It is impossible to know exactly why Tabula Rasa failed, as MMO economics are very complex. A few possible reasons include:
- Very rocky launch: At the launch of the game, there were many problems. A significant percentage of the missions were bugged or broken in one way or another. Many zones suffered enormous server side lag due to inefficient handling of large numbers of NPCs on a single map (Mires was one of the most notorious). There was little or no content for levels 40 and up.
- User Interface problems: The user interface lacked any significant customization options. Screen elements could not be moved around, and the chat box was very strangely placed in the top left of the screen. Traditionally, MMOs put chat along the bottom of the screen. Additionally, many keyboard shortcut options were never implemented. There were never keyboard commands for targeting oneself or for targeting members of one's squad (a party or team). This made healing or buffing allies or oneself extremely difficult (and prone to sudden unexpected results if another being moved in front of your reticle at the exact moment you pressed the button for an ability). Many aspects of the game left the player feeling like he or she was fighting against the interface rather than using it to interact with the game world.
- Lack of direction: Possibly related to Richard Garriotts' preoccupation with his mission to space, the game lacked direction during the late stages of its development and first few months of release. His space flight was announced in October 2007, a month before the game's release. The mission itself took place in October of 2008. During the intervening year, much if not most of Garriott's time was devoted to the training necessary for the spaceflight.
- Too much enemy crowd control/status effects: Almost every Bane enemy in the game had a power called "Bane Kick", which knocked the player back and onto the ground for a few seconds. The attack was used frequently, and by almost every Bane enemy in the game. In large battles, this meant players spent significant portions of their time knocked back or down. This was extremely unpleasant. In the first few months of release, the developers added more similarly annoying status effects - a white flash that filled the screen and disoriented the player's camera, a stun that blurred the display and turned it black and white, stuns, freezes, and more. The net result of this was an excess of status effects that removed the ability for the player to act. In an action heavy, run-and-gun type game, this was particularly bad.
- Turning to "nerfs" too early: Game balance is absolutely vital to any MMO, but when there are game breaking bugs and zones so lagged they cannot be used, that is not the time to start "nerfing" (power reducing balance changes) the game. The timing of these nerfs was extremely poor, and drove people away from the game en masse.
- Not enough content variety: Ultimately, all there was to do in the game was run around and blow up aliens. While this was fun in a lot of ways, an MMO needs to simulate a world and have a variety of gameplay options in order to succeed. Tabula Rasa simply never provided any of this variety.
In the end, most direct reason Tabula Rasa failed was an insufficient number of subscribers. NCSoft is a large, publicly traded company that invested many millions of dollars into Tabula Rasa over almost 7 years of development (some estimate exceed $100 million). When a game has that kind of investment and expectation, it has to deliver significant gains relatively quickly. The NCSoft divisions located in North America and Europe have generally underperformed (other than Guild Wars), which puts all of those games on tenuous footing.
After a year, Tabula Rasa still suffered from a small subscriber base (some estimates place it well under 50,000 subscribers, and perhaps close to 10,000). In the current economic environment, it is nearly impossible for a game to justify its existence when owned and operated by a large, publicly traded company. The developers definitely gave the game everythign they had. The final end game event was just one example of that. It is a shame Tabula Rasa was not independently owned, or run by a smaller company. If so, it might still be in operation today.