-- I'm not sure how this announcement is different, actually) makes me a bit interested in it again.

Before World of Warcraft, I think some publishers and developers didn't realize their weak Everquest clones wouldn't bring in the bucks they were hoping for. Now that they see who's gonna eat their lunch while they die in obscurity, I think they're realizing they have to step up and do something different. I look forward to seeing if this game turns out to be any good.

Out on a Limb

[Zonk]

Commentary on this up at Grimwell.

I personally think is is likely to end up with the product better than it might have already been. While you might say "WoW scared them into second guessing themselves", more development time seems almost universally to lead to a better product.

All that said, I liked the sound of the original Tabular Rasa design. I especially liked the idea of skill/attribute mods being plug-ins, with the avatar's appearance being entirely at the user's whim.

I swear, some of the color combinations I've worn in WoW has made me neauseous.

Re:Out on a Limb

[Geckoman]

more development time seems almost universally to lead to a better product.

Yeah, Daikatana benefitted greatly from the extra time that went into it, and Duke Nukem Forever is sure to be a high quality production because of all the extra time it's had, too.

Sadly, dramatic mid-project changes or indefinite schedules are seldom a good sign....

Skill

[Lord_Dweomer]

I wish there were some MMORPGs out there that actually required twitch skills instead of just "press button A to use power 1, wait for it to recharge, rinse, repeat"