General Discussion

MMORPG.com has learned today that NCsoft's Tabula Rasa will end its service on February 28th of next year.

When we learned back on November the 11th that Richard Garriott was moving on from his work on NCsoft's Tabula Rasa to persue other interests, we wondered what the future would hold for the game that held Garriott's name. Today, MMORPG.com has learned that due to what NCsoft is calling the game's failure to meet performance expectations, Tabula Rasa's servers will be shut down on February 28th, 2009.

The letter in which the community was told of the decision applauded the development team for the improvements that it had made to the game before launch, but admitted that this was not enough to create a strong enough player base for the game to continue.

Also in the letter, the team promioses to make sticking with the game until the end worth the players' time and energy and have even announced that the servers will be free to play for a little over a month, beginning on January 10th.

Read more on Tabula Rasa's Cancellation.

"To thank our loyal Tabula Rasa fans we've prepared a little closing down gift. Any active paying player as of 10:00 AM Pacific Time on November 21st, 2008 will be eligible for all of the following:

* 3 free months of City of Heroes including digital client
* 3 free months of Lineage II including digital client
* Aion beta access (coming soon)
* Aion pre-order access (available in 2009)
* 1 free month of Aion including digital client (available in 2009)"

Hmmm these are some nice features/gifts, best connected with TR so far tbh. :P:P:P

I knew it was coming but didn't want to admit it.  So long TR.

You guys sure typed this up quickly considering the announcement of the game shutting down was made only a few hours ago. Good job I guess.

I think the TR players should be happy. NCsoft is buying everyone who was still subscribed to TR as of today two free games each with three months of subscription time, giving them free entrance to the Aion beta test AND giving them Aion once it comes out next year. If they know it or not yet NC soft is doing them a favor by ushering them into some better games.

TR honestly had a good premise behind it, but the development never had any direction. Things kept changing all the time and nothing they did was ever as good as they (or their fans) wanted it to be. The game just never got to where it needed to go because of that. I suspect this has a lot to do with the games lead developer spending more time playing space man than doing his job. He is lucky they let him save face by "leaving" the game rather than just straight out telling everyone that he was being fired.

If you guys want to see some "interesting" discussion about this announcement then head over the the TR section of these forums. One guy posted an all caps rant cussing out the TR devs for shutting the game down. Another guy had just finished posting an essay telling people why they should resubscribe to the game and quit complaining about how bad it was in beta when they announced the game was being shut down.

Makes me sad to see this.  Tabula Rasa was not a bad game at all.  It just needed more content and variety.  I still wish that Richard would have made a fantasy game instead, but then again I am partial to fantasy games(although I do like sci-fi too). 

Being that they wanted to go with sci-fi, I wish that they would have at least stuck with their original concept which was a sci-fi / fantasy type blend.  I know that they scrapped it because they were afraid that people "would not get it".  But it seemed unique and in this day and age something different would be a welcome thing. 

Well its all water over the dam now.  Hopefully Richard Garriott will make another mmorpg some day in the future.  And I hope Starr Long and company find good jobs within the industry.  I wish them all well.

Hrm...

This game  now in the bargain bin AND I get a month free?

Maybe it's time to play through what it has to offer :D

Can't say I'm surprised.  It was a very shallow game and not much to do.  Combat was very boring and I mentioned it several times when I was in closed beta.  Even when in a group it just felt like soloing.  The different classes didn't really feel like they needed each other.  I am just a firm believer that quasi-fps/rpg hybrids don't work.  It needs to be all or nothing.  FPS players will play FPS and RPGers will play RPGs, it's as simple as that.  Some things just weren't meant to be mixed, like fruit and beer. 

At least NCsoft is offering some cool stuff in return.  The Aion beta access alone is pretty sweet.

Honestly I saw this coming... I went back to TR about four months ago to play it and see if anything had changed (I enjoyed the Hybrid races) but seeing how few people actualy played the game realy spoke volumes to the state of TR. When I went back to TR I found that you were lucky to run into another player and that grouping was almost impossible, honestly it reminded me of SWG and its many ghost towns (except these wern't player towns but NPC player hubs!). In the end I have to say NCsoft has a horrid record and now that Cryptic has left them I have very little faith in them as developers. I don't know much about Aion but based on NCsofts record I don't have much faith in it lasting longer than Everquest 2 rofl.

NCsoft games killed: Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa

SOE games killed: None (well no major ones... even planetside still runs)

With that said I have more faith in SOE as a company than NCsoft... I know lots of people hate SOE but at least you can be assured your game will keep running unlike with NCsoft. Afterall everyone hates SWG and yet that game is still running.

saw this comming from a mile away

too bad it was a good game but it was ruined by starr long