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SAVE TABULA RASA
boberic
Member Posts: 97
in Tabula Rasa
I'm waiting...
waiting for january 10th so i can sign up for my free tabula rasa account. On jan. 10th their making the game free to play and its going to be that way until feb. 28. I think that as many of us as possible should go and play the game. They said " the game never achieved the player population we hoped for". so lets go help them reach it. or atleast get close. Tabula Rasa looks like a cool game and ive watched a friend or two play it. Maybe something will happen, an act of god perhaps?, and theyll save the game and keep its servers online...
SAVE TABULA RASA! it deserves deserves to be saved.
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runescape != goodgame;
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Comments
I dont know if u know it.... but they need the people in the game to get enough $$$ to keep the game running .... Free to Play means no $$$.... no matter how much people get into the free period... the game is going down anyway....
Exactly. By waiting until the 10th to sign up the only message you are sending to NCsoft is that you are only willing to play TR as long as it is free. If they were willing to run the game without making any money off of it they wouldn't be shutting it down in the first place.
Maybe if you went back to the game NOW and started paying a subscription fee that would send a proper message to NCsoft, but I doubt you will find many people willing to join you in such an act.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
Exactly. By waiting until the 10th to sign up the only message you are sending to NCsoft is that you are only willing to play TR as long as it is free. If they were willing to run the game without making any money off of it they wouldn't be shutting it down in the first place.
Maybe if you went back to the game NOW and started paying a subscription fee that would send a proper message to NCsoft, but I doubt you will find many people willing to join you in such an act.
why couldnt they lower subscription fees instead?
Exactly. By waiting until the 10th to sign up the only message you are sending to NCsoft is that you are only willing to play TR as long as it is free. If they were willing to run the game without making any money off of it they wouldn't be shutting it down in the first place.
Maybe if you went back to the game NOW and started paying a subscription fee that would send a proper message to NCsoft, but I doubt you will find many people willing to join you in such an act.
why couldnt they lower subscription fees instead?
I don't know the specifics, but I would be willing to guess that they are already breaking even/taking a loss as is. I would think that as they stand at the moment, lowering the subscription fee would result in negative returns. I played TR for a bit and I don't know what it was, but it just didn't click.
maybe lord british descends down from his orbit,
buys the game, throws some money at it and revives it as the vision he had
or maybe not...
well ill definitly try the free game phase, i did a 15da< triel once and it didnt seem half bad to me
if your bored, visit my blog at:
http://craylon.wordpress.com/ dealing with the look of mmos with the nvidia 3d vision glasses
I don't know what it is costing them to keep the game online at this point. Probably not a lot since they already cut nearly all the staff for the game and there is next to no development being done for it. But I doubt that was the issue.
The money they spent to develop this game in the first place is probably the issue. I forget the exact number (maybe one of the more deatil oriented posters on this forum will care to remind us) but this game cost NCSoft some HUGE sum of money. Something on the order of tens of millions of dollars, a pretty hefty sum of which I would guess went directly into Richard Garriot's pocket. They could double the subscription fee for this game and they would never come close to earning back what the game cost them to develop. No matter what they do at this point they are pretty much going to have to accept that this game kicked their wallet in the balls.
So at this point they probably just want to cut their losses and put this whole disaster out of sight and out of mind as quickly as possible for the sake of their share holders.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
I don't know what it is costing them to keep the game online at this point. Probably not a lot since they already cut nearly all the staff for the game and there is next to no development being done for it. But I doubt that was the issue.
The money they spent to develop this game in the first place is probably the issue. I forget the exact number (maybe one of the more deatil oriented posters on this forum will care to remind us) but this game cost NCSoft some HUGE sum of money. Something on the order of tens of millions of dollars, a pretty hefty sum of which I would guess went directly into Richard Garriot's pocket. They could double the subscription fee for this game and they would never come close to earning back what the game cost them to develop. No matter what they do at this point they are pretty much going to have to accept that this game kicked their wallet in the balls.
So at this point they probably just want to cut their losses and put this whole disaster out of sight and out of mind as quickly as possible for the sake of their share holders.
No offense, but if the game only cost "tens of millions of dollars", then I would assume from start up cost alone, it would fail or atleast not even be on an even playing field of the current top mmos.
