Tabula Rasa, now with no FUN!

[schild]

I bet those guys are happy to be off Tabula Rasa.

[Sir Fodder]

Hmm, the tone of that Korea Times article did seem a bit heated.

[Ratman_tf]

So, if Korea Times is taking the piss, then how is Tabula Rasa doing? I mean, the main site is all puppies and rainbows for good old Tabula Rasa, but is it on track to make back the money spent on it?

[/curious]

[schild]

So, if Korea Times is taking the piss, then how is Tabula Rasa doing?

Badly. It's doing badly. It's mechanism for doing good was broken the moment they put a fucking DINOSAUR in charge of game development. The only way it could've flopped worse is if we had a dream team of Bartle and the Terranova staff making Circle Jerk: The MMOG.

Next question, plz.

[cmlancas]

I heard McQualude sent in his app. 

Truthiness?

[HaemishM]

but the numbers quoted are wrong (esp. in terms of the game's development budget)

Thank Fucking God. To have pissed that much money away on Tabula Rasa would be a goddamn crime against humanity.

[Ratman_tf]

So, if Korea Times is taking the piss, then how is Tabula Rasa doing?

Badly. It's doing badly. It's mechanism for doing good was broken the moment they put a fucking DINOSAUR in charge of game development. The only way it could've flopped worse is if we had a dream team of Bartle and the Terranova staff making Circle Jerk: The MMOG.

Next question, plz.

So, NCSoft says Tabula Rasa is the next WoW, and a fella on the internet with a Guy Fawkes mask says it's doing lousy.

I guess it's like a Tootsie Pop.

[Lum]

Here's a story with NCsoft's official response (most of which I sort of alluded to already)

[Ratman_tf]

Here's a story with NCsoft's official response (most of which I sort of alluded to already)

No reason. I just think that mask is kuh-razy!

[Phred]

From the story Lum linked

“The article made it sound like the TR launch led to some sort of falling out with Robert Garriott. That is so far from the truth. In fact Robert has been promoted to work more with CEO TJ Kim on business development. Yes Robert is out of the day-to-day operations, but he’s still in the office and now travels much more for the company than he did before.

The similarities with Brad McQuaid just keep going. Oh wait, is Robert Richard's brother or is this a typo? Didn't the original story mainly deal with Richard's fall from grace at NCSoft, rather than Robert if he is his brother?

[Tannhauser]

If you fire McQuaid or, in this case, Garriott you acknowledge the vision for your game is fundamentally flawed.

[UnSub]

From the story Lum linked

“The article made it sound like the TR launch led to some sort of falling out with Robert Garriott. That is so far from the truth. In fact Robert has been promoted to work more with CEO TJ Kim on business development. Yes Robert is out of the day-to-day operations, but he’s still in the office and now travels much more for the company than he did before.

The similarities with Brad McQuaid just keep going. Oh wait, is Robert Richard's brother or is this a typo? Didn't the original story mainly deal with Richard's fall from grace at NCSoft, rather than Robert if he is his brother?

Robert and Richard Garriott are brothers. Richard was designing TR, Robert was president / CEO (?) of NCsoft North America.

[tazelbain]

If you fire McQuaid or, in this case, Garriott you acknowledge the vision for your game is fundamentally flawed.

And that you are chump for going along with it.

Still, the hysterical nature of original article was silly.

[Slyfeind]

Did the author of that article get banned from Guild Wars or something?

[schild]

Did the author of that article get banned from Guild Wars or something?

Maybe he didn't yell loud enough for a refund.

[Ratman_tf]

Did the author of that article get banned from Guild Wars or something?

Maybe he didn't yell loud enough for a refund.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Let me get this straight.  They've taken the ONE thing most of their paying customers agreed was fun and cool about the game, fast pew pew combat against mobs of, um, mobs, and nerfed the heck out of it???

 

So they've basically raped PvE to balance PvP?  Oh wait, of COURSE they put PvP at higher priority.  They always intended for their last-remnants-of-the-human-race in an existential battle against evil aliens universe to be focused on team combat between aliens and um, squads of endangered humans?  That's what everyone flocked to the game to experience after all! 

Wait, wait!  This is a joke, right?  After all, this is 20078, and these are professional game developers with decades of experience, right?  The NGE is still fresh in everyone's mind, right?  RIGHT???

I am SO glad I waited on this one to see if it would float or sink upon launch.  It's starting to look like it may burn to the waterline, roll over and sink into the swamp after all. 

