No-one can really say, hand on heart, that this was a surprise.
While the games media was very quick to pile in whenever Tabula Rasa looked shakey, and perhaps over-zealous in their declarations of its impending death, the truth is the game was never in that good shape subscriber wise. It never did as badly as Auto Assault (which had problems beyond the game itself), but it was never called a ‘hit’ internally. At least, not with a straight face.
For me, personally, it was symbolic of the last attempt by NCsoft to do something a little bit different. At least, it was when I joined the company in 2004 – when it was still ‘unicorns in space’, and before it became Starship Troopers. Having said that, a year after the reboot, I really liked what I played in 2005 (and still maintain that if by some miracle it could have been released then, it would have been a hit) but by 2007 it was never, ever going to be serious competition to… well, anything really.
I know some people will use this as an opportunity to spout craziness like “Sci-fi MMOs don’t work!” but in reality, the truth is the same as it’s always been: not-so-great games don’t work. They can do okay, for a while, but they’ll never be hits at launch.
Nope, you need to give those not-so-great games some time; whether it’s in development (assuming you know what you’re doing and just need more time) or in public release (assuming you listen to your community and know what you’re doing).
Sadly, Tabula Rasa didn’t get it.
#1 by Extremus at November 22nd, 2008
I actually kinda enjoyed Tabula Rasa, it felt like a good ‘MMO Lite’. I could happily jump in for an hour or two, do some quests, run an instance thingy. It certainly had a feel of a game that could end up at least reasonable if it lasted long enough to dig itself out the hole it was in, sadly it didn’t.
A lot was promised for TR in terms of scope, gameplay etc… and not all of that was delivered. Basically the Peter Molyneux Effect.
Shame, we needs more Sci-Fi on the internet. hopefully JG:E will not suck. *cough*
#2 by welshtroll at November 22nd, 2008
I think Tabula Rasa held many hopes for lots people, those waiting on Huxley, those from Planetside, sadly those hopes didn’t come to fruition.
Myself and a band of members from my clan hoped it would go some way to replacing our need for a Sci-Fi game. Sadly due to the amount of time each person had to play, we got split by the level differences and slowly we drifted away from the game. Yes it’s an age old problem for more MMO games but I think an underlying cause was that people didn’t click with the game to start with.
As an added note I was quite shocked when the beta forums got scrapped on launch, but I think it may have been too late at that point.