f13.net

Three days until the servers are set to be shut down. Here are my thoughts after taking the game up again for presumably the last time.

I love the setting and instances. The Eloh and Bane backstory is quite good for a MMOG, if you bother to go looking for it.

Questing. Now, I was a big proponent of quests and missions back in the day. Camping mobs was never fun for me, and games like DAOC and EQ seemed to be stuffed with it. I never had the feeling that my character was doing anything in the world besides standing around waiting for crabs and bugs to spawn so I could kill them and take their stuff.
Then WoW came along, and quests are the way to go. Why are you standing around? There's spleens to be collected!  :awesome_for_real: It was good to have a way to advance your character without standing around.
But here we are on the other side, and it's been done to death. Every game now has it's quest chains and there's hardly any camping going on. But I feel it's gone too far in the other direction now. Everyone runs around collecting heads and running errands for other people. Rarely do you see a player doing something because they want to do it. Reputation grinds and dailies and etc. I think Tabula Rasa could have benefitied from a little more sandbox. Especially in the anemic crafting game. Gathering mats and crafting is a great way to get players to do things for themselves, and it was sorely missed in Tabula Rasa.

I don't think sandbox elements and crafting could have saved Tabula Rasa. At this point, I don't think anything could have saved it. The problems and dev drama ran too deep. But it certainly couldn't have hurt.

(http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/large/1be72084c413fef760fa2300a633160c1d7af0f0.jpg) (http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/ratmantransform/ss_file-1be72084c413fef760fa2300a633160c1d7af0f0.jpg)

Is it really a post mortem when it is still twitching on the autopsy table?  :why_so_serious:

Summary: A sci fi game done right would be a nice addition to the MMO collection.  I think we all can agree with that. 

Post mortem: don't ditch your entire design when it's almost complete and start over from scratch. Suck up your ego, release the crappy game and then make the second one that you really wanted to make. I was in testing very early (of the second version), and almost every update made the game less fun to play.

There was definitely a fun game in TR. Missed it by that much.

My hope is that the interest in TR due to it going free until the shutdown might spark NCSoft into keeping the game afloat somehow.

I don't think it will happen, but stranger things have occured in MMOG land.

I enjoyed the hell out of Tabula Rasa when I first picked it up. I really liked the semi twitch style of combat, especially when using a shotgun. But the game had some major flaws, and bugs. And the dev team just didnt seem to know where they where going. About 2 months in to my stint in TR, they implemented a very badly thought out patch, that completely changed the way the game worked at a pretty core level.

What happened was that when I started the health system worked like this: Most creatures (players included) had a 10:1 shield to health ratio, which seemed realistic. You *knew* that when your shield was about to be gone, you where in big trouble, and same with a mob. A few classes had weapons that would bypass a portion of shields and hit straight at health (Medic). It all worked pretty damn good. Then they put in the patch that buffed health by like 1500%. This made players have as much or more health than shields. It also lead to mobs having hugely broken amounts of health that would regenerate faster than you could attack them. In the end it made the game go from a run and gun combat style where mobs died quickly, to a more standup tank and spank style.

It did not make the game more fun, and I ended up quitting shortly after.

I really wish TR could have gotten its self right, cause I loved the lore and setting, and they really had some cool concepts like cloning.

They were a preview of the "how to mess up your game by knowing you need a change and doing the exact wrong thing" style that WAR perfected.

This.

Example: it helps if you balance your classes, for the first few months (all that I played) spies were so ridiculuously overpowered.  Solution: instead of toning down the overpowered class they insanely buff the mobs to challenge the spies resulting in the game being totally impossible to play for the gimpy dps specailist classes.

Mid level grind was also WAR painful.

I'm still waiting for comments about bullets and laser beams that travel around corners. 

I'll comment on that! (Not directed at you personally, just generally speaking.) Get used to it. In an RPG system, it is necessary and inevitable for bullets and lasers and arrows and bolts (and magic missles, hello UO) to track the player. In an FPS system, you use physics on your projectiles and make them hit cover. But if it's entirely "roll to hit" then there is no way to avoid it.

Bullet hits player, player moves, bullet still needs to hit player.

Actually, there is a way to avoid it: let the player take damage even if the bullet sails harmlessly overhead after they duck. I wonder what would be preferable.

