by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

It's been a busy week soldiers, and the AFS has kept us engaged with lots of changes and events. Here are the highlights of this week and what you need to know!

Update - We saw a major update this week that changed so much we can't really cover it all. You can find a list of all the patch notes here but to summarize:

Experience Modifiers were changed from X2, X3, etc... to 125%, 150%, etc.. Apparently we've been racking up too much experience and they want the leveling to take a little longer. Most of us can't really argue with that as we burn through their meticulously built content in mere hours.

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I Love the Smell of Dead Thrax in the Morning!

Control Point AI was tweaked. What do I mean by tweaked? I mean OMGWTF? Get your butt on the line! I've personally hung around Imperial Valley and Ft. Dew in Palisades and they were just absolutely being brutalized. Ft. Dew in particular had 4-5 dropships spawning at once and there were easily 50+ Bane soldiers attacking. Watching 3 or 4 players run around tirelessly killing wave after wave of Bane was one of the most beautifully violent things I've ever seen.

In addition to upping the spawns, they also brought in more creature types including the massive Kael and the annoying Linker. What is a Linker? A Linker is a creature that fires massive energy blasts and absorbs/reflects damage done against them. They are only really vulnerable a few seconds after their energy attack. So if you get a twitchy trigger finger and attack, you may find yourself dead pretty quick.

Valvedere another area of the planet Foreas was added. New zones, new missions, and new stuff to smack around? *thumbs up*

Although not specifically mentioned, from numerous posts creature damage was also tweaked, meaning it was possible for things you could've beaten down last week to grind you into a fine paste. There is nothing more embarrassing than a mob of grey conned Thrax killing you.

Servers are Down! - This has been a rough week for the Tabula Rasa Devs and Community team. The servers have been up and down more than the hopes of Vanguard Players. While there is no specific mention of exactly what has been broken, the servers are coming down HOURLY.

General British himself has tried to cheer folks up by spawning waves of Bane at the Cumbria Research Center. It was nice to see players band together but level 35-45's in a 20ish zone? At least buy me dinner first next time sir because ouch.

From what has been said on the forums, programmers are working round the clock to isolate and repair the issue. Keep your fingers crossed.

Open Beta - We are officially in Open Beta! Why? Because apparently Fileplanet says so! It seems anyone who registers with Fileplanet will be tossed a key that is good through the end of beta (unlike OTHER companies *cough* Gamespot). If you have friends you want to show the awesomeness of Tabula Rasa, point them that way.

Free Playtime - In another exciting announcement NCSoft offered beta players an additional 10 days free subscription after launch for their participation in beta. Now if I understand this correctly, you get 30 days free for pre-ordering, 30 free for buying the game, and 10 more for beta? I won't have to pay for the game (other than the box) until 2008!

Where is the catch? Oh, right you have to level to 15 in order to get the 10 days. We've got a great leveling guide that'll get you to 10 so just take it from there!

Weapon Changes - Yeah I know we discussed the patch already but there were two major weapon changes, one unplanned.

The net gun for Rangers almost no one had trouble admitting was just a tad overpowered. Sure we could drop almost everything within 10 levels of us in a matter of seconds. It seems the damage has finally been toned back to fit in line with the games expectations.

Commandos Launchers were soon expected to get a little boost but in the meantime a change was made to Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) launchers. The update was supposed to lessen the damage of the weapon as you got farther away from it's impact. What it actually did was start damaging the user if they were too close. I'm sorry, but I found this absolutely hilarious. Want reality? Become a Commando!

We hope this has been educational for you soldier, because knowledge saves lives in the field. Be sure to keep checking back for more briefings and remember, videogames don't kill Bane, you do.