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Tabula Rasa Going Out With A Bang
Mytob notes that sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa is set to close down tomorrow, and the development team has something special planned for the game's final hours. The decision to close the game was made in November, and it went free-to-play a month later, while the developers continued to roll out the new content they had planned. Now, after a round of patches and server merges, the beleaguered MMO has reached its shutdown date. The game's primary enemies, the Bane, are launching an all-out offensive on Allied forces, which will culminate in a battle beginning at 8PM on Saturday and lasting until midnight. All players are being called in as reinforcements in this apocalyptic fight, though the final announcement says, "Penumbra has been informed of the situation and is standing by on the use of their last resort weapon. We can not afford to be complacent or uncertain, but if it is truly our destiny to be destroyed, we are taking them all with us."
Someone could always 'leak' some documentation and perhaps enough info for dedicated people to get it working. It wouldn't be the first time.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
As in a proper, scripted end to the entire world?
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
This game was just un-fun. I played during the open beta and it was 'fun' for the first night like just about any game. However, by the end of the second night it had already become a chore and there was no third night. Although I am a little surprised that it made this short of a run. Even Earth and Beyond nearly made two full years TR couldn't even make it for 18 months.
Wow. Your Slashdot membership is hereby revoked.
In addition to what the other posters said, there's also the issue of proprietary third party code. They may have a large chunk of that in there that they don't have the rights to release. Happens with a lot of closed source.
There are dozens of open source graphical MMO projects out there already. Name one that has reliable servers and an active, sustainable playerbase.
It's OK, we'll wait while you do the research. Take your time.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I guess it just shows how subjective tastes are. I also tried it when it was first released, like many other people did -- you know, because it's Lord British and all -- and my conclusion was the exact opposite: there was not much to like about it. In fact, I hated every single design decision about it, except for "let's make it SF." Even as the "let's make a bastard child of MMO and FPS" went, it had been done much better before: e.g., Planetside.
In fact, you're the first person I even hear about which considered it a great game. I know several gamers IRL, and lemme tell you their tastes are spread all over the spectrum. There are a couple which prefer EQ2 over WoW, there's one guy who's actually become a big WAR fan, the mandatory couple of WoW addicts too, etc, among other distinctions. So, you know, at least about them you can't say that they didn't even try TR because of WoW, because more than half don't even like WoW. And invariably the talk went something along the lines of:
Mr X: "So, what have you been up to lately?"
Me: "Ah, I got Tabula Rasa last week."
Mr X: "And, how do you like it so far?"
Me: "To be honest, I'm don't like it that much."
Mr X: "Heh. Why don't you ever ask first? I could have told you it sucked."
Mind you, I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong in a matter of subjective tastes. Just that you were obviously a too small minority to keep the game running.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't think the company that owned this is going under. However, I'm sure they use the same software in some of their other MMOs, so no way would they release the sourcecode.
Uh, no.
First off, you're making a ridiculous assumption that the code belongs to the developer, and not the company's creditors. This is not iD, this is an outfit whose assets have gone into hock.
Second, you're making the ridiculous assumption that the developers are being paid to go through the source and make it open-source friendly. Instead of, you know, shopping their resumes around, hoping to God that they've got enough socked away to make it until they're rehired somewhere, and not providing you with entertainment for free.
Third... you're ridiculous, period.
I think the community needs to be saying a HUGE thanks to these guys for showing the industry how to bow out gracefully and give closure to customers. Too often they simply abandon communities to wither and die; it's wonderful to see a company recognize when a game can't support itself in the long term and give the users a positive experience as they end it.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Raise money and buy it for open source. It worked for Blender in ages past when whatever company originally wrote it went bankrupt.