Here’s a little Tabula Rasa holiday flashback I found via archive.org.

So I’ve been jumping from MMOs since TR was cancelled. I raided with my old WoW guild for a bit, then tried out LOTRO and hated that. Then, I finally found a hidden gem.

The Chronicles of Spellborn came out and I only heard about it the week it came out from a guildy in LOTRO due to a complete absence of advertising. I fell in love with the game from day one. I finally found my new MMO that was actually refreshing to play. Like TR, it also had a third-person shooter aiming system, only there was no lock on feature. It’s probably the most beautiful MMO artistically that I’ve ever played. It has a fable-esque vibe with over-proportioned characters and armor with massive, awe inspiring buildings. The capital city is probably the best city I have ever seen in a game. I haven’t been this immersed in an MMO since Ultima Online. The story is just fantastic and since it has that light fable vibe, all of the NPCs are loaded with humor, but with a serious back story. The soundtrack matched the art style perfectly. Easily one of my favorite soundtracks. The game wasn’t gear based, leaving armor/weapons and such as aesthetic choices that can be customized through a socketing like system for player enhancements.

It turns out most others were like me and hadn’t even heard of the game until it launched. The community stayed very small, but close-knit except for the House vs House rivalries. Two months pass… and there’s still zero marketing or advertising from Acclaim, a major F2P MMO publisher. The community is split between a region lock of Europe and the UK/US servers. Soon after, the developers go bankrupt and the European publisher Frogster (Another F2P publisher) immediately sends the game to Korea of all places for an MMO like this to be redeveloped into a F2P game with no plans for updates in between now and the relaunch in 2010. It’s as if that’s what the publishers wanted all along. Now that the community is dead… I’m left with another essentially cancelled MMO.

What luck, huh? All the MMOs I actually like end up being shut down.

There was a thread to this nature some time ago, but this story came up in a vent conversation the other day and I thought I would share and thus made this new thread.

"The Exo at a CP"
a genuine OMG TR moment
brought to you by the 1625th Mass Requiem

A couple of clan mates and I were camping Ortho Post in Incline. We were all in the early 30’s. A spy laying out a nice carpet of bane carcasses for us to walk over.. each wave brought a new layer.. it was carnage… well….I was playing around with my Exo "Ute Ravensberg"… (had just gotten the signature ‘reanimation wave’ and joined them at Ortho. This was rather early in the game, so it had suffered little nerfing.

The precise moment escapes me… but i waited until you could barely see the dirt when i jumped in the middle of the mass of dead bane and hit reanimation wave… the screen froze…. maybe to 2 frames per second… then suddenly, I had a pure army under my control… ooooo .. awesome thought I.. a few moments later.. the sheet hit the royal fan…OMFG I never met more bane at one time!

Back then, the bane spawns rather based themselves on the number of good guys in a CP… the more good guys.. the more spawn… hhmmm My newly formed army, counted as good guys… LOLOL

I NEVAH saw more incoming bane ships than at that moment… I couldn’t count them all… I estimate 15 or so… maybe more.. my mate says there were over 20…. the screen was bloody full thats all I know… I could actually see the spawn point grid of the game with the layout of the ships there were so many. The whole north side of my map was scarlet red! The war that ensued was epic! A lagfest of epic proportions! What to expect with a tidal wave of bane ..hehe! We entertained worries that we would break TR…hehe

OMG the carnage! Oh ya, we were pwnd in mere moments, everyone at the CP ended up a casualty of that battle, (sry about that guys) and they took over Ortho for god knows how long. After like 30 minutes of laughing on vent, we rezzed and did it again…:-)

A great memory..:-)

Hi Guys: Things with NCSoft and the cancel TR are getting worst for me, I receive a email from ncsoft saying this, "

Hello ******,

Your support ticket has been escalated to me as a supervisor for the PlayNC Account Support Team.

I would first like to comment on your commitment to the game. Your devotion to Tabula Rasa is greatly appreciated and, like you, we feel it’s unfortunate that the service ended last Saturday. The fact that you offered to provide funds to continue playing the game is incredibly generous, however, this is something that is not necessary.

To address the status of your remaining game time which was added to your Tabula Rasa game account, when the service ended on February 28, 2009, your game account still had game time added up until April 6. As the service to play Tabula Rasa for free began late December, you should have 4 months (give or take) of game time coming to you. In reviewing your account, it’s hard to determine how this game time can be credited back to you, due to the fact that pre-paid game time cards and one-time PayPal® purchases were stacked (record are wrong, someone at ncsoft has changed my billing summary - dont want the game cards).

