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Here we are once again, saying goodbye to yet another talented NCsoft employee as they pursue a greater opportunity outside the company. And once again, we're saddened by the news, yet excited for their broadened horizons. This time it's Amy "Critters" Crider, former Community Coordinator for Tabula Rasa.

Crider took over the community role earlier this year from April "CuppaJo" Burba, when she left for the Dungeon Runners team. Since that time, Crider has won the respect of the TR community through her work with in-game events, fansite interviews and more. Taking her place will be Dane Caruthers, who you may remember from our PAX08 interview earlier last month. We wish Dane all the best in his new role, and Amy continued success with her new venture.

If you follow Tabula Rasa news, you may have seen a recent announcement concerning the Server vs. Server war coming up this Saturday, October 11th, 2008. This war is the third one of its kind, and aims to be the largest and most popular to date.

If you're new to the Server vs. Server war, you may be interested in a brief explanation as told to us by PlanetTR's Adele Machka. The war works by combining clans from Pegasus-Centaurus and Orion-Cassiopeia to join two "super" clans which then declare war upon each other. Each of these wars last 4 hours. The victor is the clan which has the least amount of deaths at the end. It's an extremely well-organized event, and the organizers want to make sure that everyone just has fun, first and foremost. If you'd like more details or information on signing up for this event, check out this thread. Let's all do our part to make this the largest SvS event ever!

[Thanks Adele and Andriss!]

One of the MMO industry's most recognized names, Richard Garriott, is about to become the world's sixth private citizen to participate in a space mission aboard the International Space Station. The trip into space comes at no small cost through Space Adventures, and the whole experience of gearing up for the trip is documented on Garriott's dedicated site. The MMO tie-in is that Garriott's space walk is part of "Operation Immortality" which we've touched upon in the past here at Massively.

Garriott fans can watch him launch into space via streaming video at NASA TV, NASA Select TV (Australia), or the NASA TV Public Channel. Haters can do the same thing, just describing it as "seeing him strapped to a rocket and shot into space." It's all about perspective. Regardless of whether you think Operation Immortality and the trip to the International Space Station is interesting or not, it's a first in the industry. If you're in the Austin area, there will be a space watch party at Opal Divine's Penn Field restaurant, with live music and pre-launch activities.The launch is scheduled for October 12, at 1 pm Kazakhstan time. Since we suspect most of our readers don't reside in Kazakhstan, that's Sunday at 2 am Central, 3 am Eastern, and midnight Pacific. Best of luck with the flight, Richard.

Massively and NCsoft have had the chance to touch base several times in the last week or so, and we wanted to be sure to put it all together in one place. If you're a fan of NCsoft's games, or just a fan of the genre, you undoubtedly have heard about the trials and tribulations player and developer have been experiencing of late. We've got all the details you want about the NCsoft Austin shakeup, the future of Tabula Rasa, the City of Heroes Issue 13 changeup and the microtransaction initiative the NC NorCal team is ramping up. Check out this roundup of NCsoft posts for everything you need on one of the bigs MMO publishers around.

	City of Heroes Mission Architect moving to next year! So what is replacing Architect? How about an all new level syncing system that will ensure you can always keep up with your buddies? The "Day Jobs" system, with brand-new civilian costumes and a brand-new game mechanic? Rebalancing of powers for PvP? A new merit reward system?
	David Reid sets the record straight on NC West David Reid, appointed President of Publishing, was kind enough to give up considerable time yesterday for an interview. We discussed Guild Wars and Tabula Rasa, but the main focus was on the NC West announcement.
	Brian Clayton and Matt Miller on Power and Responsibility in City of Heroes Right now the news is breaking about a major change to the City of Heroes issue release schedule. The Mission Architect feature is being moved to Issue 14. Issue 13, now titled Power and Responsibility, will include a whole lot more cool content and reach the player base that much sooner.
	NCsoft 'very encouraged' by Guild Wars 2 Massively recently got to talk to David Reid, the newly appointed President of Publishing for NC West, about several key NCsoft matters. We took the opportunity to ask David about ArenaNet and Guild Wars, and in particular, what was happening with Guild Wars 2.

It's a long time since the first sighting of a Personal Armor Unit on Tabula Rasa - and that one was disassembled. Now, on TR's public test server, the first prototype mech has been unveiled that players can test-drive. PlanetTR.com board poster RWScissors has bagged a couple of screenshots of the stompy vehicle in action.

The original plan for PAUs called for one specific type per tier-4 class. It's not yet clear whether the developers have stuck to this plan or revised it, though the hint given by new lead designer Susan Kath of 'a cool new system to allow you to customize your mechs through a type of alternative advancement' may suggest the latter. The possibilities have Tabula Rasa players very excited, if unsure about the exact role the mech is meant to play.

For the immediate future, the best source for definitive information on the PAUs must surely be Dev_Ridout, who's going to be doing a podcast with PlanetTR any day now. There's still time for interested players to get questions in.

The list of celebrities donating their digitized DNA for Tabula Rasa's Operation Immortality is becoming a bit staggering, but this latest one should help perk your interest. Jo Garcia, Playboy Magazine's Cyber Girl of the Year for 2008 will be the latest to store her digitized DNA on the International Space Station along with others like Stephen Hawking, Stephen Colbert, Tim Draper and more.

Although the title of Cyber Girl of the Year has nothing to do with gaming, Garcia considers herself an avid gamer. "People don't understand that that the whole gaming world is not just for geeks, and assume that every person who plays video games is a geek that wears glasses," Garcia said in a recent interview with Kotaku. "It's a misnomer that needs to be put to rest."

