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

Originally posted by Starbear

!). 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 think you make some incredible points here.

NCSoft has seen some wonky shake-ups as of late. Most to do w/ TR staff, but even the fiasco that is Issue 13 has spawned the community manager to “resign”. That game seems to be taking a downward turn now too.

It wouldn’t surprise me if NCSoft decided that it’s North American market just wasn’t worth the trouble. Currently, Lineage is has like 1/12th of the Korea’s entire population.
 

Originally posted by Starbear

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.

We were actually  talking about this in the Tabula Rasa forum.

The reason SoE never shuts a game down, no matter how unpopular or screwed up it may have become, is to pad the value of their all access pass. I mean, if SoE shut games down for the same level of unpopularity that causes NCsoft to shut a game down, they would have pretty much nothing but Everquest going! SWG and Planetside would surely be shut down and I doubt Vanguard or EQ2 would last much longer past that. But if all those games got shut down, what would your all access pass be worth? It would be a subscription to Everquest that costs an extra five dollars is what it would be worth.

On the other hand, NCsoft doesn't have an all access pass. And an all access pass wouldn't really work for them because their most popular games are either free (in the case of Guild Wars) or aimed mostly at the Asain Market (in the case of Lineage). so if they don't have an all access pass, then they are pretty much just flushing money down the toilet by running servers for games that nobody plays. I actually am proud of NCSoft for having the guts to admit when a game is doing poorly and being willing to take action by shutting it down (while also working to keep customers happy by refunding their subscription time and buying them extra games to boot). SoE on the other hand is too stubborn to do this, doesn't care about keeping customers happy and refuses to admit their mistakes. To this day they still tell people what a good idea the NGE was.

again another mmorpg to the garbage bin...  ah well....

well, i got into this game free, cause they shut down Auto Assault, and now i will get into some more free games cause they are shutting this down

All Hail UO beating another one ,     , oooppss wrong forum  

No really  ,I  played in beta and 2 weeks after lauch and it never really peaked my interest , it was like it didnt suck me in , like some other MMO's I have played..

Stupid NCSoft...

They need to take a queue from SOE and lump their games into a pay-one-price-for-all subscription. Of all the MMOs I have played, AA and TR were two of the best non-conventional MMOs around. With an all access pass, NCSoft could have seen some of the Lineage or COX crowd to check these great niche games out.

IMO, when you are a niche game producer, you would benefit the most from an all access subscription. I'd still be playing AA and TR if I could have paid $30 a month to access all of NCSoft's offerings.

MMOs should never die...

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Starbear

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.

 

We were actually  talking about this in the Tabula Rasa forum.

The reason SoE never shuts a game down, no matter how unpopular or screwed up it may have become, is to pad the value of their all access pass. I mean, if SoE shut games down for the same level of unpopularity that causes NCsoft to shut a game down, they would have pretty much nothing but Everquest going! SWG and Planetside would surely be shut down and I doubt Vanguard or EQ2 would last much longer past that. But if all those games got shut down, what would your all access pass be worth? It would be a subscription to Everquest that costs an extra five dollars is what it would be worth.

On the other hand, NCsoft doesn't have an all access pass. And an all access pass wouldn't really work for them because their most popular games are either free (in the case of Guild Wars) or aimed mostly at the Asain Market (in the case of Lineage). so if they don't have an all access pass, then they are pretty much just flushing money down the toilet by running servers for games that nobody plays. I actually am proud of NCSoft for having the guts to admit when a game is doing poorly and being willing to take action by shutting it down (while also working to keep customers happy by refunding their subscription time and buying them extra games to boot). SoE on the other hand is too stubborn to do this, doesn't care about keeping customers happy and refuses to admit their mistakes. To this day they still tell people what a good idea the NGE was.

My thinking is:

TR = still needs a lot of development work, has a lot of extra costs, doesn't have the fanbase to sustain it.

SOE games = shared support between all games (and the less players a game has, the less support they need), shared server farms, the less popular games (Matrix, Planetside) are playable without needing massive bug fixes, and they have very small teams looking after them (seems like the Matrix only has 1 person working on it...), if a low level developer costs, I don't know $40-50k a year, thats only around 250-300 players needed to pay their salary...

This is kind of sad:\

I enjoyed the game immensely in closed beta, however being the gamer that I am, the lack of end content and persistent bugs left OVER from beta quickly made me cancel my paid subscription.  The concept itself was unusual, and I did enjoy the mechanics. I figured, however, that this would happen....I just didn't expect it to be so soon.

Ah, well. I may resubscribe, just to give it a go again.

Here's my video from End of Beta. Not the best, but it definitely makes me nostalgic.

RIP :( It really was a great game in my opinion.

I wonder if TR might have been viable if it had been set up like Guild Wars: pay once, play forever.

Charging subscription fees is just not going to help a game like TR, which desperately needed a larger player base. It was an OK game that absolutely was not worth the subscription they were charging.

I bet a lot of MMO developers are shaking in their shoes, about now -- as well they should be.

Make the game worth the price of admission (e.g., WoW) or make it a better value by using a more sensible payment model: lower monthly fees or no monthly fees (e.g., Guild Wars). Otherwise, you will FAIL, big time.

Charging "full price" for a "just OK" product like TR is a sure recipe for failure.