As PayPal charges are immediate and one-time (at the time you used this method of payment), the game time was immediately added to your game account. As such, our system did not recognize that you had game time purchased via PayPal remaining on your account at the time of the service ending. It was recognized that the game time remaining was time added from the multiple game time cards you stacked on your account.

I cannot process a refund for any of the PayPal transactions which occurred in August, September and November of 2008, as the game time was immediately added on the purchase dates and played through. Also, all eligible PayPal refunds were processed by our billing system last week. However, I will be able to issue you four 30-day game time cards (for the remaining game time from the multiple game time card codes you added to your account) which you will be able to use towards, if you choose, your existing City of Heroes/Villains game account or any other game accounts you might have which accept game time cards.

Before I issue you four 30-day game time cards, I wanted to see if you have any questions concerning this issue. If so, please let me know and I will certainly address them along with issuing you the appropriate game time.

Thank you,
***********
PlayNC Account Support Supervisor

I hope this is not happening to anyone else. I feel ncsoft lost a customer today and if anyone is interested in buying City of Heroes Good vs Evil Edition please send me a tell.

Drawing inspiration from Hawkwar’s I remember when… thread, I thought I’d make a similar thread myself, using some of all the screenshots I’ve taken throughout my time of playing TR. They should appear in chronological order, from beta to a few weeks before the end.

I remember…

…when they tried to convince me that I had a Predator behind my back. But I told myself never to fall for that again.

…very intense pain in the groin.

…the headaches I used to get from my engineers shield bot when it used to reflect.

…meeting my NPC doppelganger.

…how hard the Refueling Station in Marshes was.

…getting shunned and ignored by the foreans. Bastards…

…losing my temper for one short moment. That guy had it coming though.

…desperately trying to score…

…all the fun times at the Retread CP in Pools…

…and White Oasis in Ashen.

…wishing upon a star.

…getting drunk and passing out in bad places.

…the overflowing toilet.

…leveling up and having fun with reality ripper.

…coming across that weird clan.

…seeing scary things.

…hiring a kael as a chiropractor. And regretting it until I was able to walk up-right again.

…forcing Gangrel to walk the plank.

…freaking unicorns everywhere.

…pwetty colors.

Whassup, folks? I’m looking to write down the tragic arc of Tabula Rasa’s development, in a fashion that’s accessible to "normal" folks. It’s exceedingly rare for a game of its stature to get released and subsequently be turned off, never to be accessible again. Honestly, it breaks my heart, but I think anybody still reading these forums understands that.

If you’re wondering who I played online, I was "Takoda_2" on Hydra during the final assault. You may remember me saying "WE’VE GOT ELOH VALLEY LOCKED DOWN, B*TCHES!" =) Ah, but I was a n00b, taking down normal Bane mob assaults with my redlined rocket launcher and a shotgun, thinking I was fending off armageddon…

Anyways, whut? Oh, right, sorry, getting carried away, ahem.

I have plenty of material covering the launch and afterwards. At the very beginning, I know that EA shut down UO in Austin the day after Richard Garriott’s non-complete expired, allowing him to immediately get experienced, top-flight talent (what a start to a story!).

What I don’t have is good information or images from the very start of TR, when Richard Garriott was full of talk about his new language and Phi and creating a new civilization from scratch. He was extremely open when I saw his talk at AGC in 2004 or so, explaining how they reached a dead end and had to restart with something people understood. That’s important stuff right there, but I’d love to maybe get his slideshow from that talk, notes from the devs who were there, and anything first-hand that can make this more of a journalistic piece.

From YOU GUYS (and gals!) out there who not a part of the team, can you help me out with images you may have squirreled away, webpages you maybe saved, stuff that has disappeared into the internet wormhole and gone to that purgatory where the sign "Acquiring Data" hangs forever?

Just post it here, if you can… no reason not to share! =)

Thanks!

Ted Brown

Hi there Planet TR Community,

In the name of full disclosure, I am not a TR player, though my housemate is. I have watched him prepare for The Last Stand; watched the YouTube videos of the Olympics and FNF; and have read the posts here and seen the amazing people who have posted here.

I had heard about the end of another game, Asheron’s Call, and wondered what it would be like to watch. The more I saw, the more I became emotionally invested in this game and its people, and I too feel a void today, as many of you do. My emotional investment in TR is rather modest, so I can just imagine the pain being felt throughout this community.

That is why I want to try, in some small way, to offer a bit of hope and solace by suggesting people try Anarchy Online. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_Online

It too is a Sci-Fi MMORPG with a rich history and robost community of both regular players (with official forums) and "Froobs" the people who play the base game free (and have their own fan-supported community at http://www.aofroobs.com). While its not as nice-looking, or as much of a shooter as TR, I feel its similar enough that players could find a nice home there.

