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."

Comments

Open sauce

[Lehk228]

they should release an open server even if it lacks the content and patch the client to allow the user to specify a server.

Re:Open sauce

[tepples]

They'll just have someone go through tens of thousands of lines of source code

How long would it take to bang out a script that searches all source code files in the tree for third-party copyright notices and produces a list of only those files that have the developer's or publisher's copyright notice and no third party's?

Re:Why stop there?

[symbolic]

I have to give NCSoft some serious credit here - it was a great game. I started when it was first released, and there's not much I didn't like about it. It's a damned shame they have to close it.

Re:If a virtual worlds ends...

[Culture20]

Apparently, yes. The neat thing about this is that these guys _care_ about their users. They could have kept things going business as usual, letting it whimper. If I see their names attached to a project, I'll know to give it a longer look.

Let it out as open source - DONT let it die

[unity100]

anyone with a little common sense would have done it by now. if you cant run it due to lack of funds, thousands of people can run it by collaborating.

Re:Let it out as open source - DONT let it die

[Anonymous Coward]

This option has been offered. Repeatedly.

Monetary offers have been made for the game's IP. None were seriously considered, all were rejected.

Executives at NCSoft want this game to die. They lose face if it succeeds. They want to be right and they want Destination Games to be wrong.

It's all political, from the fact that they launched a year early because they were running out of startup capital, to this point where they simply want to be rid of it, and cannot risk it being successful in another's hands. This is a Korean company we're talking about: saving face is EVERYTHING. Better to lose money than face.

The devs have been doing whatever they can to give the players whatever this past week. Tokens that boost XP 20x for an hour as a common drop. Fully overspecced weapons dropping left and right. The costumes reserved to the devs are now dropped loot. Mimeomech (crafting cash) is now available from vendors, not just salvage. If you know where to go, you can get a character to 50 in a couple hours now. And tonight they went handing out personal armored units (that run for 5 minutes) to lots of folks for the big blowout tomorrow.

It's the end of the world as we know it, so let's have fun! And look at the bright side: that's $15/mo./player that NCSoft won't be getting any more.

Re:Has an MMO ever had an ending before?

[dreemernj]

It sounds like they have at least some sort of scripted end for Tabula Rasa. As in it will end in a series of events, probably culminating in this ultimate weapon destroying the world. One ending for the whole world. The question was if any other MMOs also have a scripted end.

Just asking if something like this has happened before. Do you know if it has?

Re:Has an MMO ever had an ending before?

[murdocj]

Well, WoW's WotLK has a pretty amazing story line and a number of great quest lines that I would match up against single player RPGs. So yeah, WoW has a well scripted middle.

Unfortunately the bankruptcy officials ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

What would be better is to release the source to the client and the server so atleast it could live on in the community.

Unfortunately the bankruptcy officials may consider it part of the company's assets, to potentially be sold to pay off creditors.

If the stockholders had put something like that in the company charter BEFORE THEY TOOK ON DEBT it would be another story. Ditto if the creditors could be persuaded to release claims on the source for this purpose.

Also: Some players might form a consortium and make a bid on the source. (They could probably make a rather SMALL bid and still get it.) Once they own it they can do what they want with it - including releasing it under any license terms that don't violate those of any licensed IP it contains.

At least that's how I understand it. (Insert obligatory IANAL disclaimer here.)

Re:Has an MMO ever had an ending before?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that it is basically impossible but what happens if the players win?

Re:Has an MMO ever had an ending before?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's different from single player RPGs how?

It isn't really. Another thing that isn't any different is his complaint. Heard it time and time again.

Might as well bitch about reading literature being boring because there is no moving plot and nothing special because everyone reads the same book and it always has the same characters and the plot twists and turns the same way and always ends the same way.

Re:Has an MMO ever had an ending before?

[ActionJesus]

Fwiw, I was there for that, and all I saw of the attack on open citys was a few fellguard mobs spawned in city locations, boosted to about 500% size and no ability for players to respawn on death. The idea was nice, but the whole thing felt just a little underwhelming.

Re:Has an MMO ever had an ending before?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of two single-player RPGs that had storylines moving enough to pull out a few tears.

Both of 'em were made by Lord British.

Re:You must have been the only one

[lwsimon]

"A game without serious, multi-tiered, Player vs. Environment raiding, with many very tough encounters which reward players with exceptional loot is going to FAIL."

I diasagree.

Exhibit A: Eve Online.