Tabula Rasa Re-Review

[GameBanshee News]

Eurogamer is doing a re-review of Tabula Rasa, though they note it feels more like an autopsy of a dying MMO.

Yet it's also, by many accounts, a commercial disaster. Server populations are low, there was talk of guilds defecting from the game within months of launch, and despite a strong denial from publishers NCsoft, a Korean newspaper piece slamming the game as an expensive failure for the firm elicited a nod-and-wink "no smoke without fire" response from many quarters.

In public, NCsoft remains completely supportive of Tabula Rasa - dedicated to a programme of ongoing improvement and upgrades, and even to an expansion pack down the line. Privately, however, the company must be asking itself where it all went wrong.

I personally think it went wrong when they decide to pay Garriott the equivalent of a mid-range game budget.

[Xandax]

It went wrong when they decided to not put in much content at game launch, coupled with a game play that was so easy you could casually breeze through it without ever thinking.

Casual approach was what attracted me to TR - that and it was a Sci-fi plus the setting looked fun and had some good ideas (class/leveling system etc). However, when the game was so casual that you rarely ever needed to group, it felt more as an incomplete single player, combined with its lack of MMO qualities. The game was however never above mediocre and I seriously never understood the reviews the game got - especially if you spend a little more time on it then the first 10 hours. And once you started to reach higher level it was apparent how much content and MMO elements actually missed from the game.

Perhaps they thought it would sell on Garriots name and hype alone but it just couldn't live up to it. It was just too little, way too late.