Just recently, NCsoft announced that their sci-fi shooter MMO, Tabula Rasa will be getting the axe at the end of February, thanks to slow sales and general suckitude. Tabula Rasa is a sort of MMO version of Quake, where players fight against an alien enemy for control over vital resources and strategic positions on a war-torn world. The game was praised for its unique combat system, which combined character-based dice-rolling with player skill in accurate targeting, an approach which worked well to counter the lag and slow response times common to MMOs. However, technical problems like memory leaks, random crashes, and a total lack of anything actually fun to do hurt the game during its release.
While several patches have come through since then, including a number of new content releases that added the necessary standards of an Auction House and crafting system, the damage had been done. With World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and Warhammer Online all looming murderously over the MMO market, there’s simply no reason for gamers to play a decent, okay, kinda cool game like Tabula Rasa, when they could be playing something great like one of the big boy MMORPGs.
Look, devs, it’s simple. You’ve got a choice. Put out a great game that does something interesting and does it well, get all the details dead on from launch, and keep an iron-fisted reign over where you want the game to go and what you want it to be. Or, you can lose all your players in two months when they go back to Warcraft.
Jumpgate. Asheron’s Call 2. Age of Conan. Hellgate: London. Auto Assault. Now, Tabula Rasa. Look upon these names and learn well their lessons! Here lies hundreds of millions in financing, broken into ruins upon the ground. Years of work, cast aside and burned as servers merge. Give us something new, give us something great, and we will forsake Azeroth. Give us yesterday’s game with tomorrow’s graphics, and we will forsake you. The play is the thing!
Oh, if you want to see what you’ve been missing in Tabula Rasa, the servers go free to play on January 10th. Take a look, and decide for yourself.
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