Then if you're not playing right now, you're missing out. They introduced a wide variety fairly common random drop "red" class (epic) weapons and armour drops that make players very strong, and random-drop 2000% XP buffs. You can still die, and you have to kill stuff for a couple of hours to get a collection of reds (and then there are higher level reds to get), but the pace of the game has picked up immensely, and I can't get enough of it.

Anyone wasting their time posting "oh, it could have been fun" in this thread while failing to play it in its final two days, is even more frustrating to me than the fact they amped up the fun just before shutdown. You're all posting impressions of a game that ended a couple of weeks ago when they cranked up the speed.

C'mon now. You can have a RPG without dice rolls. We'd be better off with less dice rolls, from a gameplay perspective.

Not when latency is involved.
If you're gonna have players with 200ms+ latency, yeah, your bullets will have to bend corners.

There aren't any. If you think that's a problem with TR, you must have been playing it a long time ago in some kind of shitty beta form that I missed.

Line of sight currently works properly in Tabula Rasa. Anything that comes around a wall is happening due to lag, and well, it's the internet. I rely on line of sight to stay alive. I duck behind trees/walls/hills to make the AI bunch up and come towards me, in preparation for my shotgun blast.

You apparently don't have any understanding of Tabula Rasa. There's this stupid attitude that "it's just dice rolls underneath", when it simply is NOT. Go earn 4 pumps of Firearms skill, run around with a shotgun and tell me it's dice rolls.

Here's what I saw of Tabula Rasa.

I downloaded the client when it went open beta. I made a character and I started the newbie missions. One of the newbie missions was to take some explosives and blow up a wall. I picked up the explosives, which involved running over and standing next to a box, then hitting the use key, and watched my character crouch and stay motionless for 10 seconds. Once I had the explosives, I ran over next to the wall, pressed the use key, and watched my character crouch for 10 more seconds while he was setting the explosives.

Then I stood there ~1 ft away from the wall and watched the explosion animation do absolutely nothing to my character, damage or physics-wise, and I got a "mission complete" graphic. I then exited the game, uninstalled it, and deleted the X gig installer.

I do not care to see any more Tabula Rasa. That is just embarrassing for a 2008 era game.

FAIL.

Yeah, look at all that time I didn't waste playing some 3rd world piece of shit game. Hoist the failure sails indeed.

I've had a lot of fun in it, and I'm still having a lot of fun in it, despite its imperfections, probably because I haven't locked myself in a box saying "I know all about it because of beta and my cat died so it can never be fun lalalalala I can't hear you".

Nah, the old skill vs stat argument. I would tend to fall on the dice roll side of rpgs, even at the cost of some immersion. I have decent fps skills, but if I have a high level character, I shouldn't be hobbled by my twitch skills.

But to echo Tale, one thing TR did good was give you the fps feel in an rpg environment. It wasn't quite PS, but they did come pretty close to nailing it, given the shenanigans in the office.

I just hope this doesn't hurt the chances for sci-fi mmofpsrpg.

Well it doesn't have to be so one sided.  You could implement a skill based system where the impact of increasing your skill decreases the effect of the dice role.  Something like where the more you use a bow, the more dex you get, and the less often you miss. 

Can you make Mario jump over a bottomless chasm?

Can you click on units in a RTS game?

Can you make Lara Croft's tits bounce?

If you answered yes to any of these, you can aim a ranged weapon at a target and have a good chance at hitting it without fucking dice rolls.

Now try it with 600ms.

So what? I can make my sim go to the bathroom in Sims 2. Does that mean every game should have toilets and bladder meters?

TR wasn't aiming (hur) at pure FPS, and there's no reason why they should.

No, he's right there. You don't release a crap game to open beta. That's just begging for a red-ass-beat-down.

The shotgun is a special case cause it doesn't have the weird hybrid "lock on" mechanism that most of the other weapons do (or did when I played, dunno if they eventually got rid of it). With the shotgun it really does feel like you are playing a 3rd person shooter.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10842.msg347079#msg347079

Eh?  I'm fairly certain if any one of us picked up a bow or shotgun and fired it, we'd miss the mark. 

I grew up in Arkansas.

Do these recent MMO failures signify a turning point — granted, past game servers went dark, but it seemed that the trend was for any game to have an eternal half-life, clinging to existence, with a decaying subscription base (i.e., M59, UO, SWG, Shadowbane, etc.…)…?

I come from a family of hunters.

My father thought it was a skill worth having, taught us all as soon as we could handle the recoil.

I think the turning point is "don't expect you can recoup $50m+ development costs just because WoW did". Or "don't have a business plan that requires 500k+ players to break even (but do have a business plan, because HGL shows that is important)".