Originally posted by Raltar

We were actually  talking about this in the Tabula Rasa forum.

The reason SoE never shuts a game down, no matter how unpopular or screwed up it may have become, is to pad the value of their all access pass. I mean, if SoE shut games down for the same level of unpopularity that causes NCsoft to shut a game down, they would have pretty much nothing but Everquest going! SWG and Planetside would surely be shut down and I doubt Vanguard or EQ2 would last much longer past that. But if all those games got shut down, what would your all access pass be worth? It would be a subscription to Everquest that costs an extra five dollars is what it would be worth.

On the other hand, NCsoft doesn't have an all access pass. And an all access pass wouldn't really work for them because their most popular games are either free (in the case of Guild Wars) or aimed mostly at the Asain Market (in the case of Lineage). so if they don't have an all access pass, then they are pretty much just flushing money down the toilet by running servers for games that nobody plays. I actually am proud of NCSoft for having the guts to admit when a game is doing poorly and being willing to take action by shutting it down (while also working to keep customers happy by refunding their subscription time and buying them extra games to boot). SoE on the other hand is too stubborn to do this, doesn't care about keeping customers happy and refuses to admit their mistakes. To this day they still tell people what a good idea the NGE was.

A little correction is in place.

EverQuest 2 is still doing pretty good! They still have around 250k subscribers, wich isn't bad at all!

It's safe to say that at this moment EverQuest 2 is their best running game at this moment. With EverQuest 1 coming in close second.

The Shadow Odyssey brought in some really great improvements into the game, a lot of people welcomed. So EverQuest 2 isn't going anywhere any time soon. It's here to stay for a long while.

In fact, EverQuest 2 has build up a very loyal fanbase, just like with EverQuest 1.  That's the advantage you have with a much older, more mature playerbase. They tend to stick around a lot longer and don't jump from game to game on each opportunity.

And basically, that is exactly the same now with LOTRO.

Cheers

I liked TR, but now I have Beyond Protocol.  It just released and I have been playing it for a few days before it did.  The devs showed us tons of cool stuff this game has built in to it.  Their special researches make this game very deep.  Space games are much more my thing.

Originally posted by Ludwix

"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 skimmed through the thread and I didn't notice anyone else mention this but..

"Aion beta access (coming soon)"   For all the people saying there will be no Aion Beta for NA/EU I think this should be a pretty interesting development. Unless of course this was posted elsewhere already. :)

There was a debate going over one of COH's global channels about if COH was going to be next.

DOOOOM?

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Starbear

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.

The reason SoE never shuts a game down, no matter how unpopular or screwed up it may have become, is to pad the value of their all access pass. I mean, if SoE shut games down for the same level of unpopularity that causes NCsoft to shut a game down, they would have pretty much nothing but Everquest going! SWG and Planetside would surely be shut down and I doubt Vanguard or EQ2 would last much longer past that. But if all those games got shut down, what would your all access pass be worth? It would be a subscription to Everquest that costs an extra five dollars is what it would be worth.

On the other hand, NCsoft doesn't have an all access pass. And an all access pass wouldn't really work for them because their most popular games are either free (in the case of Guild Wars) or aimed mostly at the Asain Market (in the case of Lineage). so if they don't have an all access pass, then they are pretty much just flushing money down the toilet by running servers for games that nobody plays. I actually am proud of NCSoft for having the guts to admit when a game is doing poorly and being willing to take action by shutting it down (while also working to keep customers happy by refunding their subscription time and buying them extra games to boot). SoE on the other hand is too stubborn to do this, doesn't care about keeping customers happy and refuses to admit their mistakes. To this day they still tell people what a good idea the NGE was.

That is absolutely not true at all.

While it's true that SWG doesn't have even 1/2 the number it did before the NGE, but it does seem to have a community of somewhat decent size. I'm even willing to bet that EQ and SWG probably have similar numbers, with neither doing as bad as TR was, or other NCSoft MMO's for that matter...

Where you are REALLY off though is concerning EQ2, and even Vanguard. EQ2 especially has a very healthy sized, and stable community, and is probably SOE's real money-maker atm. I have been playing WAR lately, but played EQ2 for the last year or so before that, and I have to say that it's actually a really enjoyable game. I played beta tested EQ2, and when it and WoW released so close to each other I ended up going with WoW b/c EQ2 wasn't all that great...But SOE really listened to it's players and improved the game ten-fold. I really dug it for what it was...and that's a very solid, PvE MMORPG. Vanguard is even making a comeback under SOE, and that says alot I think. Is it the end-all, be-all MMO that McQuaid hyped it as? No. But just like w/ EQ2, it has become a very solid game, and has improved immensely since release.

Now that I think about it though, none of NCSoft's MMOs have really done all that well. It's top performer has to be, at least here in NA, CoX, and I'm guessing that at it's peak it only ever had maybe 250k players. Then what is there? Lineage 2 (which admitedly has a much larger pop in Asia), but here never exceeded 150. Auto Assault shut down maybe just as fast as TR did, although I think if that game had more time in the over it could have sustained a community.

It is always sad to see a game shut-down though, and there are always people out there that are very passionate about thier game of choice, and to those of you for whom TR was yours...my condolences.

If only the devs doing SGW look at this as there combat system is close to what TR had but not as good