To recap the story so far, after 2 (or more?) ENTIRE design & development cycles the public is invited to tour the nearly completed good ship Tabula Rasa (Mark II) with an "open" beta.  Out of the ensuing din, one can discern a plethora of criticisms, a few shrugs, and a lot of folks shaking their heads and quickly getting back to solid land lest they find themselves trapped on board when it launches.  Notwithstanding its apparent unseaworthiness, the game is launched anyway in mid-October with the inevitable first day "miracle" patch that's supposed to fix everything and make it all good, or at least good enough to be fixable during the shakedown cruise.

Surprisingly enough, the late beta/early launch patch(es) actually seem to address enough of the critical problems for TR to stay afloat through the first weeks after launch.  She's listing a bit though, and taking on water, due, according to Admiral Gariott, to damage taken from the bad PR caused by allowing civilians to inspect her prematurely.  No recognition that it might have been RELEASED too early as well, but hey, Admirals (or Generals or whatever) often loose their heads if they admit that kind of mistake!  The general consensus on the game during this period, excluding both rabid fanbois and those who can never be satisfied, is generally that, well, it's kinda OK.  You get to pew pew aliens instead of hack hack orcs and there are some kinda cool moments, generally involving Starship Trooper-like combat against waves of enemies in suitably "realistic" science-fictiony battle environments.

Fast forward a couple of months to the end of the year, and what do we see?  Horrible class imbalance with wave after wave of nerfs, skill/class redesigns, etc; lag; incomplete secondary systems (like crafting); no apparent end game; limited content already wearing painfully thin.  The ship's clear of the dock but they seem to be trying to rebuild it even as she sails.  Hopeful passengers are still staggering around on the canted deck and the Live Team crew can be seen to be banging on stuff furiously if, perhaps, chaotically.  It's not completely clear who's in charge or where they're trying to take the ship, the P/A system was disconnected at launch, and the Admiral has vanished (again), but she's under way and heading out into deep water.

Skip (or sleep) forward another month and we see the ship being rocked and battered by great shocks.  It's not clear through the smoke and spray whether these shocks are caused by onboard explosions, an external storm or hidden rocks under the surface.  But damage reports include desperate tales of expansions cancelled, massive development staff reductions, and increasingly radical and desperate design changes.  Meanwhile, everyone in charge has recieved medals and promotions, while the remaining crew, fearing a mutiny by the passengers, has cleverly distracted the conspirators by issuing them all devilish unicorn goat masks so they can't tell each other apart any more!



hmmm, other than reducing the first 6 years of the story to half a sentence, have I missed anything significant?  It's like watching one of those wannabe-artsy movies that can't make up it's mind if it's a drama, a comedy, a documentary, or just a director's acid trip.

[Arrrgh]

Wait, wait!  This is a joke, right?  After all, this is 20078, and these are professional game developers with decades of experience, right?  The NGE is still fresh in everyone's mind, right?  RIGHT???

That's why I don't get all the dev worship. They release POS after POS and people just breathlessly follow where they're off to to start their next likely POS.

The ones who actually make a decent game (WoW) get the least (that I've seen anyway...link to bliz dev fanboy forum if you have it) forum fanboy fawning.

[WindupAtheist]

That's because the blizzdevs (wisely) refrain from interacting with forum peons.  They remain remote and inscrutable.

[Abelian75]

I dunno, there's plenty of massive blizzard fans.  It's true they don't really have a specific rock star personality that gets the credit for their successes.  Not having your company based around that kind of rock star "vision" is probably helpful for actually getting real work done on your software product.

[tmp]

That's why I don't get all the dev worship. They release POS after POS and people just breathlessly follow where they're off to to start their next likely POS.

The ones who actually make a decent game (WoW) get the least (that I've seen anyway...link to bliz dev fanboy forum if you have it) forum fanboy fawning.

You really need links to people saying "zomg Blizzard makes the bestest games ever"? They don't get individual dev worship, it's collective worshipping instead.

[SnakeCharmer]

Let me get this straight.  They've taken the ONE thing most of their paying customers agreed was fun and cool about the game, fast pew pew combat against mobs of, um, mobs, and nerfed the heck out of it???

 

So they've basically raped PvE to balance PvP?  Oh wait, of COURSE they put PvP at higher priority.  They always intended for their last-remnants-of-the-human-race in an existential battle against evil aliens universe to be focused on team combat between aliens and um, squads of endangered humans?  That's what everyone flocked to the game to experience after all! 

Wait, wait!  This is a joke, right?  After all, this is 20078, and these are professional game developers with decades of experience, right?  The NGE is still fresh in everyone's mind, right?  RIGHT???