TR cost too much. HGL had no business plan. Fury had no business plan. I counted about 9 MMOs closing last year. The eternal half-life is over.

Why does Mario have a limit to how high/far he can jump? Why do the units in the RTS games have stats like health, armour, firepower? Shouldn't it all boil down to how fast you can click on these units or how frequent you can hit that jump key?

Games don't all need to be about direct application of player's own dexterity and nothing else. In fact, very few are.

Ok, so I stand corrected on 3 cases.  But if you take average joe gamer gave him or her a shotgun or bow, and told them to hit a target, they'd be all over the map.  If you want to get the true experience, you'd need to implement some major physics on your weapons as well as the impact of the environment around.  The dice rolls are the easy way out.   Not everyone is good with an FPS engine.

I mean isn't that one of the reasons we play these things?  TO do something we can't do in the physical world?

It works both ways i think -- when the game usees character's simulated skills rather than player's own, it can be used both to allow actions the player would be incapable of, as well as not to allow actions that player could do (because it wouldn't make sense for the simulated character in game to be capable of these actions) And either option allows interesting "what ifs".

I just had to be snarky.

My ability to aim in games is much, much worse than it is in real life.  The skills don't necessarily translate.

This is  just one of the things that really bugs me about a lot of games. For instance, WW2 FPS games that have health packs floating around. Why go through all the painstaking historical recreation to totally murder it with fucking health packs?

Why have a game with guns if you can't aim them? At least make it like Contra, where you have SOMETHING to do with the trajectory of the weapon.

Anyways, nobody ever agrees with me on this subject. FAREWELL TR.

I'm a grenade launcher whore, have been since UT. My weapon of choice wherever it's implemented. TR did them pretty darn good, I don't recall a bounce effect, but you could arc your shots for skill based shooting.

I'm only passing with a bow and shotgun, but good with rifles, never actually fired a real grenade launcher...should get one! I'm better irl with a rifle, but worse with everything else.

I'm on both sides of the issue. I like skill-based games, but will always be wtfpwnd by the folks who learn every map and sploit and play for days and days on end. I like stat-based games, but will always be wtfpwnd by catasses who play for days and days on end. So I don't give a shit either way, it's not like I'll ever be "good", relatively speaking.

The fact is...TR was never, ever, ever damn did someone mention NEVER about aiming. That was literally the first thing anyone following that mmo who could actually read understood. I don't know why someone will play TR expecting something remotely realistic when every interview, game-preview, any information about the game at all clearly stated that whole game is really dice roll.

:headscratch:

Mouse aim is ghey anyway, and all FPSes suck for having it. It's light gun or nothing!  :drill:\

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Nes_zapper.jpg/800px-Nes_zapper.jpg)

More trolling by DLRiley, f13's most worthless poster.

Necros the other TR thread to say he never played it: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10842.1295  Then posts in this second thread about the game he's never played, to make a strongly worded argument about game mechanics, using the "dice roll" phrase from above to evoke a response.

Does the same in the politics forum.

hmm defiantly feeling the love tale. mind if i bring up your post history for old times sake?

Yeah, throw me in the 'can game and can shoot IRL' crew as well.

I'm sorry about my general lack of Tabula Rasa knowledge. I tried the beta when I had a chance. From that experience I did not buy the retail game. When I first heard of the game it was wearing completely different clothing. I couldn't keep track of all the developmental changes, so I put it in a black box until they released something that I could play. I do the same thing with Peter Molyneux games -- don't read a single preview or 'first impression' of the game or believe any of the hype until you have it in your hands and can see for yourself. 

I wanted a shooter game in the same vein as Planetside, but with more character development and a more telling and lasting impact on the game world. I figured a game by LB featuring some topless redhead with laser guns might provide that sort of gameplay. Obviously, I was mistaken.

Well, now that you bitches have gotten your slapfight out of the way, I'll weigh in and say I'll actually miss the game.

At least I got to go home...

(http://homepage.mac.com/surlyboi/esg.jpg)

How do you get to Earth? I don't think I'll get time, I'm not even level 50 yet and I'm logos-impaired due to lack of gaming time.

S'alright. I thought Ultima Online was going to be about Role Playing.




...




wait for it.






 :awesome_for_real:

If the server's haven't melted by tomorrow morning, look for one of my myriad variations of starcrossed. Get to 50 and we'll go to Earth.

