Tabula Rasa To Shut Down
NCSoft announced today that it will be closing down Tabula Rasa on February 28th. The sci-fi shooter-flavored MMO struggled for quite some time, despite recent attempts to draw in new players by announcements of new features, price reductions, and using Richard Garriott's trip into space as a promotion. We discussed Garriott's departure from NCSoft a couple weeks ago. This is NCSoft's second failed MMO, and apparently layoffs are in the works. They seem to be making an effort to make the game's last few months as fun as they can for their remaining players, though. "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."
Last time the marketing department springs for a trip into space ...
They really WILL become a "tabula rasa".
It's like when Bill Gates swam in a pool of money to promote Microsoft!
This is exactly why MMO's don't lend themselves well to keeping a historical imprint on society.
Of all the criticisms I've heard of MMOs, I have to admit... that's a new one.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.