The End of Tabula Rasa - Server Shutdown Event

Over 2 years later, and I still really lament the end of this game. The fact that it hasn't popped up as a private server is also a sad thing. There are still thousands of people who miss this game and would love to be able to play it in some form.

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There were separate, but similar, end game events on both servers. They took place at 8pm GMT and 8pm CST on the European and US servers respectively.

To understand how Tabula Rasa got to this point, read: History, Timeline and Post Mortem of Tabula Rasa.

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The event began with increased Bane activity throughout the game world. Control points and bases were attacked by larger than normal forces. Even main bases that normally did not face serious attack were assaulted by Tabula Rasa staff run armies - led by superior alien beings known as the Neph. These Neph were extremely powerful foes that could only be taken down through the concerted effort of hundreds of players.

As the event continued, the Bane slowly but steadily gained control of the two main planets in the game. This blocked the players from using the transportation network to reach those planets. Eventually, a "Last Stand" took place on Earth itself.

The "Last Stand" took place on an instanced map so multiple shards could be spawned. This helped not only with lag but also with making sure more people actually had enemies to engage. The battles were enormous in scale, but eventually the AFS prevailed over the Bane and the Neph.

At midnight (GMT or CST depending on which server you were on), there was a countdown from 10 and then the server went dark.

Tabula Rasa developers posted photos taken from their offices during the event. They also informed their community that many former employees returned to the offices, unpaid, to help play NPCs and run the event. They level of effort put in by the Tabula Rasa developers in the final months of the game was impressive.

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I asked the creator and administrator of Planet TR for more details about their plans, and he responded:

"When the shutdown of Tabula Rasa was announced in November a number of community members expressed concern over the future of PlanetTR. It didn't take us very long to decide that it would be a terrible waste to to pack it in and lose this amazing community of players so we've chosen to stay open and shift our focus to other games. After polling the community members to determine what new games they were most interested in we had them vote on which of those games would make up our core focus going forward. Though we would happily cover the popular fantasy genre in MMOs if the community asked for it, they chose to have us stick with sci-fi games by choosing Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Trek Online, Stargate Worlds & Earthrise as our new core games. In an effort to be welcoming to players that may not be interested in those particular games we do plan to have sections devoted to other PC Games as well as Console & Table Top games. Where PlanetTR began as a fan site devoted solely to Tabula Rasa, we are hoping to transition into an all-around community site under our new identity of The Planet.

The only other thing I feel strongly about being mentioned is the effort we make to ensure the site is as welcoming as possible to players and developers alike. We feel very strongly about ensuring trolling and flaming are dealt with as quickly as possible because no one wants to be on a forum where excessive negativity runs rampant. That doesn't mean we don't allow negative posts, we just ask that if members have something negative to say they do so in a constructive manner and keep their focus on issues, not people."

The transition to "The Planet" has been completed, though many members are still sharing memories and nostalgic screenshots from their Tabula Rasa gameplay. It will probably be some time before the focus of the site shifts more to other Sci-Fi MMOs.

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