Free Tabula Rasa codes & download being given out

deathkitten_EU · 02-10-2009 09:24 AM

i just thought i'd share this: http://eu.playtr.com/en/news_article...ula_rasa_today - sorry for being a bit offtopic but well there is no offtopic forum and i thought people might be interested

they have a link to make a new account (it instantly does it if you are already logged in on PlayNC account management) and download the game - you don't need to have bought anything it's totally free now - i didn't buy it but i thought i might as well try it

if you are reading this and don't actually play City Of and so don't have a NCsoft account, don't worry it's very painless to setup you don't need any card details

it closes down forever on the 28th February 2009 (yeah just over 2 weeks), and there is no singleplayer, so this is the only chance to see it

it's actually better than I thought it would be, i think the critics gave it too hard a time, it's sad, I would've bought it if there had been a free trial - so far I had actually more fun than city of, though that might just be cos I've overplayed Co (all the TFs/SFs, can remember way around caves and offices etc by heart like I'm sure lots of others here can by now

the EU server at least also has a LOT of people it actually seems more active than Cityof (serious!) which is weird because the reason given by NCsoft on their site for shutting it down is low player populations

if you liked Fallout 3 you'll probably like it

Judgement_Dave · 02-10-2009 09:57 AM

QR

Think it was mentioned a while back that TR had moved to free to play (iirc it was late November or early December it made the move).

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it's actually better than I thought it would be, i think the critics gave it too hard a time, it's sad, I would've bought it if there had been a free trial

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It became a great game to play, but, as is the practice these days, it:
* Had everyman and his dog involved in the beta test (which probably managed to lose many people when perceived beta-nerfs were made)
* Launched without several features that had been promised (and obviously picked up by some reviews)

Admittedly the dev team moved pretty quickly and within 2 or 3 months a lot of the launch problems/omissions had been sorted out, but the damage was already done.

Actually, the devs struck me as pretty good with TR. There were pretty regular updates/expansions, which weren't neccesarily big but it felt good to have an expansion each month or so.

[ QUOTE ]

the EU server at least also has a LOT of people it actually seems more active than Cityof (serious!) which is weird because the reason given by NCsoft on their site for shutting it down is low player populations

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If the server traffic lighting system is correct, the EU seems to be at least as busy as any of the servers at pretty much any time of day... Which may be part of the problem: it surprises me that not one of the US servers ever sticks out as having a far bigger population.

TR was an expensive monster to create, and NC wanted to see a good return on it. I think that they've been seeing an operating profit, but one that's several magnitudes lower than planned and would take something just shy of eternity to repay the development investment.

By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)

Scarlet Shocker · 02-10-2009 10:17 AM

I've played it a while. To me it was basically Guild Wars in Outter Space. I would have played it for free on occasion but I sub to this and I've got a GW account, and Second Life. I don't have time!

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Scarlet Shocker · 02-10-2009 10:20 AM

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TR was an expensive monster to create, and NC wanted to see a good return on it. I think that they've been seeing an operating profit, but one that's several magnitudes lower than planned and would take something just shy of eternity to repay the development investment.

[/ QUOTE ]

If that were true, I'm kinda surprised they didn't try and shift the IP and infrastructure off to somebody else... to at least get some return on investment. If the game is making a profit it seems odd to me that it's going to be buried alive.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

FloatingFatMan · 02-10-2009 10:20 AM

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and Second Life. I don't have time!

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Why Scarlet! I didn't think you were into THAT kind of gaming!

@FloatingFatMan

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Sapphic_Neko · 02-10-2009 10:21 AM

Been pondering wanting to check it out, but at the same time... if i do like i'll be sad when it closes down at end of feb ><

Judgement_Dave · 02-10-2009 10:23 AM

I really can't see the similarity to Guild Wars. But the in Outer Space (well... on non-terrestrial planets actually) may be enough for some people to try it.

I have GW (in all it's current incarnations) purely as the non-sub model made it an affordable buy-and-forget package to play occasionally. Having said that - I subbed to TR partly as I'd rather escape the slew of high fantasy/swords & sorcery games.

