The only shocker here is how long it took for them to say enough is enough. NCSoft today announced that the sci-fi MMORPG from legendary game designer Richard Garriot, Tabula Rasa, will be ending it’s services in February of next year. The game had long been plagued by development problems, and received poor reviews upon it’s release in November of 2007. It’s consequent lack of subscription base spelled out Tabula Rasa’s destiny long before now, and it was only a matter of time that this happened. Garriot clearly saw the writing on the wall when he parted ways with the game and NCSoft last month.
Personally, I had really high hopes for Tabula Rasa, and if NCSoft had stuck to Garriot’s original vision of the game I think we would be in a very different situation than we are now. Garriot is a brilliant designer- one of my idols, really- but it’s when companies like EA and NCSoft force a designer to compromise their vision to reach a broader audience that things like this happen. Perhaps more importantly, this leaves the MMORPG industry with a potential goldmine of an opening: there are no, modern sci-fi MMOs on the horizon right now for players (like myself) to look forward to. And trust me, we’ve been craving a good sci-fi MMO for half a decade now.
The press release from NCSoft follows:
To the Tabula Rasa Community,
Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we’ve achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn’t performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.
So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.
Before we end the service, we’ll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009.
We can assure you that through the next couple of months we’ll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while. For more details about what we are doing for Tabula Rasa players, please click here.
Stay tuned for more information. We thank you for your loyal support of the game and encourage you to take us up on the benefits we’re offering Tabula Rasa players.
The Tabula Rasa Team
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