Tabula Rasa Goes Out with a Bang, Takes the Good Guys with It

Tabula Rasa no longer exists. The MMO, created by NCsoft, failed to attract enough players to be economically viable and was taken offline at the end of February. But the developer chose to go out in style.

A post on the official site of Tabula Rasa details how humanity is getting ready to perform a last stand against the Bane enemies it faces even as the game is preparing to perform its last doomed stand.

The post reads, “We request that all military personnel begin fortifying defenses at every AFS base in preparation for a massive Bane assault. If enemy troop movements are as large as we fear, and the Neph are truly prepared to lead all out war against us, this may be our last stand. Penumbra has been informed of the situation and is standing by on the use of their last resort weapon. We can not [sic] 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 quite unusual for a doomed MMO to continue with this level of support. Yet since the announcement that the game would no longer be supported, the team at NCsoft that had been working on the game continued to release patches. The free to play game even got a new content patch, which offered mechas for the first time, just two weeks before the date when it was scheduled to be shut down for good.

It's both nice to see such a level of commitment from the developers and somewhat heartbreaking to know that a game which they liked so much is destined to be taken offline. It's even sadder to see that Tabula Rasa, which was released to high expectations, having the name of Richard Garriott attached to it, failed to reach its audience and to maintain a constant player base.