Can't wait to get patch 1.6 for Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa? April "CuppaJo" Burba has announced that the update will be arriving very soon. To find out more about this, head on over to the full article by clicking on the "read more" link below.

If you're a denizen of one of the more popular MMOs out there like World of Warcraft or Tabula Rasa, chances are you've visited their respective wikis for information. Useful tomes aren't they? This subject was actually a point of interest at this year's SXSW Interactive, where notable members of the gaming community talked about the symbiotic relationship between gamers and wikis. Read about it in the full article.

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa end of beta event had players find and kill General British. But why? How? Who the hell is General British anyways? (Hint: Richard Garriott = General British) Well, April Burba (AKA CuppaJo) discussed about the end of beta event and how it came about. Veteran MMORPG players will know this bit of gaming lore for sure.

For those who aren't aware, this event has some historical roots from all the way back in Ultima Online. When the game launched back then, Richard Garriott (the game's creator) he addressed the crowd in-game and... well, died. Apparently, upon giving the other players the challenge to kill him, he had forgotten to make his character invincible. So, right as he jumped into the fray of battle... well, you can probably figure out the rest.

Now in Tabula Rasa, they've recreated the event from ten years ago, with a few tweaks though. For one, Garriott wasn't invulnerable. What made him seem so were the clones of himself causing chaos in the battlefield. As CuppaJo explained before the event:

A lot of the developers will be in the game, dressed in the General British armor, and although they will look identical, they will have names like General Br1t1sh or General Irish. Only Richard Garriott himself will have the correct name, General British. As the players encounter these clones, they will have to eliminate them so that they can find the right one and take him down.

If you've ever played Where's Waldo, then you have a pretty good idea of what the folks at NCSoft and World of Roleplayers Radio have cooked up for beta testers in Tabula Rasa. On Friday, August 10, at approximately 8:00 to 10:00 P.M. Central time, the World of Roleplayers Radio website and NCSoft will be sponsoring a "Find General British" beta event on the U.S. Server.

In this event, which players will engage in an epic MMO version of hide and seek as they try and find Richard Garriott's avatar inside the game world. The first people to find General British will receive a variety of prizes, from T-Shirts, Dog Tags, Signed Artwork from Tabula Rasa's Dev Team, Tabula Rasa Challenge Coins, and an NCSoft iPod.

Folks will be enticed to listen in on World of Roleplayers Radio as CuppaJo will be offering clues to General British's location during the broadcast to help players out. All in all, it certainly sounds like a fun alternative to spend an evening of beta testing, doesn't it?

In any case, if you don't have a beta key for yourself just yet, you can check out the source link we have below for more tips and info on getting a Tabula Rasa beta key of your very own.

Now while there are no shortage of Medics in the on-going closed Beta phase of NCSoft's Tabula Rasa, any player going to jump into a seemingly endless war waged against the Bane would think once about taking the more offensive classes and take second opinions when choosing stealth or support classes, such as the Medic - or the Tier 4 Medic class in this case.

In order to diffuse confusion with support classes' offensive capabilities, Community Manager April "CuppaJo" Burba demonstrated the Medic class at the recently concluded ComicCon 2007 at San Diego, emphasizing how useful a support class can be in the United Free Sentients' struggles against the Bane.

Those who haven't been lucky to participate in the Beta phase but are heavily interested in the upcoming sci-fi MMORPG can check the video embedded below for some gameplay features discussed in earlier articles, including ceaseless conflict even while offline and capturing outposts.

Uberguilds Radio has announced that Tabula Rasa Community Manager April "Cuppa Jo" Burba will be on hand on Saturday, July 21, at 3 P.M. EDT for a live interview.

Fans can submit questions for the interview so if you have any burning questions about Tabula Rasa, send 'em in. Those looking for Tabula Rasa beta keys should also try to catch the interview as Uberguilds radio will also be giving free beta keys to 35 lucky listeners.

Speaking of beta keys, the Uberguilds Radio interview announcement also mentions that gamers can also get free beta keys from GuildCafe every day until Saturday, July 21. The person who has invited the most friends to GuildCafe during the giveaway period will also get a special bonus of five beta keys.

 

In line with continuing interviews with WarCry, April Burba (AKA CuppaJo) spilled some beans on another aspect of Tabula Rasa that some of you "make love, not war" gamers might find interesting. TR's also got other activities that you can involve yourself in, more specifically social systems that allow you to spice up your gaming experience.

