Of course, I only got up to level 20ish or so. I might play it for the last few months; I got a TR box at Amazon for about $1 when I did my last big purchases for my birthday. Might as well use the free month and enjoy the game a bit more.

One of the more interesting talks I went to at GDC was Richard Garriott talking about why TR had been such a struggle. He talked about how they had too many leader types for the first iteration, not enough grunts to do the work. They had to restart the project from scratch to get a strong, solid vision for the game. This restart, whether necessary or not, was what ultimately doomed the game, I’m sure. I also heard people at NCSoft say that the project would have been killed long before it launched if it hadn’t been Garriott at the helm.

Anyway, I’m a bit sorry to see it go.

To address Rookerith’s question above:
These two examples being said, do you agree that mmos need to end after a certain point?

Even separating out my personal opinions since I run Meridian 59, I don’t think so. As a business, if a game is making enough money to turn a profit, there is some justification for keeping it around. Of course, if those resources could be used to make even more money (that is, the opportunity costs are too high), then you have a reason to shut it down.

One big problem with online games is that we don’t really have a strong sense of history for our games. One of our motivations for keeping M59 around was so that people could experience the game. There are a lot of older online games I’ll never get to experience. In TR’s case here, I wish we could keep it around, especially with the previous version around for comparison. It’s really an educational opportunity for designers to get to look at the game and see what happened. We often lack the context for how games have changed. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of effort to keep an online game running compared to a single-player game.

So, I’m for preserving games if at all possible. I really appreciate that Sony does keep games around so people can play them. I hope they are able to keep doing so in the future.

My thoughts.

I think TR could have survived as a sterile and bland thing — quirky, after all, only last so long, as anyone replaying No More Heroes too much will tell you — but it didn’t do sterile and bland well once you get too far into the game. Two months in, there wasn’t any really memorable content or enough critical mass to get real PvP or interesting factions together. The Great War aspect would have been a great game. Taking control of a major town really felt like an amazing part of a game.

There just wasn’t enough of that, or anything else, to justify the price tag they were putting on it. I’m pretty sure that quirky would have had the same problem. Of course, when they could get Quirky out a couple years and a few million dollars cheaper…

I’ve actually been happy with SOE — my customer service experiences have all been prompt, polite, and positive. Maybe I’m just lucky.

I do have to say, though, that NCSoft is treating their subscribers with respect. They are getting one hell of a deal. If I remember correctly they can choose between L2 or Aion, get some free time, beta tests, etc.

Aion, at least to me, looks like it may do well.

I would say NCSoft’s reputation is better than SOE’s, perhaps because they have a better attitude towards all of their customer handling.

SOE infuriates its customers continuously, NCSoft just chooses to break up and make up.

I had some thoughts about Tabula Rasa, and the whole maintenance of mmos, and thought I’d grace your blog with some commentary!

First off, I must say, I’m a Richard Garriott fan, I loved Ultima, and I hate to see this end this way. As you stated, best wishes to all involved.

Now to my question/thoughts:
It may be premature to say this, but NCSoft is starting to form a pattern of shutting down games that aren’t performing; Auto Assult and now Tabula Rasa.

On the flipside of the coin, it seems like SoE continues to keep their worlds open, independant of it’s success. Of course we don’t have hard numbers, but Vanguard, Matrix, Planetside, PotBS, EQoA, SWG, etc, you’d think one of them atleast has to have hit hard times.

These two examples being said, do you agree that mmos need to end after a certain point? Is NCSoft’s approach correct, or do you think SoE’s approach is more correct? Whatever anyone’s opinion is of SoE, atleast they keep their most deserted mmos open.