It was with a certain amount of surprise that I saw Lord British (AKA General British, AKA Richard Garriott), had quit NCsoft last week.
Fellow Soldiers of the AFS,
I am happy to finally be able to write the players and community of Tabula Rasa. We’ve been on quite a journey together. First in creating a game unlike any other on the MMO market, then growing a loyal community and finally launching the game and its players into space with Operation Immortality. It has been quite an unforgettable journey, one that I will treasure for the rest of my life.
I am very grateful to you loyal players for sticking around through what I think we can all honestly say was a rough launch. I thank the development team for pushing hard to get polish, updates and new content out every month since launch…a feat that I think is unusual in MMO development. They have a lot to be proud of.
Many of you probably wonder what my plans are, now that I have achieved the lifelong dream of going to space. Well, that unforgettable experience has sparked some new interests that I would like to devote my time and resources to. As such, I am leaving NCsoft to pursue those interests.
This news is difficult for me to deliver. I am honored to have worked with the team I’ve had and I’m grateful to the community who makes this game so unique and fun.
Thank you and farewell.
Richard “General British” Garriott
Like many, I wondered what revelation Garriott could have had, that would lead to him walking away from his latest creation, so soon after its release. I had been hoping that peaceful space-beings had entrusted him with the secrets that would bring about a green energy revolution (perhaps given in trade for Stephen Colbert’s DNA), but it turns out he just got the can because his game failed. Nice of them to wait a week after his letter before announcing this:
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
What I do not understand, is that NCSoft are not a single game company, and so far as I know they are not short of cash. Why do they need to shut down Tabula Rasa completely? Could they not just transfer everyone onto one or two servers, and let them chug along, without updates, for those who still wanted to play?
They are giving all Tabula Rasa players with active accounts the following compensation:
* 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)
* Refund of any Tabula Rasa gametime remaining after Jan 10th
That is pretty decent in the general scheme of things. I’m not suggesting at all that NCSoft are being unfair, and in fact I think their compensation sets a fantastic example to other companies. Actually it would have been worth reactivating your account just to get all those goodies, if they hadn’t foreseen and closed that loophole! I just think it’s odd that they’re shutting Tabula Rasa down so completely, when it is obvious that there are still people who want to play it in it’s current state.
I guess, even now, we’re not used to MMOs shutting down. Once they get through the difficult bit of getting released, they tend to linger on forever (Well, apart from Asheron’s Call II). As the market gets ever more cluttered, closures are going to become a whole lot more frequent.
It occurs to me that the occasional complete failure might actually be good for the industry, if it discourages people from rushing incomplete games into the market.