Make it free to play, with item shop, that's how asian mmo thrive..
But they will have to re-design the game abit...
RIP Orc Choppa
Like I said, maybe someone will come in and remind us of the exact figure. There are a number of posters on this board (Rokurgetpa being one of them unless I'm mistaken) who talk about the numbers behind the game a lot more than I do. But I clearly remember very large sums of money being quoted for this game in the past. With Richard Garriot on the team someone bought into the idea that the game was going to be a massive hit and become the next WoW so they threw money at it like crazy over the years during which time the game had little or no direction, suffered from constant changes and meanwhile our buddy Richard was off begging for more money to fund his trip into outer space rather than working on the game.
Long and short of it is that TR has been a giant money pit from the start and I don't think NCsoft's investors are willing to put up with it anymore now that it is clear it will never become popular enough to earn back what it cost to make in the first place.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
Well I have never beleived that the 100 million figure being floated around by some korean newspaper is correct - but they did spend 3 years in development, then scrap the game and start over - so easily 50-70 million.
I know you don't like to believe that the Garriotts were so selfish and greedy, and that Kim Taek-jin was so credulous and foolish.
All you need to do is go to NcSoft.net and read for awhile. The Korea Times did the work for you and gleaned out the facts, but you called them bad names when they wrote the truth. Read for yourself, then!
You'll see that they gave the Garriotts $43B won (about $43M) upfront, and 2.6M shares of the company in stock to buy the Garriott name and Destination Games and their vaporware Tabula Rasa in 2001. Ncsoft in their tax pages even deducted the cash $43 as an intangible asset of "knowhow". They were paying for Garriott talent, experience and effort. Did they get what they paid for? This upfront money went right to the Garriotts, not the game. This is how he bought his space ticket. Development costs were on top of that. Much of those costs were wasted with the second version (remember the Koreans bought the first version in 2001, and the vanity of the East/West game started in 2001). Then the third version came out, with limited content and many claiming that the game felt too much like Auto Assault without the cars. I'd say the second version of TR cost about $14M, the final third $25M. Year to date expenses to run the game--$10M, as per the CFO Lee. $130 million gone. The biggest single video game flop, ever.
Read for yourself before you insult an honest reporter.
So the game lies in rubble, now, at your feet, and you still want to criticize the only game news outlet that played it straight, that weren't censors like your lovenest Planettr or the myriad of Lost Boy fanboi sites that propped up a lazy hasbeen and allowed him to bring a game company to ruination.
I read today in the Korea Times that a Korean publisher is thinking of suing a developer for Hellgate, and that's just to recoup the losses of about $10M.
You guys do not get the free month of play unless you are a active Trasa subscriber. Read the fine print.
The free month of play was a gift to the subscribers that were subscribed before Nov 20th.
Website | Forum | Values | Join Us!
I don't know what it is costing them to keep the game online at this point. Probably not a lot since they already cut nearly all the staff for the game and there is next to no development being done for it. But I doubt that was the issue.
The money they spent to develop this game in the first place is probably the issue. I forget the exact number (maybe one of the more deatil oriented posters on this forum will care to remind us) but this game cost NCSoft some HUGE sum of money. Something on the order of tens of millions of dollars, a pretty hefty sum of which I would guess went directly into Richard Garriot's pocket. They could double the subscription fee for this game and they would never come close to earning back what the game cost them to develop. No matter what they do at this point they are pretty much going to have to accept that this game kicked their wallet in the balls.
So at this point they probably just want to cut their losses and put this whole disaster out of sight and out of mind as quickly as possible for the sake of their share holders.
No offense, but if the game only cost "tens of millions of dollars", then I would assume from start up cost alone, it would fail or atleast not even be on an even playing field of the current top mmos.
He didnt say "ten million" He said "Tens of millions" Which in referes to a figurative number anywhere from 20 million to 990 million. But since millions in the 990 million area are usually refered as hundreds of millions, we mostly associate tens of millions into the category of 50 million and up through 190 million, which seems about in the ballpark for a high profile MMO.
