Tabula Rasa: Getting Started
Tough love for new recruits.
Fantasy Tactics
Learning to use each of these weapon types appropriately is key to enjoying Tabula Rasa. Rather than running around with a favourite weapon, try to cultivate a collection of good weapons from early on - so you can deal with shielded enemies, or take out targets by slapping them from afar with the rifle, switching to the shotgun for close-up combat or to the chaingun for dealing with groups of foes. Keeping abreast of those tactical options is how to stay ahead in the game.
Something else you'll probably notice while playing through Bootcamp is that when you fight a lot of enemies, you occasionally get rewarded with a boost to the XP you're getting - indicated by a multiplier in the bottom of the screen. At low levels, this is normally just in the 125% to 200% range, but it can go plenty higher, which makes levelling up really fast as long as you stay in the thick of combat as much as possible.
That's another way in which TR differs from the competition, then, and it's worth keeping in mind. WOW players will be used to fighting a few enemies, depleting your mana or health, and resting for a bit. Tabula Rasa, on the other hand, encourages you to find ways to stay in the fray for as long as possible - pushing your character hard and taking risks in order to keep that multiplier going, and get the maximum XP out of a situation. It keeps the emphasis on action, rather than caution.
Okay, so you've graduated from Bootcamp, and it's time to ship out. Your next destination is Concordia Wilderness - the game's first real zone, and also your first encounter with TR's unusual server system. Upon boarding the transport dropship, you'll be asked which instance of the zone you want to ship out to - in general, just pick one with a medium or low population in order to ensure that you don't get bad lag as you play.
You may wish to move between them later on to play with friends; don't worry, this is easy thanks to a commonplace system of transport nodes scattered around each zone. Helpfully, those nodes also help you to teleport around the world to waypoints you've discovered elsewhere, so in general there isn't too much running around to be done in Tabula Rasa.
By the time you get to Concordia Wilderness, you should be within spitting distance of Level 4 - and from here on, the game holds your hand fairly effectively right up to level 10, with chains of quests that gradually bring you through the entire zone.
Golden Opportunities
Now, there's really no need for us to give you an in-depth tutorial of how to handle this section of the game - but it's worth pointing out a few things that aren't immediately apparent. The first relates to a chap called Cimoch, who you'll run into as soon as you ship into Concordia Wilderness - he's standing in the middle of the base, just across from Rogers. He'll give you a quest called "Wilderness Targets of Opportunity", which actually turns into one of the game's most unusual quest systems.
Basically, each zone in the game has a Targets of Opportunity quest - which actually comprises a handful of other quests that'll open up as you stumble upon them. So, for example, kill your first Thrax soldier and you'll get a Targets of Opportunity objective - kill 200 Thrax soldiers. Explore a cave, and a new objective will pop up, suggesting that you explore every cave in the zone. And so on.
Thing is, you're not actually meant to go out and try to kill 200 Thrax soldiers. That would be the dullest mission in the history of MMO gaming, which is really saying something. Instead, these are basically just side-objectives - it's assumed that by the time you finish all the "proper" quests in the zone, you'll already be damned near having killed 200 Thrax. So these are just little extra incentives to progress, and if you fulfil them all, you get a clone credit - which allows you to make an exact copy of your character (sans equipment, of course), so you can try out another career path without having to start a new character again from scratch.
The other thing we should probably explain is that when you do make your way to the Landing Zone Outpost... Well, you might well find it crawling with Thrax and looking desperately unfriendly. This is the first of the bases you'll encounter which changes hands between the players and the attacking enemies. When it's in human hands, it's frequently besieged by foes - and players need to band together for a concerted push to retake the base if it falls into enemy hands. So if you're hanging around an enemy occupied base, just give it a little while - the allied cavalry will probably come charging over the hill in no time.
Aside from that, there's little we can say about the Wilderness zone other than - go out, explore, and have fun. In general, the game does a great job of making it clear when you're getting out of your depth; the boundaries between areas with monsters you can kill, and areas with monsters who'll hand your backside to you on a plate, are pretty clearly defined. The Wilderness does have a few small areas with higher-level monsters (around level 13) who are designed to be killed by groups, rather than by individuals, but for the most part, you can solo right the way through this part of the game.
And that, in short, is how you get through the first few hours of Tabula Rasa. It's a very different experience to a conventional MMO title, and one that has proven very divisive among players - but hopefully we've managed to give you a taste for how the experience unfolds, if nothing else. Pack your gear, recruit - we've got an alien menace to fight off...