Whatever Happened to Tabula Rasa?

On November 2, 2007, one of the most engaging MORPO games, Tabula Rasa, was launched. The game was created by  Destination Games and published by NCSoft. Whatever became of the game?

Tabula Rasa is about humanity’s last stand against a group of aliens called the Bane, set in the near future between AFS (Allied Free Sentients) and Bane on two worlds, Arieki and Foreas.

Notably, the developers claimed that players could influence the outcome of a war between player characters and NPCs.

As a result of conflicts between developers and a vague direction, the game underwent a major revamp in 2003. Twenty percent of the original team was replaced, and 75% of the code had to be rewritten.

Pre-release hype for this sci-fi MMORPG was huge, largely because it was created by Richard Garriott, the man behind Ultima Online.

On January 5, 2007, NCsoft offered invitations to a limited beta test that began on May 2, 2007. Invitations were given as contest prizes until August 8, when several thousand further invitations were distributed via FilePlanet and Eurogamer.

Following Tabula Rasa’s retail release on November 2, 2007, pre-ordered customers were able to access the game’s live servers from October 30, 2007. The development team released updates, called “Deployments,” nearly every month after the release.

The NCsoft website announced on November 11, 2008, that Richard Garriott had left the company to pursue other ventures. Garriott later claimed NCsoft had written this letter as a means of forcing him to leave.

By January 10, 2009. the internal conflict had driven the game servers to free-to-play status. As the internal battle transformed into legal warfare, NCsoft elected to bring the curtains down on the game.

On February 27, 2009, the developers invited players to unite in one final battle against the Bane faction. The unified forces held a day-long battle against the last enemy of mankind. And so as they won this battle, the curtains came down on Tabula Rosa.