I am SO glad I waited on this one to see if it would float or sink upon launch.  It's starting to look like it may burn to the waterline, roll over and sink into the swamp after all. 

To recap the story so far, after 2 (or more?) ENTIRE design & development cycles the public is invited to tour the nearly completed good ship Tabula Rasa (Mark II) with an "open" beta.  Out of the ensuing din, one can discern a plethora of criticisms, a few shrugs, and a lot of folks shaking their heads and quickly getting back to solid land lest they find themselves trapped on board when it launches.  Notwithstanding its apparent unseaworthiness, the game is launched anyway in mid-October with the inevitable first day "miracle" patch that's supposed to fix everything and make it all good, or at least good enough to be fixable during the shakedown cruise.

Surprisingly enough, the late beta/early launch patch(es) actually seem to address enough of the critical problems for TR to stay afloat through the first weeks after launch.  She's listing a bit though, and taking on water, due, according to Admiral Gariott, to damage taken from the bad PR caused by allowing civilians to inspect her prematurely.  No recognition that it might have been RELEASED too early as well, but hey, Admirals (or Generals or whatever) often loose their heads if they admit that kind of mistake!  The general consensus on the game during this period, excluding both rabid fanbois and those who can never be satisfied, is generally that, well, it's kinda OK.  You get to pew pew aliens instead of hack hack orcs and there are some kinda cool moments, generally involving Starship Trooper-like combat against waves of enemies in suitably "realistic" science-fictiony battle environments.

Fast forward a couple of months to the end of the year, and what do we see?  Horrible class imbalance with wave after wave of nerfs, skill/class redesigns, etc; lag; incomplete secondary systems (like crafting); no apparent end game; limited content already wearing painfully thin.  The ship's clear of the dock but they seem to be trying to rebuild it even as she sails.  Hopeful passengers are still staggering around on the canted deck and the Live Team crew can be seen to be banging on stuff furiously if, perhaps, chaotically.  It's not completely clear who's in charge or where they're trying to take the ship, the P/A system was disconnected at launch, and the Admiral has vanished (again), but she's under way and heading out into deep water.

Skip (or sleep) forward another month and we see the ship being rocked and battered by great shocks.  It's not clear through the smoke and spray whether these shocks are caused by onboard explosions, an external storm or hidden rocks under the surface.  But damage reports include desperate tales of expansions cancelled, massive development staff reductions, and increasingly radical and desperate design changes.  Meanwhile, everyone in charge has recieved medals and promotions, while the remaining crew, fearing a mutiny by the passengers, has cleverly distracted the conspirators by issuing them all devilish unicorn goat masks so they can't tell each other apart any more!



hmmm, other than reducing the first 6 years of the story to half a sentence, have I missed anything significant?  It's like watching one of those wannabe-artsy movies that can't make up it's mind if it's a drama, a comedy, a documentary, or just a director's acid trip.

Best post I've ever read.

That's an award winning rant if there ever was one.

[CharlieMopps]

On a positive note, they did a really good job on the GFX engine. The game looks good. Everything else sucks though. I don't think it was released too early... nothing could have saved this game from the designers. They just didn't have a clue.

[Venkman]

When I saw the (converted) $100mil dev budget for TR, I thought it more hyperbole!!1!1/ in an article rife with it. However, I didn't think it unrealistic. The game was redesigned twice, the second time after whole cargo ships full of cash was thrown at the first one. The second redesign doesn't seem to have as much RG handson as the first, given what it became, but it still wasn't a cheap undertaking given that almost nothing could be retained from the game revealed in, err, what, 2005?

That's not saying the TR that launched cost NC $100mil US. But the total effort of going from nothing, through iterations, to launch, could have.

I'm glad this hasn't affected their other projects, particularly for the folks we know.

[Baldrake]

Here's a story with NCsoft's official response (most of which I sort of alluded to already)

I tried very hard to read that story and failed. That is one busted site.

[Merusk]

Wait, wait!  This is a joke, right?  After all, this is 20078, and these are professional game developers with decades of experience, right?  The NGE is still fresh in everyone's mind, right?  RIGHT???

That's why I don't get all the dev worship. They release POS after POS and people just breathlessly follow where they're off to to start their next likely POS.

The ones who actually make a decent game (WoW) get the least (that I've seen anyway...link to bliz dev fanboy forum if you have it) forum fanboy fawning.

Nobdy likes shitting on their childhood heroes.  Combine 'grew up with UO' with this and you get some understanding of WHY Garriot and Raph continue to get the devotion they do.