That is, of course, if the Bane and the Neph haven't fucked everything up between now and then.

I got to 47 and went to Earth anyway - sorry for not looking you up! Got involved with defending the Earth bases but gave up eventually and went into Cellar Arena, then realised everyone was gradually being forced in there with me.

Stayed to the end, great party, funny moments (devs are saying their farewells in chat broadcasts, someone demands they wish him a happy birthday, and suddenly there's a broadcast "happy fucking birthday"). Very sad to see the game close. Plenty of people were enjoying it.

Edit - also I should say the last few weeks were extraordinarily well engineered. The uber items and XP bonuses they introduced into the game were very well implemented and the defeat of humanity was brilliantly executed.

For those not there: the bad guys developed stronger troops, they attacked all player-defended bases until we were all gradually overrun (fighting was actually effective, but it was just too much struggle to keep going). Planet after planet was lost, the teleports to the overrun planets became inactive, and the surviving players were all forced into Cellar Arena (teleport hub), which the bad guys then overran (which turned into a party instead).

I was there when we lost Earth.

And then Arieki...

And then Foreas...

The good guys didn't win and the Neph. (The bad Eloh) came in and cleaned our collective clocks. Then Penumbra blew them all to hell.

If I had the cash, I'd pull the devs from this and throw them at a game involving the refugees that survived. There was a lot of decent storyline there. Sad to see it go.

That sounds really fun. It's nice that they spent the resources to develop this storyline to an end that aligned with the server closing, instead of just "Here this day we be done" non-event.

Has anyone found out how much it cost to develop TR? Ive seen 100m number tossed around quit a bit but not where that number came from.

I think they should have stuck with pink Unicorns shooting rainbows, that would have been awesome.

Anyway it is sad to see a lot of potential being flushed away like the remains of a good party.

R.I.P. Tabula Rasa

(http://homepage.mac.com/surlyboi/laststand800.jpg)

A spy fights one of the Neph in the last stand on Earth.

Pretty good TR combat video from the European server shutdown event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EChK-DbZuv4

RL photos of the devs running the shutdown event: http://www.planettr.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10647

TR Tale was kind of hot.
(http://users.on.net/~svandore/pics/tr_end3.jpg)

The arena in Cellar Arena at the end:
(http://users.on.net/~svandore/pics/tr_end2.jpg)

Chatbox madness.
(http://users.on.net/~svandore/pics/tr_end1.jpg)

(http://users.on.net/~svandore/pics/tr_end4.jpg)

No more TR ever.
(http://users.on.net/~svandore/pics/tr_end5.jpg)

edit: someone's video of the same moment, from just below me - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVh1J9MxZL4

I dunno if I've got any shots of helmetless surlyboi in any of their forms... =(

I ran with "show helmet" switched off because part of the officer's cap graphic was close-cropped brown hair, even for redheads  :uhrr:

Did the lady in that video come with her own Stripper Pole?

It's an emote called /poledance (in a game with a Richard Garriott mask ... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxMpw_O-wZA))

I also liked /airguitar9000 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzDDIQfIsGU)

... disturbing.

very.

Though I will say, I spent a good chunk of the last day in florescent pink armor doing the /rave emote.

Heh.  Psychochild was in that last screenie.

(that's why I picked it)

Dev posts from http://www.planettr.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8

Yeah. I'm really gonna miss this game. They shoulda put a bullet in Lineage II instead.  :uhrr:

Uhh, is this like the world first MMO LAST DAY Event or something? I've ever been in one but this sounds quite dramatic.

I stumbled on this video and agreed with the point it made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p5_NFQinNc

Not the first, but probably the best.

Wish had goats. I haven't heard about any goats in Tabula Rasa.

AC1 did an end-of open beta event back in 1999, but this sounded 100x better.

They had lava in some towns, other towns being attacked by Elementals, but it was pretty static.

Nope, no goats.

Goat helmets, but no goats.

I did find a couple of helmetless shots from about a year ago though, just after I got my spy and sniper to their 30s.

(http://homepage.mac.com/surlyboi/sniperface.jpg)

(http://homepage.mac.com/surlyboi/spy800.jpg)

(http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/large/8d4939e4b98475d75a9ad537cf3b0bbac9237159.jpg) (http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/ratmantransform/ss_file-8d4939e4b98475d75a9ad537cf3b0bbac9237159.jpg)

 :awesome_for_real:

Carpet bombing thick swarm of 20+ mobs attacking human base, followed with lighting strikes and then gunning down whoever was still standing with a minigun ... that did have its merits.

as had the close quarters shotgun porn, with the stuff sent flying left, right and centre.

