Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What happened to Tabula Rasa?
wicked45
Member Posts: 59
in Tabula Rasa
I never played Tabula Rasa so I was hoping some of you that have could help me out. It looked like a very cool game. Very good art and animations. Why didn't it do well? Was there something wrong with the gameplay? Thanks.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I played it at launch and there was a lot there to like. Really a lot. Some of the things they did with TR were awesome. But it wasn't finished.
Unfortunately they did something a bit silly in the development cycle. The game started out as one thing and then a fair way into development they decided to essentially make a completely different game. So it's no big surprise that they ran out of time.
And they never quite got it to the point of meeting it's potential.
Worse, they took an often weird but not wonderful approach to PR. There was that hilarious 'send your DNA into space with Lord British' campaign. And then just before the end - this may have been the final nail in their coffin - they did an advertising blitz here on mmorpg.com, but their ad had this huge, glaring typo in it.
Too much of that sort of thing and it's hard for us as consumers to take them seriously as a product. I do think it's a shame for us that they never properly finished it - it would have been an excellent MMO - but they made a lot of mistakes that handicapped their product. By the end it was just an embarassment for NCSoft who had several solid MMOs in their stable and Aion in the works.
It was too ugly to share space with their pretty, shiny MMOs so they shot it dead.
Honestly i felt there was nothing wrong with the gameplay itself. It was fun, different.. then most of the other games out there, and loved the Sci-Fi blah blah blah. It's problem really was a lack of content overall, and a community that lit a bomb, and blew itself up. Then top it off, w/ a group of game dev's.. that couldn't tell their own ass from a hole in the ground, so the game lacked direction, and people were left with a thumb up their ass wondering what was going to happen next.
PR behind the game with NcSoft, and Richard Garriott.. behind the scenes was bad enough. NcSoft apparently frauded some papers, screwed Garriott on his stock in the company, and forced him out of the company. Then they shit canned Tabula Rasa, and wiped their hands clean with the mess.
Garriott is suing NcSoft over all that, and if he win's he'll get his cash he got jipped on, plus the IP rights to Tabula Rasa. So if he win's, theres a good chance he will revive the game, but who knows at this point, and if the game will just release the way it was........ it shoud remain dead.
I really liked Tabula Rasa when I first played it.
The combat was particularly fun. It was one of those rare games where I was happy to wander aimlessly around killing things as I went, just because it was fun. Unfortunately, the game felt like it was abandoned shortly after launch by both NCSoft and Richard Garriott. There were unresolved content gaps and patches were few and far between.
Wasted opportunity.
Any word about the upcoming trial? It's been about a year ago Garriott seued them and I haven't seen/heard a word about it (could be I'm from Europe and TR had little to no love here anyway
)
Personally I think TR was awesome. Pity I took the trial early november 2008 and bought the SE box 1 week before the closure announce. I'd love to play TR again, either with Garriott holding the IP or on a private server ...I know both options have little chance though...
I think it got "erased."
Quite true.
It was probably most fun just playing it MMO.
Unfortuantely it was unfinished. Garriot obviously scammed NC soft. And NC closed the game. Cause this is how they think.
"If something is broken , junk it. Dont fix it"
Garriott scammed NCSoft? WHat? Can you be more specific?
It's Garriott who's sueing NCSoft for frauding his "letter to the community" when he was out in space - which then forced Garriott to sell his options in NCSoft right before Aion release, in which he lost over $25m - the amount he's sueing them for. NCSoft will go down in flames and burn in hell once this resolves and we get back Tabula Rasa, as its license goes to the winner and no, ...I'm not delusional.
REALITY CHECK
Thanks for the replies. It seems like a lot of drama to me...I'm sorry I missed it.
I can't believe for as long as it took them to make the game it didn't have enough content or was completely polished.
I thought the controls to be cluncky. Would like to know more about this trial, cause maybe if the game get some new life blown in it it could be something as long it's fixed.
Tabula Rasa was a really good game, but the community never got really big enough. Being a game designed mainly for groups that really sucked, I personally had to quit at some point (a couple of levels below the max) because I just could not find any groups to quest with any more.
The problem was It was run by a space cadet.
It was a great game but missing that magical *something* that causes a person to stick around and subscribe. The crafting was essentially non-existant at launch. The content lost all polish about 1/4 of the way through the game. There was no end game to look forward to. You get all your abilities that you would ever need by about half way through the game so you can lose motivation easily.
It was full of great ideas. The AI, the spawning system, the control points, the action oriented combat, these were all fantastic. It was everything else that was missing that made it hard to call home.
Most of these issues were addressed by the time it closed down, but it was too late and there was too much bad word of mouth from the early adopters.
What happened? It died. A sad day for me because it was the only sci-fi MMO I could tolerate.