The play-style and indeed the world setup (open zones vs instances) is very different to GW.

About the biggest similarity between the 2 may be certain aspects of inventory/mission management - and tbh ever since trying GW/TR I've wished that we didn't have the limits on 3 missions/2 arcs in CoX.

By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)

Judgement_Dave · 02-10-2009 10:29 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

TR was an expensive monster to create, and NC wanted to see a good return on it. I think that they've been seeing an operating profit, but one that's several magnitudes lower than planned and would take something just shy of eternity to repay the development investment.

[/ QUOTE ]

If that were true, I'm kinda surprised they didn't try and shift the IP and infrastructure off to somebody else... to at least get some return on investment. If the game is making a profit it seems odd to me that it's going to be buried alive.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm waiting to be pulled up on that... as I said 'I think' - i.e. iirc

I've not double-checked for todays post, but a little voice in my head seems to recall that it was making money on a day-to-day basis (before moving to free to play).

Not offloading it has surprised a few people.

We've been told (about 2 weeks ago) that a server merge (to a single server) is coming soon, and some speculate that it's to make running an end-of-game event easier... But there's always the alternate camp still hoping that the free-to-play period and server merge may be NC seeing if there is enough interest to run a single server and look into alternate revenue streams for it...

It'd be nice if this happened.. but, then, it'd be nice if there was no war and cancer was a long distant memory.

By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)

RetiredPlayer · 02-10-2009 10:44 AM

I played it to L30+ when it became free, it's a fairly solid game now, and had it been like this at launch it probably would have been quite successful. Still hoping it might not close down completely.

TheMESS · 02-10-2009 10:48 AM

i liked the sound of TR it seemed like a good idea a change from the swords and magic of other MMOs and had they maybe held it back a few months till it was more complete before releasing it it may have fared better in that respect its a bit like auto assault another good idea some what badly implemented.

Maybe there hanging onto the IP with plans to either relaunch the game or reuse the core IP for some other type of game as it could probably be remolded into a average to above average FPS

Or hows about this for a pipe dream there gonna take tek from TR (the clone build type thingy) and cars from auto assault and splice them into COH

Scarlet Shocker · 02-10-2009 10:49 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
and Second Life. I don't have time!

[/ QUOTE ]

Why Scarlet! I didn't think you were into THAT kind of gaming!

[/ QUOTE ]

HAHA I'm not. But it's a good place to find an audience when involved in internet radio

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Judgement_Dave · 02-10-2009 10:50 AM

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Or hows about this for a pipe dream there gonna take tek from TR (the clone build type thingy) and cars from auto assault and splice them into COH

[/ QUOTE ]
When VEATs came out with branching subtypes/powersets I wondered if it was inter-team collaboration/idea sharing within NC.

By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)

Snow · 02-10-2009 11:19 AM

Tabula rasa is a fine little game, i did enjoy playing it.

Im sure i tried to log in not so long ago and found the game to be offline, has it since come back ?

As at moment im sorta playing a bit of WAR as well as COH. while fitting in the odd jam session on rockband2

@Snow.
Defiant: Snow + many other alts

Arc ID 61069

deathkitten_EU · 02-10-2009 11:25 AM

it's definitely back -though obviously only until the 28th

apparently this morning they released a high-resolution textures patch for a lot of buildings

Judgement_Dave · 02-10-2009 11:59 AM

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Im sure i tried to log in not so long ago and found the game to be offline, has it since come back ?

[/ QUOTE ]
AFAIK the live servers have never been away other than minor update/maintenance spots (much as our game servers have).

I think that the test server hasn't always been available.

By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)

Isit_Hotinhere · 02-10-2009 02:10 PM

Better get in there quick tho ...TR servers close for good at the end of the month.

JawDropper_EU · 02-10-2009 02:40 PM

I'm tempted to give this a try out tomorrow night, anyone fancy joining me for a lowbie run together?

@Jaw Dropper - Toons of all levels so drop me a line!

Imaginary Inc.

Twitter me!