Don't forget the ice weapon crit that turned dead mobs into snowmen.  :why_so_serious:

Watching that





slowly paced





video





was a






fucking grind






in itself.







Also:


You seem to be missing a rather large point. MMO in it's final death throes "hay guysz we removed sum of teh suck for teh lat 2 weekz!" doesn't really mean much, especially in MMO-terms. "oh, it could have been fun" might apply pretty well to the game that actually was people's experiences, not the "out with a bang" final couple of weeks or days.

 
Perhaps they should have done that shit (much) earlier and might not have had to turn out the lights?

Looks like UT 2004...


With a subscription fee...


And a cockblocking grind...


Fuck that.

Did you miss the words "is even more frustrating to me than"?

That's how I said what you said.

 :dead_horse:

It's dead and you're beating it. What a fucking hero.

Man that non-grindy video made me miss TR :(

I wish it didn't come out right before I got laid off so I could have played it more (before they did the retarded health update).

ok.

I can't see how people saying "the shit just aint that good when I played it" would be more frustrating then the game getting the best update evar once the devs had the death watch going though.
Imagine if that happened to/when that happens to Warhammer. Too little, too fucking late, foolish devs.



You seem a little protective of the memory of the game. It's a fucking game, It's dead. It's also what we do here, in case you haven't been reading for the last howevermany years.
The whole thread is  :dead_horse:, even the posts before they turned out the lights.

Every game has teh potential. And the list of games that squander that potential is long. Anyone who tried TR and then gave it the bird are totally justified. Although a lot of work went into TR towards the end, it was textbook "too little, too late".

IMHO TR's biggest weakness is that it was a ship without a captain. No one to stick up for the game and steer it during it's post-launch crisis.

TR should have started a cash shop to raise funds  :awesome_for_real:.

FIFY

It had potential.  They screwed it up.  Twice.

This has all happened before.  And it will all happen again.

Sorry, can't imagine it. Wasn't dumb enough to buy it.

Correct. Here is the issue distilled: "but is it fun?". Along with thousands of other players, I was having fun in Tabula Rasa (yes, even before they frustratingly amped up the fun before frustratingly shutting it down). They switched off my fun. All I can do is celebrate the memory of the game and playing forum PvP is the only activity left.

I suppose. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where in the development history that RG started drifting away. Even a crazy moon man at the helm is preferable to no one at all.

I was testing the game from an early stage and there was no strong sense of direction. They seemed to be almost guessing what to do next.

There were some great ideas but there wasn't a real good plan, so even the good stuff got buried in the final rush to throw the thing out into the hands of the open beta and then the paying public.

They also didn't listen to people they hired to give feedback.

Three times, don't forget they scrapped it and did a complete redesign a couple of years back.

Out of curiosity, what would be considered regular and fast pace?

All I'll say on this is that Tab Ras was the least grindy of any game I've played. You leveled up fast and it was goddam fun.

Remember that, Fun?

And thats all that matters.

RIP. You will be missed.

Arroo?

http://www.xfire.com/games/tr/Tabula_Rasa/

I see people playing after the shutdown?

Maybe even bad games have private servers.

In a video, you get to the fucking point.

Might have been fun to be the guy playing that video, but to make it watchable, you need to compress your point to make it take up less time, otherwise it's just fucking tedious. Less time between the onscreen text, shorten the whole thing to 1/3 or 1/4 of the time it was running for. It's the same broad reasoning behind why you get people to bunch right up each other way beyond normal personal space limits when you take a group photo.

I did some googling, but came up empty. If there's private servers going on, I'd like to find out about it.

There have been people on TR boards who crank the app up every day to check if they can login, just in case NCSoft switches on a server again. Could that be the source of the xfire count? Simply cranking up the app and trying to log in?

+

Yes. Xfire counts time the game's EXE is running, not actual game time.  So if you just sit at a login screen for 12h, it's 12h of 'game time.'

That's a hilarious indictment of the MMO subculture.

I would not be shocked if there are people that just don't know. Like they've been held hostage in Nam for 30 years.

The running joke in general chat during the free leadup to shutdown was "OMG! This gaem is bein shut downs?"

I've got my Gods and Heroes shortcut just waiting on my desktop for the day they launch.  :why_so_serious:

Ladies and gentlemen, it gets better...

