Tabula Rasa

This week, Richard Garriott's Magnum Opus gets a little love. A long distance dedication, from Yahtzee to General British.

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That was brilliant, might give the game a go myself though.

Thankx Yahtzee... I don't understand the appeal of MMORPGs either....

Probably the most disturbing one yet! Congratulations!

I am so not having salad for lunch...

Amazing.

Gareth Gobulcoque for the win! I have a great name for my FFT game now. A round of applause for this one, it was lurvely although I haven't seen Tabula Rasa yet to verify any statement. Not that it matters. Fully agree with the stance on MuhMorPeeGees: not my cup of tea, not worth throwing money to, but some like it so power to them.

gotta say i had played the tabula rasa beta too and that review is totally spot on, pointless character outfit changing at the start to immediately change it to something else. although yuo can get paint to help colour code your new armour. although its not nearly as noticeable as the first choice you make.

also good on calling it for being basically a sci fi port of wow but about 10 times less obvious. the help tips were completely unhelpful

although i kinda enjoyed the twist of having to take control of bases before receiving missions. although when iplayed it that was buggy as fuck and only worked once

Just like last week, folks, if you wanna show Yahtzee some love and you have an account, Digg him here.

Heh, as usual, Yahtzee smacking everyone in the face with the obvious they should have already known but constantly refuse to acknowledge. An MMORPG isn't going to be worth playing unless it breaks the mold, and shoving Everquest into a science fiction setting is not breaking the mold.

Of the MMORPGs I've played, rated on "breaking the mold" (not overall, just on uniqueness):

Anarchy Online: Played this for a month and a half. The skilling system is pretty unique, so that gets it a 2/10 on the Break The Mold scale.

World of Warcraft: Please, this doesn't break the mold; this IS the mold. 0/10.

Earth and Beyond: The most I've ever seen a conventional leveling MMORPG break the mold; multiple level categories, and a lot of great ideas. And killed off by Electronic Arts as baggage from the Westwood takeover, but thats besides the point. 4/10.

EVE Online: Almost the definition of breaking the mold, even if some of its aspects drop down into grinding, because at least it gives the player the choice to stop grinding, even if it means he can't afford that 5% better Mega Ship Of Doom that he'll lose 10 minutes later. 6/10.

Shattered Galaxy: Why does nobody else know about this game? Its so fracking *fun*. I mean seriously, its loads of FUN. That is, FUN, not grinding, not repetitiveness, FUN. How can you go wrong with an MMORTS? Has anyone else even DONE an MMORTS? 7/10 because it still had a conventional leveling system and tried to shove an extra grind in there with the reincarnation system.

Very good all round I never got Lord British either so glad to see I'm not the only one.

Why, in the name of all that I hold holy and dear, did I decide to take a huge swig of Pepsi at the exact moment that Yahtzee revealed the name of his character?

Ben, you're going to kill me one of these days. Or at least get me thrown out of these open computer labs.

As a beta tester myself i must say the game WAS good up until a very recent patch. It stuffed the game royally. They made all melee useless by having the mobs blow you to dickhole about 3x as much now, they also spot you from about twice as far. I knew this review was gonna be bad as soon as i saw the tittle, but i suppose they should be honored that he even did the game.

Very nice.

I'm curious why they went the MMORPG route rather than MMOFPS route that Planetside went. Granted Planetside wasn't the most amazing engine ever, and the updates they gave it slowly killed any and all balance and started to remove all the fun. However, waging a two hour battle over a single base where the fight went from "I'm winning!" to "FUCK SHIT COCK MONGLERY WE'RE DYING!" to "Yay we're winning again!" reaches such a point of awesome that the game didn't even NEED to have a good engine as the experience itself made it fun gameplay.

Now imagine doing that with a good engine and better game design. I mean, unless you're doing something like the aforementioned EVE online, an MMORPG with guns seems real pointless. Planetside was a great idea. Too bad the execution and horrible, unbalancing updates ruined it after a while.

Wow, Registered just because this was the first time Yahtzee revieuws a game (rather - beta) I'm playing at the moment.

