MMO Tabula Rasa closes its doors

While Richard Garriott was fulfilling a lifelong dream of going into space, his latest MMO project, Tabula Rasa, was sinking further and further into the MMO graveyard. And now, barely a year since its release, Tabula Rasa is officially closing its doors.

This is a sad note for anyone hoping for some type of innovation in MMO's that have become increasingly stale over the last few years. While Tabula Rasa failed to capture that compelling spark that beckons us back to good MMO's, it did have some neat features. First and foremost among these was the not-another-fantasy-MMO feature. It also had bases that would sometimes be captured by (non-player) enemies and a killing spree bonus that gave you more experience the more enemies you killed in a short span of time.

To the Tabula Rasa Community,

Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we've achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.

So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

One thing that can be said about NCSoft is that they are doing the right thing for their fans. Instead of just unceremoniously closing the doors to Tabula Rasa, they are giving away a parting gift to anyone who was an active subscriber on November 21st. This gift includes a digital copy of City of Heroes with three free months, a digital copy of Lineage 2 with three free months, and beta access to the upcoming MMO Aion in addition to a free digital copy of the game once it is released.