Massivley: If you're still postponing the dive into NCsoft's Tabula Rasa, because of that whole shut-down thing, I wanted to just let you know that you may be missing out on a historical opportunity here. How often is it that you get to play a game through its last remaining weeks, and actually witness the end first-hand?

Right now the game itself is even free to download. I'll explain more on this later, but if you're feeling extra generous, or you're big into souvenirs from dead MMOs, you can pick it up on Amazon or most brick-and-mortar shops for $5 US. If you want to spend the extra cash for a Collector's Edition, to get some dogtags, an AFS Challenge coin, a "Making of Tabula Rasa" DVD and more, you can do that for $15-$30 usually. Or perhaps, you'll be lucky enough to find a dumpster full of boxes behind an EB Games somewhere.
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After just releasing Deployment 15, and talking about the upcoming Deployment 16(With Mechs), NCSoft has made Tabula Rasa free for current, new, and returning players a month early.
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As announced in today's Feedback Friday, the Tabula Rasa team has been working on a way to present low-level instances in what could be considered a "hard mode" of sorts. The first of these is the Caves of Donn instance which now has an Epic version, accessible through the CELLAR Arena.

This Epic Caves of Donn instance has Epic versions of the Caretakers, Technicians, Soldiers and the brand new Ravagers and Seekers created for the Back-to-Earth campaign. This instance is repeatable, allowing players to eventually gain all rewards in addition to the XP, Prestige and Mimeomech. Admittedly, the developers report that the instance doesn't have as much polish as they'd like.
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As a testament to the fact that Tabula Rasa players aren't throwing down their rifles and giving up that easily, the community events are carrying on stronger than ever. Thanks to fansites such as PlanetTR and Gangrel's Forums, this weekend is chocked full of contests and special events to keep away those end-of-the-game-in-two-months blues.
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Massively: "For those players left to enjoy Tabula Rasa in its final months, NCsoft has remained diligent about keeping up with quality content. The most recent game update, Deployment 15, has now hit the Public Test Server and brings with it many features that players have been looking forward to for a while now.

In addition to the new FPS camera view, we're treated to a new instance map entitled "The Empire Sector". This special map is restricted to level 50 players who must also meet certain Logos requirements."
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Massively writes: "Last week we spoke very briefly with NCsoft's Director of Public Relations David Swofford about the company's decision to close Tabula Rasa. He reiterated the basic statement we heard from several sources surrounding the call: this was all about the bottom line."
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With NCSoft slowing sinking, teams being laid off, Richard Garriott himself exiting the company, it should come as no surprise that another round of lay-offs have rippled through the company.

Sources tell us that today many of the Tabula Rasa team were let go. The plug has also been pulled on the game, according to both our sources and the official Tabula Rasa website.

It seems that the game didn't accomplished the player population the devs expected.
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Richard Garriott Leaves NCsoft Richard "Lord British" Garriott, the Ultima designer and recent space tourist, has announced that he will be leaving Tabula Rasa developer NCsoft to pursue new interests.
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Massively: "The Server vs. Server War in Tabula Rasa is ready for this month's installment, as the PlanetTR folks get ready for what has quickly become one of their largest events. As with last month's server war, this one will follow the same rules, although this time Pegasus will join forces with Cassiopeia to battle those in Orion and Centaurus."
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You may be reading that title up there and thinking that's a typo -- like 1UP must have forgotten a zero or something. And you'd be right, 1UP did forget something: not to round up.
Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa has fallen on hard times lately -- what with other high-profile MMOs like Age of Conan and Warhammer Online stealing away their thunder -- but 1UP doesn't think they realized quite how far the game has been sinking. Many retailers, including Gamestop, have stopped carrying the game altogether, but the clearest indicator that all is not well with NCSoft's space MMO probably comes from Amazon. Right now, the online retailer has dropped the price of Tabula Rasa to $0.96 (and once again, no, that's not a typo).
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