by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

It's been an extremely busy week for Tabula Rasa soldiers, and the AFS has kept us engaged with lots of news and events. Here are the highlights of this week and what you need to know!

Patch 10.23.2007

There seems to be a patch a week these days, but we saw the last of the beta patches on 10/23. While I wasn't as excited as last patch, there are still a number of things that warrant pointing out.

• Kael damage and knockback affect range has been moderately increased.

- Now maybe it's just me, but I found Kael's were already difficult to avoid. There are so many I find in closed quarters and there is little more dangerous than one of these at point blank range.

• Hominis machina laser attacks will now be treated as laser damage and will no longer have a chance to knockback. - This is great! T Having a Machina 10 levels below you smack you to the ground is extremely annoying. Knockback is ok for a creature to have but when you have like 5 of them on you at once? We call it chain stunning in other games.

• Fixed a problem where your weapon could get stuck while being drawn or holstered. - This was extremely annoying bug that affected a large number of players but only because it's been around so long. Essentially you could just get stuck and unable to use your weapon. Camping would normally fix it, but kudos for squashing it.

• Netgun now has a clip size of 3. Damage has been reduced as well. This is a crowd control weapon.- Netguns were once again hit with the nerf bat. It used to have 5 shots, then went to one, and now back to three. Why the damage was reduced is kinda baffling to me however. Mine was only a first strike weapon that I used to pin down the target. Reload made it impractical for normal use.

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Does thing give off radiation?

• Torqueshell Gun damage has been reduced. It was overpowered.- Ouch...if you are a sniper. It doesn't get much clearer than that I suppose. They were overpowered so they got reduced, end of story.

• EMP Bombs should no longer damage their user. - I'm not really sure what the deal is behind this one. The relative danger of using a large weapon like an EMP bomb meant you couldn't just run in crazy and stand around at the foot of something. I'm sure it's for the best, but on a more interesting note some people are claiming the damage was nerfed as well.

So there are your patch notes which can't be officially found anywhere but are listed clearly in our forums.

End of Beta - The Beta ends tomorrow! The icing on top of this cake is we are taking on General British himself. The developer team has treated us with a ton of back story this week in the form of intercepted emails. Check them out here, here, here, and here. The battle begins tomorrow night!

Halloween on Beta - Those of us playing Beta got a little treat instead of a trick this week by being able to test out the new Halloween content. With 9 different masks, three different mission givers, and a special emote this is just the kind of fluff that makes players appreciative of good development work. There is still time to finish up the missions and run around with a toaster or cactus on your head. If you are having trouble, we've actually put together a fairly extensive guide where you can even see the rewards.

Elves are out, Aliens are In! - While the article is a little dated now, the New York times ran a piece on how the appeal of science fiction theme games are overtaking the traditional fantasy market. Tabula Rasa is specifically mentioned in it.

The one thing that makes electronic games unique among entertainment media is choice, or agency. In a game the star of the show is the consumer, not a celebrity on a screen, stage or playing field. A gamer does not have merely to identify with the protagonist of someone’s else story; the gamer actually gets to become that alternative identity, if just for a while.

The whole article is over at the New York Times.

Veteran Reward Program Announced - Taking a page from Sony Online Entertainments book (and a smart page to take) NCsoft has announced it will reward customer dedication by providing veteran rewards to players based on the length of subscription. The first month reward has already been released and consists of a few emotes.

In addition to listing the rewards, they also posted an FAQ responding to various concerns and inquiries.

We hope this briefing has been useful! If there is news I missed or something you'd like to see please email me!