Whilst the revieuw is very true off course I look through it with perhaps a lot less jaded perspective. I haven't played an MMO since Ragnarock 8 years ago or so. I do know what's going on in other MMO's so I just compared to what I heard and then ran with that.

So for me, choosing armor colour etc wasn't that big of a deal. Just hit random and go. MMO's are about updating and that's what I was aiming for.
Action, same thing. I'm way more of a shooter/RTS/action lover and in that aspect it's just sheer fun when you manage to pull of a mortal kombat style fatality during a fire fight.

My biggest problem with the came was indeed that the quests are nothing new, mostly grinds. "Kill me so much of X". Either that, or scavenger hunts/posing as a convenient mailman delivering stuff.
This while Oblivion (though overrated) was clearly able to at least bring depth to even the simplest of tasks. For instance, collecting a book meant infiltrating a castle either by sneaking or getting a job, battling it out with a vampire and then either rambo or sneak you're way out.

Still, it remains cool to pull a squad together and retake a lost base (something that happens a lot more now that the beta has been patched.)

I think that Yahtzee's view on MMORPG's is natural with anyone over 20.As in every person under this age likes MMORPG's whereas the slightly older audience deem it a complete waste of time, you cant appeal to all audiences though.

GrandBoy:
I think that Yahtzee's view on MMORPG's is natural with anyone over 20.As in every person under this age likes MMORPG's whereas the slightly older audience deem it a complete waste of time, you cant appeal to all audiences though.

I don't think age is related at all. The average age for World of Warcraft is likely below 20, while its a rare day when I run into anyone below 20 playing EVE Online, where almost everyone I know is 20-50.

Its mainly a matter of intended audience, not the game genre itself.

Ha Ha. Classic. Way to take the piss out of those time-sinks. I always thought that MMORPG's could only be fun if you played with people you knew that lived across country. I can't fathom playing it with your townie friends. I mean why don't you just call them up and say, "Hey, wasting time grinding on a level treadmill with no discernible reward is fun and all but why don't we get together and do something a little more engaging, since you know, we only live within 5 or 10 bloody miles of each other."

i registered simply to post on this one teehee *giggles like an excited asian schoolgirl*
but seriously, i am playing the tabula rasa demo and ive got only one word for it: buggy, of course i cant expect a BETA to bePERFECT, but when i cant even look up in the sky without the game crashing, cant even shoot an enemy before him popping up besides me suddenly, or cant even switch guns before my computer exploding, i guess theres a problem, but on the other hand, i enjoy tabula rasa's system in general (and im over 20) theres a small "strategy aspect" that adds a nice touch to the game, now im not saying id ever PAY for this, but id gladly play it now and then if it was free, another small problem though are the hugeness of the lands, now dont get me wrong, i was a star wars galaxies fan, with whole planets to explore, who were HUGE, but for christ's sake, i had a speederbike! now this game expects me to go to a point at the other side of the map, with monsters 10 times my level blocking the whole way, and who start runing after me while i must be something of a dot in the distance for them, but overall its a decent game, but like i said, its good if its free, its worth nothing if its pay-per-month

not to conclude my post, id like to submit the game "second life" to you yahtzee, its not really a "game", more of a "social environement" but its getting a lot of media to talk about them, and im sure youd do a good video with it, just like anything you do ^^

TR doesn't make any sense. It's setting is supposed to be the near future but the entire game takes place on different planets. What's the point of having the setting of the game in this century if there is nothing from this century in the game?

I've stopped playing MMOs when an MMO comes out that plays like a normal non MMORPG action game or FPS then maybe I'll look at the genre again until then as far as I'm concerned MMOs don't exist.

Well, the important thing is that you tried.

Oh come now good sir, the game ain't that bad.
Then again, I'm one of those people who genuinely enjoyed Auto Assault, the short-lived bastard of Mad Max and WoW that it was, and think combining MMORPGs and shooters may be a good idea.
I personaly don't get the people that don't get the premises. What's not to get? Humanity is weak and decadent, so it gets shafted and only the strong are left to fight for our survival. All those damn MMORPG playing slackers get left behind to die on Earth. And complaining there is nothing contemporary in the game would be alike to a 20s man complaining there ain't anything recognizable in the Transfromers movie.

