Originally posted by Guillermo197

You want to know why Tabula Rasa failed and basically became the largest financial dissaster in MMO history (next in line with Age of Conan).

The fact that Richard decided to ditch the whole game after three years of development and start all over again.

Meaning the game you see today was developed in only 2 years! And it clearly shows in the game.

- All character progression stops at level30.

- Different classes are poorly fleshed out. Not really distinctive. And lots of abilities still either overpowered or severely bugged / lacking! Only the idea that you unlock your last ability 20 levels too soon already, making the last 20 levels just a boring grind without any feel of progression anymore.

- Not to mention that most interesting and available content stops at level30. They filled up some gaps past level30, but it still lacking!

But the biggest disaster and failure is this:

The whole mystery around the Eloh's and their artifacts is the main drive of interesting storyline that could have driven the game. Be it not that they just dumbed it down into a dumb collection game to unlock your skills.

This was for most people the biggest dissapointment. You were soaked into the mystery of the Eloh's and so thrilled about it, especially the Eloh Vale questline, that was needed to gain access to the stargate and move on to the next Tier of zones.

But in beta bugs were plague'ing the Eloh Vale questchain and prevented people from unlocking the stargate. So instead of fixing it, they removed the access requirement from the stargate and so killed the best questline in the game.

As that's right, after this questline it's over and then the nasty truth comes afloat and you discover that eloh artifacts are nothing more then collection objects to unlock your skills.

No more plotlines, no more interesting questlines. Nothing. Nada.

You got some standard quest series to get you into the dungeons of the game. But that's it!

You could really notice the game was optimised and polished in content through the first three zones and after that the severe lack of interesting quests (missions) kick in.

The buggy Eloh Vale story questline is proof that they even couldn't finish and optimise that one.

Tabula Rasa was a game with great potential. And that is what it always will be. A great MMO it could have been.

And these are my words. A longtime Closed Beta tester of Tabula Rasa up till 2 months after release.

Cheers

nailed it.

i was in the CB too and i have the CE. i recently activated it (CB told me i should wait a while before actually playing it) and found the following things un-ignorable:

-they nerfed the draw distance, in cb it was like 120 yards now its about 70. so the game actually looks worse now than it did then.

-they STILL never synced the sound of the shotgun reloading with the action. sounds like a small detail right? until you go to reload, "hear" the click and switch weps only to find out next time you switch to your shottie that you have 1 shot in it.

-certain parts of the game look kinda like aion, my theory is right after launch (and maybe even a little before) most of the team switch to production of that game leaving a skeleton crew to actually "fix" or improve TR.

-no talk of an expansion and adding boxing to the game was about the most pathetic version of pvp imaginable.

if NCsoft switches to a model like station access i MIGHT play TR just because i am already paying for it, otherwise 15$/mo is way too much (ditto on COX). it would be more inline with the 5$/mo that it costs to play as premium dungeon runners member.

on a side note i think people need to put the stroke fest around AION on hold (well all games really) there is nothing there to suggest that it is going to be a great game.

Originally posted by oronisi

The game got stale quick, and there seemed to be no reason to interact with any other people.  The story seemed stale, lack of variety in gameplay removed any desire to clone or reroll...it was just a sad MMO.

If it were a singleplayer game and I were into those games, it might have been worth the cash.  As an MMO, it fails on just about every level.

I don't know what changes have been made since I played, but at launch there were a lot of balance issues between classes, and balance issues between different gun types. There was also no PvP, and it was obvious the game was never supposed to have it in the first place.

Part of the problem, at least in my experience, was the community. This was one of the many games which had a rabid fanatic following, who would viciously attack anyone who tried to point out the many flaws with the game, yet when the game bottomed out they abandoned ship just like everyone else.

yea i quit not long after launch. i think maybe a month or so if that. it was a good idea but i wish richard garriott would have just released another badass ultima series game.

I played for 3 or 4 months but agree with the earlier comments that it just became stale. After a while there did not seem any real "hook" to keep me wanting to achieve more or explore further. I liked the theme and intent of the game but could not drum up any excitement to keep playing.

TR is just missing the X Factor I guess, I had the game when it was released and played for a few days but had no inclination to Sub to it ..... sadly it gets an extremely tedious and rinse and repeat affair, also as most people have stated their is practically Zero community and no one bothers with groups etc.

TR is a real shame because it could have been Awesome . And if ever a game was screaming out for good meaningful PVP its this one.

My advice would be to wait for Warhammer 40 k  Online, I think that will be awesome ! 

I also played the trial.  Actually a friend of mine started it and convinced me to try it.  I'm kinda in the same boat the game seems innovative and a lot of fun.  I am lvl 22 and play solo and with my buddy a lot.  I did sub to the game and so far it seems to be a lot of fun.

A lot has changed since Beta and one shouldn't think of TR as anything close to what was then. I've been there since CB and still love it. The developers polished it nice and shiny and now start to add the real big stuff. Yes, TR could have done with a few months more developement but has taken big steps since it's publishing. And with Deploiment 15 we will be able to start kicking the Crusties of our Earth. Oh, and there will finally be Mechs. :P

Anyone who tried at it's release and even thought it remotely interesting should really give it another try!

Hmmm... I sound like a TR spokesperson...^^

I'm not, I just love what has become of TR .

Originally posted by Sajud

A lot has changed since Beta and one shouldn't think of TR as anything close to what was then. I've been there since CB and still love it.

Nice try.  I was in the closed beta for over 4 months.  Played at release.  Been popping back into the game with free-trials now and then.  Most recently about 3 weeks ago.  TR has not changed signifcantly since release. 

