Take a great look back on Tabula Rasa's first year (Happy Anniversary!) with this Feedback Friday!

First of all, thank you to everybody who helped us contain the invasion on Sunday night. It was an amazing display of unity in the face of adversity and a great opportunity for General British to come back and join our fight all the way from Russia.

While we have a ton of courageous Soldiers fighting for the common good every single day on Foreas and Arieki, there are also a lot of people out there who haven't had the opportunity to experience the universe of Tabula Rasa. They haven't seen it grow and develop into what it is today, so here's a little recap of what you can expect to see in today's Tabula Rasa!

    * Tabula Rasa is all about the survival of Humanity, but you can still get a taste of what other species are like. The solution: become a Hybrid.
    * Enjoy our new Crafting stations: simple yet efficient

It's been quite a year, and there's more to come!.

GM Vagabond is going to be holding another TR 101 !

Attention, Soldiers (especially you Recruits!): Next week I will be hosting Tabula Rasa 101, a Q&A session for new recruits that will address some of the basic mechanics of the game and commonly asked questions in Tabula Rasa. No need to sign up, just meet at Alia Das in Wilderness(1) at the following times for your server. Make sure to bring your questions!

Read on for the schedule, and let's hope for a great turn out!

Just when you thought you'd heard about every Halloween MMORPG event, here comes another. Tabula Rasa's festivities will be held from 11 a.m. CST on Monday, Oct. 20 to 11 a.m. CST on Monday, Nov. 3.

Get the festive missions from AFS Soldiers located in Foreas Base (Concordia Divide), Irendas Penal Colony (Torden Plains) and Fort Defiance (Valverde Plateau), and distribute Halloween goodies to get your special Halloween masks in return. There will be 9 masks to collect and keep, but this is for a limited time only, so be sure to be in-game during the Halloween celebrations!

Also, designer Jason Ford has outlined his revamp of Raksha Robotic Facility's final encounter in D14. Raksha Robotic Facility on Torden Incline features a new group encounter, a Wardenbot Control Point called the Central Dispatch Unit, that is recommended for squads of players between level 25-32 and is repeatable. For more information, check this Feedback Friday post or keep reading after the jump.

From the official Tabula Rasa site :

Richard Garriott's flight to the International Space Station began at 2:00 a.m. CST October 12, 2008 with the launch of the Russian Soyuz TMA-13 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A couple of minutes after lift-off Richard could be seen on camera holding a message for the fans of Tabula Rasa. It is written in the fictional language of "logos," which figures prominently in the game's storyline. We will not spoil things by revealing the meaning of the message just yet, but we can tell you that it is a quote attributable to someone else.

To see video of the launch, go to the Official Tabula Rasa Channel on YouTube. Because it could not be seen clearly over the camera in the cockpit, here is the message:

Garriott and the crew successfully docked at the space station this morning!

UPDATE: According to this announcement, player Valeshar correctly translated the message as a quote by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, father of space travel: "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever."

According to this announcement , Tom Potter has left Destination Games and his position as lead designer of Tabula Rasa to "pursue another opportunity in the industry," and Susan Kath has been chosen as his replacement.

Kath has been working on Tabula Rasa for the last four and a half years, having originally joined the team as a fiction writer and most recently working as the lead mission designer. She wore many hats before attaining her current position, and hopes to oversee some new additions to the game as far as battles are concerned.

NCsoft's Operation Immortality (tm) offers humans the chance to "contribute to mankind's greatest achievements." The initiative, founded by legendary game designer Richard Garriott, under the belief that perhaps some catastrophic event could destroy human civilization. Operation Immortality's goal is to record mankind's greatest achievements and also keep a digitalized archive of DNA structures of exceptional people.

And they want your help.

The idea of space travel has captivated humanity for centuries. Today, the wealthy are paying small fortunes to sign up to be able to travel into space. Now, your Tabula Rasa character can head into the great beyond - for free.

In October, Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott will visit the International Space Station, and he's taking the Immortality Drive with him to launch into orbit. The Immortality Drive is a digital time capsule uploaded with the DNA of various space afficianados and video game players, and you could be one of them. Every character active in Tabula Rasa as of September 2, 2008, will be uploaded to the drive to make the trip as well. But that's not all; each week, 8 lucky players will be chosen to have their own DNA digitalized and added to the disk.

In order to allow everyone to be part of this great journey, Tabula Rasa is offering

"I've been able to do some very exciting things in the games business, but nothing of this magnitude," said Garriott, executive producer for Tabula Rasa at NCsoft. "I'm thrilled we can offer the once in a lifetime chance to millions of gamers to virtually go to space with me. A select few will have their DNA digitized and sent. And, theoretically, if anything happens to the human race, it could be their DNA that is used to resurrect humanity."

Starting today and lasting through August 31, 2008, anyone with a PC and an Internet connection can go to http://www.OperationImmortality.com and participate in weekly polls on humanity's greatest achievements which will be included on the Immortality Drive, such as "What is the greatest song of all time?" and "What is the greatest technological breakthrough of all time?" Current Tabula Rasa players, or those who download and play the free trial, will also be able to enter a personal message for inclusion on the Drive.

"This is your chance to leave your mark," says Garriott. "While everyone can participate in the polls at OperationImmortality.com, Tabula Rasa players will be the only gamers in the universe who can say that a piece of them is in space, since we're sending their in-game alter-egos, and for some, their DNA, to space with me."

Deployment 10 is now live in Tabula Rasa. Highlights include a new LFS system, 9-month veteran rewards, and an updated and FASTER combat system!

Check out the details in this extensive post .

Finally!  Tabula Rasa has announced they're actually going to start work on crafting.  Friday's update was quite a pleasant surprise!

Hello! I'm Mike Moore, one of TR's senior game system designers, and I'm about to begin working in earnest on improvements to our Crafting system. For all of Deployment 11, I have been working on prototyping some small but important changes to Crafting. On evaluation of that prototype, many of us feel like we're on to something good. So, at this point, we want to polish things up and get them out to the Public Test Server and let you guys have a look.

Now, let me make clear from the get-go that the upcoming changes to Crafting are intended to be incremental. We aren't going to publish this as a massive, game-changing update. Instead, we're going to make small changes over a few upcoming publishes. The idea is to ease TR into a new and improved Crafting system rather than throwing it off the deep end.

We've had a Crafting revamp on the back burner for a few months, and now we're in a position to put some development resources behind it. At this point, our rough (and always subject to change) plans are to get an iteration on Crafting up on the Public Test Server with Deployment 12, and then add more incremental improvements in subsequent Deployments.

Go Mike, Go! For more details on what's planned for the revamp so far, head over to the info !

Tabula Rasa’s community-driven (and dev supported) Friday Night Fights has become so popular and brought so many questions from the community that Tabula Rasa Community Coordinator, Amy “Critters” Crider has answered them, and we have video and screen shots! First though, on Friday, July 25 watch Richard "General British" Garriott and two time featherweight boxing champ, Jesus Chavez, in game as they fight it out in this amazing event!

Q: What are Friday Night Fights?
A: Friday Night Fights is a popular hand-to-hand boxing event that takes place every Friday night in Tabula Rasa. Based on the original Friday Night Fights event created by the Tabula Rasa Community Team, the now player-run event has its own meeting location in game, aptly named the C.E.L.L.A.R (Coalition of Enlistees Likely Looking for Aggressive Retaliation), and a weekly winner's bracket posted on the official Tabula Rasa website

 

Read on for the videos, and the rest of the Friday Night Fights FAQ! For the most recent screen shots check out our Tabula Rasa gallery !