74 million is what NCSoft said it cost. That was not including any money given to the Garriots. The 74 million is what it cost to get TR to release date. After that you can check NCSoft quarterly reports and see that TR was on pace to make around 6 million a year after this year if the population stayed the same. The first year might have been around 10 million depending on how much of the box sales went to NCSoft and whether or not they counted those at the end of last year when they shipped or if they counted the revenue when the boxes sold.
So at 6 million a year TR would have broken even on initial investment in 2020. Then they could have started covering operating costs for those 12 years. My guess is 2028 TR may have made its first profit. Does anyone still wonder why this game is being closed?
Hey your post jumped off the screen....pretty common sense that alot of people dont even know ^_^
I think the F2P is an attempt to achieve some interest in the game, although it is an expensive game and they will be adding advertisments and it'll end up like the froob experience on AO haha, not so bad but hearing a pepsi or coke commercial over and over while your shopping for shit isn't my cup of tea.
Ill probably be doing the free trial thing, not entirely sure yet but maybe.
Hmm... last time I checked out AO there was no commercials, free accounts just have very limited access to content, limited to the original AO content without expansions (which, bluntly, stinks, because leveling takes forever and a day and you have no access to the more interesting parts of the game). 5 bucks a month buys you access to the first expansion, which can be a pretty good deal. Well, could be if the game wasn't so dated and the froob/5 bucks areas weren't so deserted.
Thats what free is for. How much do you really expect for the free version? I know AO is dated but didnt they/arent they doing a complete graphics engine update to AO? I liked Aos character choices and the many skills involved, always thought that AOs builds and TR combat could have made a great game, especially in a huge world with epic battles.
Its gone guys, just let it go and move on, Im sorry to be so blunt but when have you ever herd of a player movment saving a game? I doubt you can get 50,000+ Subscribers in a few months.... Hate to say it but all this hope is wasted, look at Hellgate London, a Great game really FUN game, but it still died. It happens to good games and bad games.
You can't really compare it to HGL because there was no way for HGL to create any more revenue. It was designed to be a free to play game and there never was enough content for the game to get many subscribers. TR is twice the game that HGL ever was.
While I don't think players will be the ones to save the game, it still has the potential to be profitable for a small dev studio to buy. Even with minimal development and only a couple servers, TR could easily keep a player base of 25,000 - 50,000 players. With a more reasonable $10/mo fee it could be a success. Not only that, but it would be a great way for a smaller design studio to get involved and experienced with the MMOG market. There is a huge amount of technical resources to draw from the source code alone.
The only unknown is how stingy NCSoft will be with their 'failed' product.
Stingy? You think NcSoft is stingy? They've practically ruined themselves indulging your lazy cult figure, Richard Garriott.
It costs Ncsoft a million a month to run RG's TR. The CFO said as much. The game was bringing in half that.
If you want to challenge someone to show a little soul and generosity, challenge Lord British the Selfish! He and his brother have the cash to keep it running.
Is it that hard to understand that the game sucks ? If the game was good, peoples would play it. Nobody plays it cause it sucks. What company wants to maintain a game running if they are losing money over it ? No one.
Bingo!
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I can see your epitaph now, on the day you expire. It will read "Wasted Potential".
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You can't really compare it to HGL because there was no way for HGL to create any more revenue. It was designed to be a free to play game and there never was enough content for the game to get many subscribers. TR is twice the game that HGL ever was.
While I don't think players will be the ones to save the game, it still has the potential to be profitable for a small dev studio to buy. Even with minimal development and only a couple servers, TR could easily keep a player base of 25,000 - 50,000 players. With a more reasonable $10/mo fee it could be a success. Not only that, but it would be a great way for a smaller design studio to get involved and experienced with the MMOG market. There is a huge amount of technical resources to draw from the source code alone.
The only unknown is how stingy NCSoft will be with their 'failed' product.
How would TR easily keep 25-50k subs when in the last quarter they went from roughly 39k to roughly 29k. They lost 1/4 of the subs in the last three months. That 29k is the average for 3 months the reality is they may be well below that already.
TR never had enough content to keep subscribers either, that it why it was cancelled.
I am willing to give ncsoft 2 million for the game.
You may want to call them, I doubt they are looking here for bids.