Richard Garriott Suing NCSoft for 24 Million:

Late last year, Ultima creator Richard Garriott split from NCsoft, the developers and publishers behind his latest game, Tabula Rasa. Sounds like the split wasn't exactly amicable.

While at the time it sounded like Garriott had - fresh from his trip into space - simply walked away for a new challenge outside of games development, court documents have surfaced today showing that Garriott is suing NCsoft for a whopping $24 million.

The suit was filed in the Texas Western District Court earlier today, with Garriott, the plaintiff, accusing NCsoft of fraud. We've contacted both NCsoft and the court for further information, and will update when we hear more.

http://kotaku.com/5241911/richard-garriott-suing-ncsoft-for-24000000?skyline=true&s=x

Don't know the details so maybe he has a legitimate complaint but given how much of NCsoft's money he flushed down the toliet I wouldn't be surprised if they counter-sue him.

Feh, who gives a fuck. Won't bring TR back.

Gotta make back that space money somehow.

Not much left to go after, he blew his wad into space and sunk the majority of the rest into the castle which i am sure is homesteaded/primary residence.  Hopefully this will hammer the stake home with all the money bags out there that RG isn't a good investment.

The complaint seems valid from his telling of the story.

Essentially NCSoft said "you're being terminated, end of story, no appeals process, go quietly", so he goes quietly, and finds out internally they termed it a voluntary separation, which caused all sorts of amusing things to happen with his stocks and forced a sell or some shit.

He's basically suing them for terminating him and then labeling it he quit so they could play benefits games.

There's some details at Gamepolitics (http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/05/06/richard-garriott-sues-nc-soft-over-millions-stock-options). Guy looks pretty legit. :pedobear:

If that's true, NCSoft is up to some shady shit on the termination side of things.

Usually I am against corporate cornholery but it couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy.

Oh Richard. You still entertain us!  :grin:


ew

This whole situation is hilariously stupid.

It is.

I eagerly await the 100 million fraud counter suit for pretending to be a games designer.

Looks like he has a legit case, to me.
Did Garriot kick your puppy, or something?

Definitely a legit case, if it's true. Bunch of scumbags.

What I don't get is why he didn't just tell everybody he was fired. Certainly it's less embarrassing to "leave to pursue other ventures" but c'mon now, we're talking about twenty four million dollars. I'd admit I took a sabbatical to thailand and blew a dozen ladyboys for $24m. Hell, I'd probably buy a ticket and do it for $24m! And film it! And send it to my grandma! Moneyshots and all!

Salacious asian vacations aside, I imagine he'd have a higher chance of success (and a great deal less stress) obtaining an injunction forbidding NC from terminating his stock options than rolling the dice in the courts six months later. It just doesn't add up. We're missing something.

Like, he's crazy?  Or that he sent out all that publicity saying I'm leaving to pursue other opportunities?

Even rich superstar game developers need to get it in writing when being fired.

Wasn't the whole "I'm leaving to pursue other opportunities"-letter written by NCSoft while LB prepared to depart the planet, or something?

That happened after he had arrived back planet side.

Well, it says they quit him while he was still in quarantine from the flight. I suppose it could make the negotiations more difficult...

makes me think of that "peace? no peace" scene from ID4 for some reason.

If Garriott would've taken responsibility for TR and at least tried to salvage the game himself then I'd side with him holding onto his stock options (or at least getting some money for em), but since he flushed his own game just like NCSoft... he deserves nothing.  It's his name on the box, it's his baby, it failed, he abandoned it, and now he wants to make beaucoup profit from his sponsoring company?  I dont think so.  Phuck him.  He has to take his lumps like everyone else.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, do we know for sure that RG abandoned TR, or was he getting pushed to the side much earlier than his blastoff adventure? Hell, maybe this was all a part of NCSoft's plan to get rid of him.

The guy went on a joyride in fucking space.

From what I heard, Garriott wanted out of TR for a while - he'd said to NCsoft that he'd develop the game for a few years, but then he would depart. He wanted to move on, do other things.

Unfortunately those years were eaten up long before TR ever launched. NCsoft East kept interfering, kept pushing for certain things and Garriott lost interest. Given his stock options he couldn't just leave, but he was really just a marketing figurehead towards the end of the development cycle.

I do think that Garriott should have done a better job since the project hung on his name, but he was apparently clear with NCsoft East that he didn't plan to stick around forever.

