Tabula Rasa canned by NCsoft

By Oli Welsh Published 24 November, 2008

Sci-fi MMO has until February.

NCsoft has announced that it is to close down its struggling science-fiction MMO, Tabula Rasa.

The servers will be shut down on 28th February 2009. Subscriptions will be ended and the game made free-to-play from 10th January.

The game launched just over a year ago, on 2nd November 2007 - so it will be discontinued after just 16 months of operation.

Tabula Rasa players who had an active subscription last Friday will get a parting gift from NCsoft: three free months of both City of Heroes and Lineage II, including digital copies of the games, and a copy and one free month of the forthcoming Aion: The Tower of Eternity, including beta and pre-order access.

The developer assured players that it would continue supporting the game with "really fun" updates until it closes - although it's not clear if this will include the recently-announced Earth campaign.

Tabula Rasa's creator, amateur spaceman Richard Garriott, left NCsoft earlier this month citing "new interests" as the company's profits took a hefty turn for the worse.

"Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected," the developer said in a statement. "The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for. "

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Iora #1 3 years ago

    Shame?!

    Still it's nice to see that they are rewarding there customers

  • SpyroViper #2 3 years ago

    I worked on this game last year. I knew it was a piece of shit then.. Guess I was right. Big LOLZ!

  • gremly #3 3 years ago

    Another one goes down. Alas, When will something come and challenge the big MMO's out there! (WoW, WaR)

  • thebaron #4 3 years ago

    WOW,WAR and don't forget LOTR it's an awesome game..

    Conan should be next to be canned then - it's a great big pile of crap.

  • iokthemonkey #5 3 years ago

    A shame, as NCSoft have some pretty interesting ideas outside the usual sword 'n' sorcery stuff, but at least this means cutting the cost of running a non-profitable game and - hopefully - will help keep the likes of CoH afloat.

  • Maldoror #6 3 years ago

    Conan is as good as dead
    Lotr is still runinng, but its playerbase is very small
    Warhammer is struggling, they took a huge loss of players when Lich King came out.
    Hail to the (Lich) King baby!

  • iokthemonkey #7 3 years ago

    Lotr is still runinng, but its playerbase is very small

    ----

    There's been a big uptake following the release of Moria. I've noticed a LOT more players online since it came out.

    But don't be so happy about other games "failing." Not only does that mean people out of work and the associated effects of that but also that when one company becomes dominant, the market stagnates. Where else will Blizzard get their "new" ideas from if nobody else is out there producing MMOs for them to be "inspired" by?

    Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing WoW for a lot of years, but it really is the McDonalds of MMOs.

  • Lacero #8 3 years ago

    EVE seems to be doing very well.
    We'll see on LotRO and WAR. I think they have enough to continue and make money, if not millions like WoW. Although they're have been no figures for LotRO since christmas last year (150K).

    There's always Silkroad, Granado Espada (sp?) and Perfect World if you don't want to pay and like comedy translations.

  • iokthemonkey #9 3 years ago

    We'll see on LotRO and WAR. I think they have enough to continue and make money, if not millions like WoW. Although they're have been no figures for LotRO since christmas last year (150K).

    ----

    This is the thing: everybody thinks they can compete with WoW, but in reality, it's going to be nigh-on impossible to do unless you happen to be called "Blizzard." That's not to say companies shouldn't aim high and try, but subscriptions around the 100K mark do, I believe, make a game commercially viable. Look at EverQuest. It has fewer players than that yet has been going for 10 years or so with numbers never really surpassing that, so it must make them enough to keep going...

    But it'll be interesting to see the sales figures for Moria, as I think that might give an interesting insight.

  • Wite_Noiz #10 3 years ago

    I took part in the beta for a bit... was never that impressed.
    I didn't really understand what they were trying to achieve with the game; it all felt like such a mess and not particularly fun.

  • Gurgeh #11 3 years ago

    "EVE seems to be doing very well. "

    For every active EVE player there are 100 who quit. There's a huge market for a space combat MMO; maybe Jumpgate will make it.

    As for EVE it's got a healthy user base but who knows what state their finances are in given the economic problems in Iceland.

  • Gurrah #12 3 years ago

    TR would have been an awesome single player game! It essentially was an excellent single player game with a subscription. I finished it without ever having teamed up with another player. It really is a shame that I won't be able to play it ever again, because it had it's moments.

  • Ferral #13 3 years ago

    I am wondering whether they will take it in the same direction as Guild Wars, buy the game and then free to play to keep it alive. Or is it going to be completely dead end of February? I played TR a bit while it was still in beta and have to admit that I quite enjoyed it.

    I have stopped playing GW lately though, getting difficult to get into decent teams on the missions now. So I decided to go for LOTRO July this year and love it. Player base even on Evernight which is supposed to be one of the busiest servers always seems short on players. Since Mines of Moria has been released though starting to see more people.

    Wonder if the admins here can get a bit more info on the closure.
    Edited by 1 at 24/11/08 @ 11:53

  • MaxiSleep #14 3 years ago

    Real shame this. The game mechanics were badly thought out at launch ( the entire crouch thing for better aim etc) but there was a real sense of fun and being in a battle. Unfortunately it never really delivered after that.

    MMO players play for the long term, and they do not believe stories of "Jam Tommorrow" any more. You need your endgame PVE and PVP systems in place before you launch or people will quit when they run out of things to do. Once you pause from a game for any length of time you do not go back very easily.

  • Chimpy #15 3 years ago

    Yeah MMOs have to be pretty spot-on at launch. People play MMOs for the long term and it has to have very high quality in every respect for something that is played every day for weeks.

    It's like buying a car that doesnt drive very well - you'd probably pick a different model.

    Unfortunately it takes a lot of time and money to do this, more than a lot of publishers and developers have.

  • AphoticCosmos #16 3 years ago

    "EVE seems to be doing very well. "

    For every active EVE player there are 100 who quit. There's a huge market for a space combat MMO; maybe Jumpgate will make it.


    That's because idiots want instant gratification and a level system to tell them how well they're beating up NPCs . . .

  • gmjapan #17 3 years ago

    Played TR for a little bit and the combat was fantastic fun but theres probably 3 things that drove me off...
    -the UI was horrid to the point of painful
    -the typical response to group requests was 'level a bit and solo it'
    -the same map was played out in different servers you could hop between so you may never run into anyone else
    They created a single player MMO, failure was inevitable.

    P.S Make a single player version maybe...