Having just discovered this community, I would hate to see it simply blow away like the proverbial dust in the wind. What I would propose is a mass exodus to AO, start playing there, and work to make that game even better.

I am not sure how appropriate my post is to this forum or even this site, and I would understand if the moderators were to erase it. But for one shining moment, I wanted to come out of the shadows and say something that I hope people will at least consider.

I want to thank all of you players and the developers for giving me entertainment far better than any movie or TV show. I’ve watched my housemate play this game since open beta and its been a heck of a ride.

Taken from a post I made to another site, explaining what was happening

As I write this, its 15 minutes before "The Last Stand"

* The EU Server has been shut down, some of them have logged onto the U.S. Server

* The economy has collapsed, if not for the forced minimum price in the auctions, people would give away equipment, everyone is using money for ammo. My housemate spent all his on ammo

* I have never seen this many people on at once, ever, it looks like WoW does normally.

* There is a bit of a carnival mentality, people have out their bonus pets, special armor, and setting off fireworks.

* My housemate has been clearing a lot of old missions out since, well, it no longer matters.

* Unlike Asheron’s Call (the last big MMORPG to go boom) there is not much in the way of tourism, Tabula Rasa is going out with a bang.

————————————-

Five minutes to go, players are giddy and goofy, shouting stupid things over the channels, lots of calls to join guilds. My housemate is going to promote Anarchy Online, its the next best thing to Tabula Rasa plus you can play it free (yes even the people here, since it uses the same engine in did in 2001, most PCs should be able to handle it).

The plan is to release a mass amount of monsters game-wide, most people have maxed out their levels and have great weapons and armor. Unfortunately, its also gonna kill a lot of slower machines.

——————————————–

Took about 10 minutes, but its on!

* The zone to earth has been blocked, too many people there now

* Several major bases now under attack. Fort Definace is lagging, housemate is choosing to go to nearby fort.

* I just heard him yell "Holy Crap, this thing won’t die!"

——————————————————————-

Lots and lots of LAG, all the major bases are under attack by huge "epic" aliens/monsters, reports are coming in from all quarters that they are under attack everywhere from the newbie area to the final battlefield. My housemate has been able to wander the battlefields but because the lag is so terrible he could not fight. He is heading towards another base he is more familiar with.

This is only 25 minutes in.

————————————————-

Housmate made it out to his fist major battle, he managed to attack and penetrate a minor Bane (enemy) base, but has not been able to convert it back to AFS (good guys) because they keep sending in reinforcements. The annoying ones are the epic-level doglike "howlers" who, excuse the term, dogpiled him. Others have joined in the fight and he decided to draw away the epic puppies so others could take the base.

Reports are coming in from all sides that attacks are game-wide now and there is no place to hide from the enemy or the lag.

—————————————————-

Housmate switched his strategy to draw the epic enemies towards the NPC soldiers, that didn’t work too well. The automated message went out that The Bane had overtaken his region (even though the main base held), so he was warped out involuntarily to "the cellar" which is an underground hub linking several bases. He is going to try another fort in another zone. We are now almost an hour into The Last Stand.

——————————————-

Houstemate found himself in a really huge battle this time, tougher enemies and more of them. Unfortunately, the biggest enemy right now is lag. He went to a quieter area and just survived a very intense attack force, the base and control point held.

Someone over the channels tried to get to the region that had fallen on foot, they were locked out. I think the developers are shutting down certain zones to try and reduce lag overall.

Now an hour and a half in and just heard my housemate scream about the enemy penetrating the very secure base he is operating from now.

—————————————–

Housmate just survived a very intense battle for a base. Well, "survive" isn’t the word, he kept getting killed every few seconds until enough the enemy had died that he could stay in the battle longer. For his bravery, he was rewarded by the Devs/GM with the best armor in the game.

Some places are being attacked more than others, mostly the playfieds near the transport to Earth/NYC are getting pounded hard, less so where my housemate is playing.

Once again, silliness is leaking out into the main channels.

——————————————————————–

Almost 2.5 hours in.

The base my housemate successfully defended twice has fallen, so he retreated to another playfield that was quieter. Unfortunately it was so quiet that he and a handful of others were not able to dislodge the epic enemy forces, so he retreated back to the beginning area (the first place n00bs go), there was a lone epic monster but tons of lag, not sure whats going.

Word on the channels is that earth/NYC is unlocked again, but empty (no enemy).

—————————————————–

One hour to go….

My housemate managed to get to earth/NYC, the devs tweaked the playfield a bit, its a lot more open and interesting.

