pegasus posts

We've mentioned in the past that NCsoft plans to merge all four Tabula Rasa servers into one, before the final shutdown on February 28th. Their plan has changed somewhat, as only the three U.S. servers (Pegasus; Orion; Cassiopeia) will be merged into a consolidated server called Hydra.

NCsoft will perform a data capture on Monday, and it may take up to 48 hours beyond that before Hydra is active. NCsoft says, "This means that characters will appear to 'time warp' back to Monday at 12:01 AM on the new server. We do not recommend doing anything irreversible to your character after Monday's data capture, as we are not absolutely confirming the server merge at this time. We will release more details, as well as a final conformation of the server merge, early next week."

Tabula Rasa's European server, Centarus, is not being included in the server merge, and as such will have a separate 'sunset' event for European time zones.

In lieu of a more structured PvP system like the one the developer's have promised in future patches, some Tabula Rasa players have taken the initiative and decided to start their own community event on the Pegasus server. Dubbed "The Supremacy Circuit," the tournament will take place over five weeks and will feature four different tiers of combatants based on level. The tiers go by a strict level cap of 15, 30, 40, and 50 for each respective tier. On the designated nights, participants assemble in their teams of four and go at it in the Irendas Penal Colony.

Registration will remain open until March 29, giving you plenty of time to level a character to your desired tier. The actual circuit doesn't begin until April 5. Players are allowed to field hybrid characters, though each team is restricted to a single character of any one class in their four active participants. No word yet on what the prizes will be for the winning team in each tier, though it probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch to expect a good chunk of in-game cash, and if the developers pay attention, perhaps even some berets as well. Planet TR has a sub-forum specifically dedicated to the event, so head on over there to find out more detailed information and sign up.

Tabula Rasa's long-awaited patch 1.5 has finally entered the process of rolling out (at least, we assume it's 1.5 - it's called 1.5.4 on the update screen, but the notes make no mention of it), as the Destination Games crew has released a new build onto the public test server, and the patch notes along with it. Just a note before you drop what you're doing and go try and log into the PTS, it appears as though only those on the Pegasus server got their characters copied over this time around, so suckers like me on Orion will just get to QQ for another week or so.

There's a lot of small changes, but some of the ones that most immediately stuck out to us were:

• Green, Blue, and Purple Healing Discs and Repair Tools now offer +20%, +40%, and +60% effectiveness like other equipment. Since itemization finally became a big deal, Specialists have had to put up with repair tools that were not as proportionately effective as their weapon counterparts. I've never actually seen a blue or purple repair tool though, so presumably those will be added as rewards.
• You should no longer be stunned for a significant duration after standing up from a knockback. This may not sound big, but it's a pet-peeve of most players. Thrax have a habit of kicking players in the face, which takes an inordinate amount of time to recover from.
• We're also getting reports on the Planet TR forums that boss drops have increased significantly, and now drop named items. This is a big (and welcome!) change, as bosses were rarely worth the trouble in previous versions.

We'll have more on this patch as it develops. Check out the full patch notes after the jump.

One of the biggest criticisms levied at NCsoft's sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa is that it is, in many respects, an incomplete game. The Specialist tree has undergone months of retooling and tweaking to be made truly viable, the disparate amount of content in the mid to late levels has been the cause for considerable concern, and it's fairly well known that the game lacks a significant endgame.

It's this latter point that has caused a crisis of sorts on the Pegasus server. Both Defiance and Tranquility, two of the larger endgame guilds on the server (or so we're told), have decided to call it quits because of the barren state of the end-game. All there is to do once you've hit the level gap is PvP. Problem is, the PvP in Tabula Rasa is pretty broken, and the development team hasn't shown much interest in fixing it in the near future. Or if they have, they haven't done a terribly good job of communicating that.

MMO players are famous for the ability to come up with strange and often bewildering ideas for in-game events. Whether you're talking about naked gnome raids on Ironforge, naked races across a continent, or a large group punching a whole zone into submission ... while naked, MMOs and community events just go hand in hand. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised then to find that dinoroger on the Planet TR forums is trying to arrange a "Blind Race" on the Pegasus server for next Saturday.

The basic gist of it is that each team will be composed of two players, a racer and a coach. The racer will be instructed to turn off his monitor, and attempt to race through a series of objectives as quickly as possible. The coach will be tasked with guiding the racer using Ventrillo or any other voice chat program. Motor Assist Armor and five pumps in the sprint ability are heartily recommended. The event is just for fun, so there won't be any prizes for the winners beyond the requisite bragging rights, but it could be potentially amusing if enough players decide to take part. And who knows, maybe the weekend after that there'll be potato sack races!

I suppose you could debate the raw salience of this video to the greater news-hungry public but... well, we're not all always entirely serious around here. And speaking personally, anything played sped up to the Benny Hill theme song is usually good for at least a chuckle from me. The video you see before you is the Invictus clan on Tabula Rasa's Pegasus server making a naked holiday-themed rampage through the leafy planet of Foreas. While naked clan runs are hardly particular to Tabula Rasa (though this is among the first we've seen up on YouTube), what's particularly impressive is that Invictus was able to do their fellow members of the Allied Free Sentients a service and take over a couple capture points while they were at it. I suppose it speaks to the enduring power of humanity that a group of determined, albeit naked, humans can punch their way to victory.

So now we've seen them free the Wilderness from the Bane's icy grasp. Can we get a naked Mires going soon?

It's now over three days since Tabula Rasa went retail, so I thought I'd cover the kind of launch and reception that it's received so far.

Let's face it: MMO launch servers are notorious for spending their first couple of days offline -- but in a surprise twist, I'm still yet to encounter any of the TR servers going down for more than a second. Having said that, the game seems to have attracted a lot more players than NCsoft were expecting -- the solitary EU server in particular has been almost continuously maximum population since day one, and starting today I've had to queue up to enter. Not cool. There's also been major lag on the EU server at peak times with so many players logged in at once.

In more continental news, there's a large French (and German) community on Centaurus, both of which are obviously keen on getting their own language-specific server. A second or third EU server at very least is badly needed, but as yet there's been no announcement from NCsoft. Over on the US servers, things have been a lot more stable -- so much so, I've already decided to skip over to Pegasus.

Overall, I've been quite surprised by how enthusiastic the reception Tabula Rasa has received from players in-game has been. Opinions were divided in the beta prior to launch, and I personally thought the game was being launched early -- but the TR crew have cleared up the code, improved framerates, and given the game the extra layer of polish needed. By polish, yes, I *do* mean wearable shades.

The chat interface is still awful, though.

(Note -- there's almost no reviews for RGTR up at present, but once a sufficient amount have hit the Internet, we'll throw up a Joystiq-style metareview for your enjoyment.)