SinergyX_EU · 02-10-2009 03:24 PM

Tabula is what AoC was not. Both had a very very rough start, along with some major changes shortly before launch, yet Tabula made up a huge chunk of issues.

I have few lvl30ish character, they diversity is pretty big between them, though forced to dropping playerbase they had to make the game 'easier' (read solo) to keep people playing. Few days before the 'big word' they even showed the PAU's, luckely they are still added after they announced closure.

I will miss this game though, no other game ever could give the feeling when the base was attacked by bane, trying to fight them off with a hand full of people. Or taking a base back, great PvE activity. And opening fire with a lvl2 chaingun fully buffed was plain fun

Sad part, they did announce the future maps will involve going back to earth (refering partly to richard himself), but afaik this never made it live

Goodside, we got lotsa goodies when they announced closure, biggest one is the Aion beta acces and 1 free month, along with LA2 and CoH free months.

50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore

Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!

deathkitten_EU · 02-10-2009 03:42 PM

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I'm tempted to give this a try out tomorrow night, anyone fancy joining me for a lowbie run together?

[/ QUOTE ]

sure my name on there is Mccarver (it picks your first character's last name as your OOC name and you have the same last name for all your characters) - there's a friends list thing on the CTRL menu in bottomleft

hey and whats a PAU?

Judgement_Dave · 02-10-2009 03:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Sad part, they did announce the future maps will involve going back to earth (refering partly to richard himself), but afaik this never made it live

[/ QUOTE ]
The first map did make it to live over a month ago - though I've not seen it as it's a level 50 instance and my highest still ain't that high... Thinking I'd subscribed to a game that will last longer than 15 months I wasn't racing to 50!

PAU - Personal Armoured Units (e.g. big armoured mechs that you can get into and control).

By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)

Gangrel_EU · 02-10-2009 04:09 PM

The Earth instance is also *very* hard, dont even think about trying to solo it, as you *will* be 2/3/4 shotted.

Will be bouncing on and off it to get all the red items.

Name is Gangrel ingame btw ^^

JawDropper_EU · 02-10-2009 05:41 PM

I am installing it as we speak. Think i'll probably have a bit of a play with it tonight, surname McDropper no doubt.

Edit: or i would be if i could actually get onto the Ncsoft account page

@Jaw Dropper - Toons of all levels so drop me a line!

Imaginary Inc.

Twitter me!

SinergyX_EU · 02-10-2009 06:25 PM

If you get in game, Rince is the name

Oh forgot to mention, for the last day event its good to be 50. So mobs drop hyper exp boosts, giving 2000% exp bonus. So even starters have a chance of reaching 50

50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore

Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!

JawDropper_EU · 02-10-2009 07:52 PM

ok, i've been playing for about an hour and a half. Someone wipe the smile off my face, this game is great! Only lvl 6 but its good (relatively) mindless fun!

It does what WAR failed to do by actually making it feel like a battle. Someone helped me kill some mobs, in any other mmo it would have felt like KSing, but in this, it actually felt like we were allies (ok i could have described that better).

I just wish my computer could run the graphics higher than normal

Saucy McDropper, signing out!

@Jaw Dropper - Toons of all levels so drop me a line!

Imaginary Inc.

Twitter me!

Judgement_Dave · 02-10-2009 08:00 PM

Glad that you're enjoying it!

[ QUOTE ]
It does what WAR failed to do by actually making it feel like a battle. Someone helped me kill some mobs, in any other mmo it would have felt like KSing, but in this, it actually felt like we were allies (ok i could have described that better).

[/ QUOTE ]
It's good that there are usually plenty of enemy MoBs about and so you get a reasonable feel of it being a battle/war. Also, like CoX, you can feel that you're character is above average as you can often take on groups of a reasonable size with a reasonable chance of defeating them (assuming you're not looking at ones that con too high).

IIRC xp goes to the top 3 damagers (or it may be top 3 damaging teams). So you may get some xp sorta-stolen, but more likely you'll still get a decent return and if 2 or 3 of you are attacking the same spawn, the spawn will fall quickly and you'll each get the prime slice of xp on some.

By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)