[The following rant is pure conjecture]

Yes we do.  
Common sense dictates that given the net worth of Garriott and his stock options he could've easily taken greater responsibility for the game and probably done NCSoft a favor in doing-so (for pennies on the dollar).  Instead, he knew his own creation was a dud (largely due to his lack of real input; or vice versa) and spent the entire time as nothing more than a glorified employee with no real boss, having a cushy relationship with NCSoft execs, and nice bonuses.  He at no point took responsibility for the project after the redesign in any way, shape, or form...  wanted all the reward and none of the pain.

NCSoft knowing his intentions (to turn his back on the game) did the smart thing and forced him out under the pretext of him wanting to (which is in reality EXACTLY what he [Garriott] wanted).  Basically, the guy is now trying to do an "insider trading" deal with his own stock options.  His thinking:  "my game sux, screw it... i'm not gonna put any more resources into it, I'll just hang around here until my stock options get some value (after my game is cancelled and Aion releases), and then I'll sell out and bail."

In reality, Garriott was better served NOT producing a quality product in TR because that'd require too much more time and capital which would weaken his stock position.  He was better off letting the product bomb out (purposely) and get it off NCSoft's books... bumping his stock value up.   [even moreso once Aion released]  

If he'd taken the moral high road and either:
a) released his stocks under the condition of the game being kept running and expanded under NCSoft; whilst he kept working on it
b) bought the rights to the game outright via his stock options
c) formulated a deal to sell his options at "x" value and buy the game

He'd have been fine.  But, since he proved to be a greedy little man, he's on the path to getting burned.  NCSoft was wise to do what they did, because in an SEC-like trial Garriott would've been guilty of manipulating the stock anyways.  Not only that, but if/when Garriott dumped his stock NCSoft would've taken a pretty big hit in stock price just from the sale.   So, obviously they didnt want that to happen and headed him off at the pass.

Screw him.  Give him a few hundred-grand and tell him to go away.  You cant make money from nothing.  TR=nothing (literally now), so him actually wanting to make profit from it makes me ill.  Kudos to NCSoft.   :drill:

p.s.
I really dont know wth I'm talking about, but this was still a fun post   :why_so_serious:

You deliberatley cut off the second part of that sentence.

KAHN!

Heaven forbid someone with an opportunity to do something AMAZING that .0000001% of the population of the human race will ever get to do actually take advantage of the situation rather than sit around and crap out some fucking piece of software.

Oh, the huge manatee~

I can't say I wouldn't do something similar, but it's cold comfort for the people (investors, employees, etc..) who were busting ass and hoping TR would be something more than a flop.

He took a holiday, it's not the same thing as pissing in the coffeepot on your last day. When you're an insanely wealthy space-obsessed loon your holidays tend to be more unconventional than the week on a beach that most of us make do with.

Ummm, he didnt pay for his trip to space.  NCSoft fronted the money (or at least a large chunk of it).  Which is yet another reason he should get not a dime from NCSoft.

Hahaha what? They did? Proof?

Please remember to appropriately label every post comprised of your flights of fancy and imagination, otherwise people will think you're trolling. Only the moderators are allowed to troll here!

I take back my statement.  It was gleaned from info. I received when I was playing TR (back in the day), obviously from rampant speculation. 
Indirectly though, NCSoft did indeed pay for this trip into space though (he worked on TR for 4 years, risiduals, and stock options).  And the ultimate sacrificial lamb for him to go there was Tabula Rasa.  Had he not blasted off I'm pretty sure the game would still be open for business.

It's also no coincidence his suit is asking for $24million and his trip costed him $30million.  One way or another, he's going to get NCSoft to pay for his trip.

 :uhrr:

I'm pretty sure the game was sunk at the point where they scratched it and started over. Long before the space trip.

Indirectly, I feel responsible for Ghambit's stupidity as my taxes pay for his internet access through the 2008 stimulus check. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to everybody for subsidizing this fucknut. Please accept my heartfelt apologies.

Well, we needed a new Grunk. Nice of Ghambit to rise to an admittedly high standard of prose.

So, my employer owns the television I bought with my salary?   :uhrr:

Well, it depends where you work. Lets say you work for a company that makes paper.