Tabula Rasa's Deployment 13 has just hit the Public Test Server, and we think you might be excited to hear about the new Command System being implemented with it. Previously referred to as the Minion System, this enhancement gives better control over AI pets and controllable NPCs, also called subordinates, in the game.

Subordinates now have better control features where you can set their aggressiveness or defensiveness, assign an anchor point, order them to attack or heal a particular target or set them to simply follow you. All of these commands are done through a set of easy commands and hotkeys. To find out more info on the complete Command System, check out today's Feedback Friday.

Massively recently had the chance to speak with NC West's newly appointed President of Publishing, David Reid. The bulk of the interview concerned the formation of NC West and its implications for NCsoft as a whole, but David also took the time to answer our questions about several of NCsoft's existing triple-A titles, including Tabula Rasa.

Massively: Obviously, Tabula Rasa is one of the triple-A titles NCsoft has in its stable. We hope you'll disagree, but we've heard again and again these rumors from players who are talking to people and from people within the industry, that people within the company are looking at Tabula Rasa to perform better than it has in the past, and that if it doesn't, then there might be consequences to that business reality. Can you clarify that for us, or expand upon that?

Tom Potter has stepped down to pursue another opportunity, and Susan Kath has stepped up to the plate to take on the role of Lead Designer in the epic SF MMO Tabula Rasa. Susan is more than qualified, having worn numerous different hats in her career with TR, and been with the project for four and a half years.

In her meaty introduction, Susan quickly switches from talking about herself (which she dismisses as 'boring') to talking about Tabula Rasa's future. There is no doom. There is only awesome. The coming content includes 'a new instanced map, in which players (with or without clans) can battle over control points in order to win exclusive rewards.' There are prototype mechs in development, and a tantalizing system of mech customization through a form of alternative advancement.

With the formation of NC West recently announced, industry professionals and interested gamers alike have been trading rumors concerning the NC Austin studio. Sanya Weathers has a lot to say on the subject, and DJ Jester of w00tradio.net devoted a large chunk of his recent podcast to the events and the gossip surrounding them.

Now the President of Publishing for NC West, David Reid, has given an interview with Edge Online. Dismissing speculation as erroneous, he states that 'Austin continues to be a critically important space for NCsoft. The Tabula Rasa team is still there, along with customer service and QA.'

As announced earlier in the week, Richard Garriott made his Comedy Central debut last night with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. This appearance by Garriott was in conjunction with his Operation Immortality project that will take place next month. Stephen Colbert will be joining many other popular celebrities by adding his digitized DNA to the Immortality Drive which will accompany Garriott on his space flight, and remain on the International Space Station in the event of Earth's destruction.

Admittedly, the Garriott appearance is very brief. In fact, he didn't actually "appear" on the show at all, but called in from his space flight training grounds in Russia. This was a bit on the disappointing side, yet we understand Garriott's time restraints with that whole space flight thing and all. Plus, it turns out this interview was done literally ten minutes before Garriott was to be quarantined for the flight. Sadly enough, there was no mention of Tabula Rasa during the interview at all. Regardless, it's a funny little interview.

We have exciting news, dear readers. In just over a month, Massively will be one year old! We're very proud of how far we've come since last November, and we'd like to thank you for sticking with us through all these months. To celebrate our first birthday we're looking back at the most interesting stuff we've experienced so far!

We're starting with our ten most important interviews. We tried to find a good balance between interviews that have insights that are still relevant today, interviews that were important for the history of our site, and interviews that were just plain awesome. We saved the coolest ones for last, so be sure and stick with us to the end!

Think of it as a look back at the past year in the MMO world, if you like. Major releases, major ideas -- many of them are here. Enjoy, and be sure and tell us what you think.

Tabula Rasa's Deployment 12.5 hit the live servers today, and with it comes some major changes to the game. First off, there's the highly-anticipated Omega Labs instance that has been discussed in great length for quite a while now. This instance is available for level 50 players and can only be accessed after your character has completed a series of difficult missions to gain Level 5 Security Clearance.

This patch also brings us a new waypoint in the Concordia Palisades, new creatures, new Series 2 weapons, new dialogue audio for 200 missions, the first installment of pet AI improvements, regular bug fixes and much more. Check out the complete patch notes for more information as we look forward to the big Deployment 13 patch coming up on the PTS soon.

If the recent news of Stephen Colbert joining Operation Immortality has you scratching your head, you may be pleased to learn that Tabula Rasa's Richard Garriott will appear on Colbert's show, The Colbert Report, to discuss his flight to the International Space Station, Operation Immortality and Colbert's participation with the project.

This particular episode will air on Comedy Central tomorrow, September 17th, immediately following the Jon Stewart Show at 11:30pm EDT/10:30pm CDT. With Colbert's dry humor and satirical wit, we're sure there will be more than a few jokes made at Garriott's expense.

In this week's Tabula Rasa Feedback Friday, the Progressive Weapons are explained a bit more for those high-end players looking for something new and exciting with their firepower. Anything from Series 2 up will play by a new set of rules, revolving around better skins, more specified damage types and more damage dealt. Plus, With the upcoming deployment 13, players will have the chance to duel-wield certain Series 2 pistols.

In addition to all of this, there was a new patch today for Deployment 12.4, which is currently on the Public Test Server. This patch was implemented mostly for bug fixes which include many for the COCP map. Check out the complete Feedback Friday and the complete patch notes from Deployment 12.4 for more information.