We determined the problem with the epic-level aliens is that the lag allows their regeneration to outpace the damage. This means several people firing on them still won’t kill them, and they tend not to attack. So the battles are a lot more laid back here compared to the waves of non-epic aliens before.

—————————————-

40 minutes to go

Housemate shows me an example of how bad the lag is, a "lightbender" (non-epic) he can usually kill in two shots simply won’t drop, the lag is helping it regenerate.

There are no more reinforcements of normal aliens, so its just the unkillable epics remaining, and they generally don’t attack. A lot of people have taken to donning social armor/clothing and just wandering around and acting like tourists.

Just disconnected for some unknown reason, its back now.

——————————————————–

30 mins to go

Housemate observed that one of the things the devs are doing to try and restore balance is have the pets/slaves of the main aliens turn on them, which allows the players a chance to defeat them.

He also decided that he has seen everything he wants to see, except for the end-game uber-race of people who started the whole mess, the "Neph". He has been following sightings on the channels and is now going to actively pursue them.

————————————————-

20 minutes to go

The channels are abuzz with suggestions serious and stupid about where to go next. In the midst the developers send out a message thanking the players for a good year of gaming (yes, it only lasted a year).

There is a dev on the earth/NYC playfield, he is summoning unusual monsters just to mess with the players

My housemate is unable to leave, guess he is stuck there until the end, thats the bad news. The good news is he found an "instance" (copy of the playfield) that has a lot less lag.

——————————————-

10 minutes to go

Enemies have stopped spawning, its over.

Housemate uses the last of his fireworks at the last part of the last playfield on earth. From a beta tester to the last few minutes, he has seen everything.

The communication channels are still flooded with people suggesting where to go next.

————————————————————

Near the end

* My housemate has 40,000 rounds of ammo, hundreds of rockets, and a over a million credits left

* The developers have announced the defeat of the Bane/Neph, and then have been repeating "ALL YOUR BASE"

* Someone mentioned they were frapping (taping) in The Cellar area, lots of people celebrating

* A lot of people had stripped off their armor and were shooting their weapons wildly (doesn’t harm anyone)

* The communication channel was flat-out spammed, but I managed to catch the Developers counting down from 10

* After the developers got to 1, my housemate got the "disconnected from server" message.

* Time of death for Tabula Rasa: 1:01 AM Eastern Time.

Now we check the various fan sites and YouTube for the footage and comments about the end.
__________________
"Brave men tell the truth, a wise man’s tools are analogies and puzzles. A woman holds her tongue, knowing silence will speak for her"–Royksopp

Probably everybody has their own theory of what happened when the game ended.
If the Penumbra weapon worked, or if humanity was finally defeated.
(Besides the Admins yelling that All our Bases Belonged to Them)

This is what I think of what may had happened yesterday, some kind of Deus Ex Machina-ish ending (probably better called British Ex Moongate). However a logical ending nevertheless.

————————————————————————————-

The Bane realized that the war was difficult to sustain because the humans had the technology to revive fallen Logos-Receptives. Finally being able to use Wormhole technology, their final plan was a full scale attack to all major AFS bases at the same time and destroy all medical installations to prevent further resuscitations.

So it was February 28th, the day of the final assault, there where several AFT Troops fighting on Earth, their final stand. Someone noticed the full moon shining strangely and then on the ground where a circle of stones was lying there was a golden flash, and from the earth raised the shape of a rectangle, a golden rectangle, 61.80% taller than its length, it was in fact a perfect representation of Phi, the Golden Ratio.

This Golden Rectangle seemed to be some kind of gate, a Phigate, as from it a shape appeared and by the surprise of everybody present it was none other than the Lost General himself, the one that was thought to had been destroyed by the Bane, General Cantabrigian British. And he wasn’t alone, behind him appeared his Companions; Geoffrey the Grenadier, Dupre the Guardian, Shamino the Sniper, Julia the Spy, Jaana the Engineer, Katrina the Demolitionist, Mariah the Medic and Iolo the Exobiologist.

To those who where present, British told the story of how long time ago he crossed a gate that resembled the one that had just appeared, and how it took him to another world called Sosaria. In Sosaria he fought and defeated an evil man called Mondain, but Mondain returned more powerful than before thanks to a powerful artifact, the Gem of Immortality, yet he was defeated again by some other man from Earth. Mondain however had an Apprentice and Lover, the Revenge of the Enchantress Minax was casted not only over Sosaria, but also to the home world of British and the man who killed her mentor, Earth. The destruction of the Gem of Immortality created several Timegates to Earth, however there has a problem on Minax plans; the Earth Universe didn’t contained Ether like Sosaria, and channeling Ether through the Timegates was an ineffective way to execute her plans.

