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The End of Tabula Rasa

I just caught this over at MMOG Nation. Was not expecting Tabula Rasa to close. I figured they would fight it out for a good while before they ended up deciding to pull the plug.

To the Tabula Rasa Community,

Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we’ve achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn’t performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.

So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

Before we end the service, we’ll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009.

– Ethic

Quotes of the Week

“We just really wanted to shatter the cupcake-pizza dichotomy. It’s just existed for too long.”

– Asa Wilder, on the origin of the “cupzza.” Hat tip to The Blog of Diminishing Returns via Marginal Revolution.

Marginal Revolution also links to the second place:

“If reports are true and Barack Obama is really going to tap widely respected CBO Director Peter Orszag to head up the Office of Management and Budget … then I believe that would make him the highest-ranking blogger in the history of the United States of America.”

The Onion AV Club has a strong competitor with this plot summary:

Up-and-coming pickle-factory executive Mr. Tamura is sweating out a deal to package kimchi for a South Korean company when he gets some terrible news: his girlfriend has been murdered, and he’s the prime suspect. For Tamura, who’s obsessed with fitting in, this accusation is disastrous. Still, he does have a tendency to fly into blind rages. Also, he’s a giant koala.

: Zubon

Non-Recruit

A friend has been encouraging me to try WoW. I think he just wants a zebra. I was considering it until I realized what a ghost town the lower levels would be with the expansion pack coming out. Packing invitations for friends in the expansion box seemed silly even before this stuff.

Maybe in a few months, after the initial burst of leveling and raiding, but I see WoW catering to returning accounts from now through Boxing Day. There is not a place for new players. Well, there is, but it is a vast, lonely field at the end of a long queue.

: Zubon

Lich King Tidbits

Still digesting it all, slowly, but I can offer some quickies. Longer lasting impressions might follow at some point.

– Yes, Death Knights are cool.
– Some folks are complaining about itemization. This ain’t like Burning Crusade, where the greens you got in Hellfire were better than your epics from Naxx. From what I gather, 71-75 items are only slightly better, and in the vast majority of cases only sidegrades, assuming your character did a minimum of Karazhan, Magister’s Terrace or Outland instances. Blizzard smoothed out at least the first half of your Northrend journey in terms of gear. This has heavy raiders from BC slightly miffed, and it’s naturally bad news for them. However, it’s great news for…
– People who didn’t get to raid at all in BC, or… wait for it… wait for it…. people who rolled Death Knights, headed to Outland straight away and blazed to 68 riding on quest reward gear only (which is perfectly doable). By the time those lvl68 Death Knights set foot in Northrend, everyone else’s ‘sidegrades’ are actually huge upgrades for them. Blizzard can be shrewd like that sometimes.
– The Nexus is hands down one of the best-looking instances I’ve seen in years, and Utgarde Keep holds its own as well. It seems they really raised the bar for this one, visually at least.
– Just to be fair and balanced, I glanced at my wife playing in Azjol Nerub for all of 20 seconds and didn’t find it very aesthetically appealing at all. But I cannot judge from a 20 second glance. We’ll see. I have high hopes for Uldum, personally.
– If you’re about to head into Northrend, you really, really, really wanna take your time and take the boat from Menethil instead of the one from Stormwind. The one from Stormwind leaves you in Borean Tundra. The one from Menethil, in the Howling Fjord. Why? How do I wanna put it…

Borean Tundra: Pasta.
Howling Fjord: Pasta with a freshly made tomato, basil and mushroom soft sauce, topped with freshly-grated parmesan cheese. Served just at the right temperature, by a 10th generation family chef from Tuscany, who made the whole dish right before your eyes while you sipped the season’s red wine, in a delightful summer sunset, on the terrace at his private villa. Then his daughter appears, and she’s none other than Isabella Rossellini. She sits next to you, takes a sip of wine from your glass and smiles at you, saying how much she loves men who play MMOs, and how virile they seem.

It’s about that level of difference in the experience, give or take the beautiful female. It’s like they dropped the Northrend map and it hit the floor on the Borean Tundra side when it was young.

