I have tinkered in Tabula Rasa since beta. A friend of mine talked me itno trying it and while I normally not a big fan of this type of game, I did find it enjoyable. I was never a hard core player but when NCSoft suddenly announced its upcoming closure, I couldnt help but feel sad and somewhat betrayed. Just a few weeks prior to the announcement, Richard Garriot went into space and Tabula Rasa got a huge promotion thanks to him. When he suddenly left the game with no real explanation, players began to wonder what was going on but NCSoft said the game was going to go on with its Earth expansion projects and the long awaited vehicles.
Then we got the rug yanked out from under us when NCSoft closed the servers down for a few hours...when they came back up they announced its pending Closure. Yes the game probably could have used a few more months in development but what game out there didnt at release? Paying subscribers were to be given a "severance" package which wasnice but still...how can you offer 3 months of fantasy based games as severance for cclosing a scifi game?
In its current state, Tabula Rasa is 300 times better than it was at release and I firmly believe that if NCSoft had invested a little more in advertising and promotion of the game, it would not be closing. They could have even gone a step further and made it a $9.99 a month game or even gone to a free game with microtransaction game store (simular to the guild wars and dungeon runners formats) which could have drawn a larger player base and probably earned them more money than a traditional monthly subscirption fee would have.
But Sadly, NCSoft has decided to pull the plug after only a year, on a game that had potential. I firmly believe NCSoft could have made this game work if they had really wanted to and will regret its closure sometime in the future. They are putting huge amounts of energy , time and resourcesinto the upcoming Aion which while it does look to be good...is still a fantasy game for which are pretty much a dime a dozen these days.
Dont get me wrong...I really do like many of NCSoft's fantasy games, Guild Wars being my favorite. But what we needed was a good well developed SciFi game, not another fantasy game. I cannot help but feel that NCSoft dropped the ball on this one..a game that could have been great had the parent company cared a littlemore about the game and a little less bout money. A year was not enough.
MMORPG.com writes:
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