Tabula Rasa

the problem for ncsoft now is why trust them to invest in buying and subscribing to something like aion . they ve proven twice its not worth the time and effort of leveling characters in one of thier mmos . i ve only tried tabula rasa now because i got it cheap and am playing out the first month . i would nt say its the best mmo but neither is it the worst . what i cant understand is why give your company such a bad name by shutting down something this quickly .( vanguards still going even if its not that popular at least that shows soe has some respect for its user base ) .

my personal view is they should have tried a different payment model , used in game advertising or added it as part of a package with one of their other mmos . or even sold it on to another company to continue it  . shutting it down is the worst thing they could have done .

I think alot of folks will wait and see what gets posted here after what Funcom did and is still trying to do to keep subscriptions ive learned my lesson.

I was going to write up the pros and cons of TR from an outsider's prospective, but its just a waste of time.

I think it took balls for NCsoft to come out and announce the end of TR. Its more honest than leaving it to painfully die while continue to profit from box sales.

And hey, its not like NCsoft is SoE =P

/salt

Originally posted by Nixish

I was going to write up the pros and cons of TR from an outsider's prospective, but its just a waste of time.

I think it took balls for NCsoft to come out and announce the end of TR. Its more honest than leaving it to painfully die while continue to profit from box sales.

And hey, its not like NCsoft is SoE =P

/salt

They do not continue to profit from box sales. They profit from digital downloads. The boxes were sold to retailers last year. NCSoft already got their money for those.

yes i will still be playing aion. while its true that some publishing companies are pretty crappy, that shouldnt effect the gameplay at all.

Tabula Rasa was a terrible game its concept was changed multiple times, its project was started multiple times costing NCSoft millions which they were never able to gain back.  They're essentially bleeding money by leaving Tabula Rasa run, its not the first time they've cut losses that are justified by the state of the game.

NCSoft has alot of other rather popular but still niche games that have never suffered the weakness that TR has ... Aion is oddly enough going to be one of these games.   I'm not saying people should rush out and buy it but they certaintly shouldn't judge Aion by what happened to Tabula Rasa.  NCSoft is the publisher and server host but the games themselves are made by entirely seperate production houses.  Needless to say the people who made TR are out of a job or severely hurt in reputation right now.

Originally posted by googajoob7

the problem for ncsoft now is why trust them to invest in buying and subscribing to something like aion . they ve proven twice its not worth the time and effort of leveling characters in one of thier mmos . i ve only tried tabula rasa now because i got it cheap and am playing out the first month . i would nt say its the best mmo but neither is it the worst . what i cant understand is why give your company such a bad name by shutting down something this quickly .( vanguards still going even if its not that popular at least that shows soe has some respect for its user base ) .

my personal view is they should have tried a different payment model , used in game advertising or added it as part of a package with one of their other mmos . or even sold it on to another company to continue it  . shutting it down is the worst thing they could have done .

Shutting it down was exactly what was needed. The game was a disaster as an MMO as the 28k still playing at the end of last quarter proved. The game was operating at a loss every month. If they scaled back to turn a profit no new development would happen anyway. The game is a three month game tops if you do not play a bunch of alts and with the cloning they took most of the alt play out anyway.

Vanguard is better than TR and has a larger population. SOE avoided the big initial investment and most likely turns a profit monthly with their way of doing development. Not saying their way is good or bad, but they are most likely not losing money like TR was.

NCSoft shutting TR does not make me trust them less. I have no interest in Aion anyway, but I am waiting to see GW 2 when it comes out.

In game advertising? To who? Advertising is not going up as the economy goes down, why would a company pay to advertise to 28k people? I can yell out a window at my house and reach that many people almost. If they go free to play with an item shop they have to develop the entire shop and put it in place for a game they know was on life support since release. Keeping it alive in any other state be that selling it off or packaging with another game would have meant much less development. In the last year they barely added anything content wise as it is, the game was almost out of players and I doubt it was going to become profitable no matter what they did at this point.

I'm comfortable with the decision even if I do like Tabula Rasa ( I was obsessed with that name for a while) I still feel they did what they could and the MMO didn't show any signs of keeping or regaining any of its userbase so they chose to shut it down and since General British decided to leave they thought it would not be worth keeping it any longer. Its a bold decision and i actually regret missing out on the freebies which unfortunately were given in a month that i was packed full of work and didn't have time for games.

 Tabula Rasa was a terrible game its concept was changed multiple times, its project was started multiple times costing NCSoft millions which they were never able to gain back. They're essentially bleeding money by leaving Tabula Rasa run, its not the first time they've cut losses that are justified by the state of the game.

NcSoft went into their deal with the Garriotts with good faith on the part of NcSoft.  They expected competence, talent and effort and were disappointed every step of the way.   .

People should keep in mind that NcSoft also must listen to their stockholders.  Would you buy NcSoft stock if the company continued to pour money down the TR rathole?

Aion was developed by developers, not by a egomaniac whose star power has come and gone.   Lineage and COH and of course GW are successful.   I think NcSoft is a good company, has been treated badly  by a a selfish American drama queen, and deserves a break.