Tabula Rasa in 2008 - An Interview with April Burba

[Cody Bye]

With the coming of 2008, every gamer wants to get a quick update on their favorite game and what sort of course that the development team is taking. The Ten Ton Hammer staff is equally as interested in the future of every MMOG, so we've been eagerly communicating with developers around the world. One of the first updates we have for the new year focuses on a game that was one of the last released in 2007: Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. Cody "Micajah" Bye and Tony "RadarX" Jones sat down with TR's community manager, April "CuppaJo" Burba, to hear about NCsoft's plans for that game. Please enjoy!

April: You're definitely going to see us introducing new missions for content that we've already rolled out, especially in the higher level areas. Along with that, you're going to see some new areas coming online as well. You're just going to be seeing more content as we progress in our game development.

In fact, we're gradually moving towards a regular content release schedule that might be a bit more ambitious than what you've seen in other NCsoft titles. We'll have the big releases similar to what players have seen with the Issues in CoH/CoV, but we also want to get regular content to those people that have been in the game a long time and give them the sort of continuous experience that they want to enjoy.

Check out the whole interview here!

What sort of advancements would you like to see in the progression of Tabula Rasa? What do you think of the general Tabula Rasa community? Let us know!

[Taea]

Call me shallow, but the biggest thing I see on there is:

We've got a contest coming up where one of the awards for the contest is black armor dye. But - if you play Tabula Rasa - you know that there isn't ANY black armor dye in the game.

Huge, I tell you, HUGE!

I'm in a unique position in that my highest toon is 32, atm, so I'm no where near end game status. I don't PvP or craft either. As far as I'm concerned, everything is running smoothly

[auutumn]

The game went live way too soon and therefore the early players are seeing a lot of annoying and frustrating bugs. A lot of players I've talked to in the game have reported some really silly and stupid bugs repeatedly but the devs just seem to ignore them; too many to list.

I'm all for adding new content to a game but seriously, you've got to fix what's broken first. Then you can address character class balance issue (tons of issues here), and then work on economy...which is an incredibly bad shape.

My intent is to play for the first free month at which point I hope to get my character to level 50.

[RadarX]

Originally Posted by auutumn

The game went live way too soon and therefore the early players are seeing a lot of annoying and frustrating bugs. A lot of players I've talked to in the game have reported some really silly and stupid bugs repeatedly but the devs just seem to ignore them; too many to list.

I'm all for adding new content to a game but seriously, you've got to fix what's broken first. Then you can address character class balance issue (tons of issues here), and then work on economy...which is an incredibly bad shape.

My intent is to play for the first free month at which point I hope to get my character to level 50.

We had a similar thread over in the TR forums to which I gave a similar response to this. I disagree completely. Once a game goes into serious production you cannot under any circumstance stop creating content or it will die. People get excited about new equipment, new zones, etc... People do not get excited and start talking about bug fixes and class balance.

What am I personally going to get more excited about? PAU's giving me something to look forward to at higher levels or a revamp to a class I don't even play?

Now I'm not saying they don't need to address bugs because there are some that need to be taken care of ASAP, they just are going to have to balance both.