[Morfiend]

but it still wasn't a cheap undertaking given that almost nothing could be retained from the game revealed in, err, what, 2005?

Hey, that unicorn head helmet was totally worth 25mil.

[Stormwaltz]

Hey, that unicorn head helmet was totally worth 25mil.

Needs butterfly wings.

[Lantyssa]

Needs butterfly wings.

Argh!  You had to remind me of the scrapped design.

It brings back my grrl gamer nerd rage.

[tmp]

Needs butterfly wings.

That's the next year reward.

[Signe]

I was SO looking forward to those unicorns. 

[UnSub]

I was SO looking forward to those unicorns. 

Fortunately for you, Garriot cut their heads off, scooped out the innards and turned them into fashion accessories.

Now TR has unicorns without the concern of horse dung falling out of the sky.

[Lucas]

Ye olde "damage control" post by Blackthorn himself (Starr Long) over at PlayNC.com

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Dev Corner: Tabula Rasa - State of the Game
 
Starr Long, the Producer of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, updates us on the state of the game, as well as moving forward to the exciting things to come.

In the last few weeks there’s been talk about the future of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, the financial impact of the game on NCsoft as a whole, and the state of our development team here in Austin. I think it’s important to clarify what is going on and what our players can look forward to in the near future, because there is a lot to look forward to.

NCsoft has committed a lot of money and resources into continuing post-launch development of Tabula Rasa. We have been putting new content into the game every few weeks, and we will continue doing just that. We have already added more upper level content and new features like Hybrids, and we’re working on tons of exciting content, such as Personal Armor Units (mechs and mini-vehicles that players can use and will grant them new abilities). Other features we are planning include Command Opportunity, where players will get the ability to summon entire squads of upgradeable NPCs to fight for them. Clans will be able to battle over control points, which we are building specifically for clan versus clan gameplay. Another addition we’re working on is Flashpoints, which are missions that start dynamically in a region for a number of players, whenever certain criteria are met.

Richard Garriott remains involved in, and dedicated to, Tabula Rasa. Even while training for the opportunity of a lifetime—to go to space—he’s been in daily contact with our team, providing guidance and continually challenging us.

I would be remiss if I don’t clarify the matter of rumored “massive layoffs” within NCsoft North America and the Tabula Rasa team. While the game has not taken off as quickly as we had hoped, we also launched in an insanely competitive time frame, with several well-known intellectual properties launching follow up products at the same time. However, the fact of the matter is that we are transitioning from a pre-launch crunch-mode development team to a live service team. This is standard in our industry—you ramp up to launch a game and then ramp down once it’s live. This is what we are doing over the next several weeks, and it only affects the Tabula Rasa team. Once all is said and done, we will still have a substantial live team for industry standards. As you can see by the new features we’re working on, we’re still planning on lots of great content and updates all year long.

There has been a lot of talk about Tabula Rasa lately which doesn’t match the reality of the situation. I hope I’ve been able to shed some light on what is really going on. We have become a more flexible team and have put procedures in place in order to deliver more focused, timely content and fixes much faster than before. This has given us the ability to support our players in a much more timely fashion, which they seem to appreciate and we plan to continue.

I can’t close this column without mentioning Tabula Rasa’s community. They have been invaluable in helping us determine the priorities for the game moving forward. We deeply value our community’s passion, commitment, and dedication to the game. They continue to provide us with excellent feedback and ways to improve Tabula Rasa. We have a lot on the horizon for Tabula Rasa this year, so stay tuned to our website for more updates on the game.

Thanks for your time!

Starr Long, Producer of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, NCsoft North America

Starr Long has been in the business of making PC games for more than a dozen years. Alongside Richard Garriott, he was the original Project Director for the commercially successful Ultima Online. Starr worked his way up through the ranks of Origin Systems, Inc. starting in Quality Assurance working on Wing Commander, Ultima, and many other titles for Origin. In 2001 Starr teamed with Garriott to start the Destination Games studio in Austin, which was later acquired by Korean gaming giant, NCsoft. Currently Starr is Producer on Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa, an epic sci-fi role-playing online game developed at NCsoft’s Austin, Texas studio and published in 2007.

[Ratman_tf]

(mechs and mini-vehicles that players can use and will grant them new abilities).

I hope mini-vehicles doesn't mean something like AO's shoe cars.

[Johny Cee]

(mechs and mini-vehicles that players can use and will grant them new abilities).

I hope mini-vehicles doesn't mean something like AO's shoe cars.

There are some drool-worthy NPC mechs running around in TR.  Pretty much your first reaction is "Fuck I need one!" and then you find out that they aren't in the game for players.