Is learning the Logos language necessary? CuppaJo tells WarCry that "it won't be necessary" to learn the distinct iconographic language of the game world - unless you're trying to translate that darned stone tablet - yet Logos should also be "easy to pick up" as players course through the game. She even says that even without the complete Logos vocabulary, players should be able to understand paragraphs through context.

One word that theoretically shouldn't be in Tabula Rasa's vocabulary is "grind." At least that's how the game's built. Experience points should be earned from quests and kills, CuppaJo reveals: but there's also a kill streak bonus to take advantage of. So yeah, you should still be ripping heads off for XP. But at least it'll be faster.

NCSoft announces a new contest for the Tabula Rasa community - one which will allow the player to literally contribute something to the game: an emote. "Do you want to contribute to Tabula Rasa by suggesting a compelling emote that everyone will want to use?"

Ooh, happy face! Sad face! Angry face! WTF, where the hell did you learn your *&^%* battle skills?! face (that emote might be needed a lot...).

For those who wish to be preserved as the physical reaction available to all the players of Tabula Rasa, NCSoft invites them to submit a short video clip depicting their desired emote. Of course, there are certain rules to be followed, like no using copyrighted images or sounds (does the YMCA dance count?), no living in places where these kinds of contests are prohibited, and no not reading the official rules which can be accessed via the Read link.

I wonder what the proper emote is to react to the phrase "Many Eastern women."

 

For those keeping track of the Benefactor Stone translation contest, two more Logos have been translated, courtesy of Curse Gaming. The symbols refer to the terms "None" and "Wonder"; the reasoning behind their iconography should be somewhat deducible, given these two and the history of prior translations.

Other than that... who knows what message the Benefactors brings to us Earthlings? Perhaps it warns of a terrible curse that will strike those who dare to make a mess of Lord British's home? We bet a curse of frogs. Of course we kid. How many more letters to go before we get the full message anyway?

 

Decyphering Logos in the Tabula Rasa Benefactor Language Research Project must be like other pictographic, language-analysis, and cryptographic research. You try to find patterns in the language, in the message, that tend to repeat, and (in hieroglyphic or pictographic research) see what that repeated pattern means in the context of the message.

Take this one. The TR BLRP ran into "Far" some time before, and now they come into "Coming." They note that both share the same core Logos, one which (from now) is associated with the concept of spatial distance. They think that the horizontal line in the symbol represents distance (which makes the diagonals lines of perspective?).

• "Coming" has it simple: the arrow which points down indicates progress that is changing the spatial distance, in this case, closing the gap.
• Now as for the previously-found "Far", they believe that the difference between the Circle used in "Far" and the Disc used in the similar "There" Logos is that they stress "scale." "A Disc is a lesser, more personal, scale than the Circle, thus the There (Disc)/Far (Circle) construction."

Richard Garriott, your penchant for amateur archeology is really becoming obvious with this Logos Project. Well, we got our cootie shot...

Okay, just a quick update to all the translating work being done over those Tabula Rasa Logos. The one with the grouped houses translates to "Civilization/Community." Obvious enough as a Logos symbol: they're houses. Can't get any easier than that (Guess that makes a single house symbol "house", right?).

And the second was a bit harder: "Ancestor." It did have the Logos common to all people-related Logos (the anthropomorphic stick figure), but maybe it was that hat that was the final clincher. You know, to hide the shiny bald heads of the really, really old.

(Although to be serious about it, the hat does tend to have more than just a utilitarian role; the right hat also symbolizes authority, power, or position of respect - for example, the officer's cap, a crown, or a tribal elder's headdress. Hence the term, "to be double-hatted" when occupying more than one authoritative post. Just a bit of trivia there).

Well, that's two for two to the library.

Guardian Unlimited solicited Richard Garriott's criticisms of MMORPGs, and while the Tabula Rasa creator did say he's a big fan of MMOs, he also felt they were lacking something. By the very design of the gameplay, MMOs didn't give what contemporary single-player games give: that unabashed self-serving gratuitous heroic save-the-world feeling.

After all, there can be only one Kim Possible.

... you no longer feel like the hero; your life has become, frankly, pretty average. Half the people playing are at a higher level than you, and half at a lower level than you. Every time you log on after a new feature has been added overnight, half the people will have seen it before you. Basically, you never win; you never get to be the hero.

