Tabula Rasa: A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall

With the game’s demise quickly approaching, Ten Ton Hammer is offering up a timeline that chronicles Tabula Rasa’s brief existence.

October 2007 – On October 29, pre-order keys allowed players to hop in the game an entire 3 days early. With Halloween masks and a fairly smooth launch there wasn’t much to complain about. A number of network sites began running previews and reviews of the game which weren’t glowing but favorable.

November 2007 – The hard launch does not go quite as well due to the four servers buckling under a heavy load. A few tweaks and adjustments fix it a week later, but the first few days are rough. The Test server opens on the 12th allowing players to get a peek at exactly what is in the works. On the 26th, not even a month after launch, the first nerf is announced on a buff called Rage which increases damage.

December 2007 – The first week of December, the developers announced they are entirely revamping the Biotechnician and Medic classes. This works out for these two classes as there are numerous complaints about their utility and even one or two skills not working. Just 10 days later, the Auction system made it’s way on to the servers, meaning players could finally sell dropped items. The end of the month brought an announcement to changes in the stat system which was considered at the time ueseless. Now that free game time was up, populations began to thin a little.

What a shame. Rather than pull the plug, why not sell the server-side software and let players set up community-run servers.