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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."
It's the only way to be sure.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
they should release an open server even if it lacks the content and patch the client to allow the user to specify a server.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Does anyone notice?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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.
we threw a war, and nobody came?
As in a proper, scripted end to the entire world?
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
I am totally lame to be reading about this on a Friday night. .... rolls dice...... score!!
I am open source, and Linux baby!
And I mean this seriously...
Was my bugged character.
I could run at about 5x normal speed, jump about 60', climb to the edges, and beyond (and fall off the edges of!) maps by bouncing up them, very easily.
I must say, once I got bugged, I didn't die once. How could I? I'd just RUN UP A MOUNTAIN and get away.
*pointing and stuttering in fear*
GU...GU...GU...GURL!
They were, after all, trying to simulate Disney World...
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.
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.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How many beers before she asks you to untie her - all the while promising you that she won't tell the police?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
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.
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.
Sounds like someone had an unhappy childhood.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
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.
a bunch of fat faggot geeks sitting around on a saturday night weeping over the end of a mmo while spanking off to some epic space federation battle. wtf is your problem people? go out, have a drink or two, talk to a real live girl.
Why should we go out? Everyone's got your mom on speed dial and she makes house calls.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
While not entirely LEGAL per se [ok, more, not at all legal] if you google "private Ragnarok Online server" you'll find a few top 100 sites. Several of these servers do manage a decent up rate considering they aren't backed by a huge company.
Its open source atleast in the software they use to make the games run on their own server..