GameDaily BIZ: What was your reaction to the closure of Tabula Rasa?

Garriott: Of course, I wish it had continued. I also, personally, think it should have continued -- in the sense of, it was a game that was hitting its stride enough where it could keep what I'll call a critical fan base, and had the opportunity to continue to be grown.

If I were in charge, I would continue to grow it, because MMOs are long-term plays, and that's what you should do with them. That being said, we had already lost a fair number of critical team members. And while Tabula Rasa definitely had a rocky start, it did have a core fan base, and the team was motivated to continue to grow it. So I wish it had continued.

But I'm also not what I'll call terribly surprised, either, that the company would choose this path. I think NCsoft looks at it as an opportunity cost issue -- where they put those resources and people on that, or something new. They chose something new.

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Hitting its stride?

wtf is that man smoking? It staggered out of beta, limped along with nothing more than vapourware and false promises for a year, then had life support pulled to let it die the ignoble death everyone bar the most rabid fanboiz predicted.

If Dick had paid attention to what was going on with the game that had his name splashed all over it, instead of having his head firmly jammed up his nethers in his race into space, then perhaps TR wouldn't have failed so epically. But no, mr. space tourist was too busy throwing pyjama parties and riding vomit comets to notice how badly TR was sucking.

Perhaps next time, when the beta testers tell the devs that the game they are working on needs more time, more content, and a lot more polish, they'll listen

yeah, right

It was released a year too early. Now, when it was closed, I could agree with RG. It was a pretty ok game. No "WoW killer" or anything close to it, but a game that I could have seen playing for a while. It was finally stable, its classes had a semblance of balance, content was lacking but at least there was some "there"... all things the release a year ago didn't have.

Yes, my standards ain't too high. Old gamers remember the days of games that had good ideas and poor implementation. TR was one of them. It had a fresh idea, different from the usual holy trinity of tank-healer-dd and a fantasy world of dwarves and elves. I can't stomach them anymore, they're bland and all smell the same, from EQ2 up to WoW. Here a different graphics set, there some different skills/spells and styles but essentially, it comes down to static trinity combat gameplay.

TR dared something different and failed. Not because it was different, if you ask me, but because it was implemented poorly and was shoved out the door too early. Granted, considering the wads of money that were thrown into this dead horse, I can well understand the beancounters that wanted to cut the losses. Still, I think it was a missed chance.

In its final stage, the game was pretty much what RG described. It had its "fanboys", it showed progress (one reason why I don't want to go back to EQ2, it has a crappy implementation and shows none), and it could have continued if NC wanted. I think it would have deserved a relaunch try before calling it a failure.  NC had the chance to earn a name as a company where returning to a relaunch actually pays (so far, any game that I was "reinvited" in back for 2 free weeks failed to deliver anything they promised, looking at TR a year ago and today you would have seen some real progress, the game was actually fun to play in the end).

They opted for closing. IMO, a poor decision, but then I don't know their plans.

TR was different in many ways and put  fresh light on certain things granted.  And altho I'll agree it  was shoved out the door too soon, that was not the ONLY reason for its failure and lack of audience.  TR was missing many fundamental elements that attracts and keeps a solid playerbase in an MMO. 

First was lack of meaningful endgame, like raiding and interesting Boss encounters.  2nd was lack of itemization, everyone looked the same.  3rd was lack of purposeful quest lines and storytelling.  And last, was lack of meaningful crafting that added real value to items and the economy. 

I think alot of people could have overlooked the bugs and issues if the game showed some semblence of implementing the above.  But the fanbois didnt want to be outdone by raiders and the devs made the terrible mistake of listening to them .  Other than leveling alts, the game had nothing to offer to a player in the long term, so people left. 

So lets not confuse issues here, TR failed for many reasons but the MAIN one was the inability to keep its playerbase due to lack of meaningful content. 

RG should put his money were his mouth is and buy the game and run for the long haul like he say's.