Whytwulf ? Race of Man ? Rohan ? Lore-Master ? Historian ? Master Supreme Scholar
Ovar ¤ Dwarf ¤ Lonely Mountain ¤ Minstrel ¤ Tinker ¤ Master Supreme Jeweller
Grumwald ¤ Race of Man ¤ Rohan ¤ Hunter ¤ Explorer ¤ Master Supreme Tailor
I guess you could consider NCSoft a space cadet -- just look at Aion.
If you are referring to Richard Garriot, he was the creator. He didn't run the game.
Whytwulf ? Race of Man ? Rohan ? Lore-Master ? Historian ? Master Supreme Scholar
Ovar ¤ Dwarf ¤ Lonely Mountain ¤ Minstrel ¤ Tinker ¤ Master Supreme Jeweller
Grumwald ¤ Race of Man ¤ Rohan ¤ Hunter ¤ Explorer ¤ Master Supreme Tailor
Hey, thanks for the great info Aganazer. All the stuff you said really makes sense. I just couldn't get over how cool it looked and why it's still not around. I would think a game like that would have a huge following considering the lack of many alternatives to the fantasy genre.
Yeah, Only is someone would make one...
I played TR from Beta to the last D-day.
My perspective
----------------------------------
Tabula Rasa was one of the greatest games of its time. The Story, the combat, the systems and design were top notch. There was some flaws and Yes maybe it would have been better if they did not Re-vamp the skill system 10 times but for what it was after Launch we had a Great game with Amazing potential.
The main and only issue was Lack of Endgame content and Lack of Development. RG decided to spend 30 million of Tabula Rasa money to fly in space. This in my opinion was the reason for its shutdown.
Updates were scarce and there were plenty of broken and unfinished systems. The Clan system for example was botched and if they fleshed it out to include Alliances, Clan bases that were more elaborate, refined PvP clan warfare the game would have soared and been a very successful sci-fi MMO today.
The flat out reason it died was Lack of capital for better, stronger updates and patches. If Garriet spent the 30 mill on the game and not the gay spaceflight the game would be one of the top AAA titles. For this reason I will never play another Garriet game and I hope he reads this so he knows how much I hate him. Why do you think NCsoft screwed him so bad and cut him out of his stock options? Cuz Garriet is a sham.
Website | Forum | Values | Join Us!
Lack of endgame? Hell - this gilded turd lacked any real content after you hit level 30-odd and got te signature skill for your branch of the sparse skill-tree
It had some serious potential - but wasted it trying to appease the Garriot fanbois and by getting shoved out the door well before it was ready.
had the devs actually listened to the people trying to give them suggestions on how to improve their offering instead of pandering to the sheep it could have become something fantastic
As it was? coldsauce
-=A=-
Any news on the future of TR? I was hoping Earthrise would be the next TR but FFA pvp is why I didn't bother.
The reason for the end of TR was that NCSoft and Garriot couldn't come to terms so they had to pull the plug, the biggest problem was that Garriot left the game for the NCsoft devs to deal with and they couldn't figure out what to fix/change in patches so they started messing with class abilities and didn't address the pvp aspect, when they started figuring things out it was too little too late. It was a fun game but content was shallow, I liked the character combat, open world that you can travel anywhere and the base raids and defends.
Yeah, grouping in TR had something of a similar feel to grouping in City of Heroes for some reason - i.e. tremendous fun, of a kind I've seldom found in other games. Something to do with it being on that fine balance between being too fiddly (like LOTRO sometimtes) and too easy (like Champions Online). i.e. just complicated enough for some team interplay, but easy enough for things to go FAST and not get bogged down in stop-start.
Real shame about TR, real shame, in terms of atmosphere and lore and combat, I loved it. I was looking forward to re-subbing and was gutted when it shut down.
Btw, I think some people here are being a bit uninformed about the situation with Garriott. The blame kind of spreads across a lot of the people involved, it's just one of those things where something bold was tried (in this case a joint venture between Eastern and Western developers) but just didn't work out for financial and "political" reasons (both sides to blame a bit).
If the original idea had worked out it probably would have been a totally different game, and wonderful; but as it didn't work out, the game we got was something the dev team pulled together in the last year or so, but weren't quite able to finish. They did an amazing job in the time they had.
i picked up the game in last few months of it being live was gutted when it shut down was enjoying it loads . the one game i like and it gose belly up on me
The reason for the end of TR was almost no one playing it. NCSoft and garriot not coming to terms was not nearly as big a deal as the fact the game was never going to make back the initial investment and was a money loser from the start.
PvP in TR was atrocious and really had no place in the game. Had they built the game around PvP with more races/factions to play MAYBE PvP could have been OK. As it was TR PvP was poor and did not really fit the story of people supposedly fighting the Bane for mankinds right to exist. How do you logically add PvP to that unless you can actually play as the enemy?
Please do not necro post in old threads. Locked.