Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa

Whether running with a group of warriors, or trekking alone, TR has a very nice pace that will keep players on their toes and checking their ammo supply.

Overall the game is solid, fun, and action-packed. The production values are great with excellent graphics, animation, voicework, music, and sound effects. The game itself is almost as impressive as the cutscenes.

An action-orientated MMORPG, with tons of great ideas. [Feb 2008, p.82]

While it's an MMO, it managed to make me forget it was, and I started treating it just as a wonderful place to explore, full of monsters to shoot, friends to defend and stuff to pick up. In other words, a world. Which was always the idea of this genre, but I'd lost the ability to see it in a fog of numbers and impeccably managed levelling curves.

Tabula Rasa has some flaws, but ultimately the deep and engaging combat is what makes the title shine.

A promising FPS-flavoured MMORPG, which suffers from some bad lag and minor design flaws, such as lack of proper auction house and a bit useless crafting. [Jan 2008]

Despite the strong competition of World of Warcraft and Everquest 2, Tabula Rasa manages to add some unique and innovative features to the genre such as the cloning system, and hopefully with a few more patches under its belt (adding extra features); it will be guaranteed a strong player base for many years to come.

It has a fantastic atmosphere, a good backstory, and a combat system that, when stable, is more fun than other MMOs'. It fails to break the MMO Quest/mission structure though. [Jan 2008, p.70]

It will appeal to both hardcore gamers who want to spend hours exploring every square centimeter of this immense world, as well as the casual gamer who only wishes to play for 20 minutes at a time yet feels like they accomplished something.

While the lack of an auction house hurts the game, the awesome combat, intense battlefield action, fun missions and interesting character progression is more than enough to keep players coming back for a good long while. A well-realized science fiction setting in a genre overflowing with elves and orcs doesn't hurt either.

If this genre has intimidated you in the past, Tabula Rasa is the perfect entry point with its user-friendliness and swift tempo. Calling it a clean slate may be a bit of a stretch, but Richard Garriott has certainly provided gamers with something unique.

Massively multiplayer games are all evolving things, and we're very, very keen to watch Tabula Rasa's evolution. The initial launch is incredibly promising, more than anything else.

A definite attempt at evolving the MMO genre after a decade of gameplay clones and the unmitigated success of WoW in the last three years, Tabula Rasa feels like the baby steps towards the next stage. It doesn't have the same 'wow' factor of Blizzard's mighty MMO, but it's a pretty solid foundation from which Destination Games (and Richard Garriott) can build upon.

Should you cancel your WoW sub and pick it up? Perhaps not, but blowing away aliens with a laser chaingun sure beats the pants off of farming old content that got stale months ago.

After all, if the creator of many popular videogames can’t stop playing his own titles, that’s probably the best statement that they are worth your time as well.

A surprisingly solid product, and gamers that have waited long for a decent sci-fi MMO should check it out. If you’re already into another MMO, however, I don’t see this pulling you away from it unless you’re a big Garriott fan (Ultima fans will find nothing here of interest). On the other hand, there is no harm in spending at least a month or two in the world of Tabula Rasa because this game will likely influence others for years to come.

Yet hope for new patches springs eternal, and Garriott's crew promise to release player housing, new planets to explore, vehicles, and a more robust PVP system in the near future. How the developers capitalize on those promises will determine whether Tabula Rasa becomes a true sensation, or just a cult classic.

Despite all of the points I’ve raised, however, the only true measure of a MMORPG is whether you are still enjoying and paying to play at the end of your ‘free’ 30 days, and as of the time of this writing, I am doing precisely that.

Tabula Rasa does a lot of things right and only a few things really wrong, but I still find it tough to recommend this one except to those anti-fantasy RPG fans who feel they must be holding a gun rather than a sword in their games.

Tabula Rasa evolves the MMORPG formula just far enough to make things interesting.

Deliver on your promises, Mr. Garriott, and it'll be a winner. [Feb 2008, p.100]

Overall, Tabula Rasa is a very fun MMORPG.

The outstanding feature of Tabula Rasa isn't it's futuristic setting, but it's fighting system. Instead of the usual clicking on symbols, it offers real time battles. Richard Garriott's latest creation may have its weaknesses, but it's a MMO with personality.

Overall Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa is not your average Massively Multiplayer title, although the basis is firmly planted in that genre, whether it will appeal to everyone and have the same clout as the likes of EVE or any of the other sword and sorcery MMO's is debatable.

The original sci-fi story also helps distinguish it from others of the genre, but rather than obliterating the old dirt road and starting entirely from scratch, Tabula Rasa takes what has been laid out and travels a little further.

Richard Garriott's newest online creation has its problems, but it's still a good amount of fun.

Not a complete disaster, but lacks in scope and ambition, and fails to keep the interest up as the quality of available content falls as you level up, and the high end game is just promises at this point - while the newbie experience is fine, the "meat" of the game that would keep you playing for months seems to be still under development.

With its fast-paced combat, Tabbula Rasa offers a fantastic change from the usual elvish offerings in the MMO landscape. However, its lack of community-building tools and single-path progression may hinder its long-term appeal. [Feb 2008, p.78]

It’s an original and fun game that will influence the scene, it just lacks the expected Garriott magic. [Chrismas 2007, p.130]

Tabula Rasa is a fun game, but frustrating enough that you are left with a feeling that the fun parts are mocking you from their inaccessible tower guarded by the lag monsters, poorly designed controls and the never ending kill-or-be-killed pacing.

If Ultima Online was essentially "immerse yourself in an alternate universe and live," then Tabula Rasa is a much more focused "jump into an alien world and fight."

My chief concern is TR's longevity. At present, the game offers maybe three or four months of content. With little in the way of engaging PVP, useful item crafting, or other distractions for veterans who've hit the level cap and cleared out all their quests, the game could easily fade away.