– All quest gear, depending on class and gear type, apparently shares the same bland models (well detailed bland models, though), and you’ll come across a lot of recolors. Bad mojo. I don’t know if this is intentional and the good looking gear is only found in instances or later on, or if there’s an upcoming patch to introduce some variety. Dunno. But it is a serious turn off.

More to follow at some point. Overall verdict so far (very early on): Thumbs up, with some reservations.

Or Not

I mentioned last week that the suicide was not going to be admissable evidence in the Lori Drew “violation of ToS is a federal hacking crime” trial. The judge changed his mind. Reason Magazine reports this under the headline “Lori Drew is Doomed.”

And if so, being suspended or banned from your MMO of choice can be treated as a federal criminal offense. 3 day ban with 200 hours community service? Did you know that the Google ToS says that you should print or save a copy of the ToS before searching? There might be an amnesty period.

I am off this story until there is something more like a verdict to report.

: Zubon

Pay Someone Else to Play

Despite EVE’s horrendous learning curve, or lack thereof, I still think it is one of the MMO genre’s best success stories.  I am not alone in that time for my hobby is limited, and even playing two games can be a juggling feat.  Some games I wish had a business model that I feel is worthy of me being a customer, and some games I just like reading about.  EVE Online is the only game that I would like to pay someone else to play for me.

It would be simple, really.  I would pay for the subscription and some sort of stipend, and like some Dick Cheney, I would sit in the shadows and “guide” my employee on how to play the avatar.  In return they would give me a complete actual play multimedia gaming feed.

This month, I would say during our Sunday night meeting, I want you to be a drug smuggler.  For the first half of the month, I want you to get your ducks in a row.  You know, build up a clientele and find your smuggling routes.  The second half, I want you to live a little more dangerously.  Take some risks.

Maybe then for the next fiscal quarter, you will became an agent inside an enemy corporation.  Make your way up the corporate ladder playing the good little, helpful guild member.  Then strike with a fury of a billion isk.

After that, who knows?  The single-server universe is the limit.  Of course, my employee would get bonuses for a satisfactory job (both in-game and in the actual play feed content) and some degree of control.  I just need this MMO experience compressed from the hobby-style time-consuming Las Vegas buffet to a one-bite peanut butter-coated grape wrapped in brioche.

–Ravious
Maybe the last humanist.

The Power of xkcd

Today’s xkcd is about using rocks for cellular automata. The alt text is “I call Rule 34 on Wolfram’s Rule 34.” You can look up either term, but the great glory comes from Google trends, where “wolfram rule 34” has jumped to the #5 hot search trend, with a ridiculously massive spike within minutes of midnight EST. (It is still losing to “miley cyrus dead” (she’s not).) As I write this, the top search results for “Wolfram’s Rule 34” are from people who monitor search engines, wondering why everyone is Googling “Wolfram’s Rule 34.”

And now I am part of the feedback loop. It is a warm and cozy loop.

: Zubon

Frantic

I rarely recommend flash shooter games, but Frantic is rather good. It demonstrates several competencies in game development:

  1. It has auto-fire. How many games like this make you hold down a button to shoot? Or worse, click repeatedly? If the player is going to shoot constantly, with no reason not to, just turn on constant fire by default.
  2. Bullets everywhere. You are throwing out so much ammo that you can forget to dodge enemy attacks because you are distracted by how awesome you are. Use all the powers of this computer to make me feel mighty.
  3. Enemy attacks are entirely reasonable. For all the bright colors flying at you, at no point is being hit inevitable. You can beat the game on your first try without dying (I did). You can probably get through the whole thing without getting hit. This qualifies as the main negative: it is easy. But when a boss throws out hundreds of shots at once, you can still find a safe path through them. Excellent.
  4. You do not take damage for touching an enemy ship, just their shots. Not a terribly important thing, I just like any change on the standard “touch anything and die instantly.”
  5. You get enough money for the final set of upgrades just before the last level. The timing on that is perfect. You build over time, you get all your toys, you get one last run of being awesome with them, and then you are done. You do not farm gold to buy them, you do not keep doing the same thing after running out of shinies: cap, hit the final boss, go home the winner.

: Zubon