One of your company's main customers is the local hospital, who uses paper for towels, records, sanitary purposes, that sort of thing. The hospital's services are paid for by its patients through insurance provided by their employers, and they work at many different jobs. Lets say the fella that used your particular paper towel was shot in the arse in a gang war, just to keep it spicy and interesting. We'll call him "L-dub", because I think it's funny. So L-dub is "employed" by his gang. They sell oregano disguished as hashish to little kids in elementary school playgrounds during recess. The little kid who bought this one particular dimebag of "hash" is actually a quite prolific working character actor. Also a midget. He buys his pot in schoolyards because cops don't proscecute kids, and he has his buddy Karl come in to pick him up posing as his Daddy whenever the cops round up the little potheads. Anyway, this actor works for many studios but the vast majority of his pay goes to the Shin Lee Therapeutic Asian Choice Massage in encino CA. This massage parlor is full of trafficked korean women between the ages of 16 and 45 forced to have sex with hairy American men while fantasizing about killing them. All of the profits are funneled through the Madam, a somewhat chunky but generally pleasant (unless you cross her) Korean woman with trendy thick red rimmed glasses, where she skims 10-20% off the top. The rest are sent to North Korea, where Kim Jong Il spends them on gold-plated Mercedes Benz automobiles which his crazy drunk sons use to run over dissidents and daterape desperately poor young peasants of both sexes. Mercedes is a german car manufacturer with thousands of employees...

But you just make paper, you say? No, sir. You, sir, are part of the problem!

In a way, yes.  You most likely bought that expensive plasma (assuming you did) on credit or at least under the assumption you'd be making "x" amount of dollars in the future.  If those dollars are taken away by your employer all of a sudden you cant pay for that plasma and your credit goes to shyt or you're broke from dumping your wad in cash on the purchase.

RG was working in the rears, meaning he really didnt have $30million to dump into space (he's actually said he's pretty much tapped out and needs to find work now).  He went into space under the assumption he'd be "taken care of" by his employers.  He wasnt.  He was "fired."  Now he needs a way to pay for his trip.

So yah, NCSoft owned his space trip.  They paid his salary and gave him stock options and some control over a game he outright marketed through his space ventures; of which he paid for under the assumption he'd actually be worth something.  But, NCSoft pulled the rug from under him whilst he lay in containment, basically chopping off his credit line.

Whenever you're working with money you dont really have, you never really feel like you "own" anything.  And I bet RG sure as shyt doesnt feel like he pwned his space venture; right about now he's probably wishing he never went.  Kinda sad actually.  Now he's got nothing but his retarded castle.  And who the hell is gonna hire or invest in him now?   :why_so_serious:   Naw, he's done unless he wins this lawsuit.

Lastly, from a wealthy CEO's perspective, they (NCSoft) do indeed own his space trip.  That's just the way those people think.  If they see their employees jaunting off on extravagant ventures, they more or less feel like they're the reason it happened.  OR, they just feel robbed (their money went to waste).  His space trip was a pretty well marketed thing that NCSoft was wrapped up in; it's not like some private vacation he went on.  And just because they didnt write the check directly for his trip, doesnt mean they dont feel responsible for him being able to go.  You guys gotta understand the way this crap really works with these people (wealthy CEOs, big companies, etc).  I know I've harped on it in the past, but you really gotta read between the lines.  Whether I'm right or not.

Regardless, you never really own anything in this country anyways. :oh_i_see:

I wish I could hate you to death.

awwww... that's not nice   :heartbreak:
If it makes you feel better, I edited it and added more text for your reading pleasure.

All that is a far cry from RG robbing the till and using the petty cash to purchase a space hot rod, and you know it.

Well, actually... how is being given $30million in stock options for an eventual dud project and ejecting it into space (while abandoning the project said stock was given for) not robbing the till?
The only way he's not really stealing (in my eyes) is if he injected some of those options back into his game.

I SEE WHAT YOU TEABAGGED THERE.

They gave him the stock options. It's not like (AFAIK) there was some small print saying he had to stick around and invest that funds back into the game. Shit, he could have cashed that out and bought hookers and coke and it would have been the same result for TabRas.

Because hiring a terrible worker does not mean the worker is stealing.  It means your hiring practices are terrible.

If NCSoft wanted RG to do something with stock options or whatever, then it should be in the contract.  So they can pound his ass if he doesn't.  If it's not in the contract, then too fucking bad.

NCsoft paid for his name and his expertise. He provided both, incidentally the game for whatever reasons was giant shit sandwich. Unless his contract stipulated some measure of success  (it didnt) the money and stock options are his. Does not matter how awful the game performed, it does not matter that he blew 100 zillion dollars on a space flight.