They are still doing the 3 day free trial thing.  Which is nothing more than an attempt to trick people into buying the game since the first 3 days of play are fun.  But even after a week of dedicated play the shallowness of the game begins to become very clear.

Sajud, you've been playing the game since CB and you love it.  I'm very happy for you.  You found a game, that dispite it's many flaws in design and lack of content, fits your play style perfectly.  we should all be so lucky.

Just a slight correction and not stepping on anyone's opinion...

The trial on the official page is 7 days. The refer a friend from your master account is 5 days.

http://www.rgtr.com/trial/index.html

No idea if the refer a friend trial has the limitations set on it as the official free trial offer.

You're right OP. Its got great gameplay and it is a bit nostalgic at the moment. It will wear off after a while, when you find there is no-one to play with and that it plays more like a FPS with no players. Thats why I left, because I play MMO's for that human interaction.

Well I like many other played right after launch for about 2 months.  The combat system was fun enough, it feels like a actual working, finished version of what SOE dropped on SWG with the NGE.  I enjoyed many of the battlefields, and often had more fun with random attacks from the Bane "beaming" down then with the quests (the "morale parables" are a complete joke, at least the ones I did).

However after a while, it got stale and felt empty.  The combat was still fun enough, but no way was it worth a $15 sub fee.  I can throw Halo into my X Box and get just about the same feeling.  Plus there was a lot of talk of doing PvP developments into the game, like player held control points or something.  Honestly I didn't look at PvP much, because in a game where you are supposed to be  the very last survivors of humanity engaged in a all out war for survival, I kind of find PvP to be a little silly.  If they wanted to have PvP content then the Bane shoudl either be playable, or they should have zones where players can control one of them, like the Monster Play system in LOTRO.

In the end though, my main issue with the game was that it just felt empty and shallow.  Fun for a bit, but it lacks real substence to hold my interest.  If there was more to the game past combat and leveling, plus some real reason to socialize it might be better.

Originally posted by Sajud

A lot has changed since Beta and one shouldn't think of TR as anything close to what was then. I've been there since CB and still love it. The developers polished it nice and shiny and now start to add the real big stuff. Yes, TR could have done with a few months more developement but has taken big steps since it's publishing. And with Deploiment 15 we will be able to start kicking the Crusties of our Earth. Oh, and there will finally be Mechs. :P

Anyone who tried at it's release and even thought it remotely interesting should really give it another try!

Hmmm... I sound like a TR spokesperson...^^

I'm not, I just love what has become of TR .

I gave it another try from July through August and did not find it all that different from release. The weaknesses were still the same. Tiny game world that lost most of the fun after level 30.

There were never supposed to be MECHS, they were supposed to PAUs and different for each class, but in typical TR fashion they took what could have been amazing and turned it into the mundane and played out. They took way too long to shine it, they should have been adding real solid content. Instead they have lost almost the entire customer base and shined up a turd.

For a game that "lost almost their entire customer base" the servers have been pretty consistant with medium load nightly except for the EU server. If you look at the servers in the afternoon the EU server is under medium load.

Originally posted by Sevenwind

For a game that "lost almost their entire customer base" the servers have been pretty consistant with medium load nightly except for the EU server. If you look at the servers in the afternoon the EU server is under medium load.

TR has 30-35k subs, this is according to their financial report and not a made up numkber.At one point a few months ago had sold 150k copies of the game, that right there tells you over 100k of the people who bought the game quit paying for it and that is almost the entire customer base. When you lose four players for every one you keep you need to sell a million copies to make any money.

What does medium load mean? You have no number to attach to it so medium load could mean 500 people online at that time. Back in December and January the servers always showed low, then the devs fixed the population counter and after that the pops stayed at medium 24/7. That was when TR had more people than it does now.

If you prefer to ignore facts that is fine, but you can look these things up becasue TR is an NCSoft product and NCSoft has to release quarterly reports about their finances.

Well, the game isn't more popular because people tried it  and either stop subscribing or didn't subscribe after the first thirty days. 

To the OP, nice and well thought post.
But to that analysys I reply with the following equation:

60% FPS + 40% RPG = Fail

There are very fun FPS multiplayer games out there, and most importantly they are FREE.
Why on earth people should pay for the honor of playing in a persistent world?

FPS combat is fine in a MMORPG but it doesn't have to be the main feature, RPG should be the main feature, and in TR is not.
 

Originally posted by Sevenwind
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I used NCSoft released quarterly report which had the making around 1.5 million USD for the second quarter of 2008. That works out to 100k paid subs divided by 3 for the three months it takes to make up a quarter equaling roughly 35k subs. No fuzzy math at all. I used NCSoft own profit numbers. 1.5 million USD was the income from subs alone.

As far as I know and can tell MMORPGchart is a guess at best, the guy who runs it has very little inside info on games that do not release numbers. NCSoft releases income and income can be divided by anyone with math skills.

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Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by Sevenwind
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I used NCSoft released quarterly report which had the making around 1.5 million USD for the second quarter of 2008. That works out to 100k paid subs divided by 3 for the three months it takes to make up a quarter equaling roughly 35k subs. No fuzzy math at all. I used NCSoft own profit numbers. 1.5 million USD was the income from subs alone.

As far as I know and can tell MMORPGchart is a guess at best, the guy who runs it has very little inside info on games that do not release numbers. NCSoft releases income and income can be divided by anyone with math skills.

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This number seems about what I'd expect looking at xfire stats. 

I'd love to see sevenwind's retort to this.

too much vapour, not enough content

pretty much sums it up in a nutshell