Tabula Rasa was an MMORPG that blended role playing with 3rd person shooter tactics, in an open ended and dynamic war waged between the human and bane forces. The game focused on Logos, artifacts that players collect to enable certain powers. While the game focused on PvE play, the introduction of PvP content introduced war games, allowing various game modes to be played between warring clans.
Unlike most other MMO’s that feature a targeting system and auto-attacks with the addition of hotbar attacks, Tabula Rasa features a targeting system for only some weapons, combined with a third person shooter system, and rpg hit/miss and damage calculations. Tabula Rasa focused on the war aspect of the game, and both sides of the war would launch attacks on each other’s bases. It was completely possible to lose a base to the Bane forces, meaning that access to the NPC’s, vendors, spawn points, teleport locations, and anything else located in the base would become inaccessible until the area was retaken.
So where did Tabula Rasa fail? The easiest way to answer that is unfulfilled promises. The game launched with very little, if any, end-game content, and the developers took so long to introduce any inkling of end-game content that many of the players who had reached the level cap had quit long beforehand. Certain promises of player-driven mechs, pvp wargames, and more, weren’t fulfilled until literally a month before the game shut down. Richard Garriot also left the company a few weeks before the announcement of shutdown.
Inevitably, player count went down sharply, resulting in the game getting the axe for subpar subscriber numbers.
OR WAS IT?
Fraud! Not too long after the shutdown of Tabula Rasa, news surfaced that Richard Garriot is suing NCSoft for $24 million USD, for fraud. According to the legal documents, Garriot alledges that he was fired while on quarantine in Russia after his space trip last year. As part of Garriot’s contract, he is eligible for stock option until 2011 if he was forcibly removed from the company, although if he left on his own will, he would only have 90 days to do what he wished.
It is a belief among the community that NCSoft was determined to shut down Tabula Rasa, and staged the departure of Richard Garriot in order to stick the stake throught its proverbial heart, not to mention to screw Garriot over on his stock options as well. What this means for Tabula Rasa is unclear, although it’s highly likely the game is dead for good.
Tabula Rasa taught us that no MMO is safe from the almighty fist of the consumer, even if it was made with the tender loving care of a legend, in this case Ultima Online legend, noted crazy, spaceman, Lord, and General, Richard Garriot.
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