Tabula Rasa is intended to close February 2009.

This probably isn’t much of a surprise for those who’ve been paying attention. Depending on where you look, most estimates suggest that Tabula Rasa only had around 30-40k box sales in the first place, and lost a hefty number of players after the first month. There are no official player population numbers being released — never a good sign — but it doesn’t look like it ever got much of a player base jump. Worse, this was a game that had been redesigned several times; it cost significantly more than most other MMOs to develop. In many ways, it’s surprising that the game has lasted this long.

A few groups are hoping to keep the game alive. If you enjoyed the game — I know I did, and I have the collector’s edition to prove it — those may be of interest to you.

The death of this MMO is unfortunate for a number of reasons, but it’s worth paying attention to, if only to see how people think about it.

NCSoft

NCSoft’s North American sector is not faring well, and probably won’t get a second chance like it did before. This is the second game NCSoft has closed that was built and bred for the western market, and despite the big name, it managed to hurt them quite a bit. They’re not going to make that mistake again, and that means NCSoft Austin is going to be in unpleasant shape even before Champions Online comes out.

Station Pass is probably going to remain a niche concept. It’s worked wonders for Sony Online, but if it wasn’t appealing to NCSoft here, there’s little reason to believe it’ll attract the attention of other, normal game developers.

Harder SciFi — at least, SciFi harder than the comic book Science! of City of Heroes — is probably gone for the near future. Whether it’s because SciFi MMORPGs just are a harder sell, or because SciFi MMOs have just been garbage, the risks look stupidly high.

This presents a certain opportunity for developers willing to take a risk, but it also means getting capital is going to be messier than normal for games or groups of games under the above system.

Players

This is the second game in as many years that NCSoft has closed down completely. More than anything else, game closures are the single greatest fear the average player holds, as they involve losing hundreds if not thousands of hours of gameplay. There’s going to be a lot of player suspicion about any adventurous games through NCSoft, or even anything with a box price.

Rightly or wrongly, a lot of the issues with Tabula Rasa have been attributed to the lackluster end-game and faction-based PvP content. That may not be accurate, but players are going to be much more wary of games without a well-defined end-game.

Designers

What’s your take? What do you think killed Tabula Rasa, and how do you think this particular fate is going to change how you design games in the future?