A clean slate indeed
As you may have heard, Tabula Rasa will be shutting down its servers and going the way of the Dodo.
“So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009”
It is regrettable. I picked up my copy of TR the day of its release and was captivated by the game. The world looked good, the graphics looked good, the characters looked good. Combat was fun, the guild I joined was great, and doing instances together was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it all got a bit dull very fast. After six weeks I had stopped playing. I went back to it a few months later and tried it for another month. Again, it was fun for about three weeks, at which point I once again cancelled my subscription. I was always hoping to go back to it and give it another try, so the news of its closure is a little sad. My Exo-biologist will cease to exist. Never again will I be able to load up the game, select my avatar, and play. A sad day.
A few people question the reason for the games failure. Is it the blend of “shooter” combat and MMO’s that fail to work? Is it a lack of interest in the Sci-Fi setting? Maybe it is these things. I know what I didn’t like about it, and it’s the shift from the classic tank/healer/dps dynamic.
While the game did contain tank, healer, and dps type classes, there was no need to have any particular type in your group. While many might argue that this is a good thing, no more need to wait around for that elusive tank or healer; it was that lack of dependence on other players that turned an MMO into a single player game. That and PuGs. Why pay $15 a month to do what you can do in Halo for free. Certainly the game lacked in content and replayability, and many things that were slated to be in the game never got there. And I experienced the worst PuGs of any game, so even if you could get a group together, which you couldn’t, you didn’t want to.
It’s hard to believe the game will be no more. It really wasn’t a bad game; it just lacked a reason to keep playing. Openedge mentions Stargate Worlds, another Sci –Fi MMO due for release, and is of the opinion that it will be a failure. I can’t help but agree, and I think I’ll wait a while before trying it. I’m getting a little weary of trying games straight from release. Tabula Rasa, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online.
So what of NCSoft? Their next flagship title, Aion – The Tower of Eternity, is currently in Beta and should see a North American release around the middle of 2009. Apart from that, there is not a single MMO on the horizon that has me excited. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place.
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Comments
Comment from 
caliga
Time: November 29, 2008, 2:15 pm
The last time I played TR I was determined to get my then 25 Bio-Tech to 30 and try out the Exo. Once I hit 30 it got boring again very quickly. I would’ve preferred to see this game go free-to-play with micro transactions. It’s a good game but just doesn’t have enough to keep you interested in the long term, certainly not enough to keep you paying a monthly subscription.
There’s a reasonable Beta review for Spellborn over at
http://adingworld.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/first-peek-into-spellborn/
if you haven’t had the chance to read it yet.
Comment from Ainilome
Time: November 29, 2008, 4:15 am
I think for me, it was their terrible decision to give you your final career change at 30 then have twenty more levels to grind off with no incentive other than “getting max”. Getting to 30 you always had a goal in mind, after 30 it just turned into “Eh… what now?”. There was zero end game and that was a concern all the way through beta. They announced their plans for the … whatever they called them, the vehicles end game set up, back in beta and it was never seen. You are right however about the extreme lack of grouping and heavy solo focus. That was a huuuuuge dramatic point of contention among beta testers. A lot of us saw it as an issue but there was a such a psyco vocal majority who were convinced that “requiring” any sort of grouping would turn it into a typical raid game and their panic was obviously heard.
The game had a very storied past and cost NCSoft a whole lot of money. It was actually totally scarped two or three years into development and reworked from an asian style fantasy/sci-fi hyrbid into the shooter hybrid. NCSoft was eager to make some money from it finally, unwilling to put yet more money into and so it was rather rushed out the door. Then General British decided to pull out for his space monkey trip and I imagine that things fell apart from there.
As for upcoming games, there isn’t much coming soon that gets me excited. I’ve been waiting on Aion for years now and will certainly be playing it. There’s also Chronicles of the Spellborn when I’ve sat in beta sign ups for for four years now coming to NA soon that I’ve always thought looked like a stellar sci-fi fantasy hybrid with great RP potential. On the “someday, sometime” time frame there Hero’s Journey (haha. I have two close friends actually working on that game and I still don’t think it’ll launch before I die.) and the KOTOR MMO from Bioware.