Minax explored the Universe through the Timegates looking an alternative source of power an eventually found it. An extraterrestrial race called Eloh had found the equivalent of Ether in this Universe, a source of power based on the fundamental order of the Universe itself and called it Logos. Minax travelled to the time the Eloh race was more vulnerable, after a war they had against another race called Thrax, then she seduced a charismatic Eloh leader called Samael, and corrupted him in her ways of power and domination, and from him she learned the way to use Logos in the same way Ether worked on her Universe. Even though Minax was finally defeated in the time of legends by the same man who defeated her mentor, her influence on the timeline was not completely erased. Being precautions, Minax met for the first time with Samael in different opportunities, thus creating different timelines. The one where she met Samael in a planet in the constellation of Cassiopeia, Centaurus, Orion and Pegasus, this four encounters created four different timelines that lead to an eventual attack to planet Earth 10,000 years afterwards.

Then he announced: "I have finally discovered this secret, and it is the time to erase Minax influence on our Universe" "By using the power of Logos I can execute a contained version of the secret of the Wisps, the Armageddon Spell, destroy this timeline and bring all humanity to a different timeline where the Bane never formed and the war never started" "You may not be aware of this, but I have tried it a few days ago, and I was partially successful, I had erased the Cassiopeia, Orion and Pegasus timelines"
"Yes, but why won’t you tell them, that you actually merged them to this new timeline where the Minax encounter happened on the Hydra Constellation?" asked Iolo.
"That doesn’t matter anymore, right Iolo?" Said Shamino "We were successful erasing the Centaurus timeline a few hours ago".
Dupre said: "Just like old times my friends" and looking to British "It’s time to created another of your trademarked Cataclysms"

All of the Companions surrounded British, each one invoking a powerful logos that represented different virtues. British exclaimed: "Don’t fear AFS soldiers, this will soon be over, you will soon be transported to a better version of Earth, i have seen it myself, and only the logos-receptives will have memories of this war that should never had started" British then used the logos of Big, Effect, Negative, Life, Create, Death, Wind and Time and yelled "VAS KAL AN MANI IN CORP HUR TYM"…

British was then in a white room, a voice told him.
"Back so soon?, yet it seems you manage to save humanity once again"
"Are you the Time Lord?" - asked him
"Why are you always asking things you should already know?, is the next thing you will do, to ask me to bring you back to Earth? - said the Time Lord.
"And you will tell me that my journey isn’t over yet, and that Destination wasn’t really my truly destination" - replied British.
"Good, you have learned well, then allow me to show you where the next road starts…"

Hey guys.
I started playing TR a while ago, about 2 years, it was not my first MMO but the best I played so far, I was starting to work things out and ask more questions to learn instead of trying to work my way through by trial and error.
My first chars I ever had got lost (I think I forgot what account I had) and I remember the "main" being a lvl 14 … I thought that was good, I re-started TR back up again only to have to drop out again due to finances, I had 6 chars (or maybe 7) at least 2 on each server, I finally got financial again and restarted playing but due to moving and a few other real world related issues I did not play, though I did keep up the payments, THEN when I finally got the chance to start playing it was like about 2 months before the shut down announcement, which made me really unhappy and almost dropped it completely, I am glad I didn’t, I did not stay until the server shut down, I had to leave about 10 minutes before it did ( I actually hung out for an hour and a half over what I should have) I totaly enjoyed the time I spent these past weeks in TR and the last hours was intense ( I ran out of money, ammo and all my gear was at 0%) I took tons of photos (my FRAPS broke and I lost the "key") .
This is number 4 of an online game I have played that has shut down (one has bounced back the other is still running but has not fully recovered the others I don’t know how they are doing), each time it gets harder as I have been becoming more "involved" and talking a lot more and not ignoring "team" invites, I used to play solo only.
The community was good in TR, though I did not mix much, just went and leveled, but when I did drop a few words in it was good to talk with folks, and it was good to pass on any information or knowledge I had gained about certain things in the game, I spend a lot of time helping out in other games and so kinda lag (excuse that word) behind as my " apprentices" lvl up, and end up usually higher than me, but I go to play and enjoy and have fun.
To all you guys, the players and the DEVS and GM’s, thanks for the time and the game, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DEVS and GM or anyone that has anything to do with this game inform us all if it is going to be resurected my e-mail is jaberaoky08@gmail.com … I payed to play this game once I will do it again…I am not usually the one to pay for online stuff BUT this one had my votes from the first day I logged in and finished "Boot Camp"…