WarCry: We know there is lots of fighting in Tabula Rasa, can you tell us a bit about what else you can do in the game, for example what type of social skills are available in game?

April Burba: Besides fighting we have a crafting system, the hunt for Logos (collection), taverns (social RnR), and a Clan system (Guilds). These are just the first steps in these areas and I expect more social systems to show up in some of our major content releases. // The worlds themselves are also great for explorers who enjoy wandering. (Not all that wander are lost.) Unlike some MMOs where you can walk for an hour and see only some dried grass and a lion or two, the worlds of TR are large, but dense with points of interest.

Also in the interview, CuppaJo talks of how they were able to balance FPS aspects in an MMO. It's not only about FPS aiming, because more than that, you also have to consider factors such as which body part would do more damage when hit or even down to how "sticky" you want your reticle to latch onto your target.

More on instancing, Banes, and progress on the beta right behind the Read link below.

NCSoft Community Manager for Tabula Rasa April Burba (aka CuppaJo) was recently interviewed by website WarCry regarding details related to the said MMO's warfare. We guess you already understand by now that despite the game's excellent background story, the main highlight for TR is still in its battlefields.

According to CuppaJo, enemies in Tabula Rasa can be distinguished through their colors. When you see grey enemy units, don't worry because these Banes are definitely weak. On the other hand, you might want to keep an eye on the red ones as they are immensely powerful. White, furthermore, represents medium difficulty.

Also, take note that the Bane will come to you in two different ways. There's a type of enemy that compensates for its weakness through numbers, CuppaJo even brought up StarCraft's Zerg Swarm as a point of reference. Semi-bosses were also created as "very strong", making up for its limited numbers.

Aside from this, Tabula Rasa will also feature a PvP environment. It's just intriguing how NCsoft is going to do this provided that every player in the game will belong to the human race. Burba explained,

Throughout human history in spite of the presence of a common enemy, humans still fight amongst themselves. Humans still love, they still lust, they still fear. Our humanness does not disappear in war, rather it is amplified. The world (in-game and out) is not black and white. There are ethical shades of grey that can make you wonder which side is really good or evil.

CuppaJo added that PvP play will come in the form of 1v1, small team against a small team, as well as clan versus clan. Other topics discussed in the interview include item decay and cloning. The community manager shared that item decay is faster every time you die and depending on the frequency you use any given item or gear.

Lastly, cloning in Tabula Rasa is yet to be finalized. Burba said that players can delete every single clone they don't want and create a new one. However, this feature will be limited by the number of character slots to be assigned to players - which is yet to be decided as well.

The WarCry network was able to have a quick Q&A with none other than CuppaJo herself regarding NCSoft's Tabula Rasa. One of the first topics they discussed was the format of raids. If WoW has their own system, how exactly will it go for TR? Besides, Garriott previously stated that WoW did them a great service in the MMO arena. So how different would raids be in this game?

WarCry: Raids! Some people love them, others hate them. Will there be raids in TR and how will they be handled? What do you plan to be the average size group in TR?

CuppaJo: So we have large instanced areas - but the max group size will be the same as all other groupings - 6. As for stuff to do with large groups of people, there are large enemy controlled bases which if players wanted to take them over would require working together in large groups. More like castle sieges.

Castle sieges? Right. Castle here being some sprawling base that's part metal and part laser security systems, populated with Banes and Thrax soldiers left and right. But more on these instances, an intriguing question popped up towards the end of the interview:

WarCry: You have said that Tabula Rasa will use Instancing. Could you explain how often we will see instancing, and what kind of things we can look forward to seeing in the instances?

CuppaJo: Instancing runs about 40% of the game at the start and then moves to about 60% towards the end. Instances are more like single player games - lots of story, lots of amazing things going on. Instances in TR blow me away. There is more thinking going on in instances with cameras, alarms, and interacting with your environment and it's just cool as hell.

You can click the Read link below to see the full interview.

 

Is learning the Logos language necessary? CuppaJo tells WarCry that "it won't be necessary" to learn the distinct iconographic language of the game world - unless you're trying to translate that darned stone tablet - yet Logos should also be "easy to pick up" as players course through the game. She even says that even without the complete Logos vocabulary, players should be able to understand paragraphs through context.

One word that theoretically shouldn't be in Tabula Rasa's vocabulary is "grind." At least that's how the game's built. Experience points should be earned from quests and kills, CuppaJo reveals: but there's also a kill streak bonus to take advantage of. So yeah, you should still be ripping heads off for XP. But at least it'll be faster.