Yeah, well MMOs are all about the social interaction, (minor bleep), but that lack of self-gratification can be lonely sometimes. And the Tabula Rasa team aims to correct that. Its instances are unlike those in, say, World of Warcraft, where the instances simply allow everyone (or every guild) access to high-level drops from rare monsters.

Each TR instance aims to make "you feel individually rewarded, and get to engage in interesting story spaces." Richard confirms that even your personal actions in your own instance will affect events (or at least gameplay) in the larger game world. And in that larger game world, NPC characters and the Bane have their own objectives, their own battles to fight.

So how does it feel to be to save the world again? And again? And again?

Richard Garriott himself will walk attendees of GDC 2007 in San Francisco through a demo of NCSoft's Tabula Rasa, NCSoft told Eurogamer recently. That hopefully should appease people who're miffed that they're not in the closed beta, with a look into massively multiplayer online frag-me-RPG. Plus the guided tour from Lord British himself.

"And if you look out your left window, you'll see this wonderful expanse of blasted battlefield filled with lots and lots of dead Bane..."

NCSoft also confirms, sort of, a release date, of sorts, for TR, mentioning that it'll be out by the end of Q3 2007 (September-October-ish?). Fits nicely with Garriott himself saying set for release "soon after" the summer beta.

GameDaily Biz sat down with the other Garriott, Robert, NCSoft North America CEO and brother to Richard HRH Lord British Garriott (guess they both didn't quit), to talk about Tabula Rasa, microtransactions (*gasp!*), and a bunch of other stuff. Long three-page interview. Can we concentrate instead on TR and the microtransaction bits?

Obviously Brother Richard is trying to change the way we look at and play MMOs with Tabula Rasa, and when Brother Robert describes the game along the lines of a shooter title. Finding traditional MMOs ho-hum boring, what attracts Robert to TR is that it is, in many respects, a shooter. You hide behind obstacles like a shooter, you take your shots like a shooter... only doing so with a bunch of other people and in a deep game system like in MMOs.

Microtransaction's turn. NCSoft will be looking at several micropayment models for their games. The real question they're asking is, what model to use. Think about it: they've got Guild Wars, that's essentially pay once, play for life, he observed. They've got other games that live off subscriptions. They've got coming games that use NC Coin micropayments.

How would this play to Tabula Rasa? We don't know - Robert offers no clues in that direction. Given the variety of weapons and equipment in the game, it's not too hard to imagine either an online shop for equipment, or at the least allowing equipment exchanges among players (with the right price, of course), but that does run into a certain multiplayer taboo concerning ubers. It's also easy to imagine a Guild Wars model of pay-once, but that's certainly taking a big risk with a very much radical new MMO property.

To give your Desktop that fuzzy-warm feeling of otherworldly battles, MMO combat, and the sweet smell of napalm in the morning, NCSoft has some Desktop wallpapers cooked up on the official site for Tabula Rasa. All these pics are optimized for screens at 1024x768, though there are two higher alternate resolutions available as well. Outside of the closed beta (which is close to its conclusion, it seems), this is one way of getting TR into your PC.

Aye, and an interesting bit of trivia we picked up is that Community Manager CuppaJo herself took the screenshot that was turned into one of the wallpapers. The one we're using as the banner image. It features what looks like a weird lab with what looks like a body strapped onto some funky lab table. Okay, whatever is happening in that room, it looks positively squeamish.

Here are the rest of the wallpapers. Not-so-squeamish ones.

   
 

If you happen to be part of the Beta test for Tabula Rasa, then the dev team wants to hear from you. CuppaJo has dropped by in Tabula Rasa-related forums, among them Planet TR, to pop an important question. The Beta for the game is about to wrap up, so the TR team is taking a survey: what was your favorite End of Beta (EoB) event (or something similarly large-scale) from other MMOs, and why?

Over at that forum, people started dropping their stories about EoBs from City of Heroes/Villains, Matrix Online, and Guild Wars. Since, as Community Manager, CuppaJo must be making rounds of the various fora and commentae regarding Tabula Rasa, she's sure to take these suggestions to the devs so that they can party like it's... wait, in what year do the events of Tabula Rasa occur again? In other words, to create a TR End of Beta to remember.

Suggestions like massive invasions, a large-scale stab at the heart of the Bane enemy, and ginormous catastrophes to avert are suitable to the action-RPG genre TR belongs to... and are too obvious, so get creative! One silly suggestion from this room? All the Beta players meet up on the field... and dance to "We're All In This Together" from High School Musical. It can't get any more unique (or weird) than that.