P.S. I suspect all salad bars in Australia have a "No Yah-Tzees allowed" sign.

I understand yahztee, I understand only too well...

Great review as always. Echoes my thoughs on MMO's neatly. How I hate the tedium of having to do the same thing 26743 times in MMO gameplay... and how I hate myself for playing and getting hooked on them anyway. I...I have a problem. :'(

I completely understand where you're coming from Yah-tzee but if you think about it any Onlinegames are pretty much the same, the same "grind" in a different way, you're always playing the same map... often with the same people, doing the same objectives over and over again only with a bit more "Action", but then there are also different kinds of "MMORPG'S" e.g. for example the latest Fury and Mythos are more about the combat/battling aspect.
While I DO agree that mindnumbingly tedious grind is kind of stupid and I didn't pay for any MMO monthly for several years it's always nice to play Betas here and there and there's always parts of those games that are actually fun.

Wow, that was a brilliant assessment of my feelings, more or less on MMORPGs. I actually played the Tabula Rosa game a few E3s ago, when it was not actually a shooter, but more of standard, Guild Quest/WOW looking MMO. I actually enjoyed it a little bit more than the newer Tablua Rosa that wants to be a shooter.

Grinding, to me, takes a lot of fun out of games, and I include the Final Fantasy Series to a certain degree in this statement.

I also agree that Shattered Galaxy was an amazingly promising and innovative MMO game and I wish we could see a Starcraft themed MMO done in that fashion.

As we are on the subject of different MMO's, any thoughts about the upcommin Conan game? At least the combat there looks engaging and should at least bring some extra "oomph" to grinding I think.

Ok, I'm f-ing stumped, where are the damn guns from (Startrek?)

Also, note to self when eating salad with Yahtzee always bring a fork.

I barely understood a word of that. >:( I had to keep replaying certain bits. There is such a thing as taking a gimmick too far, y'know? Speaking really fast is apparently your 'thing' now, but remember you still need to let the audience kinda understand your actual words.

Otherwise it was mostly cool.

Feehl:

I personaly don't get the people that don't get the premises. What's not to get? Humanity is weak and decadent, so it gets shafted and only the strong are left to fight for our survival. All those damn MMORPG playing slackers get left behind to die on Earth. And complaining there is nothing contemporary in the game would be alike to a 20s man complaining there ain't anything recognizable in the Transfromers movie.

I was watching an interview on the Blade Trinity dvd with David Goyer. In the interview Goyer said "I had planned to set the 3rd Blade movie 50 years into the future, but if I did that then I might has well set the movie on mars." He said that because there wouldn't have been anything for audience to identify with.

With TR the game is set in the near future but there are laser shotguns that run on energy ammo, personal shield generators, forms of transportation that can move a person from one planet to another in an instant, not to mention the "logos" that let you shoot electricity out of you hands. So, with all this in the game what's the point of it being in the near future if there's next to nothing from the period present in the game? Unless you want to count things like the footlocker.

Merlynn:
Well,since we seem to have a fuckload of TR players,I got a question after looking some of the TR stuff up. Is TR a FPS/RPG deal or is it like City of Heroes in which the game is more "actiony" but still an RPG? What I mean is,when you point a gun at an enemy is it actually aiming at them or is it just a niftier way to do the old "WoW targetting" thing and hitting or missing is still decided by a "roll of the dice"?

TR wants to be a 3rd person shooter, but where it fails to do this is that dice rolls still determine the hit and miss and how much damage you do, also moving and shooting lowers your damage and hit percentage. Other than movement during combat TR is standard MMO fare.

Very funny again. Thought that the MMOFPS would once again fail.

Memo to self: Avoid creamy ranch dressing in Brisbane.

Well done, as usual man. I do wonder what other option there is in mm besides the grind, however. If you don't give the same task over and over, someone has to design and write exponentially more places and activities, its hard to imagine that working out to be cost effective.

Edit: Does anyone else visualize a penguin with a gun when they read the words "magnum opus"?