Review: Tabula Rasa

EuroTrash

86%

Tabula Rasa was enjoyable and includes a number of really innovative features. The game is a nice mix between a fantasy ability based MMO and fast paced hardcore FPS.
   Lets talk about my favorite feature first, the living realistic world. Mobs don't stand around waiting for players to kill them and then respawn. Enemies are shuttled in on a drop ship and they attack settlements in an exciting fashion. This is by far the most innovative difference between this game and something like WoW. Who hasn't envisioned a game with caravan traffic on the roads, pilgrim NPCs, and actual living breathing populations that go beyond being quest givers and vendors? I can only pray this technology is developed more for every future MMO.
   There is also a really awesome way to re-spec and explore alternate facets of the game with character cloning. Say you want to re-play a battle as a different type of character? Simply hop onto a clone and you will maintain your level, but have the ability to re-distribute your talents into any configuration you want. This means everyone aught to settle into their favorite play style after exploring them all without it costing billions of hours out of their lives.
   In PvP combat Tabula Rasa has one awesome feature called the Wargame Feud system. A guild leader declares a feud with another guild (which has to accept) and then over the next 7 real life days their kill tallies are totaled. Whichever guild killed members of the other guild more during that time period is declared the winner of the feud. Imagine that, the ability to have a guild vs guild competition in an MMORPG. WoW player's heads are collectively exploding as the thought of how amazing this is makes its way into their subconscious
  

ComradePepp...

72%

Everyone has been kissing Richard Garriott's feet after he made it big with UO. So he quickly went into his magical video game factory and ordered his flunkies to produce a game that will give his fans a feeling of warm spunk filling their cheeks. Tabula Rasa is basically a game for people who could not handle the atrocious difficulty of World of Warcraft's RP servers.
   There is no such thing as world PVP or factions to choose from. At the beginning you will know exactly where to go, but the quest log will eventually bug out and you won't be able to track your "Kill This" and "Fetch That" quests anymore.
   The twist of Tabula Rasa is that you don't mash hotkeys like in WOW. You shoot guns on the run with a standard third person view. You will have to buy new ammo all the time and you will have to constantly switch between different guns to kill specific types of monsters, but don't worry, the King of Video Games gives his followers so much game money they can effortlessly buy the best of the best gear all the time. All they have to do is hold down a button and annihilate everything in their path.
   Not everything is easy in Richard Garriott's playhouse -- for example, when you really want to use that new class skill, sometimes you won't be able to because this game wants you to search for LOGOS that you have to put into your character, and then you can use your new class skills, awesome!!! There is virtually no PVP in TR, only standard instanced PVP which is no fun at all. The talent tree is
  simple, it branches out as you level up so you can choose to be a healer or a dpser or an engineer.
   It's a crappy MMO for Care Bears, noobs, and young children. Tabula Rasa tried to be an original MMO but miserably failed. I guess Richard Garriot was too busy dressing in costumes and reading Harry Potter in his 2 million dollar treehouse.

Newton

80%

Holy crap was Tabula Rasa a huge disappointment to me. A game from the creator of Ultima Online is exactly the type of thing that gets me super excited; hoping for another awesome PVP game with harsh death penalties and insane player driven politics. However what I got with TR proves to me that UO was a fluke and Richard Garriot isn't even remotely in touch with what anyone who liked UO would want to experience in a modern MMO.
   Garriot specifically stated that players would be able to affect the outcome of the war depicted in the game. Humans have been driven from the Earth and are on the run from an evil alien race known as "The Bane." Problem is your options are to fight against the bane or not and that is it. You can't choose to ally with them and if you decide to just ignore them you may as well quit and just play something else instead.
   Quests that put you to an A or B decision simply result in slightly different results, but these results have no impact whatsoever on anyone else playing the game. UO was brilliant because if I decided to be an evil killer I could do it and I would actually impact the other good players and align myself with the other evil ones. Tabula Rasa has only consensual PvP. It aught to be illegal to advertise this game using the UO name.
   Want an ironclad example of how this game blows donkey ass? Taking a non-combat profession costs exactly the same ability points that you use for fighting skills! This means if you want to be a crafter in TR you have to sacrifice power in battle to do it. How insanely stupid can you get? I guess combat power really doesn't mean anything without PvP, but this system basically forces serious players to have an alt for crafting and completely devote their main character to being a stronger fighter. Talk about lack of understanding in MMO design!